High-stakes cash game pro Brian Rast may not be the most recognizable player in poker, but amongst his peers, and those in the know inside the poker industry, he is considered one of the best all around poker players in the world. Able to boast about playing in the highest stakes games in the world, Rast is equally as adept at No Limit Holdem and PLO, and one of the biggest winners in the high-stakes games.

Rast first started playing poker in college when he saw the movie Rounders for the first time, and in 2003, the former valedictorian was attending Stanford University when he decided he was going to give poker a go, eventually leaving school to focus on his poker career.

Rast was born in Denver, Colorado but the 20-something now calls Poway, California home, but he can be seen playing in the highest stakes poker games around the world. You can find Rast playing at PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Bodog Poker under the same screen-name ‘tsarrast’.

Rast has also displayed his ability in tournament poker, having won over $750,000 in live tournaments despite playing a very limited schedule –heck, why play a tournament with a $300,000 first prize when you can sit down on a cash-game with a $100,000 buy-in!

Even though Rast has yet to win a big, major, tournament –which is likely what helps him keep his anonymity amongst the mainstream poker fan– he does have three 6-figure cashes on his resume including a 7th place finish in the 2009 WPT Championship at the Bellagio where he booked his biggest tournament score to date at $204,275.

In addition to his live tournament earnings, Rast has also fared well in online tournaments, winning some $400,000 up to this point in his career, but once again Rast hasn’t come through with a major victory in any of these events –just a ton of final tables!

Rast was also the first high-profile poker pro to pull up a chair in the high-stakes games in Macau, and his performance during his time there was a main reason why “pros” were barred from the game for a few years! Rast won somewhere between $1 million and $2 million, depending on the source, and the real total may well be much higher than that amount; after all, it was high enough for the billionaire players in the game to decide they wanted nothing to do with poker pros for a while!

Rast is a relatively new member of the Poker VT team having signed on with the site in October, 2010, but his addition has already been one of the most talked about signings in the online poker training world in recent memory. Rast’s Poker VT videos will focus mainly on cash-games, and according to the site he will be putting a major emphasis on how to work your way up the poker ladder to eventually play in the biggest games in the world –something that Rast has first-hand knowledge of.