MEET MATT SAVAGE
Matt was born and raised in San Jose, California. He started working at the age of 14 as a porter in a 60-lane bowling center. When his dreams of becoming a professional bowler started to fade, he looked for other ways to compete. Who could have predicted that when he walked into a poker room for the first time at the age of 21 that his new competitive choice would take him to the top of the profession? Not exactly as he planned mostly because he claims that his below average poker playing ability led him to take a job at the same poker room he walked into one year earlier.
Matt has handled most poker room jobs from selling chips, dealing, floorman, and lead floorman, but is was not until 1998 that he discovered his passion for running poker tournaments. Savage stepped in as a substitute when the tournament director went on vacation. Shortly thereafter he was asked to take the lead tournament position when a nearby casino opened its doors. It was a couple of years after making the tournaments the most popular in the Bay Area that he noticed a serious problem plaguing the industry.
Matt realized that tournaments around the country and the world had different and inconsistent rules and players did not know what to expect when they entered an event. In 2001, he traveled to the world’s biggest poker stage, the World Series of Poker, hoping to get poker directors to work together to form standardized rules. He was initially met with roadblocks, but the path cleared when a friend (Linda Johnson) agreed to create a forum for tournament directors to convene. Out of that meeting the Poker Tournament Directors Association (TDA) was formed. The Poker TDA has become the worldwide standard for tournament rules and is now used in most major tournaments including the WSOP.
In 2002, Matt was invited to direct the World Series of Poker at a critical time and watched the cash prizes in the main event grow from $6,000,000 to more than $25,000,000 in 2004. During his tenure at the WSOP, the transformation of both televised poker and the internet boom was taking place. Call it being at the right place at the right time, or persistence and hard work, but Savage ascended to become the world’s top poker tournament director. In 2003, he was awarded the inaugural Benny Binion Award for outstanding service in the poker industry. Matt has currently appeared on more than 300 televised poker shows on ESPN, GSN, Fox Sports, Travel Channel, and numerous others. Matt was also the host of a nationally televised show called “Inside Poker,” and has an acting role in the Warner Brothers movie “Lucky You,” working alongside Drew Barrymore, Robert Duvall, and Eric Bana. Matt currently is the Tournament Director at Commerce Casino in Los Angeles, the world’s largest poker room, and at Bay 101 in his hometown of San Jose.
Matt Savage has directed events all around the world and is very proud of his achievements. When asked how he would like to be remembered, he answers simply, “I would like to be known as a person of high integrity…. someone who was fair and treated everyone with respect.”
Matt currently lives in Las Vegas with his lovely wife Maryann, daughter Rizaann, and son Marko.
Matt’s popular forum / blog site “Directing Championship Events Worldwide” is located at: The Poker TDA Discussion Forum. He looks forward to your comments and feedback.
