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Knowing your opponent is a crucial part of any poker game, but how well do you know the big names of poker? If you don’t know your Hachems from your Harmans, here’s our quick guide to some of the most remarkable poker pros past and present.
Doyle Brunson
Career Winnings: over $4,000,000
Career Highlights: It’s easy to see why Doyle Brunson was one of the first players to be inducted into the WPT Poker Hall of Fame. He was WSOP champion in 1976 and 1977 and recently won his tenth WSOP bracelet. Doyle has stated throughout has poker career that most players go downhill after they reach their late 50s, but Doyle has seeming defied his own observations and at the tender age of 74, some observers have commented that Doyle is playing some of the best poker of his life. As recently as 2004, he won Legends of Poker World Poker Tour event. If you ever want to catch up with him for some old tales and deep-south homespun Texan quotes, you'll find him taking pots off the very best in the world in Bobby's room at the Bellagio in Las Vegas (minimum limit $4,000-$8,000). But whether it's a cash game or a tournament, most players would rather not have him at the table as his loose-aggressive, almost propositional style of play is as difficult to overcome as it is to get a good read on his hand. Ironically, his biggest mistake in poker was perhaps in 1978 when he made his poker wisdom is available to all aspiring poker legends in his best-selling Super System poker books. In the years following its publication, Doyle noted that the games seemed "a hell of a lot tougher than they used to be!"
Johnny Chan
Career Winnings: over $4,000,000
Career Highlights: Johnny Chan could have been a world class 10-pin bowler by now, if only he was telling the truth. Back in the early 1980s, Chan would finish work at the family restaurant and head to the bowling alley. Well.... that's what he told his parents! In reality, though, he drove straight past the bowling alley and into the casino car park. Some recalled him taking off his chef's aprin in the car park of the casino, before rushing off to his low limit hold'em table. It didn't take long for him to get his first break through - a WSOP bracelet in a limit hold'em event. He caught the attention of some senior opponents at that time as they also watched him rise up the limits in the cash games. Then he did the impossible: back-to-back championship wins at the World Series of Poker (1987 and 1988). His legendary 1988 WSOP winning hand was immortalized in the film Rounders, when he flopped a nut straight against Erik Seidel and checked it all the way to the river (and on the river) and forcing Erik to trap himself in the slowplay of the century. Interestingly, in 1989, he was poised to win his third WSOP bracelet, but lost the heads up duel at the end to a very young Phil Hellmuth. Chan has ten bracelets to his name and is a legend at the cash game tables, playing in the highest limits around. He was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2002. It doesn’t get much more legendary than that.
T J Cloutier
Career Winnings: over $5,500,000
Career Highlights: With 50 major tournament titles, 6 WSOP bracelets and huge winnings to his name, T. J. Cloutier has easily earned his place among the poker greats, but unfortunately he has never won the big one. Despite sitting down at the final table on no less than four occasions, Cloutier has never placed first at the WSOP main event. Even if that victory continues to elude him, he can draw some consolation from the fact that he has been in the money some 130 times in his career so far! He is a legend and one of the most successful and consistent tournament players of all time.
Joe Hachem
Career Winnings: over $10,000,000
Career Highlights: Joe Hachem became the biggest money winner from a single event of all time in one fell swoop by winning his very first WSOP Championship in 2005. He was the first Australian to win the big prize, which last year came to a record-breaking $7,500,000. No newcomer to poker, Hachem had been playing online and in his home-town of Melbourne for ten years before he made his stunning debut on the world stage. He followed it up less than 18 months later with victory in a WPT Event for which he collected more than 2 million dollars. Chances are we haven't seen the last of him.
Jennifer Harman
Career Winnings: over $1,400,000
Career Highlights: There are few better high-stakes poker players, male or female, than Jennifer Harman. A two-time WSOP gold bracelet winner (for Deuce-to-Seven Lowball and Limit Hold’em) Harman has made it to a grand total of seven WSOP final tables. A real-money player since she was eight, and a pro since the 1980s, Harman is as formidable a foe at tournaments as she is in cash games.
Phil Hellmuth
Career Winnings: almost $6,000,000
Career Highlights: At 24, Hellmuth became the youngest ever player to win the World Series of Poker main event. That was back in 1989, and since then he has picked up a total of 11 WSOP bracelets (current record) and achieved 5 top-ten finishes in World Poker Tour events – just a few of his dozens of major tournament titles to date. A real character at the table and away from it, Hellmuth truly has become a legend in his own lifetime.
Kathy Liebert
Career Winnings: almost $3,000,000
Career Highlights: A former Dun & Bradstreet exec, Kathy Liebert is now one of the biggest female money winners on the professional poker circuit, the first woman ever to win a $1,000,000 first prize poker event and one of the few to have won a WSOP bracelet. Alongside her win at the 2004 World Series of Poker Hold’em Shoot event, Liebert’s cool but fearsome play also helped her to reach 2nd place in the 1997 WSOP No Limit Hold’em event – a year which saw her ranked 4th out of all US tournament players.
Chris Moneymaker
Career Winnings: over $2,500,000
Career Highlights: Chris Moneymaker’s transformation from accountant to poker pro is a real-life poker fairytale. In 2003 he paid less than $40 to enter an online satellite for a seat at the World Series of Poker main event. Having won his seat, he then passed into poker legend overnight by taking down the pros, taking the 2003 WSOP crown, and taking home a cool $2,500,000. Not bad for a $40 buy-in…
Daniel Negreanu
Career Winnings: over 9,000,000
Career Highlights: Canadian Daniel Negreanu is one of the brightest young stars in the poker firmament. In 1998, aged just 23, he became the youngest ever player to win an event at the World Series of Poker ($2000 Pot Limit Texas Hold’em). Add to that two first-place finishes at the 1997 World Poker Finals at Foxwoods, another two WSOP bracelets and two World Poker Tour titles and you’ve got yourself a legend in the making.
Greg Raymer
Career Winnings: over $5,500,000
Career Highlights: Greg “Fossilman” Raymer achieved his lifetime ambition of becoming World Poker Champion by winning the main event at the 2004 World Series of Poker. Despite being an experienced tournament player, he followed in previous champ Chris Moneymaker’s footsteps by qualifying for the main event online. Since his big win he has been spending less time playing tournaments and more time with his family and fossil collection.
Stu Ungar
Career Winnings: over $2,000,000
Career Highlights: Stu Ungar won consecutive World Series of Poker Chamiponships in 1980 and 1981, returning from the poker wilderness to take the title again in 1997. He had a phenomenal read on the game and incredibly brave and bold aggression. One legendary story involved Stu heads up a massive pot and when the board read 5-6-10-K-J, he called a massive all in bet with 8-7, convinced that his opponent had 3-4. Stu was right and scooped a massive pot with nothing more than 8-high. Certainly one of the best there ever was and aside from being the joint record holder with Johnny Moss, he is technically the only player to have won three WSOP Championship events by eliminating all his opponents in a no limit tournament (as Johnny Moss's first WSOP victory was decided by a vote of all the players). He is regarded by many as both the best gin rummy player and the greatest No Limit Hold’em player ever to have lived – a view held up by the fact he won no less than 10 of the 30 No Limit Hold’em tournaments he entered. Plagued by drug addiction throughout his career, Ungar died a year after his big comeback when his body apparently gave in to years of alcohol and cocaine abuse.
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