Tomer Berda at the WSOP, photo via wsop.com
Back in the day, one of the great sources for Director Xtras was DirectXtras, and the man behind it was Tomer Berda. Tomer had a suite of custom transition Xtras, a fast image manipulation Xtra, tools for FTP and email, communication Xtras that could talk to USB, serial, and parallel ports, even an SMS messaging Xtra. He was always a helpful voice on forums but I haven’t had any correspondence with him for a number of years.
But I did a double-take when I was reading some of the news coming out of the World Series of Poker, which started last weekend. In the recap of one of the early events, a No-Limit Hold’em tournament with a $1,500 buy-in that drew more than 2,000 entrants, there was a list of big-name players who went out in places from 51st to 216th. But the name in fifth place, winning $117,416, was: Tomer Berda. According to PokerPages, the Tomer who won the WSOP event lives in Menlo Park, California, which is where DirectXtras is based. How many Tomer Berdas can there be in Menlo Park?
Either way, Tomer deserves praise for all he did with DirectXtras in the past. And the Tomer who did incredibly well at poker? He deserves praise even if he’s not the same guy. But I’m going to believe he is, either way. [UPDATE] I emailed DirectXtras Tomer to conditionally congratulate him and he confirmed that he is, indeed, Poker Tomer.