Despite only being in his early 20’s Brian Hastings –who goes by the names Stinger885 and LucLongley at the online poker tables– has been grinding the online poker games for many years, and has gradually worked his way up to some of the highest stakes games in the world. Despite all of this success and recognition, Hastings will likely go down in online poker lore for having the most lucrative session in online poker history, when he bested Isildur1 for $4.2 million in a single session in late 2009! The $4.2 million was by far the largest sum won or lost in any online poker session, and will be a very difficult number for anyone to beat in the near future.

Even though Hastings had already won millions at the online poker tables, and then add to that the $4.2 million bonanza from 2009, he remains intent on finishing college where he is currently enrolled at Cornell University. Regarding his decision to stay in school Hasting told Bluff Magazine: “Basically I’ve received lots of advice from close friends, family, and colleagues preaching the importance of a degree. Obviously this is no surprise coming from my family, but I think it’s even more significant coming from someone like Taylor Caby, who is in a similar position as me but a few years older. Also, I’m not sure I want to just play poker for the rest of my life, so I’d like to keep my options open.”

Hastings was initially a member at Cardrunners where he learned from the site’s original instruction team before he signed on to become a poker coach, and his training videos have been some of the best received in the online poker training industry. Hastings was even honored with producing Cardrunners 2,000th training video, which saw him take on the absolute best in the online poker world at the nosebleed PLO tables: In the video you get to see and hear Hastings take on Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan, Ilari ‘Ziigmund’ Sahamies and other top players.

Hastings was born in Hanover Township, Pennsylvania in 1988, and caught the online poker bug in 2006. His rise through the online poker ranks was meteoric, as Hastings placed a ton of emphasis on studying and other away from the table work; a trait that comes through in his online poker training videos at Cardrunners. Hastings coaching style focuses on knowing each situation as well as you can, so your decisions are clear and well-thought out beforehand.

Hastings sticks primarily to online poker cash games (these are his bread and butter games) and he hasn’t yet ventured much into the live poker world; in fact Hastings has no tournament results whatsoever –he simply doesn’t play major tournaments! Hastings also participates in online poker tournaments only sporadically, and even on this limited schedule he has managed a 2nd place finish in the FTOPS in 2009 worth nearly $300,000.