Philips Hellmuth Jr. is known for holding an unbeatable record of 11 WSOP bracelets. An American poker player, he was born on July 16, 1964. He is known for his “poker brat” personality and as a renowned member of the Poker Hall of Fame.

He won the Main Event of the World Series of Poker in 1989, when he was just 24 years old, defeating the champion Johnny Chan. He has made three times to the final tables of the World Poker Tour and has cashed 10 times.

He is not just being playing poker but also creating instructional articles and videos for budding poker players. He has been in the controversy for being a bad loser; one who cannot take a defeat with dignity.

Chris Bryan Moneymaker, the professional American poker player, was born on November 21, 1975 in Georgia. Before entering the mystic world of poker, he completed his masters in accounting from the University of Tennessee.

Moneymaker is famously known for his victory at the main even of the World Series of Poker in 2003. This winning game is considered to be a catalyst in bring the boom to the poker game. His autobiography was published in March, 2005.

In 2004, he finished at the second position on the Shooting Stars event (at the WPT) and walked away with price money of $200,000.

As of 2008, his total winnings sum up to be more than $2,800,000. Out of which $2,532,041 has come from the WSOP.

Gustav Hansen, known as Gus Hansen, was born on February 13, 1974 in Denmark. He is a Danish professional poker player. In his bag of achievements, he has three World Poker Tour open titles, the season one winner of the Poker Superstars Invitational Tournament and the 2007 main event of the Aussie Millions.

Prior to playing poker, Hansen was a youth tennis champion and an excellent backgammon player. During his teenage, he was a great sports enthusiast: both indoor and outdoor games. Besides playing poker, he has done well in some of his business ventures too. A few poker websites that he created are making good business.

At present, his total winnings are more than $10,000,000. Out of this $3,104,014 has come from the WSOP.

Thuan Scotty Nguyen was born on October 28, 1962 in Vietname. He is an American poker player who is known for his record of holding five WSOP bracelets. His winning game of the Main Event of the World Series of Poker in 1998 is still remembered.

Nguyen is amongst those few players who have won both $50,000 H.O.R.S.E and the Main Event at WSOP. He is known as one of the most active and emotional professional poker player. In 2009, he made $339,743 by winning the inaugural LA Poker Classic $10,000 H.O.R.S.E World Championship.

At present, his total winnings sum to be more than $10,300,000 and out of this $4,694,049 has come from winning at the WSOP!

As a part of the global boom in Texas Hold’em popularity, the European Poker Tour was started in the year 2004. It is a series of poker tournaments that are aired on the television; in Europe. This series have been influenced by the original World Poker Tour.

However, to be distinguished from the WPT, the European Poker Tour has some difference. For instance, there are 8 players on the final table, unlike the 6 in the WPT. The main sponsor and partially owner of the EPT is PokerStars.

The initiative was taken by the winner of the inaugural Poker Million tournament John Duthie. He is also the co-host of the show with Colin Murray.

Should poker celebrities be considered role models? It’s a question that many would answer, “Absolutely not!” And watching poker tournament pro Phil Hellmuth throw a temper tantrum at the poker table may not help the case much either. But before you rush to judgment, consider some of the other poker celebrities. For example, five time World Series of Poker bracelet winner Chris “Jesus” Ferguson earned a Ph.D. in computer science from UCLA before hitting it big in poker. He used his knowledge of game theory and computers to run simulations that helped him net the big bucks in poker tournaments. Not too shabby, and not usually what one would imagine when the thought of a poker player comes to mind.

Then there’s 23 year old internet poker sensation Tom “durrrr” Dwan, an engineering major who dropped out of college to pursue poker full time. He made over 5 million dollars playing online poker in 2008 alone. And let’s not forget poker tournament and cash game player Phil Laak, who has worked as a mechanical engineer and a day stock trader prior to his poker career. Not only that, but he is currently dating the beautiful movie actress and World Series of Poker bracelet winner Jennifer Tilly. Not bad, and in addition to all of that Laak also has his own television show that he co-hosts along with his best friend and fellow poker pro Antonio Esfandiari. And even the “Pokerbrat” Phil Hellmuth, whom we mentioned earlier, has launched numerous entrepreneurial endeavors in addition to his poker tournament career, including his own clothing line and energy drinks.

So as you can see, poker celebrities can come from many various and diverse walks of life. Gone are the days when poker players are only seen as macho, cigar chomping chauvinists. Today poker is for everybody and with options available to play free poker people are quickly able to learn it and shed their fear of getting involved with this game. And in many ways a poker tournament is an apt metaphor for life, teaching skills such as: being good at reading other people; being able to assess risk in relation to reward; and how to not just survive a situation, but how to thrive. All of these qualities that make poker great also make for an admirable set of skills when it comes to entrepreneurship and the pursuit of new ventures. Poker celebrities as role models you ask? It’s not as unlikely as you might think.

Here are a few tips we’ve put together to help you when you begin playing poker. To the seasoned player these may seem like obvious things, but when you first start out it is easy to feel a bit at sea.

1. Have fun! – Yes poker is a gambling game, but it’s not something that is worth getting totally stressed about. Enjoy it, and you’ll find things will come a lot easier to you.
2. If you’ve never played poker online then join one or two poker sites that will let you play for fun rather than money. Use this time to learn the ropes and get to grips with the nuances of the game.before you start, but don’t be afraid to ask questions. Most people who play poker are quite happy to answer your questions when you’re a new player, so don’t be afraid to ask, everyone is new once!
3. Don’t play every hand when you’re new, this is probably the biggest mistake that new poker players make. Set yourself a starting hand requirement and don’t play if you don’t have at least that in your starting hand. If you’re playing more than 50% of the hands then you probably need to re-think your starting hand requirement.
4. Don’t drink and play for big money. If you’re going to have a drink then keep the stakes low. If you’re playing for big stakes then don’t drink. The two things really don’t mix well it’s as simple as that.
5. Pay attention to the cards on the table, not just your own cards. It really is important to learn to look at what’s going on around the table not just with your own cards particularly in games like Texas Hold’em.
6. Pay attention to other players. Even if you’ve folded pay attention to the game. When you are a new player, this is probably one of the best ways for you to learn how your opponents think. Look out for poker tells (where someone gives themselves away by a sign or movement or way of doing things when they have good/bad cards) this will help you to gather information for the hands when you do keep playing.
7. Don’t jump too high or too fast. Just because you are doing well at a low stake game doesn’t mean to say that you will at one with higher stakes. Generally speaking, as the stakes rise so does the skill level. Besides that, if you’re winning money at a lower stakes table then why move!

Of course there are going to be other things that you find useful, and for different people it will be different things, but we think that remembering these things will give you a good place to start from in a game that can be both fun and for the good player sometimes even lucrative.

Winning the World Series of Poker main event is the pinnacle in the
life of many a poker player. They say once you win the World Series of
Poker your life is changed forever. Although many of the older
champions are now household names, some of the newer winners were
complete unknowns before they won the Main Event. It remains to bee
seen if WSOP 2009 will be the time when a famous pro once again enters the throne, which hasn’t happened since Carlos Mortensen won in 2001.

2008 Champion Peter Eastgate

In November 2008, Eastgate was far from the odds-on favorite to become
world poker champion. He was one of the shorter stacks in chips, and
had less experience than players such as Ylon Schwartz and Chino Rheem.
Still, the 22 year-old from Odense, Denmark, battled fiercely, and
managed to get to heads-up action. Even then, facing young superstar
Ivan Demidov, Eastgate was the underdog, but when his A5 made a
straight on the turn to beat Demidov’s two pair, Eastgate
became poker’s newest -and youngest- champion.

2007 Champion Jerry Yang

Jerry Yang emerged in a tumultuous year for poker. U.S. restrictions on
Internet play had limited the number of Internet satellite qualifiers
and the main event experienced a dip in attendance for the first time
in history. On the plus side, America’s loss was the
world’s gain, as the final table was the most international
affair in the event’s history, and led to a surge in
international poker play. The amateur Yang, a therapist and social
worker for California, was welcomed as champion due to his good works
and kindhearted demeanor. It was hoped that he would serve as an
ambassador for poker moving forward, but he made very little impact on
the poker world in his year as champion.

2006 Champion Jamie Gold

Some say that Jamie Gold’s win is what necessitated a poker
ambassador. Gold, a show business agent and producer who befriended Johnny Chan during a show he was producing, was a force in the tournament, taking over the chip lead after day three and never
relinquishing it, generally implementing a successful strategy of
“strong means strong and weak means weak,” as
opposed to the traditional amateur “weak means
strong” strategy. However, Gold’s victory was mired
with controversy, as he was the victim of an extended lawsuit by an
associate who claimed that Gold promised him half of his win.

Michael Matusow was born on April 30, 1968 in California. He is an American professional poker player who resides in Henderson, Nevada. He started his poker career in the early 1990s by working as a poker dealer. Gradually, he became a professional poker player.

Matusow has three World Series of Poker bracelets and the 2005 World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions title in his bag. He has been given the nickname of “The Mouth”, which refers to his trash-talking at the poker table. He is also known for spooling an entire game with a spectacular misjudgment. He is not very popular amongst the poker fans.

As of 2008, his winnings are more than $6,800,000. Out of this, more than $3,000,000 has come from the WSOP.

Michael Keiner is a professional poker player, who was born on February 8, 1959, in Germany. He has won a WSOP bracelet in 2007 in Seven Card Stud Poker. In 2008, Michael Keiner was the winner of the UK Open.

Actually Keiner is a plastic surgeon, who started to play poker in 1993. Finally he made a profession out of his hobby and has started to play Seven Card Stud games on a regular base since 1995. This also made him become European champion. His favorite poker game is Omaha Pot Limit.

Since 2006 Michael Keiner is sponsored by 888.com and the company’s poker room Pazifik Poker.

His winnings in poker tournaments are $1,129,846.

In his video blog, Michael Keiner reports live from Las Vegas about the WSOP 2009: