Who Are The Best Celebrity Poker Players?

Poker appeals to everyone from the rich members of society looking to enjoy the new phenomenon to young students seeking fame and fortune. On television there are regularly celebrity poker tournaments where we see famous actors, sportsman and society figures squaring off on the green felt. The competitive nature of Poker appeals to sportsman perhaps after their sporting retirement looking for a new pursuit and actors enjoy meeting their fans and gaining exposure for their charitable causes and in the case of our profiled players, their own pockets!

One thing in common with celebrities and sports people alike is their desire to win. Whilst I cringe at some of the weak plays on TV by some of the celebrities particularly in the heats leading to the finals some of the well-known poker players are becoming very good at the game and are posting some big results on the circuits around the world. So the biggest question is who is the best celebrity poker player?

I will give you three well-known players and you decide who the best player really is.

Ben Affleck – Actor

Ben received tuition from Annie Duke and won a $10,000 buy-in event at the WPT California State Poker Championship winning $356,400 in 2004. Ben still plays in most World Series of Poker events and plays in big money cash games with friends from Hollywood including Matt Damon and Jack Black. Bankroll is not a major problem for this Hollywood actor and Ben is one of the few superstars from a none poker background to hold a major championship title.

Michael Greco – Actor

Michael is better known as “Beppe” from Eastenders in the 1990’s. Michael has had lots of excellent results in Poker. A good all round player he has won a leg of the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour for $10,000 and has made two final tables at the World Series of Poker. This year, in 2009, he finished third in the $1500 No Limit Holdem event for $248,855. He also has high finishes in the EPT events finishing 71st in the grand final event for $32,871. Michael is considered by UK Poker experts to be on the of the finest UK poker players, not just of the celebrity community and is one of the more active players known as a celebrity.

Tony Cascarino – Ex-Footballer

After finishing his career scoring goals he turned to acquiring chips for a living. Tony immediately took to poker like a duck to water and is a regular feature of British poker events. He won the 7th leg of the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour in 2008 for $99,078 and followed that up with 6th place in the grand final for another hefty prize of $54,795. In 2006 he won the Caribbean Poker Classic for $28,400. Tony is considered, like Michael Greco, an excellent all round poker player not just a good celebrity player.

Teddy Sheringham – Footballer

Teddy spent years partnering Alan Shearer for England and playing for teams such as Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur until his career started winding down at the age of 42. He is known as a bit of a playboy and has been sponsored by large poker sites in the past. Teddy regularly appears in the big poker tournaments posting deep runs in many of them. He won $20,000 in 2006 finishing 9th in the UK Poker Open.

It seems everyone loves poker including the celebrities. Model Leilani is also a keen poker player so you never know who you might end up sitting with at a poker tournament. It may be a famous Sports person, beautiful model, or a well-known poker professional. Who is the best celebrity poker player? It is hard to say but I would prefer none of the four players stated above on my table.

By Malcolm Clarke

Although there are more accomplished WSOP champions, there are few who can claim to have done more for the game of poker today than 2003 champion Chris Moneymaker. Moneymaker even has a poker phenomenon named after him. “The Moneymaker” Effect refers to the boom in poker activity directly resulting from ESPNs coverage of Moneymaker’s historic 2003 main event victory.

Chris Moneymaker and the WSOP

Before 2003, Moneymaker was an accountant and a largely unsuccessful sports gambler. He did enjoy playing poker occasionally on PokerStars and regarded it as a harmless, if not particularly profitable, diversion. That all changed the day he sat down to play a $39 step satellite on PokerStars. The prize for the satellite was entry into a larger satellite, for which the top three finishers would get a seat into the World Series of Poker, and the fourth finisher a cash prize. Although Moneymaker did not necessarily expect to win, he took the satellite extremely seriously, and sequestered himself to play.

The Historic WSOP Online Satellite

As he climbed the money ladder, he decided he wanted to play for the thousands of dollars awarded for fourth place. Moneymaker had mounting debts and desperately needed the money. However, a friend convinced him to play poker tournaments for the seat, promising to buy half of it if Moneymaker won. Moneymaker decided to play on, a fateful decision that turned his winnings from a few thousand for some debts to a life changing multi-million dollar payday.

Chris Moneymaker, WSOP Champion

To Moneymaker’s dismay, the friend could not come up with the money, and Moneymaker was stuck. Fortunately, his dad came to the rescue and bought part of the seat. This turned out to be a great investment as Moneymaker tore through the 839 player field to get heads up with Sammy Farha. In a heads up match watched by more poker fans on ESPN than any WSOP broadcast before, Moneymaker outplayed Farha to win the title.

Moneymaker’s win proved that an amateur could be a world poker champion, and thousands flocked to their computers to try to win their own WSOP seats on the Internet, creating the poker boom that we know today.

Now that the online poker boom has well and truly passed it has become quite difficult to beat online poker. Players that once were able to turn a profit at their favorite card game are now barely breaking even or posting a loss.

The reasons for this are many. One reason is the rise of poker training sites. Another reason is the growing popularity of online poker tools.

These days, there are a lot of people that are taking the game very seriously indeed, which has made it increasingly difficult for the casual play to beat online poker.

The possibility of making a living from playing texas hold’em has taken quite a hold and everyday what once were casual players are now taking their game to the next level – becoming semi pro, or even full time professional players.

So now there is a whole online poker economy that has a sizable number of career online players that need to be fed by a steady supply of losing players, either existing players or newcomers.

So from the heady days of the boom in the first years of this century, when most players were newbies, the whole landscape of the game has changed to one where there is a growing percentage of professional swimming with the fishes, so to speak.

What can a casual player do in this changed world? Well, the first thing to consider is where you want to go with your game. Do you figure on becoming more serious? Or do you want to continue playing for recreational purposes but maybe reduce the cost a bit? Or do you simply want to improve your online poker game a bit?

If you want to go pro then that is a whole nother story, which we will get to in time. But if you want ot stay playing casually but go back to your earlier winning ways then we have a few bits of advice that may help you with that.

First things first, you have to take a look at the poker site that you are currently playing on. If it is one of the bigger sites, like Stars or Tilt, then you have a big decision in front of you; whether you want to continue playing there or are willing to move to a smaller room.

Changing to a smaller room will have a couple of advantages. First, the bigger rooms are where most of the full time players hang out, and so you are more likely to be playing against winning players on those sites. Whereas the smaller rooms don’t have enough losing players to provide enough of a feeding ground for most pros.

Of course, if you go to a really small poker site then there might be difficulty getting a game at the stakes you are used to, due to the vastly reduced player pool. If you can face the prospect of changing to a smaller room, you will also be looking at a fresh deposit bonus as a new player, which will help to boost your online bankroll a bit too.

A good smaller room to consider moving to is Carbon Poker. Not the smallest room out there, as they continue to accept American players, Carbon is currently offering up to $600 bonus dollars to new players. You can check them out here – Carbon Poker.

UltimateBet poker is firmly in the middle of yet another scandal after ther incredible events that occurred there this past weekend.

For the few online poker players out there that don’t already know, UltimateBet was involved in the ‘super user’ scandal earlier this year, and didn’t cover themselves in glory with their less than honorable handling of the affair. If you really haven’t heard about this a google search should point you in the right direction.

The latest scandal involves something that is fundamental to the integrity of the online game of poker. To put this as concisely as possible, the software shipped the pot from a heads-up hand to the losing player.  Yes, you read that right.  The pot was given to the player that lost the hand. Continue Reading »

What drives poker? Is it the fall of the cards or the fall of the players?

It’s both, of course. In fact, human interaction and behavior play more of a role in live poker as well as online poker than most players realize. Experienced poker players may think they are in control of their tells, but many physical actions that reveal tells are done subconsciously, and can be applied to both the live game as well as the virtual one. Continue Reading »