Michael Chu aka ‘Primetime Mike’ is a stock trader who plays poker for fun. He was born in Seoul, South Korea and today resides in California. He has been playing poker for more than ten years of his life but never plans of making it his profession because according to him poker is a game that gives him happiness and thrill while his job as a stock trader in Los Angeles gives him job satisfaction.

Chu is a political science major from the University of California. He played poker since his high school and he loved everything about it. According to him, the film ‘Rounders’ was what aroused his interest in Texas Holdem and he has never let go of the game since then. He had fun playing poker games with his friends at high school as well as his college friends and then it was ‘in’ to play poker games in college.

His skill with numbers was what made his good at the game or so he says. But its more than the numbers that keep him floating in a game, it is his knack of playing his game so that he wins most of the times. His deep interest in the game comes from the fact that he loves it for the fun it provides than rather the money he wins.

Chu won his first World Series of Poker bracelet in the year 2007 when he won the $1000 No Limit holdem re-buy championship. He won a whopping prize of $585,774 and that too without an actual re-buy while all his competitors had to re-buy at least 8 times throughout the championship. His performance at the tournament got him a lot of attention and praise from poker players as well as poker lovers. Winning a gold bracelet along with the prize came as a huge bonus to his small investment in the game. He was just 27 when he won his first bracelet.

After his win at the World Series of Poker of 2007, he participated in the World Poker Tourand he won $16,005 in the No Limit Holdem Championship event. He kept on participating in the World Series of Poker tournaments and managed to cash in the tournament of 2008. He was placed 8^th in the $1500 Mixed Holdem event and took home a prize of $27,440. In 2011 World Series of Poker he was placed 31^st in the $2500 Mixed Holdem event and won $7653 in prize money.

For a poker player who plays for recreation, Chu has more than $630,000 from his tournament winnings. He has had a consistent poker career though he never wants to take it up professionally. This poker player is more than a stock trader and proves to be a cool player whenever he finds a chance. His being pretty good with the numbers gives him the added advantage. Michael Chu is definitely a player to look out for.

http://www.pokerstarsus.com/6521/michael-chu/

David Chiu was born in China in 1960 but he spent most of his life in the United States. He went to the USA as a college exchange student and stayed put. He started a Chinese restaurant in Colorado to earn some extra bucks. He later took up another job as a poker dealer and that is how he got to know more about the game.

Chiu has four World Series of Poker bracelets to his credit, which is a feat that only few players have managed to achieve. His first bracelet came in the year 1996 when he won $2000 Limit Holdem tournament. He took home a prize of $396000. It was as if Chiu was not going to stop winning. In 1998 came his second World Series of Poker bracelet when he won the $3000 Limit Holdem tournament and got $205200 in prize money. Chiu was soon proving to be one of the best players of Limit Holdem around the world.

In the year 2000, he won his third World Series of Poker bracelet when he won the $5000 Seven Card Stud event and got $202000 in prize money. In the year 2005, came his fourth World Series of Poker bracelet when he won the $5000 Omaha Hi/Lo event and took home a prize of $347410. Chiu also won the 2008 World Poker Tour World Championship and won a whopping $3.4 million prize. Chiu has cashed in as many as 25 World Series of Poker tournaments and has an unparalleled knack of winning games.

Chiu attributes his success at poker to an accident that left him partially deaf in both ears. Due to this he began to access people and read them through their faces and body language. This ability allows him to make crucial decisions in toughest of games by relying on his instinct and playing a hand. He is unbelievably talented at reading his opponents at the table and so it is very rare that he loses to someone. It is not a surprise that he has come to be known as one of the finest poker players in the poker world and is revered by his peers for his outstanding game. Chiu played on the Full Tilt Poker site for a long time.

Today, Chiu has more than $7 million in live tournament earnings and has a reputation of being a very soft spoken poker player who does not like to show his aggression through words but through his play. Chiu shall dominate the poker arena as far as he has skill and talent and also until he is bored of the game, which is highly unlikely for a player of his calibre. David Chiu is a player who is here to stay and dominate the poker world and win a lot of titles and tournaments.

http://www.pokerstarsus.com/6515/david-chiu/

Jimmy Cha is a South Korean professional go and poker player who today resides in the USA. He is called as the ‘forever quarter finalist’ because he keeps on losing in quarter finals and never gets past them. Jimmy Cha has some tremendous wins to his credit and his journey from becoming an amateur poker player to a professional one is full of interesting things.

As a child, Jimmy was exposed to various extracurricular activities like playing the piano, learning taekwondo, martial arts, swimming, playing table tennis, pool, and violin. According to him, he was not a genius but all the talents he possessed helped him become a better poker player. His exposure to playing Go helped him a lot as he was advancing to become a professional poker player. He grew up mostly in Seoul and did everything to be strong at poker and by the end of his training, when he was in his 11^th grade; he was as good as a pro.  He graduated from his college in Economics and by that time he was considered as one of the strongest amateur poker players in South Korea.

When he moved to the USA for doing something big as a poker pro, he initially had to take up different jobs to make things work. He worked at a gas station for some time and after that he began to train under the guidance of Chip Johnson who was a very well known poker theorist in California. Following his training, he was able to secure a good reputation in the poker world and in 80s and 90s he was at his best. He was awarded the ‘Best Player’ award by the Dangguk University where he attended college and he was also the winner of the South Korean National Amateur Championship twice in a row. He also has considerable contribution in spreading Go in the USA after he moved there.

From the year 2002 to 2006, Jimmy has been playing in the World Series of Poker tournament and has cashed in several events. However, he hasn’t won a bracelet yet. His knack of reaching the quarter finals and then bowing out has been unusual but he doesn’t regret his moves or his game. IN 1989, he reached the quarter finals of the Fujitsu Cup after defeating Yamashiro Hiroshi and Ohira Shuzo but he lost in the quarter finals. He has the runners up title of the North American Masters Tournament for 1995 and 1998.

Jimmy has won as much as $370,000 in a day and his total tournament earnings exceed $20 million. He is considered as one of the three best poker players and cash experts in the world, the other two being Doyle Brunson and Chip Reese. His consistency in earning big money through his game lasted for a good 11 years but he decided to help the Casino industry in Korea and so left USA in 2005. Today, he works as a professor at Sejong University and is the chairman of the Casino International Group in Korea. He divides his time between his businesses and playing ‘Go’ and poker.

http://www.pokerstarsus.com/6511/jimmy-cha/

There are some poker players who do not play a lot of poker but are considered to be friends of poker. They may not earn loads of money, bracelets or titles at poker tournaments but they are still a very good part of the poker world. One such player is Don Cheadle. Originally a producer and American film actor Don got into playing poker in the late 80s.

Don was born in Kansas City in 1964. He moved to Colorado where he completed his graduation from the East High School. His inclination to poker came after few years of pursuing his first love- stage, music and acting. He loved everything about them and so he secured scholarships for both acting and music school. He eventually chose acting over music and took a BA degree from California Institute of Arts, Valencia.

Acting in television shows and movies followed and he was really good at what he was doing until he came to know about the situation of Sudan where thousands of people were dead owing to political conflicts. He was totally devastated when he visited Sudan’s Darfur region and decided to do something about it.

He along with poker player Annie Duke and Normal Epstein founded the ‘Ante Up Africa Tournament’ in order to generate awareness among people and to raise money for the betterment of the people who were rendered homeless in the Darfur and Rwanda areas of Sudan. It was $5000 buy in event and their initial goal was to at least raise $20,000 to $30,000 but when the tournament ended, the amount that was raised was equal to $700,000. In a period of 4 years, from 2006 to 2010, the tournament was able to raise $3,000,000 which was donated for the cause.

Don was already a famous man amongst the poker players. He appeared on Poker After Dark in 2007 as he had astonishingly defeated poker pro Phil Ivey in the first round of the ‘National Heads Up Poker Championship’. Until then, Don was considered an amateur player and an underdog to Phil. The Ante Up Africa takes place every year as one of the two non bracelet events held in the World Series of Poker. In 2010, famous professional poker players like Phil Ivey, Ben Affleck, Brad Garrett and Chris Ferguson and celebs like Matt Damon sat to play at the tournament and another $2,75,000 were donated for different humanitarian causes through the tournament.

For his selfless humanitarian work, Don was awarded the BET Humanitarian Award of the year 2007. He along with George Clooney also received the Summit Peace Prize Award which was presented to them by the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates in 2007. In 2010, he was appointed as the UN Environment Program Goodwill Ambassador.

In his free time, Don loves to spend time with his family and playing golf, though free time is something that happens rarely to Don. Don is a poker player who has changed a lot of lives through poker and thus he has changed the perspective of people who once saw poker as a means of only earning money or being in the tournament circle. We salute this friend of poker for all that he has done for suffering people through poker.

http://www.pokerstarsus.com/6504/don-cheadle/

Bill Chen or Dr William Chen for that matter is a PhD holder in mathematics, a software designer and a poker player. He is not a professional because he works as the head of the Statistical Arbitrage department at the Susquehanna International Group. But his company is so supportive of his poker skills that he gets to participate in big tournaments like World Series of Poker. He is allotted leave to participate in poker tournaments around the year.

Bill grew up as a boy who knew the importance of analysis and research. He was an undergraduate at the Washington University majoring in three subjects-physics, math and computer science. He was also a research intern in the university’s Computer Science SURA program. Before shifting his attention to playing poker, Bill spent a lot of his time working in the quantitative analysis field and software designing.

Researching through various trends of poker in the year 2000, Chen formulated the famed ‘Chen Formula’ which allowed a player to assess the value of his pre flop hand by simple arithmetic calculations and then categorizing the hand in different groups. His formula was deeply appreciated and was considered as a breakthrough in the history of the game.

Using his own formula and lots of good luck, Bill won two World Series of Poker bracelets in the year 2006. One was for $2500 Short Handed No Limit Holdem and the other was for $3000 Limit Holdem event for which he won a total prize of $7, 86,129. Chen’s first tournament cash came in the year 1999 followed by his first World Series of Poker cash in 2000. He also won the No limit holdem event in the year 2000 at the Bicycle Casino’s Legends of Poker which got him $41,600 as prize money. In the next decade, he was able to have 18 big tournament money finishes. In 2009, he appeared in the show ‘Poker After Dark’s special tournament ‘Brilliant Minds’ and won the 5^th spot. His success was overwhelming but not unexpected owing to his profound knowledge of math and the application of his analytical abilities.

Chen has also co-authored a book titled ‘The Mathematics of Poker’ with Jerrod Ankenman. The full consists of deep analysis of the quantitative techniques of poker and the book is considered to be a milestone in the history of poker, but is complicated.

Chen was a member of the Team PokerStars and has significant involvement in the rec.gambling.poker newsgroup and B.A.R.G.E. He is also an honorary Chairman of the Churchill regular association for poker which is in affiliation with the Churchill College.

Today, Chen resides in Lafayette Hill, PA and spends his time working at SIG and playing poker throughout the year at different tournaments. He likes to practice yoga in his free time and is considered to be a jolly poker player as he is found laughing and smiling as he sits on any table to play. With his impeccable abilities at poker and knowledge of its little aspects, he is sure to make better title additions to his poker career.

http://www.pokerstarsus.com/6499/bill-chen/

John Cernuto, more commonly known as Miami John is an American poker professional who resides in Las Vegas. A graduate in finance, John worked as an air traffic controller at Miami Dade International Airport and it was his belief that he would retire doing the same job. But things changed when Ronal Reagan fired more than 10,000 air traffic controllers, including John. He was left jobless. To overcome the financial crunch, he left forLas Vegas to take a risk to play poker, a risk that today has made him both famous and rich.

His time as an air controller reaped rewards for John as he learnt to deal with the ups and downs that poker had to offer. When he sat at a table to play, he was totally prepared to handle whatever came his way and deal with the stress and make important decisions in a limited period of time. It was a gift that he got from his former job. When he began playing, his game was not bad but not good in terms of serious competition. All he did was defeat amateur poker players. But soon he realised that serious competition made his bankroll weak.

http://www.pokerstarsus.com/6425/john-cernuto/

After having a hard time to make ends meet, John learned from his experiences and began working hard to develop a better strategy to play. Things finally began changing after all the efforts that John took. He won the $1000 Seven Card Stud event at Amarillo Slim’s Super Bowl of Poker Tournament. He took home a prize of $58000.

In 1989, when he was playing at the World Series of Poker, he made it to the final table of the $5000 Seven Card Stud event and won the fourth spot. He also had five money finishes in World Series of Poker tournament until he finally won his first World Series of Poker bracelet in 1996 for winning the $1,500 Seven Card Stud Split event. His second bracelet came in the following year when he won the $2,000 No Limit Holdem event while he won his third bracelet in the year 2002 after winning the $1,500 Limit Omaha event.

He made it to the final table of three events at World Series of Poker of 2006- twice in the 7 Card Stud events and once in the Razz event. He has a total of 49 money finishes in World Series of Poker due to which he is placed in the all time list of top ten money finishers of World Series of Poker. Interestingly, since the year 1992, John has had at least one money finish in every World Series of Poker until now.

John also ended up winning the third World Heads-Up Poker Championship which was held in Viennain the year 2003. He won a prize of € 60,000. He made it to the final table of 2005PokerStars Caribbean Poker Adventure which was a part of the World Poker Tour.

John is happily married and has three children. His favourite poker game is Omaha 8. He aspires to win a total of ten World Series of Poker bracelets in his life and works hard for it. He loves playing softball and wants every poker player to be confident and outspoken about views regarding the game.

Avery Cardoza is a poker player and an author from America, who is also a gambler by profession. He is an initiator of a publishing empire with famous reaches into 4 main media – magazines, books, internet gaming and internet betting.

After relinquishing the professional card counting of black jack, he initiated the globe’s biggest gaming book publisher, the Cardoza publishing. Some of its customers comprise of Daniel Negreanu,Doyle Brunson, Mike Caro, T.J. Cloutier, Mike Matusow, Tom McEvoy, and Arnold Snyder.

The Cardoza library dispersed around the globe and was further interpreted into 12 languages comprising of more than two hundred gambling tricks. A total of more than ten million books written by Cardoza have been sold out and this comprise of bestselling books such as the Super system 2 and Super system of Doyle.

Cardoza has intended packaging ideas in hundreds for, multimedia software, books magazines, and direct mailers, brochures, and throughout his previous corporation, The Discount Guide was the chief architect for all the campaigns on mail order. It functioned out of 5 northern Californian state offices, which not only fetched extensive achievement to his personal organization but also held many individuals firsts in the trade.

Another famous software is the Cardoza gambling brand, whose CD ROM Windows games sold like hot cakes. In 1997, the Casino of Avery Cardoza  was approved by several individuals as the finest casino inspiration ever formed.

Cardoza stretched his accomplishment to the 2010 gambling offer with the Gamblers Book Club’s purchase that released the mythological gambling organization with a record that dates way back to the year 1964, whilst it initiators Edna Luckman and John initially unlocked its gates. Cardoza has also the credit of being the publisher of above two hundred titles comprising of the 1976 David Sklansky authored primary hold’em poker manual and other well-known books.

A glance at the poker achievements of Avery Cardozo -

In 2004, Cardozo was placed in the 37^th position in the 9^th No-Limit Hold’em event, at the thirty fifth yearly WSOP (World Series of Poker) with $1500 buy-in and $3,320 winnings. He also secured the 46^th slot in the No Limit Hold’em championship in the Poker stars Caribbean adventure held in 2005. He was placed in the 46^th position in the event with $7,800 buy-ins and $13,000 winnings.

Cardozo managed to secure the forty fourth position in the No limit Hold’em championship in the 6^th yearly Jack Binion World Poker Open with $10,200 buy-ins and $14,858 winnings. He also succeeded in getting the 19^th slot at the 39^th yearly WSOP in 2008, in 6 handed No limit Hold’em (9^th event) with a buy-ins and winnings in the amount of $1,500, $11,135 respectively.

Overall the earnings of Avery Cardoza placed him in the 15,062 position in the ESPN/BLUFF power rankings. He also secured the 12,847^th place in the player of the year rank in 2011.

http://www.pokerstarsus.com/6416/avery-cardoza/

Jonathan Aguiar captured gold on Day 11 of the 2012World Series of Poker Europe. Aguiar beat Brandan Cantu to win the ‘€10,450 Mixed Max-No-Limit Hold’em”. The fourth day battle lasted for six hours, after which the play was paused for over twenty four hours to ensure that the poker players are able to participate in the main event. However, the fifth day event lasted only for around forty five minutes since Aguiar got the better of Cantu very quickly. With this win, Aguiar won his very first WSOPE bracelet in addition to €258,047 first place prize.

The 1^st day of the competition commenced with 9-handed play and further moved to 6-handed play on second day. The moment the final sixteen players were chosen, a bracket was randomly drawn following which matches were held until a champion was found.

The final group of sixteen players comprised strong players from the world of poker. The group included, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Phil Hellmuth, Mike Watson, Joe Keuther, Paul Tedeschi, Jason Mercier, Jennifer Tilly and Vladimir Troyanovskiy were some of those players who contended for the heads-up part of the contest. But they were dismissed in round one and acquired a sum of 20,443 Euros, as part of their performance during the game.

In the second round, Martin Jacobson, Kristijonas Andrulis, Konstantin Puchkov andMarvin Rettenmaier exited with an amount of €42,094. Following this elimination, the final four players left in the game included, Roger Hairabedian, Brandon Cantu, Faraz Jaka and Jonathan Aguiar.

In the match that took place between Aguiar and Jaka, Aguiar performed exceptionally well to defeat Jaka quickly and manage enough for resting time for the final match. On the other hand, the match between Roger and Cantu was completely different as the match stretched for nearly 9 hours and involved a number of controversies. During their match, Jack Effel, Director of the competition had to be called twice to conduct an assessment of the issues that were raised by Cantu.

Baranov Ahead in 10,450 Euros No-Limit Hold’em Main Event Day 2

The second day of the 2012 World Series of Poker Europe €10,450 No-Limit Hold’emMain Event was held in at Cannes in France. The rest of the two hundred thirty players, from a total of four hundred twenty, came back for 6 levels of play. By the time the night came to an end Sergil Baranov led with his stack of 607,000 with eighty others following him.

http://www.pokerstarsus.com/6407/aguiar-drubs-cantu-win-e10450-2012-world-series-poker-europe/

Daniel Cates is a professional poker player who was born in Maryland. He is said to be one of the best players of Heads-Up No Limit Texas Holdem players in the world and has been playing poker since he was 17. His nick names jungleman12 andw00ki3z are known everyone in the poker world. He is one of the players who earned a lot of money playing poker online and has earned a reputation of playing impeccable poker.

A fancy life for Cates did not start just like that. He lost big time when he began playing and to support his poker aspirations, he had to work to replenish his funds. His losses never crumbled him and he always made it a point to try harder to win than lose easily. He loved playing videogames, especially Conquer and Command as a child and remained distant from people for most of the time. He was a student of Economics at the University of Maryland but later decided to leave college and pursue poker as a full time career.

Daniel’s growth graph was tremendous. In a period of two years, he had already moved on from playing micro stakes to high stakes and soon he was winning more than losing. He was playing for really high stake No Limit Texas Holdem along with Pot Limit Omaha on Full Tilt Poker and became a regular player at the card rooms. He purchased a membership of CardRunners and used it to take video lessons that helped him hone his cash game skills and strategies. He coaches for CardRunners today and is paid $1000 for an hour.

He has been a consistent player at Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars since 2009 and has won good money through his games as a regular online poker player. In 2009, he lost most of his funds to Viktor Blom at Full Tilt Poker but managed to replenish his bankroll soon enough. In the year 2010, Cates was so confident of his skills at high stake heads-up games that he played for higher and higher stakes. He managed to win against seasoned professional players like Tom Dwan who is known to be one of the best heads-up players. In 2010, he accepted the Durr Challenge which means if Cates beats Dwan by a dollar or more after 50,000 hands; Dwan will give a whopping 1.5 million dollars. Until now, they both have played over 19,335 hands and Cates is already ahead of Dwan by a million dollars.

Today, Cates lives in London and is known to be enjoying his time there. His decision to leave States came after both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker were ousted owing to a financial scandal. His online cash game winnings through Full Tilt and PokerStars are more than $7 million and a point of time, millions of dollars of his winning were stuck with PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker due to a scandal. Cates continues playing online poker on Euro sites and enjoys a peaceful time in suburbs of London.

http://www.pokerstarsus.com/6403/daniel-cates/

Mike Caro is a poker player by profession having his base at Signal Hill in the state of California, US. He has donned other multifaceted roles as writer of poker books, leading poker theorist and also executive for a casino. Caro was born in the year 1944 and right from his early age he had an inclination towards poker. He slowly mastered the game and began to develop innovate strategies and theories for the game. Caro’s innovative approach caught the attention of Doyle Brunson. The poker legend requested Caro to offer his services in writing the book known as super system of Doyle Brunson.

In the year 1978, Caro donated fifty statistical tables to Doyle Brunson’s super system. Caro has also written chapters in books about draw poker. For several casinos, he has also served as an advisor, and also assisted in expanding the initial seriously profitable PC program known as Poker Probe. Caro also boasts of having the unique credit of establishing the initial permanent poker school called the Mike Caro University of Gaming, Poker and Life Strategy. While several individuals thought the actual cash on online poker will not work, he was one among the small number of people, who firmly believed it will get materialized.

Caro also authored several poker books such as Winning Poker Secrets of Bobby Baldwin,Pokers’ Body Language and Caro on Gambling- a compilation of Caro’s column in the Gambling time’s magazines. He has also written other books such as “Poker Tells” (a DVD/Video assistant), the fundamental secrets of succeeding in poker, quiz book on gambling times, the formal betting poker regulations, Omaha poker & master hold’em, easy & probability quick, specialized Hold’em’s play by play method. Some of the other books which Caro has authored are a program in annihilating Male Opponents at Poker.

Caro has also created several videos, a few of which communicate to his books. He is also the ex-chief editor for the poker player magazine and also served as the gambling times magazine’s senior editor. Caro also has the credit of having coined the famed poker tells “Strong means Weak” & “Weak means Strong” denoting that the player will attempt to fool other participants by function in the opposite method on the factual power of their poker hand.

Caro established Orac (Caro reversed), which is a computer poker playing agenda at the WSOP (World Series of Poker) in the year 1984. Orac was globe’s initial serious endeavor at an aritficial intelligence poker participant and many of them got astonished as to how it worked.

In 1984, at Bicycle casino, Caro served as the principal strategist and in the year 1986, was chosen as the Huntington Park Casino’s General Manager. At the Foxwoods Resort Casino, Caro also assisted in systematizing the “World Poker Finals”, the primary company sponsored tourney. In addition to this Caro is an importunate supporter for 4 color decks in tournaments and card rooms. He has also expanded several of his theories in poker in discussion with the Art Szathmary and John Fox.

Caro’s complete live tourney victories surpassed $150,000 in the year 2009. His spouse,Phyllis Caro serves as Hollywood Park Casino’s poker operations director.

http://www.pokerstarsus.com/6396/mike-caro/