The best poker players
An amazing composure, the ability to accurately predict the consequences of different scenarios, a phenomenal mathematical ability, a tremendously developed intuition. These qualities are typical for… No, we won’t speak about chessplayers but about famous and legendary poker players who became a part of the world history of this well-known card game.
Stu Unger
Some experts still consider him to be the best poker player ever. Anger was born in 1953. His remarkable mathematical skills began to show in his early years. And gambling became a sphere of application of these abilities for one simple reason. Stu’s parents earned a living by operating a small beer bar with an unofficial gambling house in the basement. The place was frequented by a lot of gambling enthusiasts. Watching them, the boy learned the wisdom of various games.
Stu became an excellent gin rummy player by the age of 8, and was just as successful at blackjack. As a teenager, the player ended up on the blacklists of many casinos, as he defeated institutions for hundreds of thousands of dollars. With such a reputation, there was only one road left for him – to Las Vegas. There, the young man quickly earned a reputation as the most formidable opponent at the poker table. Since 1980, Stu Anger has won the WSOP and other top international poker tournaments. Alas, the genius of the card game passed away very early and under very tragic circumstances. He was found dead in his hotel room. The cause of death: an overdose of drugs, which Anger was unfortunately addicted to.
Chip Rees
Born in 1951 in Ohio, the poker genius’s talent began to show in his high school days when he played with his classmates for small money and baseball cards. The child prodigy almost never lost in these tournaments. His first major success was winning the $50,000 HORSE.
At first Chip Rees was not even thinking about a gambling career, intending to go to Stanford University after high school to study law. But that all changed after a holiday trip to Las Vegas. There, the young man realised what he could really excel at. And no mistake. Chip Rees now has three WSOP bracelets and is also the undefeated HORSE champion.
Phil Ivey
He is one of the leading players in modern poker. His trophy collection is nothing short of impressive: Ten World Series of Poker bracelets, a first-place finish at the World Series of Poker and cashes on eight championship poker tours. His winnings total more than $30 million.
And that’s with Phil Ivey at the peak of his career and in excellent playing form. That means he has more success ahead of him.
Johnny Moss
This man, whose biography is partly the stuff of fantasy, is considered one of the legends of poker. There is virtually no reliable information about his early years and youth. According to unconfirmed reports, from childhood he was brought up by some criminal gang, perhaps even almost in infancy was kidnapped by criminals. He learned card games from them. As a young man he worked in the pubs where he watched the gamblers and picked up the wisdom. As a result, he became an itinerant gambler. And Moss himself talked about working with the underworld, and – as a very positive experience.
The first serious success for Johnny Moss came in 1949 when he beat poker legend of those years Nick Dandolos. 1970 saw Moss start his World Series of Poker winning streak. He won nine WSOP bracelets. The outstanding poker player died on 16 December 1995.
Other famous players
Also iconic in the world of poker are the following people.
Doyle Brunson – 10-time WSOP bracelet winner and card game theorist who has written extensively on the secrets of poker.
Sam Trickett is a young and very promising Englishman who in his first two years on the circuit has already won around $20 million in prize money.
Antonio Esfandiari is the Iranian-American who beat Sam Trickett in 2012 for around $18 million in prize money. Esfandiari now has three World Series bracelets in his collection.
