Industrial engineer. 10-year high-stakes poker career totaling $5M+ in net winnings. Along the way, he lived in and visited 70 countries. The same analytical discipline that built that career now drives every property under TSTE management.
Reese graduated from Penn State with an Industrial Engineering degree and a business minor. He was trained to solve complex systems — to find inefficiencies, model outcomes, and optimize. He just never expected to apply that to a poker table.
Numbers came naturally early. He was learning higher-level math — algebra and calculus — at 7 years old. By the time he studied Industrial Engineering, thinking in numbers, probabilities and systems was already how he understood the world.
He started playing poker in college and got better year after year. He was winning, but for the first five years it was nothing significant — certainly nothing that looked like a career. Then he found the right people, the right framework, and something clicked. Within 2 years he was making more than triple any engineering salary he could have taken, so he decided to play full time — even though everyone told him he was making a ridiculous decision.
He earned half of his $5M+ in winnings playing 1-on-1 — heads-up poker, the most aggressive and intense format. Pure math, pure psychology, pure edge.
He played with some of the best in the world. Sat across from Johnny Chan multiple times. Competed at the highest stakes the game had to offer. And he learned something that most people never do: the difference between a good decision and a lucky outcome.
He made the calculated bet that poker was the right path for him. It was — but little did he know that 2 years in, the US government would do something that would change his entire life path...
In 2011, the US government shut down the major online poker sites and locked up 90% of his money as part of their pursuit of the platforms. Almost overnight, at age 25, Reese had a choice: leave the country and keep pursuing the career he’d built, or walk away from poker and return to engineering.
He moved abroad. He didn’t know the cultures, languages or what life would look like. But he knew poker was where he had the greatest edge, so for six years he lived and played across the world — poker took him to 70 countries, living in maybe 10 of them. He bounced from country to country with 2 laptops and 2 monitors, playing the highest stakes while feeling like he was living in a movie.
Eventually the industry changed. Solvers got better. High-stakes games dried up. The edge that had made his career possible was narrowing for everyone.
He hung up the mouse, moved to Miami and started looking for what came next. He’d always been intrigued by real estate, but traditional rental returns weren’t interesting enough — financially or intellectually.
Then it clicked.
He’d stayed in more than 70 Airbnbs while traveling the world. So he started digging into short-term rentals the same way he’d attacked poker: get the data, find the inefficiencies, build the model.
The inefficiencies were everywhere. Pricing was primitive. Most operators weren’t treating revenue like a data problem. Everyone was copying each other and calling it management.
What Reese brought to STR wasn’t a property management background. It was a decade of solving games most people thought were unsolvable. The analytical framework is identical.
He knows which data matters and which doesn’t. TSTE builds pricing models from competitive data across the market — then accounts for demand elasticity, booking windows, events and changing market conditions. The team automates what should be automated and stays hands-on where judgment creates an edge.
The goal was never to build the biggest STR company. It was to build the most analytically rigorous one — and use that edge to make every property earn more.
Daniel “Jungleman” Cates — widely regarded as one of the world’s top poker players — trusted TSTE with his Las Vegas condos.
The result: 56% more revenue versus the prior year — $60,874 to $94,998 on the same Vdara unit.
And it wasn’t driven by simply filling more nights. Occupancy actually fell while revenue climbed. TSTE raised the average nightly rate from roughly $170 to $288 by solving the market around the unit and capitalizing on where competitors were mispricing — instead of chasing occupancy.
Across the TSTE portfolio, the same approach drives how every property is priced and positioned. The edge isn’t one trick. It’s hundreds of better pricing, positioning and operating decisions compounded over time.
Poker gave Reese the chance to see the world, and he never really stopped. He’s lived in and traveled across 70 countries, and he and his wife Isabela still travel whenever they can — now with their son Nico and dogs Lucky and Canela along for the ride.
They split their time between Fort Lauderdale and Rio de Janeiro, were married in Florence, and built a life where work supports the experiences and people that matter most. It’s the kind of life Reese wanted this business to make possible.
We take over pricing, listings, guests and day-to-day operations across Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Las Vegas. Owners keep the upside without the workload.
Get Started →Owners can bring a property, pricing, listing, systems or acquisition decision. We apply the same analytical approach used across our own portfolio to identify what’s missing and show where performance can improve.
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