Who is Hurricane27
Who is Hurricane27?”
Within the last year, I got asked that question a lot. Make sense I co-own a site devoted to poker on the Gulf Coast, I live outside of New Orleans and suddenly an online account of a player located in Metairie just starts crushing. Also, the community of “crushers” who press buttons is fairly small, somebody should know who this is, but nobody did.
In some ways, I was the right person to ask, but in some ways, I wasn’t. Pre-Black Friday (wow, we’ve been around for a while now) my co-owner Gene D did a much better job keeping up with online accolades than I did. He’d know what TK Miles did on Full Tilt, the Chemist did on Poker Room (?), and would always know if somebody did something on a random Sunday on Stars. But we don't live pre-Black Friday.
These days, I don’t play online so, I’m even less aware of what’s going on at America’s Card Room or Bovada or any other site. That said, all this chatter got me intrigued.
“He came out of nowhere."
"Nobody knows who he is, how can he be from Metairie and nobody at Harrah's knows who he is? Doesn't make sense."
"His graph is obscene."
"Who is Hurricane27?”
"You know who he is right?"
“….uh, no.”
Wish I could say unmasking Hurricane27 was the result of hard journalistic boot work. We don’t consider ourselves journalists (for good and also obvious reasons) but I guess we do dabble in reporting news and sometimes do present editorials or stories about people. That said, very little "investigative reporting" went into discovering who Hurricane27.
The first tidbit came when Sean Legendre of Metairie cashed at the WSOP this year. In one of the write-ups, it casually dropped his online moniker Hurricane27. Okay… it’s Sean Legendre.
Alright, we had our answer, "Hurricane27 is Sean Legendre."
That was easy.
Cue the "Who the **** is Sean Legendre?" questions.
A couple of weeks later I got a late night text after getting back from Vegas. Somehow Sean after spending a summer at the Rio struck up a conversation with a fairly well-known local player at the airport. He spent the summer at the Rio knowing basically nobody, even though down the hall or up a floor or a half a mile away, was a fairly welcoming local community of players on the same journey. He didn't meet the first one until his flight home.
From there he ended up talking to a couple of fellow minions Chris Canan and Kenny Milam, at the airport and getting a ride home from uber Uber driver himself Charlie Gelvin (a bigger supporter of locals in poker you'll likely never meet).
Chris and Kenny sent me his name and number and from there I had to talk to Sean. Both said, “Nice, kid.”
"Hurricane27, Sean Legendre is a nice kid."
Used to be I'd get asked about an online name and in general, they always turned out to be somebody we already knew, or knew of, or was on the cusp of making an impact on the live scene as well. These little mysteries would come and just as quickly go. This time with Sean it’s was a little bit different.
Kids don't just come into poker these days.
Obviously, the poker landscape is completely different than the heyday. Millenials and kids under 27 aren’t walking into the poker rooms, few of them even gamble at all, fewer of them are taking the necessary steps to get into action into the online games, and even fewer them get good enough to get the attention of the community.
For that reason, Sean is a complete anomaly. He’s a kid. He got started in today's diminished poker online. And he’s very good.
I set up a meeting with him to do this profile, and after some texts back and forth, his always coming after 3 pm. We met up to have some beers to talk. Well, I had some beers. 7 pm was a little early in Sean’s day for beer.
First off, super nice kid. Humble but confident, gracious and generous, the kind of guy you want to root for and to succeed. I told him how there was this grand mystery in the community about his identity. How people had sent me graphs of him coming out of nowhere. How there were theories popping around about who Hurricane27. Think he must have enjoyed that a community he was unaware of was fully aware of him.
So let’s get into some stats, because most of you, like me, probably don't follow online poker that much. This past summer at the Rio, Sean cashed 9 times in the WSOP. His best cash was in the 1k Online No Limit Hold’em Championship where he finished 7th winning just under 30k. Except for a short trip out last year this was basically his first WSOP. Not too shabby.
"Hurricane27’s" stats are even more impressive than Sean's live stats. Pocket Fives credit him with 431k of cashes most of it on America’s Card Room. His biggest score there 61k.
Multiple people have sent me this graph.
So… you see how he kind of came out of nowhere. His stats look like Bitcoin.
Obviously, he has the chops for poker.
Sean, the anomaly, is just like most of the younger members of our community (though separated by almost a decade). He's been careful to invest a good chunk of his winnings, although he admits sometimes he'll jump into a PLO game and take shots. He enjoys the allure of making his hours and not answering to anybody (sound familiar?). He gets up when he pleases, logs on when he pleases and lives the online lifestyle 2017 version. It’s not quite as easy to print money online but Sean, obviously, kind of does.
He likes to late reg, (why be bothered with all those early levels?), and knows how to navigate a short stack through the large fields. He applied this to live poker too, often getting to the WSOP just minutes before registration closed.
He says he watches twitch streams passively as a way to learn, but never got into training sites or books. He's mostly self-taught through trial and error. His graphs make it look like something just clicked one day, but he can't pinpoint a moment of understanding or enlightenment. He just got good enough to turn a corner.
Sean got into the game post black Friday transitioning from play money to real money. He and his friends played when younger but only he actually followed through on figuring out how to put money online and play. One day, he just did it. Despite his relative success none of his friends have followed. After time at LSU as a finance major, he’s seen his friends enter a 9 to 5 world, while he went into a world of 9pm to whenever. He’s played live locally, just a little bit, as he much prefers the online game.
When asked about his game, Sean didn’t mind sharing some of his philosophies. Kind of refreshing as some players are notoriously tight-lipped about what’s working for them. He’s also somewhat atypical in that he makes many of his decisions based on game flow, puts his tournament survival as his first priority and ignores the math a bit. Arguably, of the few players his age playing these days most have that reversed. Math first, survival second.
Some things people do, he won’t even consider. “In live poker, guys get short and just put it in.” Not him. He also mentioned that he doesn’t believe the key to beating an aggro is to just out aggro them. “These guys will get in a pissing contest with you, but you can’t outpiss them.” He certainly knows how to pick his spots and obviously like any skilled player that includes well-timed bluffs.
He plays anywhere from 5 to 10 to 15 hours a week. I asked him his poker goals. Pretty simple. He wants a bracelet. Could care less about the WSOP Circuit or their sky-high juice or their rings. If he was to travel to live events other than the WSOP it would be to somewhere like Barcelona where there are other things to do.
As a child, he was on a 13 and under National Championship basketball team, and like most successful poker players you can see the competitive spirit simmering a bit under his calm exterior. Poker has always been an avenue to channel that and it's probably fair to say that's part of the appeal to Sean.
This past WSOPC event Sean considered late regging at the IP and taking one shot at the Main Event. I texted him on Saturday and said time to get up and come win it. Actually, maybe I said come take second to me. He responded, "You'd be busted by the time I get there but I can't make it today." (Wish he had been able to make it because no way would I busted before he got there.)
When we talked I asked if he wanted me to include a picture with the write-up or if he preferred to be something of a mystery. He said he might send me one but so far hasn’t. Bad news for those of you reading this. That means you kind of know who Hurricane27 is,but you wont see him coming.
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