the Chip Shuffler

Yes Phil Ivey has once more demonstrated he is the best poker player in the world.

At only 33 years old Phil Ivey continues his poker prowess and never before has a 33 years old man been so successful at poker. Phil does not hold all poker records yet, but given his young age and if he can live a few more decades, all current records will have been pulverized.

So Phil Ivey just won his 8th WSOP bracelet in the $3,000 HORSE event. Only four players have ever won more bracelets. Phil Hellmuth has 11 bracelets (46 years old), Doyle Brunson 10 bracelets (77 years old), Johnny Chan 10 bracelets (52 years old) and the late Johnny Moss 9 bracelets (but the first one was by vote). And he is in a tie with Erik Seidel (51 years old) for 8 bracelets. Given that Phil is the youngest by a wide margin, it is clear that he has a good chance to become the player with the most bracelets at some point. Phil has said himself that he believes that he could win as many as 30 bracelets in his career.

Phil Ivey also won the first prize of $329,840, adding to the total of his live tournament winnings which is close to $13 million. Here no record broken because Phil was already the number one player and no one has ever surpassed this amount of money won at live poker tournaments. Daniel Negreanu is just behind in the number two spot with over $12 million, but he remains behind so far as he has not won a major prize at the WSOP.

Phil Ivey is considered by many poker players in the world as the best player, and this result confirms the general belief. Note that Phil is the most well-rounded player, as he can play well both live and online, both in ring games and in tournaments and in all poker variations. Interestingly Phil has not yet won a bracelet in Holdem, but he did in Omaha, Stud, Draw poker and mixed games (HORSE, SHOE, Omaha-Stud Hi/Lo).

Online, Phil Ivey plays exclusively at Full Tilt Poker as he was one of the founding poker pro at this online poker room. The highest stakes section is named after him and he can often be seen there mostly playing NLHE or PLO at stakes as high as NL100,000. A large crowd of railbirds follows all his moves, hoping to learn a few tricks from the master.

Joseph Hachem, the 2005 WSOP Main Event Champion

Nowadays Joe Hachem can often been seen online at pokerstars, where he is one of their pros with teammate Vanessa Rousso. But he was just a regular amateur poker player not long ago

His name is Joseph Hachem. His age is 42 years old. His place of residence is Providence, Melbourne, Australia by way of Lebanon.

Joe’s main distinction is of course is victory at the WSOP. Hachem seemed to come out of nowhere, defeating 5,618 other competitors his first time out to win the 2005 World Series of Poker. Unlike previous amateur winners Chris Moneymaker and Greg “Fossilman” Raymer, Hachem did not quality for the tournament online. Instead he decided to step up to the plate and pay the full $10,000 buy-in. That $10,000 investment would win him $7.5 million.

His final Table play was memorable. After playing for six straight days, Hachem persevered in a marathon 14-hour final table game, where he enjoyed some incredible flops. Holding a Q-7 to then-table leader Aaron Kanter’s pocket nines, Hachem got a Q-8-2 on the flop to pave his way towards the WSOP championship. In his final hand against runner-up Steve Dannenmann, Joseph held a 7-3 to his opponents A-3. The flop on that hand revealed a 4-5-6, giving Hachem a straight that would seal the tournament for him.

But Joe understands good hands. Hachem knows a thing or two about the importance of a good hand. Before becoming the 2005 WSOP champion, he made a living as a chiropractor for almost 20 years. When a rare blood disorder in his hands forced him to leave his trade behind, Hachem started playing poker, first in local casinos and then online.

He soon found mortgage banking as a means to support his wife and four children, but he decided on setting that career aside to play in more poker tournaments. But the real beauty of his $7.5 million winnings? While he still had to pay a significant portion to the U.S. government, because Hachem is considered an amateur, his winnings are not technically considered taxable in Australia.

Actress Mimi Rogers has taken big risks both on-screen and at the poker tables.

“Mimi? $800? That’s a lot of money.”

Poker legend Phil Hellmuth has barely been sitting at his table three minutes at a Bay 101 event in San Jose and he’s already lobbing verbal shots at one of his opponents. What’s more, his opponent isn’t even a tour veteran. At least not compared to the WSOP champion and holder of eleven gold bracelets (no player has more bracelets, Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan, each have ten).

After all, this is Mimi Rogers he’s talking to. Mrs. Kensington from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery and the sexy Claire Gregory from Someone to Watch Over Me; a freaking actress for Pete’s sake. But she isn’t backing down any. “Yeah?” Rogers shoots back at Hellmuth. “Come on and play.”

He’s all in, she calls. She’s got two black queens to his Ace-King off-suit. The flop comes down all spades. The river? It’s an ace of spades. Rogers’ flush knocks out Phil Hellmuth before his butt even has a chance to warm up his seat. The room, which by now includes about thirty pros and a number of television cameras, is stunned.

Rogers can only look over at an incensed Hellmuth. “Bye bye, Phil” she whispers under her breath. She isn’t just some token female celebrity giggling her way around the World Poker Tour. She’s as calculated a risk-taker as there is on the tour. But you don’t need to witness her work at the table to see that. Just look at her career.

“The professional risks I’ve taken are scarier and ultimately more impactful (than risks playing poker),” Rogers says. “Being a calculated risk-taker is a key thing. Being able to recognize the moment when you should take a risk is very important.” She should know. Besides her more mainstream work, Rogers has put her career and reputation on the line more than once.

In the early-90s, she starred in The Rapture, the incredibly controversial Michael Tolkin film about sexually liberated swingers turned born-again Christians. It’s one of the scariest things Rogers has done, but also the most rewarding project she’s ever been a part of.

In 1993, at age 37 (not exactly median playmate age), Rogers posed for the cover of Playboy. Just five years ago, she had a full frontal nude scene in The Door in the Floor, a small film starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger. Heck, the woman married Tom Cruise for crying out loud (“I don’t consider it particularly invigorating conversation,” she says of the requisite questions about Cruise, whom she divorced in 1990. “).

Risk is Mimi Rogers’ currency and it is also one of the primary secrets behind her success on the World Poker Tour, which has seen her become a member of its Board of Directors.

But it hasn’t been an overnight transition from Hollywood starlet to cashing in at the Bay 101, where she finished 27th. Sure, she wants you to think she just learned how to play No Limit Texas Hold ‘em, but that’s clearly not the case. “I actually like being in a situation where I’m underestimated,” she says. “You can usually capitalize on that.”

But there’s a polish to Mimi Rogers’ play at the table. A pedigree, if you will. This is the California girl whose dad taught her the game and who was playing blackjack up in Lake Tahoe when she was fifteen. Radiating a sophisticated, mature beauty even then, nobody bothered carding her. It was the perfect training to play Austin Powers’ Mrs. Kensington years later.

Equipped with good looks and a superior intellect (she graduated from high school at age fourteen), Rogers was counting cards at the blackjack tables in her teens. “It was just interesting to me that when I started counting as a process it worked,” she says. “If I was counting, I could pretty much consistently win.”

With a career marked by a series of risks, none more daunting than deciding to become an actress in Hollywood in the first place, it was only a matter of time before Mimi Rogers joined the high-stakes environment of the World Poker Tour. She has since competed in a number of tournaments, including the WPT Championships at the Bellagio, World Poker Championships in Dublin, and a number of other pro poker events.

“I must say that she has handled herself with class in the poker community,” says Hellmuth, who has nothing but respect for Rogers despite the very public embarrassment he suffered at her hands. “When I first met her, she asked me for my autograph when it should have been the other way around.”

That appreciation from the pro players seems consistent across the tour. Anyone doubting her ability only needs to ask Phil Hellmuth for confirmation. Forget the cute actress slumming with the pros; Mimi Rogers is for real. When she first started competing on the tour, she bought a number of computer programs for practice and read about nine instructional books, including Hellmuth’s, to help her game.

Her calculated strategy, not to mention several hours spent playing online, have helped make Rogers a formidable player on the World Poker Tour. But she stresses the calculated nature of her risks. She’s not just a ribald gunslinger running wild across the tables. Not that the poker world doesn’t have its fair share of those. “If you’re taking risks all the time, eventually it’s going to catch up with you. I’m not like Phil Laak or Antonio Esfandiari who are great players,” she says. “I could never play the way they play. They’ve got a different level of courage or sensibility. I don’t know if it’s blind faith or they just have big balls.”

And that’s what might give Mimi Rogers a sizable advantage in the World Poker Tour. Going all-in can be tough, but if you want stress try navigating your way through the Hollywood casting couch with your head held up and your career intact. For Rogers, poker is fun, but it’s child’s play compared to some of the things she has had to do on-screen.

It’s one of the reasons WPT founder and CEO Steve Lipscomb invited her to become a member of their Board of Directors. She can play Hollywood and a poker tournament the same week. What else do you need? Not that she considers one career any easier than the other. For Mimi Rogers, competing in a poker tournament isn’t any less impossible than surviving as an actress in Hollywood. She’s done both and she’s still trying to figure out which is harder.

“I think having a successful career in Hollywood is a combination of talent, timing, luck, and persistence, and winning a tournament is a combination of talent, timing, luck, and persistence,” she says. “So yeah, I guess it’s the same thing.”