Yet even with this negative press surrounding Hevad Khan, he is also known for his outstanding poker strategy. At the age of twenty-four, he is already among the lineup of the biggest poker players in the world today. He only began playing in professional tournaments in 2007, making his debut at the 38^th Annual World Series of Poker, where he placed in a number of events and won a combined total of $976,498. His biggest win so far is close to this number, as he won the Caesars Palace Classic the year after his superb performance at the WSOP. He took home a solid $1 million for their No Limit Hold’em Championship.

His competitive nature truly rears its head. After all, he began competing at the tournaments for StarCraft before moving on to poker. Today, with three first place finishes and twenty-two cashes, and a total of over $2.5 million in winnings, Hevad Khan does not need to make friends – he just needs to keep winning, and he’ll be just fine with his reputation in the poker world.

He has been playing for over fifteen years already, and poker is not his only game. Ylon Schwartz is also a chess master, which gives him an advantage in poker because he is quite capable of anticipating possible moves and outcomes ahead of time, so he can strategize pretty well. He also is a backgammon player, which is another game that requires you to have good strategic skills in order to succeed. Outside of the game, he took on many different jobs before he played poker full-time. He sold Broadway tickets at one point, and he was a child actor when he was younger, and these are only two of the long list of jobs that he took on before finally embracing poker as a full-time activity. It was during this time of transition that he debuted on the professional poker tournament scene, in 1998, when he joined the US Poker Championship and finished third.

He stopped and went back to the tournament scene in 2004, after the death of his mother the year before, whom he took care of when she was diagnosed with cancer. Things went fairly well with him after that. He made quite a number of money finishes and built up his bankroll as well as his reputation as a poker player to watch out for in the four years that followed his return. It took that entire decade since his first tournament, however, for him to get to where he became very famous – the 39^th World Series of Poker, which was held in 2008. While he did not win first place at the No Limit Hold’em Championship, he did place fourth, taking home the prize that brought him to the spotlight – $3,774,974. That cemented his place among the respected poker players of today. He continues to build up his bankroll, and as of 2009 he has more than $4.1 million in his bankroll.

In his career so far he has four WSOP bracelets to his name. The other two were won separately – one in 1986, where he won $52,400 for Limit Razz, and one in 1992, when he won in Limit Omaha and took home $79,200. He has had ten first-place finishes all in all, and he has made an astounding 119 money finishes throughout his career as a professional poker player. Those money finishes amount to more than $2.8 million, over $1.2 million of which came from the World Series of Poker alone. He has also already joined the European Poker Tour and the World Poker Tour, but he has yet to earn titles in the aforementioned tournaments. Aside from his superb poker playing skills, he is also known to be a vocal non-smoker, even getting Binion Benhen to agree to make the WSOP a non-smoking tournament in 2002 in exchange for free poker lessons.

This accountant sure has his mind in the right numbers. He was an account manager for Broadway Trucks before he became a professional poker player. He was already playing in different local casinos and tournaments in the year 2006, but his debut in the professional world came in 2007. He joined a World Series of Poker Circuit Event, the Grand Casino Tunica Poker Tournament, that year, and he finished at ninth place, taking home the prize of $2,386 for their No-Limit Hold’em event. Two days later, he beat his own record, placing seventh at the same event and taking home an additional $2,192. What followed a year after was incomparable to these two petty wins, though, as he made his breakthrough in the professional world of poker tournaments. He placed third on the 39^th World Series of Poker in 2008, and he took home the prize of $4,517,773 for the WSOP No Limit Hold’em Championship. He was the chip leader in the tournament when he sat at the final table, so it is comes as no surprise that he won for that year. Today his earnings exceed $4.8 million, and while he has not garnered a WSOP bracelet just yet, he has nine significant money finishes, one of which is a first place win for the Deep Stack Extravaganza. He is well on his way to earning that much-coveted bracelet.

Daniel ’s first taste of success came in when he participated in the 1998 World Series of Poker $2,000 Pot Limit Hold’em event. He became the youngest player to win his first ever World Series of Poker bracelet, at age 23. In 2002, he competed in the World Series of Poker $5,000 Omaha Hi/Lo event and ended up 2nd place. In 2003, he continued to compete in the World Series of Poker $2,000 SHOE event and obtained his second World Series of Poker bracelet. In 2004, he shone again in the World Series of Poker $2,000 Limit Hold’em event and won his third bracelet. He was able to take home $169,000. In 2008, he obtained his fourth bracelet in the World Series of Poker $2,000 Limit Hold’em event and garnered a total of $204,863. Daniel joined the World Series of Poker Europe £10,000 Main Event and reached the final table. He was able to secure 5th place and collected $395,024. Daniel also gained experience in the 2004 World Poker Tour Borgata Poker Open and won $1,117,400. He also won another impressive amount of $1,770,218 in the Five Diamond World Poker Classic which was held in the same year. Success was in sight again when Daniel participated in the 2005 World Series of Poker Circuit event and became the champion. He won an amount of $755,525. His latest success was in the 2009 World Series of Poker Europe Main Event where he won $788,618. Throughout his tournament career, Daniel has achieved an amount of around $12,000,000, which makes him one of the wealthiest poker players in the world.

His poker playing began when he was still trying to break into showbusiness. He would play poker in order to make some money to support himself and to pay for his needs. Soon after moving to California, though, he made more money out of playing poker than out of doing the projects that he got assigned on, considering most of them were minor roles or momentary television hosting gigs. He started playing the game seriously in 1993, and it was the first time he won ITM in the World Series of Poker’s Limit Hold’em event. He would go on to place at several other poker tournaments, including the World Poker Tour and Pokerstars’ European Poker Tour. While he has not won a bracelet from the WSOP, he has made twenty-seven money finishes throughout his poker playing career so far, and today he has made over $2,600,000 all in all just for the live tournaments. When he is not playing poker, he is hosting a television show that features poker, the Ultimate Poker Challenge. He is also an avid baseball fan, and an enthusiast who plays. Playing poker is a family affair as well – Brown is the husband of another renowned poker player, the young French-American player Vanessa Rousso.

Greenstein is a staple at the World Series of Poker and at the World Poker Tour, and since he began playing professionally in 1991, he has won three WSOP bracelets, has been to thirteen final tables, and he has won $1,358,562 from the WSOP alone. In the WPT, he has won a total of $1,746,008, with his biggest win taking place in 2004, when he won the first prize at the WPT World Poker Open. His combined winnings amount to $3,104,570, just from the WPT and the WSOP, and from 2004 to 2008 he has had six first-place wins in these events. This amount is almost a half of his total winnings so far. In the present day, his total winnings from all the poker tournaments he has ever joined goes over $6.9 million.

Aside from playing poker, Greenstein is also the founder of PokerRoad, a website dedicated to poker strategies and entertainment. This is his project with his stepson who is also a professional poker player, Joe Sebok. He also wrote a book on poker strategies, Ace on the River, which he gives away for free to players that beat him on the poker tables.

It was in 1999 that he started playing poker. He had just moved to Connecticut, and he played at the Foxwoods Resort Casino when he did not have to work as the patent lawyer at Pfizer. Two years later, in 2001, he joined the World Series of Poker and won ITM. His big win in the WSOP would come not too long after, in 2004. He got a seat to the WSOP by joining a $160 satellite game at Pokerstars, and at the WSOP he ended up being the champion inthe $10,000 no-limit Texas Hold’em main event. As the champion, he took home $5,000,000 and the WSOP bracelet. He was not able to defend his title as the champion, but he placed 25^th the following year, taking home $304,680.

After his big win at the WSOP, he continued to join different major tournaments, although he tried to make the WSOP his main poker event. This is because he still leaves enough time to spend with his family, and so he only participates in the major poker events that take place yearly, such as the WSOP, the WPT, and the EPT. In the present day, his overall winnings amount to nearly $6.8 million, and almost $6.5 million came from his winnings at the WSOP alone.

He plays in online poker rooms using the nickname Fossilman. He got the nickname from his means of supporting himself before he became a professional poker player or a lawyer: he would sell fossil card protectors in order to make money, hence the name. You would find him in poker tournaments wearing his trademark holographic glasses.

When she was in Duke, she approached gaming as an intellectual would – she became very interested in game theory and applied what she had learned to the Rubik’s cube and to chess. She wanted to push the envelope, though, and so she became interested in poker. She wanted to take it seriously even before that; however, since casinos and poker rooms required a player to be twenty-one and above in order to be able to participate, she could only play casually or play online. That was what she did throughout college. It was when she was out of Duke and in the University of Miami that she was able to pursue poker live. She started playing at casinos in 2004, and it was there that she saved up the $1,500 she needed to be able to participate in games at the Atlantic City. At Atlantic City, she gathered $17,500 which was her ticket to the World Poker Tour in 2005.

She played in different tournaments from there on. She joined the World Series of Poker in 2005, the same one that Jennifer Tilly eventually won, and throughout her first year of playing, she had a slew of money wins to build her record up. After a year, she joined the professional poker tour and balanced her playing poker professionally and her schooling. She continued placing high in the different poker tournaments, and by 2007 she has established herself as a noted poker player. That same year, she went to Washington DC along with other noted poker players to protest the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

Her largest prize for a single competition to this day is $946.696, which she won in 2009 for the European Poker Tour. Her winnings to this date are over $2.6 million. She has shared what she knows to the world as well, writing articles on different poker strategies in magazines and holding a poker instructional camp in early 2009. This 26-year old prodigy continues to play poker professionally, and she still continues to be the multitasker that she was back in school. She still has time to spend for herself, doing things such as skydiving to keep her adrenaline going when she’s not playing poker.

Christopher Bryan Moneymaker was not a professional poker player. He played poker every now and then online as a hobby, sure, but for the most part he spent his days as an accountant. He had a master’s degree in Accountancy and he was your ordinary family man, with a wife and a daughter to support. That’s what makes his success story even more poignant – he could be anyone.

It was in 2003 when he rose to fame as a poker player. He joined in one of the online poker games that he usually participates in, and he ended up winning a seat on the World Series of Poker for that year, which included the buy-in money for that seat. He participated in the WSOP and ended up winning the main event, and kept playing until he reached the final table. He won the highly-coveted WSOP bracelet, and more importantly, he won $2,500,000. This fortune all began with a $39 satellite tournament on the online cardroom, Pokerstars.

Since then Moneymaker has been making the rounds playing as a professional poker player, joining the WSOP and the World Poker Tour as well as Pokerstars’ EPT. He always places high enough to make a money finish. Today he has made over $2.8 million, over $2.5 million of which came from his World Series of Poker winnings. Today he is known both for his playing poker and for his surname, which, in fact, is his real surname.