Phil Gordon | Poker Players

Top Poker player Phil Gordon - One of the world's top poker players, Phil Gordon walks tall in the poker world, both literally and figuratively.

At 6’9”, the former National Merit Scholar and dot.com multimillionaire, has won a Season Two WORLD POKER TOUR™ victory, sat at a Season One final table, and placed fourth in a World Series in 2001.

Gordon, a Texas native who now resides in South Lake Tahoe, began playing at age seven for pennies and keeps against his beloved Aunt Lib, whom he described as a “brutal player.” Bored in high school, Gordon started taking college classes at age 15.

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Marc Goodwin

Marc Goodwin is one of the UK's finest poker players. There’s no place like home, as Marc makes a trip back to the Broadway Casino, Birmingham.

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Edmond Hoyle 1672-1769

Poker Player Edmond Hoyle - Poker? He never touched the stuff. But when it comes to laying down the law he’s the only name worth knowing.

The Poker Hall of Fame at Binion’s Horseshoe, Las Vegas, boasts some of the most talented gamblers ever to play the game – and a sole Englishman, who not only never set foot in a Las Vegas cardroom, never played a hand of poker in his life either.

You can’t really blame the man – after all, he died half a century before the game was invented. Nonetheless, the importance of Edmond Hoyle to the world of cards (and by extension poker) is indisputable, as he was the first chap to set about the serious task of recording and systematising the rules of card games in the 18th century.

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Johnny Moss 1907-1997

Top Poker Player Johnny Moss - The ‘Grand Old Man’ of poker always packed a pistol, but used his chips for firing his way to three World Championship wins.

Born and raised in Texas, gambling was a big part of Moss’s life even as a young boy. Then, as a teenager, he was taught how to cheat at poker by local grifters. Rather than use his knowledge for ill-gotten gains he put his skills to good use when he was hired by a saloon to watch over games and make sure they were played fairly. It was while watching the action that he picked up the strategy needed for him to make his mark on the road as a rounder.

From Mexico to Tahoe, Moss plied his trade, cleaning out gamblers and poker players fair and square. But there was a lot of cheating back then and Moss knew how to look after himself, once shooting a guy in the arse when he realised there was a spy peeping at players’ cards through a hole in the ceiling.

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Julius Oral Popwell 1913-1966

Top Poker Player Julius Oral Popwell - A born gambler, Popwell hustled his whole life, but cut a popular figure at the table.

It’s testament to the skill and popularity of Julius Popwell that despite dying before the WSOP was even conceived, ‘Little Man’ is still regarded as one of the greatest poker players ever.

Like many of the legendary poker players, Popwell was a born gambler, travelling the country in search of a game. And the game he specialised in was 5-Card Stud, playing in the company of other rounders like Johnny Moss and Henry Green.

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Adam Lee 1982-2006

Top Poker Player Adam Lee - We remember the all-to-short life of a modern poker player from London, and a top bloke to boot

This space is normally used to celebrate a legendary player, who roamed the dusty backroads of America and fleeced people in dodgy saloons.

This month, we’re marking the life of a different kind of poker hero: Adam Lee, who died in March, aged 23, of a brain tumour. Adam was not a whiskery old Texan with a pistol in his pocket. He was a 21st century player: a young guy from London with a ready smile and a fearsome reputation on the internet.

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Benny Binion 1904-1989

Benny Binion - Gambler, convicted killer, and the man who thought up the WSOP.

Born and raised in Texas, Benny Binion moved to El Paso as a 17-year-old and quickly got himself a bad reputation. He was convicted twice for moonshining – the act of illegally making whiskey. Fearful of the law, he quit the game and, somewhat bizarrely, turned to another vice – running an illegal lottery. And it was while in El Paso that Binion got the gambling bug.

Before he moved to Las Vegas though, Binion would fi nd himself in further trouble, facing a murder rap after shooting dead Frank Bolding in an argument and killing a numbers operator who pulled a gun on him. But luck was on Benny’s side as he got off with a suspended sentence in the fi rst case and was found to be acting in selfdefence in the second.

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