Stu Ungar was considered to be one of the finest ever blackjack players prior to his death in 1998. He also had a decorated career as a professional poker pro, winning the World Series of Poker Main Event on three occasions. His final triumph, at the Binion’s Horseshoe, came in 1997, only twelve months before he passed away.

Ungar was banned from playing in casinos on numerous occasions, due to his extraordinary blackjack abilities. An eidetic memory and an IQ in excess of 180 helped him win a $100,000 bet with Bob Stupak in 1977 after he successfully revealed the final card in a six-deck shoe. However, he was eventually banned from playing the game in Las Vegas and other casinos due to his near prophetic ability. The New Jersey Gaming Commission fined him $500 in 1982 for allegedly ‘capping’ a bet. Ungar later avoided the fine after a successful court case, despite spending $50,000 in travel expenses and legal fees. The exhaustive nature of the proceedings took their toll on Ungar and he failed to defend his WSOP crown.

Ungar is best known for his achievements in the poker world and his unique personality on the felt. The New York City native won back-to-back WSOP Main Event titles in 1980 and 1981, but he had to wait another 16 years before becoming world champion once again in 1997. It was his actions in between those successes that dominated the headlines, however, as a destructive drug habit and divorce took their toll on his game. He was blinded out of the 1990 WSOP Main Event in ninth place after collapsing from a drug overdose in his hotel room on the third day of the tournament. Ungar was in severe debt by the time the 1997 Main Event came around, but close friend, Billy Baxter, paid his $10,000 buy-in and he promptly defeated the whole field to secure the $1 million first prize. Baxter offered to do the same in 1998, but Ungar refused on the eve of the event due to his condition following several months of drug abuse. He died in November of that year of a suspected heart failure. Among his other accomplishments, Ungar is also considered to be the greatest ever gin rummy player.

There are five names currently dominating the world of poker in terms of winnings. 

Ranked Number One in the world is Las Vegas resident and one of the poker world’s most successful figures, Erik Seidel.  The 51-year-old boasts an impressive eight WSOP bracelets and has had 23 first place finishes in his enviable career to date.  So far, his winnings have totalled $16,703,000 making him a formidable opponent when he sits down at the felt. 

Close on his heels comes Daniel Negreanu, a 37-year-old pro who also lives in Las Vegas, who when he’s not raking up one of his 34 first place finishes, winning four WSOP bracelets and raking in $14,673,000 in winnings, likes to play golf.  He started out playing when he was just 15 and cites female number one Jennifer Harman as a hero for cracking the all-male world. 

Another Las Vegas resident, Phil Ivey, has netted an impressive $13,873,000 in winnings from his career, which has seen him take eight WSOP bracelets in his career. 

The first person outside of Las Vegas in the top five earners is Jamie Gold from Malibu, California has won $12,235,000 in his career so far. 

Fellow Californian John Juanda from Marina Del Rey, at the age of 40 has amassed $11,993,000, four WSOP bracelets and 24 first place finishes in a career he started in 1996 when he was 25.

Victoria Coren is a well-known writer, broadcaster and presenter of BBC4 quiz show “Only Connect” and Radio 4′s “Heresy.”  She is also a professional poker player.  As these two aspects of Ms Coren are closely linked, she manages to bring the world of poker up-close to a mainstream audience.

Victoria started playing poker when she was a teenager and she is now a member of PokerStars Team Pro.  Her official tournament winnings total more than $1 million.  After winning the London EPT, Victoria was crowned the 2006 European Poker Champion.  She was the first woman ever to win an event on the European Poker Tour.  She has also won the Celebrity Poker Club series on Challenge TV and is therefore perhaps the only person who has won both a celebrity and a professional poker competition. 

In 2010, Victoria Coren had good results at the EPT Monte Carlo as well as the Bahamas PCA.  She plays online under the name Vicky Coren and also plays for cash regularly at London’s Victoria Casino.  Internationally, she can found on the UK and Ireland Poker Tour and the European Poker tour.

When it comes to TV, Victoria has played poker games on Channel 4′s “Premier League Poker,” “Late Night Poker,” and various games that have been televised on Sky Sports.  She commentates on poker series’ and also has a weekly poker column that she writes for the Guardian.

Victoria Coren, and many tweets detailing her poker experiences, can be found on Twitter @VictoriaCoren.

Few names in poker are as legendary as Doyle Brunson’s.  Now age 75, Brunson is still considered a formidable poker player and the patriarch of the game.
 
Brunson did not start as a star, though.  In fact, he started poor and in Texas.  When he broke his leg, ending his chances at becoming the star athlete he may have been, he took up poker instead.
 
Brunson became a formidable force quickly, but was slowed down in 1962 when he was struck with cancer.  Given three months to live, Brunson forged ahead and is still alive and dominating at the poker table almost 50 years later.
 
One of Brunson’s most important achievements is bringing poker into the mainstream.  The sport is now hugely popular, but it was not always that way.  Brunson, as the leader of the Texas Rounders, drew attention to the game.  When he eventually made it to Las Vegas he himself became a tourist attraction.
 
Brunson has been called the single most influential force in the world of poker.  He has won a record-setting ten World Series of Poker Events.  He continues to dominate the game, winning once again as recently as 2004.
 
Today, Brunson is not only a poker player, but also a best-selling author.  In addition to books on poker, he also writes a poker column in the London Telegraph.  Brunson is a spokesperson for DoylesRoom.com, an online poker website.  His life and story has been featured on the History Channel and he was voted the #1 most influential force in the world of poker in 2006.

Kevin “Lovejoy” O’Leary used to deal in antiques.  Now, he deals in cards.
 
O’Leary is a Surrey native who has become a star on the poker circuit.  Nicknamed “Lovejoy” after the BBC series of the same name, O’Leary began his career with 9-ball pool and pro-am snooker.  His time spent as an antiques dealer lead to his “Lovejoy” nickname.  He also worked as a postman, decorator and electronics engineer before devoting himself completely to poker.
 
Over time, poker has taken over as the primary focus in O’Leary’s life.  Some of his best known performances have come from when he travelled over to Las Vegas, in the United States, for tournaments at The Venetian Casino.  He has set a record in the casino, winning five No Limit Texas Hold’em tournaments in the “Deepstack Extravaganza” series.  He also left The Venetian with its Player of the Series award.
 
His annual trek to Las Vegas has made him a regular in the World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker Tour tournaments, where he always performs well.  He has also won the Caesars Palace Las Vegas “Mega-Stack” championship and made the final table at the televised VC Poker Cup at Teddington Studios in England.
 
O’Leary can most often be spotted at live poker tournaments rather than online ones or cash games.  His skill even landed him a sponsorship deal with Blue Square, a UK bookmaker, but he gave up on the deal after three years so he could focus on doing more live tournaments.

Although most veteran poker players swear by the atmosphere of the real thing, playing online is the best way for the novice player to become familiar with the basics of poker.  Most online casinos offer free roll and low stakes games, allowing the new player to learn the game and develop their skill at little or no cost.  A lot of attention has been put into developing the user interface, and feedback on game events is constantly provided, so it is easy for the novice to follow what is happening.

The most significant difference between online and real world poker is that players cannot rely on physical tells such as facial expressions, hand or body movements, to furnish clues as to the strength of an opponent’s hand.  This can also work to the novice’s advantage as many experienced players are experts at spotting an opponent’s tells and masking their own.

Without physical tells, understanding your opponents comes down to observing their playing pattern, such as learning the conditions they fold or raise under.  A number of prominent poker players have argued that playing poker online is the best way to develop a player’s ability to spot another’s playing pattern.  If you are serious about poker, you will probably want to combine games of online and real world poker, but for the novice, there is little question about where you should go to learn the ropes.

Poker bracelets are considered to be the most prestigious non-monetary prize any poker player can win. They are traditionally given to the winner of the Main Event at World Series of Poker tournaments. The first bracelet was awarded at the 1976 WSOP event and only 14 were normally given out over the year. By the turn of the millennium this had risen to 24 bracelets and in 2009 there were 57 lucky recipients, plus four given as part of the WSOP Europe tour.

The first bracelets were very plain looking, heavy items that cost around $500; they were produce by the Las Vegas jeweller Mordechai Yerushalmi. Designs remained pretty much the same until 2005 when the ownership of the WSOP changed hands and under Harrah Entertainment the Memphis designers Gold & Diamond International revamped the design. The 2006 bracelet was made from 120 grams of gold and had 259 stones set into it.

The current bracelet designer, Steve Soffa, has said that in 2010 he wanted the style to reflect the early bracelets from the 1970’s and create an item of jewellery that people would be proud to wear and not something that was hidden away only to see the light of day on rare occasions.

Thomas Bihl was the winner of the first bracelet awarded outside of Las Vegas when in 2007 he won the first WSOPE, H.O.R.S.E. event in London. A couple of days later 18 year old Annette Obrestad became the youngest ever recipient and first women to win one at the WSOPE Main Event. The current record holder with eleven bracelets is Phil Hellmuth. 

The image of a bearded, gruff, unkempt man in a cowboy hat sitting in a darkened, smoky room as the typical poker player has taken a sever knocking over recent years. For decades it was one of the last bastions of male dominance but the rise in the game’s popularity has seen it gain more exposure over the internet and, consequently, a huge growth in its female player base.

The anonymity of the computer and the thrill of the game have been the main selling point for many players but this is especially true for women. While the idea of the boys’ poker night is a traditional male rite of passage, many women first discovered the joy of poker over the internet. The Finnish Poker pro Annette Obrestad is a prime example; still only 21 years old she has been playing for years and often tells how she started with free rolls online poker and built up her fortune that way. By the age of 18 in 2007 she was competing in the World Series of Poker Europe and took the title outright, winning over £1 million.

The first lady of poker, Linda Johnson, started playing back in 1974, won her first poker bracelet in 1997 and started to raise the profile of women in the game. These days the women’s game has broken the stereotype and brought the game glamour and sex appeal. Poker pros like Venessa Roussou, Annie Duke, Jennifer Tilley, Venessa Selbst and Liv Boeree have all helped increase the game’s popularity and proven that women can compete on an equal footing at the green felt.

Although there are no formal rules for how a player should conduct themselves at a poker table, there are several simple things that a player can do in order to make sure that the game runs more smoothly.

There are a number of things that a player sitting down at a table for a session of poker can do to enamour themselves better to their competitors. The first is to make sure that they are clean before the sit down – poker halls can often be tense, sweaty and hot environments and it immediately makes a player more popular if they had a shower before heading to the venue. Keeping a can of deodorant to hand, just in case it is needed, is also often appreciated. Secondly, players sitting down for a game of poker should generally try not to antagonise their fellow competitors as a sense of good fun always leads to a more enjoyable game.  It is also considered very bad form to react badly to losing a hand, no matter how unlucky the loss may have been.

While sat at a table, players should ensure that their chips and cards are always in view. Moving cards behind a chip stack, which in some poker rooms is viewed as an all-in move, can make other players not realise that a player is still live. Chip stacks too should be kept in clear piles with high value chips in easy view, as knowing a competitors chip count affects how a player bets.

Unbelievably a total of 7,319 who entered the WSOP Main Event and all of them, naturally were hoping to be the one to reach the very top. But after eight days of nonstop action, only nine are left to fight it out on the final table, and only one of them will be declared the champion. Still, determining the 2010 champion is still a long way off.

So who are the lucky ones counted as the 2010 November niners, some of them amateurs, some of them pros. On ninth place is Jason Senti, with 8,475,000 chips. In eight spot is Mathew Jarvis who holds 9,625,000, followed by Soi Nguyen who holds 9,800,000. A big gap in chips sees Michael Mizrachi’s stack, which is 16,800,000. Filippo Candio has 19,850,000 at 5thplace. John Racener has 21,100,000. Joseph Cheong, at 3rd place, has 23,700,000. Another significant gap, this time between second and third place, shows John Dolan with a stack of 45,300,000, but at the very top sits Jonathan Duhamel who holds a pretty sizable 55,375,000.