If you ask Howard Lederer, he'll tell you that Alan Goehring is a genius: an entertaining player with a wild and mystifying style of play that seems to work even as it baffles the professionals with its backwards logic.

If you ask Phil Hellmuth, he'll tell you that Goehring is a donkey: an amateur who plays dumb poker and hits incredible runs of luck.

But if you ask Alan Goehring, he'll tell you he’s just a hobbyist, playing poker for the adrenaline rush of top-caliber competition and the thrill of victory - which he's experienced his fair share of, whether or not it comes with Phil Hellmuth's respect attached.

Goehring was born on February 21, 1962 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He made his living as a bond trader in New York City before experiencing a mini quarter-life crisis at 25 and moving to the beaches of Southern California, where he picked up Texas Hold'em while remaining involved in the stock and bond industry.

At the age of 28, Goehring, refreshed, moved back to New York to return to Wall Street, taking with him the poker knowledge he'd accrued through experimentation and research in the Golden State.

Back in the Big Apple, Goehring initiated his colleagues in the art of Texas Hold'em, and soon the poker fever was sweeping his office. The traders, analysts, and bond salesmen with whom Goehring associated were high-powered adrenaline addicts, and games were fast, loose, and ultra-aggressive. It was here that he developed the signature style that would later baffle pros like Hellmuth and Lederer at WPT and WSOP events.

Goehring continued to work in the stock market as a junk bond analyst into the late 1990s. In 1997 he scored his first cash in a major tournament, a third place finish in a $3,000 No Limit Hold'em event at the World Series of Poker that netted him over $61,000. By 1999, Goehring had put together a number of tournament cashes, and in May of that year finished second to Noel Furlong in the Main Event at the WSOP, earning a $768,625 payday.

After the 1999 World Series, Goehring retired from his previous life on Wall Street to concentrate on poker full-time. Unfortunately, while he continued to bank successful cashes in big buy-in tournament play, a series of second place finishes after the 1999 WSOP - including losses to Richard Tatalovich in heads-up play at the Carnivale of Poker III in 2000 and to David Levi at Bellagio's Inaugural No Limit Hold'em Tournament in 2002 - seemed to tarnish Goehring's image, landing him a reputation as a player who was "always the bridesmaid, but never the bride."

Goehring lived with his reputation as a player who just couldn't clinch the big payday until April 2003, at the $25,000 WPT Season 1 Championship in Las Vegas. There, while still a relative unknown in the world of professional poker, he outlasted 104 players to land at the final table alongside heavyweights like Doyle Brunson, Ted Forrest, and Phil Ivey. Goehring ran the table, playing ultra-aggressive and confounding his more experienced counterparts, at one point bluffing Forrest off of a board showing A-T-4-T-4 with 8-2 of clubs and two clubs on the board.

The defining hand of the tournament and the key to Goehring's success occurred when Brunson and Forrest both moved all-in, Forrest with A-J and the shorter stack and Texas Dolly with Q-8. Goehring called with pocket jacks and watched the board come 6-5-3-2-9, eliminating both Forrest and Brunson and leaving only Ivey and Kirill Gerasimov in the way of Goehring's much-needed victory and vindication.

Ivey fell to Gerasimov quite quickly and the Russian fared little better in heads-up play, losing most of his chips after moving all-in on a stone bluff and getting a call from Goehring, who'd flopped trip queens.

For his victory, Goehring earned $1,036,886 and, more importantly, the respect of those in the poker world who'd previously doubted him.

In the years that followed, Goehring was able to log more money finishes in high-profile tournaments, including another second-place finish in the $3,000 Five Diamond World Poker Classic in the WPT's Season 3, and a sixth-place finish in the €10,000 Grand Prix de Paris during that same WPT season.

In 2006, Goehring won the largest payday of his professional poker career when he took down the WPT Season 4 L.A. Poker Classic at the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles, defeating Daniel Quach in heads-up play to earn himself the $2,391,550 first prize. The victory came in impressive fashion, as Goehring took over the chip lead early on Day 1 of the tournament and would not relinquish it for the duration of the event.

Goehring plays the same ultra-aggressive style that he learned while playing cash games with his colleagues in the adrenaline-fueled world of Wall Street. For a period following his second-place finish in 1999 he tried to switch to a more conservative, more accepted style of play, but found limited success and soon re-adopted the style that had brought him his biggest payday.

The man firmly believes that success in Hold'em springs not from the cards that a player starts with, but how he plays them, and is infamous for his tactic of playing - and bluffing - many small pots in tournaments, but he always seeming to have a hand when the chips really start to fly.

This unusual method has garnered both admirers and detractors among the ranks of poker's elite. Lederer came away from a day of play with Goehring intrigued, entertained - and eliminated.

Hellmuth, on the other hand, could only shake his head in wonderment and disbelief as he observed Goehring from across the felt, peering down his nose from his Web site at the lesser-known player, suggesting that Goehring's success springs from his ignorance of the game and that his winnings will plummet as he learns the real way to play poker.

It would seem, then, that Goehring has managed to avoid learning much of anything about poker, as his results haven't tailed off despite his continued involvement in the game. Following his success at the L.A. Poker Classic, Goerhing logged an eight-place finish at the Mirage Poker Showdown in May of 2006, and now can boast lifetime tournament winnings of over $5 million to date.

Despite his success, Goerhing views poker strictly as a hobby. He foregoes cash games in favor of tournament play, and thanks to his previous career, doesn't have to rely on his winnings to survive. He plays for the challenge of good competition and as an intellectual exercise, and lists poker among running, skiing, and playing the stock market as the leisure pursuits with which he occupies his time. Presumably, finding a way to spend his tournament winnings is also high on that list.

Hellmuth can sniff at Goehring's style all he wants, but it's probably a good thing for the Poker Brat that his less-experienced counterpart doesn't take poker too seriously. If Goehring can make over $5 million playing poker recreationally, just imagine what he could do if he was serious about the game.