Ben Lamb’s Big Bet: From Poker Star To Crypto Casino Founder

Sometimes the seeds of entrepreneurship get planted in the most unlikely moments. For Ben Lamb, it happened in a Tulsa, Oklahoma casino called River Spirit when he was 18, watching his $120 disappear into a slot machine.

“I was looking around and everyone’s gambling. Most people were having a good time,” Lamb told Casino Reports. “And I was like, ‘Damn, this would be cool.’ Like I should own a casino one day.”

It’s a silly thing for an 18-year-old to say, as Lamb himself admits. But sometimes silly teenage dreams have a way of becoming reality — especially when you’re Ben Lamb.

For those unfamiliar, Lamb isn’t just any dreamer. He’s a legitimate star of the poker world: 2011 World Series of Poker Player of the Year, including a third-place finish in the Main Event, and he made another Main Event final table in 2017, finishing ninth. Two WSOP bracelets, seven career final tables, and a particular knack for Pot-Limit Omaha — four of those final tables were in PLO variations. He also won the 2011 CardPlayer Player of the Year Award.

But after 20 years as a professional poker player, something had shifted.

“Not ‘burnt out’; that’s the wrong word, but just not the same level of intensity and passion and love for the way poker has become,” he said. “The game had evolved into a grind of solvers and game theory, dominated by hungry young players willing to put in infinite hours studying.”

At 40, newly married, Lamb was ready for something different.

Enter Yeet.com — the crypto casino that’s become Lamb’s latest obsession and a return to that entrepreneurial fire he’d been missing.

The opportunity came through an unlikely partnership with two pseudonymous crypto personalities: Mando (Michael Anderson) and Keyboard Monkey (parts unknown). Both are influential figures on crypto Twitter, each commanding hundreds of thousands of followers in a space where trust is everything and scammers lurk around every corner.

“When I knew they were involved, it made me want to get very, very involved very quickly,” Lamb said. 

What started as a potential investment and five or so hours of weekly consulting quickly escalated through seven or eight meetings until Lamb found himself working 90-hour weeks as a full-time co-founder.

It’s worth noting here that “employment” hasn’t exactly been Lamb’s forte. His last actual job was dealing poker at 20 years old after dropping out of college and going broke. For two decades, he’d lived the poker pro lifestyle — no alarm clocks “unless there was a tee time,” going to bed when tired, waking up when rested.

Now?

“I wake up every morning at 6 a.m. for my first call, which is quite a departure from the last 20 years,” he said.

But perhaps not all that surprising, considering Lamb’s mentor throughout his poker career has been another Tulsa native: Vegas legend Bobby Baldwin. Baldwin won the Main Event at the World Series of Poker in 1978, becoming the youngest to do so at age 28. From there, he went on to become president of the Golden Nugget, the Mirage, and the Bellagio.

“My mentor, and one of my very, very closest friends is Bobby Baldwin,” Lamb said.

And so maybe it’s not so surprising that the connection to the casino industry’s operational side had always intrigued him, dating back to that teenage moment at River Spirit when he first dreamed of owning a casino.

Building from scratch

Yeet raised $7.75 million, primarily from Dragonfly, at a $42.5 million valuation. They closed the round in July of last year and launched last month after a year of development.

While many new crypto casinos rush to market with white-label solutions in a few months, Yeet took the opposite approach. They built everything from the ground up — custom games, unique VIP programs, their own software. It’s a risky strategy, but Lamb and his team weren’t interested in taking the paved road.

“We kind of knew pretty early on, we’re going to have to differentiate ourselves, and be something quite unique,” he said.

The results speak for themselves. After 42 days and 6 weeks since launch, Yeet hit $100 million in total wagers. They currently rank 14th on Tanzanite’s tracking of crypto casinos — impressive for a startup that’s barely gotten started.

The Crypto landscape

So what exactly is a crypto casino? In Lamb’s words, it’s essentially a traditional online casino — blackjack, baccarat, roulette, craps, slots — where deposits and withdrawals happen through cryptocurrency instead of traditional banking. The killer feature? Speed. While traditional online casinos can make collecting winnings a headache, Yeet’s average withdrawal time is “about 46 seconds.”

“Very infrequently will it take more than two minutes to get your money out, which is great because collecting your winnings is the best part of gambling in general,” Lamb noted.

The space is crowded — new crypto casinos launch daily. And — at least as of now — they can’t target U.S. customers or about half of Europe. But there’s still plenty of international market to capture.

Looking ahead, Yeet is building its own sportsbook from scratch (expected by early Q3 or late Q2), and has plans for its own token. All current wagers earn points toward that eventual airdrop — an additional incentive for players to choose Yeet over the competition.

The long game

Lamb sees parallels between gaming’s evolution and what may come next.

“When I grew up in Oklahoma, Indian casinos were around but they were small,” he said. “And then all of a sudden, Hard Rock’s now managing the one that I used to deal poker at when I was 19 years old. And just look at sports betting in the last 5 or 10 years — now it’s in 30-something states with multi-billion dollar companies fully regulated, fully licensed.”

His prediction? The doors will be blown wide open for gaming in the United States, driven by the financial incentive of tax revenue for governments.

As for poker, Lamb isn’t hanging up his cards entirely. He’s excited about the upcoming World Series, particularly the $100,000 PLO tournament. He’ll still play the Main Event and Poker Players Championship, though he admits he may have to register late more than usual given his Yeet commitments.

Certainly, his days of playing full-time, or even close to it, are over.

“I’m married now and it’s just not going to be a thing where I play poker 300 days a year like I did for 15 years,” he said. “Life’s changing. I have other goals, other ambitions.”

At 40, Ben Lamb has found that same passion that drove him through his twenties poker grind.

Only this time, instead of trying to beat the house, he’s trying to build one.