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.

The biggest difference is the subtle but important change in competitive emphasis that occurs when switching between live and online play. While playing poker via the internet, the game is more reliant on mathematical analysis and players’ ability to decipher their opponents playing style and preferred hands. While playing live, though, there are many more factors which players need to take into account, including the body language of their opponents.

Because of this, poker players playing the game live have to take into account the mathematical aspects of the game while still concentrating on reading their opponents. Some online players, though, try to offset this difference by using the chat boxes and time banks, where they can request extra time to make decisions, in virtual poker rooms to influence their opponents.

Players who predominately play poker online also tend to be more aggressive in both their style of play and table demeanour than those who mainly play poker live. Trademarks of players who learned the game online often include frequent bluffs and aggressive betting patterns.

Players who predominately play online are also generally better at multi-tabling, where they will be playing on multiple virtual poker tables simultaneously. Some highly skilled online players have been known to play in excess of 16 tables at a time.

1979 – Nick “the Greek” Dandolos, James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok, Edmund Hoyle, Felton “Corky” McCorquodale, Johnny Moss – “the Grand Old Man of Poker”, Red Winn, and Sid Wyman

1980 – T “Blondie” Forbes

1981 – Bill Boyd

1982 – Tom Abdo

1983 – Joe Bernstein

1984 – Murph Harrold

1985 – Red Hodges

1986 – Henry Green

1987- Walter Clyde “Puggy” Pearson

1988 – Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson and Jack “Treetop” Straus

1989 – Fred “Sarge” Ferris

Of the above people on the list, Doyle Brunson (1988 inductee) had a total of $2,830,302 in winnings and was the biggest winner of this first group of WSOP Hall of Fame members.  It should be obvious why Edmund Hoyle was one of the inductees as he authored “According to Hoyle.”

However, many people question the validity of “Wild Bill” Hickok being in the initial group of 1979 inductees.  Hickok, who lived from 1837 to 1876, was inducted based on the fact that he was revered as the greatest poker player of his day.  On an interesting side note, Hickok is one of only three poker players to die while playing the game, having been shot in the back.  He was holding two pair – Aces and 8’s – which today is always referred to as a “dead man’s” hand.

It all started at the kitchen table for Annie. She hails from a family of New Hampshire intellectuals. While her brother Howard Lederer, popularly known as “The Professor”, went on to become a professional poker and chess player, Annie chose to pursue her education at the Pennsylvania University by studying cognitive psychology. She dropped out just a year before her PhD and moved to Montana after getting married.

It was in Montana where she started playing poker to give financial support to her family. Her brother pushed her into taking part in the World Series where in her first appearance she came in 13th. She then decided to move to Vegas with her family and take up poker professionally.

Annie stays away from women-only tournaments for she feels that poker is amongst the few games where women can play men on an entirely equal level. She has a World Series bracelet to her name and $3,500, 000 and above in tournament prizes since the 90′s.

She stood 10th in the 2000 WSOP main event. She always places her family before her career. Apart from poker she has successfully branched out into consulting, teaching and writing. She enjoys great respect amongst the women players.

Born in New York in 1970, he went to Harvard to study and then went on to acquire his MBA degree from Babson College.

He further proceeded to get a job as a senior manager with a Fortune 500 firm. It wasn’t until he was married and with two kids that, at the age of 35, he found time for playing poker seriously.

People started recognizing Lee after he stood 13th in the WSOP Main Event in 2005. He got a lot of attention because a photo clip of him kissing his family did heavy rounds in the media.

As soon as he returned to his Boston home, he was offered a job by the Boston Herald writing poker columns. He has retained that job ever since and his column is very popular. In addition to writing, he also hosts a radio show which is titled with his name. It’s a call-in show where he discusses news and strategy from the gaming world.

All this action in the field of media has not affected Lee’s game. He won the $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em competition at the WPT World finals in 2006, and in 2007 he won the $2,000 No-Limit Hold’em event. He has amassed a total of $1.2million plus in wins.

He was born in 1935 in Oklahoma. He stepped into poker professionally at around 35 years of age. Johnston was seen playing the highest of stakes with the likes of Chip Reese and Doyle Brunson. But it was only in the 1980s that he made a solid impact on the poker world.

In 1982 he finished third at the World Series in the $10,000 Championship Event and has since been considered to be amongst the best players to participate in this prestigious event.

In 1983 he won the first of his five WSOP bracelets. In 1986 he was declared world champion after beating Jesse Alto and Gary Berland.

His World Series games are the highlight of his career. Berry is at an equal standing with Chris Ferguson as the third highest earner in the history of poker. Men Nguyen and Hellmuth are the only people to have earned more. Berry Johnston has amassed over $3.2 million in his lifetime.

Johnston represents Full Tilt in online poker competitions. He is also the ambassador for the Cherokee Casino chain based in Oklahoma. He plays for them against the best of the mid-south players.

His greatest achievement was in 2004 when he was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame.  He is considered by his contemporaries as a gentleman and a deeply religious man who is devoted to his family.

Bill found very little time to play poker earlier on in his life. He was busy finishing his studies at the Berkeley Institute of the California University. He acquired his PhD in Mathematics in 1999. This started his career in the field of software design and quantitative analysis, but his desire to gain success in poker kept on burning inside him.

Bill came up with the “Chen Formula” in 2000. It helps, through simple arithmetic, to gauge a quick analysis of your pre flop hand’s strength. This, along with his ever-growing passion for poker, helped him reach the heights of the poker world.

Initially Bill had little success on the California circuit. However, he eventually demonstrated his expertise in the game and had a big win in 2000 at the ‘Legends of Poker’ event held in Los Angeles’s Bicycle Casino. In Vegas on the 4th of July, he defeated 415 players to win the $3,000 Limit Hold’em event. Eleven days later he beat 740 players in the $2,500 No Limit Six-Handed tournament. That is where he won his second bracelet.

Bill is considered to be the best mathematical mind in the game and has the respect of all his opponents.

Around 1,080 participants stood eligible for prizes in the Sunday Million. The highest prize of £92,250 was won by govshark2. He defeated princio to win this award. The runner-up took home £62,975. 3rd place was reached by trangers15 who amassed £42,000. The final table saw BrOke24/7 in 4th place, DueceBuster finishing 5th, BOKINHA in the 6th, Y2JKID in the 7th place and the 8th and 9th positions were reached by MyGambit and Jazz604, respectively.

In the Sunday Warm-Up event held on PokerStars Pokky Star won the first prize of £50,625 by defeating wdrzich who took back £35,625. The final table saw ael1979 in the 3rd place, mozitasin the 4th, wildman22222 in the 5th, Pappe Ruk in the sixth, Puniponken in the 7th and the 8th and 9th positions were reached by bot432931 and IBLUFFULOL, respectively.

PokerStars offers the Sunday Second Chance as the last opportunity for players to make money over the weekend. This weekend’s Second Chance had ozenc emerging as the winner. He won £27,375. in the second place there was Gvillebill, 3rd place was won by pocktnizzles, xxjondxx came 4th, LexLuthor85 finished fifth, POker DOh came 6th, makavelyces finished 7th and the 8th and 9th positions were awarded to Topvorm and yrcanos respectively.

It is said that Bloch was born with a set of cards, yet he only took up poker seriously after he finished MIT. During that time he was member of “The Amphibians”, a blackjack club in MIT. There he is said to have made over $100,000 in a single session. With an improvement in his skill through continued playing, he started using the money he won along with what he earned from odd jobs to pay for his studies at the Harvard Law School. After he finished his law school studies he decided to play poker full time.

He has finished amongst the top in several WSOP tournaments, including the famous H.O.R.S.E. tournament held in 2006 and the PotLimit Hold’em World Championship in 2008. In addition to playing poker, he is also a critically acclaimed blackjack player. He is a part of Team Full Tilt and also the author of a DVD and a book. Bloch donates all his Full Tilt earnings to charities, a fact that few people know about him.

Even though rumour has it that Bloch is looking for a law oriented job, it seems highly unlikely that he will quit such a successful poker career. He is man of many facets: a poet, a lawyer-engineer and a great poker player.