The financial world has seen little of Nick Leeson since 1995, when the infamous former trader's financial shenanigans brought down venerable Barings Bank. Lately, Leeson has resurfaced, hard at work on a different sort of financial gamble: playing online poker for cash.

The Watford, U.K., native, who was released from Singapore's notoriously tough Tanah Merah prison in 1999 after serving four years for fraud, now lives in the west of Ireland, where he runs the business side of tiny soccer club Galway United. He's written a couple of books: the autobiographical Rogue Trader, which was turned into a film starring Ewan McGregor, and Back From the Brink: Coping with Stress, a combined memoir and how-to manual. Leeson, 38, who, survived colon cancer in prison and whose wife left him for another trader before he was released, also works the after-dinner speaking circuit, entertaining risk officers and compliance managers with tales of his days with Barings in Singapore.

Add to that workload his latest sideline: card sharping. Leeson has become a regular online poker player. In one month he's accumulated a modest $25,000, according to a press release from CelebPoker.com, which describes his playing style as aggressive: He's "an early raiser," the site says, who "by name alone will bluff those at the virtual table." (No mention of hiding losses and leaving the table without paying.)

Leeson declined to comment on his new hobby -- or on the risks involved in once again playing to win against the odds. Still, despite the perils of online poker, it's unlikely that Leeson will accumulate losses to rival the debt he ran up at Barings. His final bill there: $1.3 billion.