Steve Albini Produced Some of the Biggest Records — and Won Two World Series of Poker Bracelets

Legendary music producer (or recording engineer, he hated the term producer) and opinionated punk Steve Albini unexpectedly passed away at the age of 61 on May 7, 2024. His cause of death was reported as a heart attack.

While most casual music fans might know of him as the guy who produced Nirvana’s In Utero and the best records from the Pixies, PJ Harvey, and other influential rock artists, some hardcore gamblers might have known him as a peer.

While he’ll be remembered for being behind the board for iconic albums and his Electrical Audio studio, he might not have been able to make some of those records and pay some of those studio bills without his poker winnings.

In a 2018 piece in The Ringer published after Steve won his first World Series of Poker bracelet, he explained how the game is different than his day job: “I feel like the parts of my brain that I’m not using in my day-to-day life come into play. I don’t do a lot of calculating when I’m going through a normal day. You’re doing at least some sort of rudimentary math in every hand of poker. When you’re playing cards you have to do a lot of sort of prediction of behavior."

Steve won his second bracelet in June 2022. “Everything in my life comes in pieces, in parts. Poker is one part of my life," he told WSOP.com after his six-digit prize. "When I'm playing poker, I try to commit to it. I try to take it seriously. I try to make sure I devote the attention to it that it deserves as an occupation. But it's only part of my year. I only play tournaments at the World Series of Poker. I play cash games informally in Chicago. It's a part of my livelihood, but it's not my profession.”

You can see Steve’s elation in a video WSOP also released after Steve won $196,089. Steve won a total of $370,045 in World Series of Poker tournaments in his lifetime. Obviously there’s no total of all of his total wins in house games.

Twelve years ago Steve did an extensive Reddit AMA. When asked about what forums and books he’d recommend for an inexperienced player, he gave a very useful response. "The forums at twoplustwo.com are fantastic resources with some of the best minds in the game sharing a lot of information. I also like the more detailed content at Cardrunners.com and Nutblocker.com."

His book response was just as helpful. “I'd stick with stuff on the 2+2 imprint to start, especially their game-specific 'for advanced players' books, all golden. For Holdem I like Dan Harrington's tournament books and the new Jonathan Little books, but I don't play either Holdem or tournaments that much, and there are better people to ask than me. I like Bill Chen's The Mathematics of Poker and David Sklansky's The Theory of Poker because they teah general concepts that you can adapt to different games and disciplines."