Call him a poker player, an author, a salesman, a literary agent, a yogi or an entrepreneur, but above all, Greg Dinkin is a teacher and an entertainer. By walking in the shoes of others—a key component of his book The Poker MBA—and understanding how they think and learn, Greg is effective at making people better: better at business, sales, strategy, negotiating, and poker. Greg delivers personalized keynote speeches that can include poker lessons and tournaments that entertain, educate, and motivate.

Greg started playing poker in high school and honed his skills during a college internship at the Mirage in Las Vegas, where he played poker whenever he wasn’t on the clock. He later worked at the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles as a “prop” player, which meant he was paid $25 an hour to play with his own money. He won a Texas Hold’em tournament at The Bicycle and finished second in a World Series of Poker Seven Card Stud Hi-Low event, earning $102,542. He was a featured columnist for Card Player magazine, writing a column relating poker to business.

He leveraged the skills he learned at the poker table to co-found Venture Literary (www.ventureliterary.com), a literary management and production company. He has sold more than one hundred thirty non-fiction titles to major publishers. In selling and negotiating deals, he relies on the skills he learned as a poker player such as reading tells and measuring expected value. While representing a wide-range of non-fiction authors, he also has carved out a niche representing poker players that include Phil Gordon, Amarillo Slim, and Matt Matros. In addition to representing several best-selling books, he is executive producing films with actors Nicolas Cage and Tobey Maguire and Academy Award–winning producers Ed Saxon (The Silence of the Lambs) and Graham King (The Departed).

Greg has a B.S. in hotel administration from Cornell University and anMBA in finance from Arizona State University. He has worked as an internal auditor for Inter-Continental Hotels and as a management consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers. His sales experience includes positions with Lanier Worldwide, Olan Mills Portrait Studios, and Ameritech Construction Corp.

He is the author of The Finance Doctor: An 8-Step Prescription So You Can Stop Chasing Your Bills & Start Chasing Your Dreams (Vital), The Poker MBA: Winning In Business No Matter What Cards You’re Dealt(Random House), and he collaborated with gambling legend Amarillo Slim to write the award-winning memoir Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People (HarperCollins).