Poker Players: Featured Players

"I think westmenloAA has more money than Tiger Woods now." That's what one poster said in a PocketFives.com thread that discussed westmenloAA's accomplishments. While it may not be true that he's richer than the world's best golfer, the Californian has certainly caused a stir with his online exploits. Not be confused with Richie Menlo - they both come from Menlo Park in California - westmenloAA won the PokerStars Sunday Million on the last weekend in January 2007 to claim a first prize of $254,517.60. But if that win put him on the map closer observers had already noted his extraordinary penchant for winning. He has cleaned up across several sites, adding a further $100k to his bankroll on PokerStars alone in 4 months at the start of '07. Aside from his Sunday Million win, westmenloAA has bagged three first prizes of more than $20,000, two of them for winning $100 buy-ins tourneys. WestmenloAA - whose real name is Isaac Baron - also plays online under the nicknames "mr.menlo", "BossMenlo" and "mjorgenson13". His live tournament winnings currently total $1,073,480 which includes 3 WPT Cashes (the biggest at the North American Championships in October '06 for $55,756). But in April '08 he travelled to Italy for the EPT San Remo and came in 11th for $45,421 to further expand his fearsome reputation. Isaac then travelled to Monte Carlo for the EPT Grand Final, where he held the chip lead at one point before bombing out in 4th for an impressive €589,000 payday. Back in cyberspace 'The Guru' Baron took down Event #1 of the FTOPS VIII in May 2008. In a $200 buy-in NLH 6-max event, he fought off over 4,000 competitors to scoop a first prize of over $158,000. When you take into account that he was up over $780,000 on PokerStars and $350,000 on Full Tilt before the tournament began, its clear that Baron is one of the best online and live players in the world.

The iconic Annette_15 is possibly our favourite global poker player. She represents all that we love about the modern poker game. Fearless, aggressive, strategic and super-smart this self-taught teenager from a small town in Norway has risen, in the space of just 3 years, to the heights of fame and achievement that even the very best of the other female players in the world can not compete with. She started playing online at age 15 and never made a serious deposit. Parlaying freeroll-earned dollars up she was soon building her bankroll via MTT success and cementing her reputation. By 2006 she had risen to the top of the MTT rakings with multiple major outright victories to her name. Still too young to compete in the WSOP in Vegas but old enough to compete in Europe, when the WSOPE hit London in late 2007 she was obviously going to take her shot. A week later, incredibly, she emerged as the Champion defeating one of the highest quality fields ever assembled. £1m richer she was crowned the youngest ever WSOP champion (a day before her 19th bday) and the first female Main Event winner. She has since finished second in the Dublin EPT (good for another $430K) and further domination beckons. Over the last 3 years, she has cashed for well over $1m in online tournaments (with a $600K+ profit) including an outright victory on Full Tilt for $117K. Quite simply, Annette Obrestad is the ultimate young European poker phenom and as champions of the modern game, we embrace and salute her every success.

A player no-one chancing their arm on the online baize can afford to ignore is Danny Ryan aka " THE__D__RY". He plays a lot so you could well find yourself tangling with the American youngster in tournaments such as the PokerStars Sunday Million (in which he has finished as high as 17th before), the Nightly Hundred Grand (he has placed 6th and 8th this year) and the $100 rebuys (which he has won and often final tables ). So far on PokerStars this year the 24-year-old has taken down tournament winnings of around $376k, of which $168k is profit, giving him an ROI of over 80%. Over on Full Tilt (FTP) there are a further $143k of tournament winnings for 2007, $76k of which are profits. On 22 July 2007 Ryan came 2nd in Full Tilt’s 3,446-runner, $216 buy-in $500k Guaranteed tournament for a nice pay-day of $75,000. He is also a formidable Sit ‘n’ Go player and out of 1,500 or so SnGs he’s played (mainly with buy-ins of $500-$2,000) on PokerStars he is showing a profit of over $60k. He has even written a very good article for Bluff on the subject titled ‘The art of the single table sit-n-go (sng)’. Earlier this year he also started a thread on PocketFives offering his thoughts on how many times you should rebuy in the PokerStars $100 rebuy tourney. This is well worth a read too.