Dani "supernova9" Stern has been a high stakes online pro for over a decade and is routinely found playing heads-up PLO at the highest stakes online.
Stern, perhaps better known as "Ansky" (he played at Full Tilt under the moniker "Ansky451") first came to the wider public's attention as one of the four stars of the 2009 reality TV series "2 Months 2 Million" where four online poker playing friends rented a house in Las Vegas for two months an attempted to earn $2m between them playing high stakes online poker. Stern starred alongside friends Jay "Krantz" Rosenkrantz, Emil "whitelime" Patel and Brian "flawless_victory" Roberts. During the show Stern managed to win just over $100k with the team falling a way short of the their target, winning 'just' $676,700 between them. Stern was also an instructor at training site 'Deuces Cracked' for a number of years.
Stern (b. November 18th 1986) hails from New York and grew up on Manhattan’s west side with his parents and older brother. He started playing poker in his senior year at high school in 2004 and continued to play throughout his four years at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. In fact, such was his focus on poker that he dropped out of college before graduating.
Prior to Black Friday, Stern regularly played in the $200/$400 NLHE and PLO games. He continued to play post Black Friday, firstly from Toronto, then from Mexico, although after suffering some online losses he realised that the nosebleed games were simply too tough and had too much variance for his liking and he became a $5/$10 and $10/$20 PLO reg for 2-3 years, eventually climbing the limits once more as his bankroll grew and his game improved.
As well as cash games, Stern is also a keen MTT player and has posted some impressive results. He has over $2m in online tournament cashes and a further $3.7m in live tournament cashes. Dani actually posted his best ever tournament year last year, cashing for over $1m including two $25k High Roller events at the Las Vegas Aria last summer.
Stern has been a very vocal and active critic of the changes made by PokerStars in recent years which he feel have unjustly punished professional players by overhauling their rewards system, increasing rake, and reneging on promises. He helped to organise boycotts of the site and lobbied for changes, attending a meeting alongside fellow pros Ike "philivey2684" Haxton and Daniel "KidPoker" Negreanu with PokerStars management, during which he attempted to present the arguments against the VIP changes.
Dani currently resides and plays out of Vancouver, Canada where he lives with his wife and dogs.