Biography

Shannon Shorr (born June 7, 1985) is a 27 year old professional poker player from Birmingham, Alabama. He is most well-known for his success on the live poker tournament circuit where he has grossed over $4.5 million dollars in earnings.

Shannon was introduced to poker by some college friends in 2003. It began with $5 house games in his college apartment. Months later, Shannon began playing online and lost several thousand dollars as a college student before meeting his then-mentor Jonathan Little. After communicating with Jon for quite some time, things took off online and Shannon won an online satellite to play in a live tournament in Melbourne, Australia. As a 20 year old, he finished 4th in that event for around $200,000, and his career began to take off.

Shannon finished 4th and 19th in Cardplayer.com’s 2006 and 2008 Player of the Year races, respectively. Shorr’s biggest tournament score to date came at the Bellagio Cup in 2006 where he won the main event for $650,000. Since, he has added four World Series of Poker final tables and three World Poker Tour final tables to his resume, including two top ten finishes in the World Poker Tour Championship ('09, '11). He has appeared on four televised final tables: 2006 Aussie Millions (Fox Sports Net), 2009 World Poker Tour Championship (FSN), 2010 World Series of Poker Circuit Hammond, Indiana (Versus), 2011 World Poker Tour Biloxi (FSN).

Shannon has two sisters, Heather and Carly and is the son of Scott and Debbie Shorr. He graduated from Shades Valley High School in Birmingham in 2003. He played high school baseball and turned down an offer to play collegiately at The University of Alabama-Birmingham. Amidst the height of his poker career, Shannon returned to work towards completion of his undergraduate Business Management degree at The University of Alabama. He expressed how important finishing it was to him in his blog on many occasions. He graduated in May 2010.

Shannon still makes his home in Birmingham when not traveling to poker tournaments. In his downtime he enjoys reading, fitness, coffee, sports and foreign films.