Barny Boatman spent much of his youth traveling the world, living in numerous countries and working a variety of jobs that included factory worker, bartender, journalist, English teacher, computer programmer, board game inventer, and even movie reviewer. But it was in the poker world that he found his true calling. The London-born player graduated from home games with his brother Ross to bigger games with fellow Brits Joe Beevers and Ram Vaswani, forming what would later be known as 'The...

Alex Fitzgerald has been a poker professional for half of his life, turning to the game when he was just 18 years old. In the nearly two decades since, Fitzgearld has racked up millions in online winnings with final tables on the World Poker Tour and European Poker Tour. But unlike many other top players, he has also shared his knowledge, taking on students of all levels and steering them towards a better game. In fact, Fitzgerald has worked with more than a thousand players over the years,...

David Sklansky is perhaps the most prolific poker writer ever, and an all-around authority on all things gambling. The author of titles such as The Theory of Poker, Small Stakes Hold'em, DUCY?, and the latest, Small Stakes No-Limit Hold'em: Help Them Give You Their Money, is one of the few authors to simultaneously hold three spots on Amazon's top 100 bestsellers list. The 76-year-old is a three-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner, and also took down the Poker By The Book...

Wolfgang is a relative newcomer to the poker world, but that hasn't stopped him from finding a huge audience with his short-form vlogs. The Chicago native and Texas resident has a background in video production and editing which he has used leapfrog other top content creators to become one of the most watched poker players on the planet. The 29-year-old has seen a meteoric rise over the last year and recently became the first poker vlogger ever to reach one million subscribers on YouTube. He...

Jeff Sluzinski, a content creator and pro better known to his viewers as Jeff Boski, was one of the pioneer poker vloggers on YouTube. In the last six years, the ACR Poker ambassador has built a sizable audience, posting more than 600 videos and racking up millions of views. Originally from Michigan, Boski has been a professional poker player for the better part of the last two decades, having discovered the game during the early 2000's boom. He gambled on his future, moving to Las Vegas...

It took less than four years for Jesse Lonis to climb from $200 tournaments to competing in high rollers with the best players in the world. The New York native kickstarted his career with a World Poker Tour final table in 2021 at the Lucky Hearts Poker Open and then followed it up with a deep run in the WSOP main event, taking 25th place overall. In 2022, the former construction worker won a bracelet in the WSOP Online series, and nearly added a second that summer while also making two final...

Daniel Weinman topped the biggest World Series of Poker main event field in history, outlasting more than 10,000 entrants. Incredibly, he almost didn't play in the event and had to be convinced by friends, including six-time bracelet winner Shaun Deeb, to fly back from his native Atlanta, Georgia for the tournament. It was Weinman's second career bracelet, having won his first in 2022 on the way to finishing second in the WSOP Player of the Year race. And despite winning a first-place prize...

Shaun Deeb was just 16 when he fell in love with poker, hosting tournaments at his home in New York. It wasn't long before he was focusing more on cards than school, and Deeb found himself quickly rising the ranks among the best online players in the world, reaching no. 1 in 2009. In the live arena, Deeb has done most of his damage at the World Series of Poker. Not only is he in an elite group of just 22 players with at least six bracelets, but he is consistently one of the best performers...

Mike Gorodinsky is a three-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner, who is coming off a summer where he took down the $10,000 H.O.R.S.E. championship for $422,747. The Russian-born pro, who was raised in St. Louis, Missouri, won his first bracelet back in 2013, taking down the $2,500 Omaha and stud eight-or-better mix event. But Gorodinsky's biggest score remains the $1,270,086 he pocketed for winning the 2015 $50,000 Poker Players Championship. Although the 37-year-old has the resume of...

Jose Ignacio "Nacho" Barbero was a top-ranked, world-traveling card player long before he ever found poker. The Argentinian discovered the game Magic: The Gathering as a teen, and he was soon leading the national team in global competitions. After six years as a Magic pro, Barbero made the switch to poker. He broke out in 2010, scoring two of his three Latin American Poker Tour victories along with a win in the EPT London high roller for nearly $900,000. In the years since, he has continued...

Stephen Song has been tearing up the tournament circuit for the last few years. The New York-born, Connecticut-raised Song was a childhood chess prodigy who found poker while in college, ultimately making a deal with his parents to turn pro. After winning a tournament for nearly $33,000, he was able to pay them back his tuition in full before hitting the road on his own. In the years since, Song has racked up more than $5.1 million in live cashes, which includes a World Series of Poker...

Dr. Lara Eisenberg is not a professional poker player, but you wouldn't know it by looking at her results. She has already scored a WSOP Circuit ring, and a World Series of Poker bracelet, taking down the Ladies Championship in 2021. Then in December, she pocketed a career-high $481,500 for finishing runner-up in the WPT Prime Championship. The 54-year-old has found a lot of success for someone who only competes on the circuit part time. When she's not staring down the pros at the table,...

Mike Holtz spent his teen years as one of the best gamers around. In fact, at one point he was considered the top-ranked World of Warcraft player and was recruited to join a traveling league called the World Series of Video Gaming. Unfortunately for the Maryland native, the league went bust and he was left looking for his next step in life. There were numerous jobs and even a stint in jail, but after rediscovering his love for poker in a local home game, Holtz decided to move across the...

Adam Pliska has been with the World Poker Tour since the start, and along with the company recently celebrated 20 years in the game. The WPT President and CEO acted as the tour's general counsel for several years before making the switch to the executive side. Under his leadership, the WPT has since grown to a truly global scale and recently hosted a record-breaking $29 million prize pool WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas. Before Pliska took the helm at WPT, however, he worked in TV...

Miikka Anttonen has been gambling since he was just 10 years old. He was originally drawn to sports betting and slot machines, but after moving from his native Finland to Australia, Anttonen discovered poker. Despite a few false starts, he stuck with the game, and eventually built a bankroll and turned pro. During his nearly decade in poker, Anttonen won millions, including a title at his native Helsinki Freezeout main event in 2011. Although he was mainly an online specialist, his time on...

Jeff Platt found poker during the Moneymaker boom, but it was more than a decade before he could work it into his career. The Dallas, Texas native graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in broadcast journalism, and scored his first gig working the sports desk at a Jackson, Mississippi news station. He then worked for ESPN covering his hometown Dallas Mavericks of the NBA, and followed that up with a job reporting on the San Antonio Spurs. He decided to take a...

Brad Ruben is a rising star in the poker world who has exploded for four World Series of Poker bracelets in the last few years. As a result, the 36-year-old Florida native 'leads the decade' with the most bracelets won so far since 2020. The mixed-games specialist got his first title in August of 2020 during the online series held during the pandemic, taking down the $1,500 pot-limit Omaha event for $220,160. His second bracelet also came in PLO, this time during the 2021 online series....

The Tournament Director's Association (TDA) was formed in 2001 by Matt Savage, Linda Johnson, Jan Fisher, and Dave Lamb with the goal of standardizing poker tournament rules. Before the TDA, each venue would have their own 'house rules,' creating problems and confusion for new or traveling players, while suppressing the growth of the game. In the two decades since, almost every licensed cardroom in the world has jumped on board, adopting TDA policies and procedures for their own events....

Dan Zack was perhaps the youngest player to get bit by the poker bug when Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 World Series of Poker main event. The Princeton, New Jersey native was just 10 years old at the time, but he was hooked, even going on to read the Harrington on Hold'em strategy series by age 13. The gaming standout had the skills to build up big bankrolls online, but lacked the discipline to hold onto it. After having to rebuild a few times, Zack finally plugged his leaks and it wasn't...

Eugene Katchalov is a World Series of Poker winner and World Poker Tour champion with more than $9.2 million in career live tournament earnings. The Ukrainian-born and New York-raised pro won the 2007 Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic for a massive $2.5 million and also the 2011 $1,500 stud event at the WSOP for his bracelet. The 41-year-old has come close to earning the Triple Crown title on a few occasions, most notably taking third at EPT Barcelona and also finishing...

Jennifer Shahade grew up in Philadelphia. Her father Mike was a master chess player and her mother Sally a professor at Drexel University, but at night the two would count cards at the blackjack tables in Atlantic City. Jennifer and her older brother Greg each took up chess as well, and both excelled at the master level, competing against the best all over the world. The NYU graduate was the first woman to ever win the U.S. Junior Open, and was also a two-time U.S. Women's Chess Champion....

Ben Rolle, known to most of the poker world as Bencb, is one of the greatest online tournament players in the game today. The 33-year-old German was a standout junior soccer player, but turned to online poker after college and grinded his way to the highest stakes available. He has won many millions during his career, most notably chopping the World Championship of Online Poker $100,000 Super High Roller with Fedor Holz for $1.2 million. Originally an anonymous player, it wasn't until the...

Brek Schutten is a family man with five children that spends his days working as a nurse in the intensive care unit. But that hasn't stopped the Michigan native from dominating the live tournament circuit for more than a year now. The 34-year-old topped a record-field of 2,482 entries in the 2021 WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open to win a life-changing $1,261,095, and in the months since has parlayed that score into even more cash. After making two final tables at the Poker Masters last...

Brad Owen discovered poker while in high school, learning the game by studying poker software his dad brought home from work. He continued to play throughout college and even as he earned his masters degree in accounting, but a nine-to-five job was never in the cards for the Santa Rosa, California native. Owen ultimately gave up his day job as a CPA to move to Las Vegas and try his hand at professional poker. He spent years grinding away anonymously at the cash game tables, but wanted a way...