1. Erik Seidel has to be the man. He has eight bracelets, four of them in the last six years. He has won over $7M in tournament play, plus his cash table earnings.

2. Allan Cunningham has five WSOP bracelets in the last six years, including three in a row. He has earned over $8.7M in tournament winnings.

3. Scotty Nguyen consistently cashes wherever he is. He cashed six times at the WSOP 2007, including an 11th-place finish in the main event.

4. Phil Ivey is one of the top players today. He has five WSOP bracelets in the last seven years, and two big wins in Monte Carlo in 2007.

5. Tom Schneider won two WSOP bracelets last year, one in Seven Card Stud Hi/Low 8 or Better, and also in Omaha/Seven Stud Hi/Low 8 or Better. He also made the final table of the $2500 HORSE event.

The top candidates for player of the year would have to be J.C. Tran, William “Bill” Edler, Jonathan Little and David Pham. They are at the top of just about every professional ranking list out there right now, all within a few hundred points of each other. Pham leads the CardPlayer Magazine standing with 5,410 points with 10 final tables. He is third on the PokerPage’s ProRank 1 list with 25,378 points.

J.C. Tran tops the ProRank 1 list (27,044 points) but is in fifth place (4,458 points) on CardPlayer’s. Bill Edler is second on PR 1 (25,446 point) and fourth on CP (4,777 points). Jonathan Little is fourth on PR 1 (24,477 points) and second on CP (5,272 points).

That makes the race for the best player up in the air at this point. There’s not many events left in the year, but my money is on J.C. Tran to win.

The explosion in the popularity of poker the last few years has seen everything that can somehow be attached to the game marketed and sold. This includes books, games, calendars, cards and even poker camps.

It may seem like a novelty idea, but poker camps have become very popular and are big business recently. A number of professional poker players either run their own camp or are affiliated with one in some way. Howard Lederer helps run Poker Reality Camp, Camp Hellmuth is run by Phil Hellmuth and even Doyle Brunson got in on the act with his son Todd Brunson in the Super System Poker Camp. One of the most popular and well-known camps is the WPT Boot Camp run by the same people that produce the World Poker Tour.

With a wide range of admission fees (from as low as $1,500 to as high as $3,500 and up), is it worth shelling out the cash? It’s worth noting that anyone who thinks they can’t learn a few things from a poker pro is a fool, and deserves to keep making mistakes at the table. Internet message boards indicate that most poker players (novice or experts) find the camps well worth the time and money because of the close interaction with the pros and the close attention paid to skills that are actually helpful at the table. If you do have a couple extra grand, attending a poker camp may be a good investment to improve your game and win more cash.

Two poker players that have gone bad are Mike “The Mouth” Matusow and Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott. Both have done time; Matusow for drugs and refusal to wear a wire, and Ulliott for robbery and assault. Matusow was in prison from September 2004 to April 2005. While he was in there he lost $250,000 that he had won in a WPT event on sports betting, and had to be staked once he got out of the clink.

Dave Ulliott was a real bad boy. He was a member of a safe-cracking team and spent time behind bars in England on numerous occasions. After a friend’s wife convinced him to go straight, he has become one of the best poker players in the world.

Both have changed their evil ways now and have learned from their wild ways. Both have won millions playing poker and don’t need to break any laws anymore.

The best head-to-head matches would come from players that like to talk and try and gain an edge with their words. When two guys like this match up head-to-head it can make for an entertaining show. One match I’d like to see would be Men “The Master” Nguyen against Phil Hellmuth. Men is good at semi-bluffing and masking any hand he may have. Phil Hellmuth’s ego and experience would surely walk into a trap or two, which would result in one Hellmuth tirade after another.

But the match that would be the most entertaining, as long as it doesn’t come to blows, would be Mike “The Mouth” Matusow and Tony “G” Guoga. These two guys are the most obnoxious players in the game. The lines and insults would be priceless, and I would even dole out pay-per-view money for this if it was a three out of five match.

With more prominent tournaments scheduled for the next couple of months, which players should we expect to see in the latter stages of these events? With so many events in Europe and Canada, young Scandinavian poker prodigy Annette Obrestad will be able to play because of the 18-year-old age restriction.

Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi is always a dangerous tournament player and has had great success on the WPT. Daniel Negreanu is due to win an event; his last win came at Tunica in 2006.

The usual pro rank leaders are sure to be seen: J.C. Tran, Juan Carlos Mortensen, Nam Le and Gavin Griffin all seem to go deep into most of the events they play. Dan Harrington is one of the best tournament players of all time and if he decides to play in a lot of events he’ll surely end up in front of a camera at a final table.

Howard Lederer is one of those elite players that have been on the poker scene for a long time. His first WSOP cash was 20 years ago last month, and he’s one of the best no-limit hold’em players in the history of the game. But that’s not me talking; that’s Doyle Brunson’s opinion of him.

Remember the geeky chess club guys in high school? Geeky stereotype notwithstanding, Howard had a real passion and talent for chess as a young man and moved to New York after college to pursue his passion for the game. It was in the backrooms of NYC chess clubs that Howard soon discovered the magic of poker games, and the rest as they say is history.

Howard’s record of achievement speaks for itself with over $3.3 million in tournament winnings alone. He has two WSOP bracelets and two WPT titles, and was the 2003 WPT player of the year. Not a bad collection of awards for the trophy case. He’s also been a high-stakes cash game player since 1994, and his total winnings can only be speculated upon.

When the poker boom hit in 2003, Howard contributed to poker’s expansion in the form of television commentary and instructional material. With proven students like his sister Annie Duke tearing up Vegas cash games, he quickly cashed in on instructional books and DVD’s as his celebrity continued to grow. His calm demeanour makes him one of the most trusted poker personalities on the scene today; a great image to have when you’re selling poker strategy. He’s an advocate for poker etiquette, and even refused to shake the hand of antagonist Tony Guoga after being knocked out of a tournament by him.

His big years were from 2000 to 2004, when he won the bulk of his tournament winnings, but he has shown consistency since the late 80’s. He hasn’t been a dominant force on the tournament scene over the last few years but his many responsibilities to the game keep him away from the tables more than in the past. Not to mention his passion for golf and Grateful Dead concerts (he’s rumoured to have attended over 125).

Lederer is also part of the design team for Full Tilt Poker and he provides commentary and game analysis on FullTiltPoker.net’s “Learning from the Pros”. You’ll also find him on FSN’s “Poker Superstars Invitational Tournament” or running his Poker Fantasy Camp with other Full Tilt Poker stars. He can be found at most big events going on in Vegas, but the one place you don’t want to find the “Professor” is sitting across from you at a poker table.

Ask any number of male amateur poker players which poker pro they want to be like and odds are you’ll hear Gus Hansen’s name come up at least a few times. Why wouldn’t it? The man they call ‘The Great Dane’ is a poker champion who has won millions of dollars playing poker, is loved and feared by poker players worldwide, and was named the sexiest poker player in People Magazine’s 2004 Sexiest Man alive issue.

Before he became a famous poker player, Hansen was a world-class backgammon player and a youth tennis champ. Before choosing poker as a career Hansen tried to make ends meet as a professional backgammon player in New York in 2000. The numbers weren’t there for Hansen to make a living playing backgammon, and the poker world has paid for it ever since.

Hansen is famous for his extremely loose aggressive style of play that often leaves his opponents guessing as to what cards he has. No matter what two cards Hansen is holding he could raise or bluff the pot at any time. This style of play has brought him tremendous success on the WPT circuit.

He is the only player to win three WPT open tournaments. He also was the winner of the first WPT Bad Boys of Poker invitational tournament. In 2004, the WPT inducted him into the World Poker Tour Walk of Fame, along with Doyle Brunson and James Garner.

Hansen has also had plenty of success away from the WPT. This includes winning the first Poker Superstars Invitational Tournament and the first EPM event, the London All Star Challenge.

One of the most popular poker videos you can find on the internet is of Hansen winning the biggest pot ever on High Stakes poker, when he won $575,700 after his 5-5 defeated Daniel Negreanu’s 6-6 when the board showed 9-6-5-5-8. It’s hands like that which make people want to be Gus Hansen.

Read more about these pro poker players…

Not a whole lot is known about poker pro Paul “Eskimo” Clark. One thing that anyone who has sat down at the same table with “Eskimo” knows, however, is that he is one of the most aggressive poker players around.

“Eskimo” has used his intensely aggressive play at the poker table to make a living at the game for the last 15 years at least. Many people believe Clark is from Alaska or somewhere else up north due to his cool nickname. In reality, Clark hails from New Orleans and his nickname was derived from his appearance, which resembles the Alaska Airlines Logo thanks to his bushy hair and beard.

Clark makes a living by playing in some of the richest cash games in the world at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, and his success has earned him the 62nd spot on the all-time poker money list. When he’s not raking it in at cash games, Clark also takes in some tournaments including making stops at the World Series of Poker and on the World Poker Tour.

Clark has won three WSOP bracelets in the last 15 years. His first bracelet win came in the $5,000 7 Card Stud event in 1992. His next bracelet win was in the $1,500 Razz event in 1999. His most recent bracelet was won in 2002 at the 7 Card Stud Hi/Lo event.

Despite Clark’s colorful appearance and personality at the tables, he is not one of the more well-known poker pros and as a result not much is known about him away from the tables. The little-known facts about Clark include his birth place (New Orleans), his current residence (Las Vegas), and that he is a Vietnam Veteran, where he worked as a medic.

The rest of Clark’s life remains a mystery, which may give him an advantage at the tables behind his somewhat scraggy appearance and reflector shades.

If you’re looking for the best female poker player in the world you might glance over names like Annie Duke, Kathy Liebert and Kristy Gazes, but your search stops at Jennifer Harman. Harman is considered by most people in the poker world to be the best female poker player on the planet. In fact, many experts peg her as one of the best poker players around, period.

Harman has won two World Series of Poker bracelets, with her first coming in the No Limit Deuce to Seven Lowball event in 2000. That win was extra special not only because it was her first WSOP bracelet, but it was also the first time she had played the game Deuce to Seven Lowball. Apparently Harman was shown the game and given a few tips by friend and fellow poker pro Howard Lederer before the event, and she proved to be a natural who picked it up in mere minutes.

Her second WSOP bracelet win came in the $5,000 No Limit Hold’em event back in 2002. That win made her the only woman to hold two bracelets in WSOP events.

When she’s not touring the tournament circuit Harman can be found grinding out a living at the highest limit cash games available at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Harman was considered to be a good enough player to be part of “The Corporation”, a group of poker pros that faced infamous billionaire Andy Beal for limits as high as $100,000-$200,000.

Harman is also active away from the poker tables as an author, spokeswoman and advocate for organ donation. Harman has first-hand experience with the necessity of organ donation after taking a year off from poker in 2004 while having her second kidney transplant. After her second transplant, Harman founded CODA – Creating Organ Donation Awareness – a non-profit organization to raise money and awareness for the cause.

As an author, Harman the author first took a crack at poker literature by writing the Limit Hold’em section in Doyle Brunson’s Super System II. Harman is a member of Team Full Tilt, and appears in ads and plays online at Full Tilt Poker.

As for the feminine mystique, Harman sums it up this way: “I think women have the more intuitive edge than men; they have better gut feelings than men do.

“This is still a man’s world, and I think men use that to get under a woman’s skin to make more money off of the women. If a woman can conquer that, and let that roll off their shoulders and not be intimidated, I think they can become very good.”