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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.