A successful night of playing pool - to the tune of $6,000, prompted Bobby Bellande to visit the Bicycle Casino. From that night on poker was the game for him. Born September 17, 1970 in Long Island, New York, Bellande grew up in Asia. After earning an undergraduate degree in marketing from Azusa Pacific University he went to work as a nightclub promoter in Los Angeles.
Bellande opened his own club called the Sky Sushi and operated it for five years until a difficult time forced him to shut the doors in part to deal with grief over the cancer death of his father. Jeff Lisandro was a poker mentor to Bellande. It was Lisandro who groomed Bellande to play a higher class of poker. Bellande spent several months at Lisandro's Prague poker room. Now he has earned a reputation for spouting off to opponents and is best remembered for his 2005 WSOP third place finish where he was outplayed by Jennifer Harman and Doug Lee. During that final table event, Bellande would not stop talking. His phrase, "Excellent Laydown!" was not entirely amusing to onlookers and opponents who felt he was overly confident. Harman began calling him a "broken record" and the entire televised scenario gave Bellande an almost instant dose of notoriety. He later sat among such poker greats as Phil Hellmuth, Gus Hansen, Mike Matusow, and Tony G. during the World Poker Tour Bad Boys of Poker II Invitational and earned fourth place. To date he has earned first place at the 2005$2,500 Winnin' O' the Green tournament and two more first place wins playing limit Omaha Hi/Lo at the Bicycle's Mini Series of Poker. In 2007 Bellande was a contestant on the popular reality series, "Survivor".
