Player bios will go here
Karina Jett was born August 16, 1974 in Saigon, Vietnam, but moved to Las Vegas, Nevada as a child. Her mother was a Seven-Card Stud player who taught her the ins and outs of the game as she neared age 21. Although she showed flashes of unusual potential for poker success, she moved away from… Read more »
Born on October 28, 1967 in California, Kristy Gazes got her gambling start at age 21 when she began frequenting the Commerce Casino to play Pai Gow with her friends. It was during these trips to the casino that poker caught her eye; before long, she was playing Seven-Card Stud several nights a week. For… Read more »
Equal parts poker player and beautiful T.V. personality, Amanda Leatherman is a great young ambassador of the game. Cheerful and easygoing, she has been a popular hostess and reporter for various poker media outlets over the past few years. Amanda got her start as a reporter with PokeWire in 2006. A few years later, she… Read more »
Hailing from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Jason Mercier is a poker professional who has torn up the poker world since he burst onto the scene in 2008. Formerly known online as treysfull21, Mercier got into poker like so many others from his generation, inspired when the then-unknown Chris Moneymaker struck it rich in the 2003 World… Read more »
Born on October 14, 1953 in Long Island, New York, Linda Johnson started her adult life working for the US Postal Service. After turning 21, she began traveling to Las Vegas numerous times a year to play blackjack. However, her father soon convinced her that poker was the game to master, since it wasn’t played… Read more »
One of the truths of the World Series of Poker Championship Event is that, since Juan Carlos Mortensen won the World Championship in 2001, only non-professional (some would say "amateur") players have won what is considered the ultimate championship in poker. Read more »
Swedish online poker pro Isildur1 is a relative newcomer to the industry. He took the high-stakes Pot Limit Omaha and No Limit Hold'em worlds by storm in November of 2009, squaring off heads-up against players like World Series of Poker November Nine member Phil Ivey, Tom "durrrr" Dwan, and Patrik Antonius. Read more »
Stepson of Barry Greenstein, Joe Sebok is the CEO and President of PokerRoad, a multimedia conglomerate that includes industry-leading podcasts, video blogs with some of the game's best like 2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event November Nine member Phil Ivey, and a mammoth collection of Twitter feeds called PokerRoad Nation. Read more »
David "Dragon" Pham is one of the fiercest tournament players the United States has ever seen, but he almost didn't make it. Born in South Vietnam in 1967, Pham fled to the US at the age of 17 aboard a boat with 145 passengers; only 46 people would survive that voyage, and fortunately, David Pham was one of them. When he arrived in the States, Pham briefly worked for his cousin's laundry business, but since his cousin was Men "The Master" Nguyen, he soon shifted his focus to poker. Read more »
With his runner up finish in the 2009 WSOP, Ivan Demidov may have cemented Russia's place among the best pokering nations of the world, but Vitaly Lunkin is providing some staunch support to even further that claim. Getting his start in strategic games such as backgammon and Renju, Lunkin was introduced to poker by a friend and his never looked back. Read more »
In conversations regarding who's had the most successful career at the World Series of Poker, it makes sense that Phil Hellmuth, Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan are usually first to be mentioned – after all, they lead the pack with 11, 11 and 10 bracelets, respectively. However, a few names down the list you'll find Layne Flack, who's also had an incredible amount of success at the WSOP, with six bracelets of his own. Read more »
Gavin Smith is a Canadian poker pro from Guelph, Ontario. At a young age, Gavin's father taught him cribbage and rummy, which no doubt later facilitated his interest in poker. After earning a bachelor's degree in economics, Smith got a job as a poker dealer, a position that would truly shape his future in the game. In 1998, after dealing for a year, and then running his own poker club for the year after that, Gavin Smith decided to take the plunge and play poker for a living. Read more »
Chris Moneymaker, the proverbial face that launched thousands of internet poker players, is the American who won the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event, taking home $2.5 million. "Money800," as he's known online, qualified through PokerStars by playing just a $39 satellite tournament and then subsequently outlasted 838 players to not only do the unthinkable – beat a field of experienced pros and veterans – but also to facilitate the unpredictable, popularizing poker to heights the game had never seen. Read more »
Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier is a Team PokerStars Pro with an extremely accomplished poker resume. Before getting into poker, "ElkY" was one of the top Starcraft players in the world, with multiple Top 5 finishes in the World Cyber Games, and a victory in the Euro Cyber Games of 2003. Once he turned his attention to cards, Grospellier had immediate success, finishing 2nd in the 2007 EPT Scandinavian Open in Copenhagen for $400K. Read more »
Jeffrey Lisandro, known as one of the best Seven Card Stud players in the world, proved he is just that at the 2009 World Series of Poker by being the first person to ever win all three Stud events in the same year. Lisandro bagged $125K in the $1500 Stud event, $431K in the $10K Seven Card Stud 8 or Better, and $188K in the $2500 Razz event for a total of over $740K in '09 WSOP earnings. For his amazing feat Jeffrey Lisandro received the '09 WSOP Player of the Year award.j Read more »
Vanessa Rousso is a member of Team PokerStars, and no doubt one of the best female poker players in the game today. Rousso – who's been ahead of the learning curve her whole life – graduated with an economics major from Duke University after just two and a half years, and then moved on to Law School at The University of Miami. During Law School, Vanessa was a member of the editorial board of the University of Miami Law Review, and was also in the top 5% of her class. Despite the accolades, Rousso didn't finish Law Scool, instead deciding to shift her focus to poker. Read more »
Phil Galfond, known as “OMGClayAiken” and “Jman” online, is a nose-bleed stakes cash game expert who also occasionally plays the juiciest tournaments, on both the real and cyber felt. Galfond’s biggest live accomplishment to date is his victory in the 2008 WSOP $5000 Pot-Limit Omaha Rebuy event, which earned him $818K. Perhaps more impressive than… Read more »
J.C. Tran is a tournament poker phenom who hails from Sacramento, California. Tran's biggest accomplishments include two World Series of Poker bracelets, a WCOOP Main Event victory, and five WPT final tables. His biggest cash is actually a 2nd place finish in the 2007 L.A. Poker Classic for $1.1 million, but he would later claim victory and $683K in the World Poker Challenge that same year. Read more »
Brock "tsoprano" Parker, is a long time online tournament grinder who exploded in 2009 by winning two WSOP bracelets, mere days apart. After getting a taste of World Series final table glory in 2008 – a 6th place in a Limit Hold'em event – Parker decided that what he really wanted was that bracelet, maybe even two. And so, four days after winning the $2500 Limit Hold'em six handed event for $224K, Parker shipped the $2500 No-Limit six handed event for $552K. Read more »
Yevgeniy "Jovial Gent" Timoshenko is, quite simply, a master of the big score. Of his 9 live cashes, Timoshenko has five over $100K, including a massive $2.1 million payday for winning the 2009 Five-Star World Poker Classic. Read more »
Jamie Gold is the winner of the largest cash prize for a televised sports event - $12 million for the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event. After outlasting 8,772 players over the course of eleven grueling days, Gold instantly became a poker-star and one of the many faces of the game. Having been taught poker at a very young age by his grandfather, winning the WSOP was somewhat of a life-long dream for Jami Gold, who had a mere $100K in cashes before making the gargantuan score. Read more »
Justin Bonomo, or "ZeeJustin" to the online world, is not just a rising poker-star, but rather one of the brightest and most analytical players the game has ever seen, period. Born September 30, 1985 in Virginia, Justin got his competitive start at the tender age of 9 by thrusting himself headlong into the world of Magic: The Gathering. Magic being a card game which requires a great deal of skill and strategy to be successful, it's no shock that Bonomo eventually made the transition over to poker. Read more »
Darvin Moon is from Oakland, MD, and was the chip leader of the "November Nine" with an astonishing 58.93 million in chips – just under a third of the chips in play. Moon held the lead of the 2009 WSOP Main Event since Day Six. The 45-year-old logger from western Maryland is a longtime poker player who learned the game at the feet of his grandfather. Read more »
Antoine Saout is from Saint Martin des Champs, France and is one of only two non-US born players of the 2009 "November Nine." When the cards hit the air on November 7th, Saout will be one of the short stacks at the table with 9.5 million in chips. Read more »
Kevin Schaffel is from Coral Springs, FL, and is the oldest member of the 2009 "November Nine" at 51 years old. When play resumes on November 7th, Schaffel will be in the middle of the pack in sixth place with 12,390,000 in chips. Read more »
