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Cornel Andrew Cimpan took down his second title in the 2009 World Poker Tour – Foxwoods World Poker Finals more than $900k after overpowering an intensely bull-headed final table. The WPT Foxwoods World Poker Finals was set for an exciting finale as the cast of poker pros consisted of 2 former WPT champions.

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Joseph Cada realized that college wasn't meant for him. A college dropout from Shelby Township, Michigan. But his decision proved to be the most lucrative of all. He is the youngest poker player among the WSOP November Nine members. One of which is the crowd favorite, Phil Ivey, and a self-employed logger of Maryland, Darvin Moon.

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Howard Lederer is consider as one of the most quick-witted and the best poker player nowadays with multiple World Series Of Poker bracelets and World Poker Tour titles and roughly $ 5,000,000 in total poker tournament earnings. He seems to have gained the respect of other players and shows a serious intellectual manner of play and it was perhaps this that entitled him the nickname of the professor by teaching his sister Annie Duke how to play poker.

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Barry Greenstein is known as The Robin Hood of Poker for his generosity giving his net earnings from tournaments of each year. He is born on December 30, 1954 in Chicago, Illinois. Barry learned to play card games at a young age by his father. He knew Gin Rummy, Hearts and Poker but he was particularly gifted in Poker. Because of his undeniable intelligence, his parents encourage him to develop a calm and analytical game.

He started playing making rounds and cashing up to $50 a night. Barry craved more intellectual work than poker could give. When he was about 15 years old, he already made his own computer software. He once dreamt to be a doctor that will cure diseases. Barry was exceptional in his classes at Bogan High School especially in mathematics and computers. He kept up with his studies at day and building his bankroll at night. This didn't end when he gone to college at the University of Illinois. He earned a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science in just three years.

He also take an undergraduate studies to a Ph.D. program in mathematics and spent the next 10 years earning his doctorate degree. He met Donna, who had three children from his previous relationship, and married her. To gain full custody of the children, he was advised by their lawyer to get a job that didn't involved gambling. Barry give up school and poker and moved with his family to Silicon Valley where he joined four others in a starting company called Symantec (The software company behind Norton Anti-Virus). He and Donna gained custody of the children after that.

Because of his exceptional skills, he was one of the main man in Symantecs background. Making a debut on 1986. The Q&A was named the product of the year in almost every industry magazine. The success of the product lead Symantec on the road to becoming one of the top computer software firms.

But in the late '80s they began to serve a more serious purpose when Donna was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and their daughter Melissa began suffering from liver problems and have to have a liver transplant.

Barry began to spend more and more time at the tables, returning to the poker-playing/work schedule of his early years, except with crazier hours. It lasted until 1990 and Barry quit Symantec. He was unable to justify the time spent in poker tables and the lost time that he wasn't able to give to his family because of his work.

In 1992, he decided to enter his first tournament: the $10,000 WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas.
He was undaunted by a 36 player starting field packed with pros like Johnny Chan, Todd Brunson, Bobby Baldwin and Berry Johnston, Barry made his way through and placed 22nd in the event for an $8,080 payday.

It was around this time he and Donna decided to get a divorce, and after a three-year battle Barry was awarded full custody of their children. During this difficult period Barry met Vietnamese player Mimi Tran and they cut their infamous deal: Barry offered to teach her poker in exchange for Vietnamese lessons, which he hoped would help him communicate with the many Vietnamese players he anted up against.

In the following years Barry kept up his No-Limit Hold'em game and began to play Limit Hold'em as well, ripping up the felt at ring games across California and Las Vegas and building a reputation as one of the top players in the world. He continued to enter and cash in tournaments through the '90s but his big break didn't come until 2003, when he won Larry Flynt's $1 million Seven-Card Stud event at the Hustler Casino.

It was after this tournament that he made his first major donation to his charity of choice, Children, Incorporated. He had been involved in the charity for some time, sponsoring several children in the United States through the organization and taking his kids to meet them. But with his Hustler win he decided it was time to make to take his philanthropy to the next level: He donated a large chunk of his $770,000 first-place win to the organization.

Over the years he has placed in more than 30 WSOP and 15 WPT events. He is a regular player in the highest-stakes cash games in Vegas and California, including the Big Game at the Bellagio, and has appeared in several major televised poker tournaments and TV shows, such as High Stakes Poker, the NBC Heads-Up Championship and Poker Superstars Invitational.

He also made a name as a poker author like other authors and co-poker players Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth Jr. He was persuaded to write a chapter for Super/System 2, the highly anticipated sequel to Doyle Brunson's poker how-to book, Super/System. Barry found the experience so enjoyable he ended up writing his own poker tome, Ace on the River, which is more about the lifestyle of a poker professional than poker strategy.

Barry's game is still one of the best in the world. And despite 15 tournament cashes in 2007, including a seventh-place finish in the WSOP H.O.R.S.E. event, and nonstop ring-game action, he is convinced that a professional poker player's game will inevitably deteriorate with age. Humble about his talents, honest about his weaknesses, he may yet prove himself wrong. And if he does, he'll be the first to admit it.

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Anne Duke was born Anne LaBarr Lederer in Concord, New Hampshire. She is the sister of another professional poker player, Howard Lederer. She has a sister, Katy Lederer, who is an author and poet who also wrote a book the Lederer family, titled Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers.

Annie went to Columbia University where she double-majored in English and psychology. Subsequent to her undergraduate years, Duke was awarded an NSF Fellowship to attend graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania to study psycholinguistics, a field within cognitive psychology.

She married Ben Duke, a close friend from the same university, and moved to his home in Columbus, Montana. Although originally intending to continue her studies, she decided to leave school in 1992, after five years of graduate school and one month before defending her Ph.D. work. It was at this time that, with the support of her brother, she took up professional poker.

In 2002, she moved to Portland, Oregon to work for ieLogic, a company that produces software for online real time casino gaming. She and Ben were divorced in 2004, but she did win a $500 wager made with fellow pro Steve Zolotow, who bet her that her marriage wouldn't last five years. In 2005 she and her children moved to the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Duke and her then new, Mediterranean-style home — with boyfriend, actor, and producer Joe Reitman — were featured in The New York Times article "At Home With Annie Duke" on January 19, 2006.

After leaving her academic work, Duke began playing poker in the legal card rooms in Billings, Montana. Her brother, Howard, was already a successful professional and he both coached and helped finance her poker play initially. In 1994, she and her husband moved to Las Vegas in order to commence playing poker full time.

In early 2004, Duke received considerable publicity for tutoring actor Ben Affleck, who then went on to win the 2004 California State Poker Championship। Before that time, one of her claims to poker fame was her 10th place finish in the 2000 World Series of Poker (WSOP) main event — one position short of the final table — while eight months pregnant with her third child. In the 2004 World Series of Poker, she eliminated her brother, Howard Lederer, from four separate events, including the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions, where she took first place and her brother took third. During this same World Series, she won her first gold bracelet, in an Omaha Hi-Lo tournament. She was one of three women (Kathy Liebert and Cyndy Violette being the other two) to win an open event in that year's WSOP.

Duke is one of many poker players who take issue with the restrictions placed on players during televised tournaments. Although the players pay mandatory entry fees to enter tournaments, some venues do not allow players to wear sponsorship logos. Duke raised some controversy when she made a statement in a news article regarding this issue: "We [poker players] are not even slaves. We're people paying to pick the cotton."

In 2006, Duke won the second annual World Series of Rock Paper Scissors (WSORPS). The WSORPS is an annual charity tournament hosted by Phil Gordon at the World Series of Poker. The winner receives free entry into the WSOP Main Event and the proceeds are donated to Gordon's charity Bad Beat on Cancer.

As of 2008, Annie holds the women's record for most "in the money" finishes at the WSOP. In September 2004, Duke won $2,000,000 in the inaugural World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions, a 10-player, winner-take-all invitational event. At the time, this victory was the most money paid in a single event to a female poker player. That record was broken by Annette Obrestad during the 2007 World Series of Poker Europe Main Event.

Duke has won one World Series of Poker bracelet, in Omaha HiLo, and more than three million dollars in tournament play. Nowadays she refuses to play in women's only tournaments, saying that "Poker is one of the few sports where a woman can compete on a totally equal footing with a man, so I don't understand why there's a ladies only tournament."

In the Main Event of the 2006 World Series of Poker, she finished in 88th place (out of 8,773 entrants) for $51,129 in winnings. She was one of two women left in the field when she was eliminated. (The remaining woman, Sabyl Cohen, later finished in 56th place for $123,699.)

As of 2009, her total live tournament winnings exceeded $3,600,000. Her 37 cashes at the WSOP account for $1,136,846 of those winnings.

On January 30, 2006, Duke became the first poker personality to appear on The Colbert Report.[citation needed] During the show, she talked about her book and what it's like to be a woman in a male-dominated event. In 2006, The Game Show Network (GSN) premiered a television special titled Annie Duke Takes on the World, which features Duke playing against amateur poker players. Duke has also made appearances on the Ultimate Blackjack Tour playing Elimination Blackjack.

On December 1, 2006, Duke appeared as a member of the Mob on The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) program, 1 vs. 100. She correctly answered every question and was the only celebrity who wasn't eliminated. She returned for the next few weeks, answering her questions correctly. She reappeared on the Christmas Day episode on December 25, answering a total of 35 consecutive questions correctly during her time on 1 vs. 100, making her the longest running mob member in the history of the show to that point. Duke returned on February 9, 2007 under special "Last Man Standing" rules where the game continued until only one person remained. She survived to reach the final five of 100 contestants, before she, along with three of the other four mob members including Ken Jennings, were eliminated.

Annie Duke has appeared on NBC's Poker After Dark three times but has not won.

On March 24, 2008, Duke appeared on the NBC show Deal Or No Deal to support a contestant named Mary Beth Holtzheimer who, after taking a $341,000 deal from the bank with only two cases left, found her case #13 had the $1,000,000. Annie gave Mary Beth an offer earlier that included a dinner with herself, Mary Beth, and her fiance John Salmieri; private lessons; and an invitation to attend an All Ladies Poker league if the bank's offer was accepted, but it was not.

Along with Phil Hellmuth Jr., Duke is a coach on Fox Sports Network’s Best Damn Poker Show, which is sponsored by the poker site UltimateBet.

In 2009, she appeared on the Donald Trump reality television show, Celebrity Apprentice. Throughout the season, each celebrity raised money for a charity of his or her choice. Duke raised more money for her charity, Refugees International, than any other contestant. Of the field of 16 competitors, Duke survived to compete in the finale against her primary rival throughout the show, Joan Rivers. Duke's fund-raising donations were more than triple those of Rivers'. However, total donations were only one of five criteria adjudged in the final task, and Rivers was ranked superior in three out of the five, placing Duke in second place overall.

source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Duke

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Gustav Hansen also known as “The Great Dane” was born on February 13, 1974 outside Coppenhagen, Denmark. He is a well-known professional poker player who now lives in Monaco.

In his poker career, Hansen has won a record of three WPT open titles, 2007 Aussie Millions main event and was the season one winner of the Poker Superstars Invitational Tournament. Before his professional poker career in 1997, Hansen was a world class backgammon player and a youth tennis champ. Known for being a sports enthusiast throughout his teen years, competing in several indoor and outdoor sports as a successful junior athlete.

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Daniel Negreanu or otherwise known as "Kid Poker" was born on July 26, 1974 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada to Ann and Constantin. His parents left the communist regime of Romania in 1967 and look for a new life in the US. Daniel arrive five years after his older brother, Blake Vasser. At first, as a young boy, the 15 years old Daniel dreamed to be a snooker player until he learned how to play poker.

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Stuart Errol Ungar a.k.a The Kid was born on September 8, 1953 in New York City and was raised in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Stu born to Jewish parents, Isadore "Ido" Ungar, his father, a loan shark who ran a bar called Foxes Corner that doubled as a gambling establishment which exposed Stu to gambling at a young age.

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Phillip D. Ivey also known as the Tiger Woods of poker (a title which he is somehow uncomfortable with) or "No Home Jerome" (it was taken from the ID card he secured to practice in Atlantic City in his teenage years) was born on February 1,1976 in Riverside, California.

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