- Dan Harrington
Dan Harrington (born December 6, 1945 in Cambridge, Massachusetts) is a professional poker player. Harrington is a former champion backgammon player, U.S. chess master (he won the 1971 Massachusetts State Chess Championship), and bankruptcy lawyer. During his time at Suffolk University, he was part of an MIT team that gained an advantage over casinos at roulette. Shortly after the MIT team disbanded he was part of different one which specialized in blackjack.
- David Sklansky
David Sklansky (born 1947, in Teaneck, New Jersey) is a professional poker player and author. Sklansky is generally considered a top authority on gambling. He has written many books on poker, blackjack, and general gambling. His book, the "Theory of Poker", is considered to be a quintessential poker primer. Sklansky has won three World Series of Poker bracelets, two in 1982 ($800 Mixed Doubles, and $1000 Draw Hi) and one in 1983 ($1000 Limit Omaha Hi).
- Doyle Brunson
Doyle Brunson (born August 10, 1933 in Longworth, Fisher County, Texas) is an American poker player who has played professionally for over 50 years. He is a two-time world champion of poker and the author of several poker books. The first player to earn $1 million in poker tournaments, Brunson has won ten World Series of Poker bracelets throughout his career, tied with Johnny Chan for second all-time, one behind Phil Hellmuth's 11.
- Chris Moneymaker
Christopher Bryan Moneymaker (born November 21, 1975 in Atlanta, Georgia) is an American poker player who won the main event at the 2003 World Series of Poker (WSOP). His victory is generally credited for being one of the main catalysts for the poker boom in the years following his win. Moneymaker attended Farragut High School in Farragut, Tennessee and later earned a master's degree in accounting from the University of Tennessee.
- Barry Greenstein
Barry Greenstein (born December 30, 1954 in Chicago, Illinois) is a professional poker player. He was exposed to poker at a young age by his father, Jack, who had played poker in the Army. After graduating from Bogan High School, he earned a bachelor degree in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He also studied for a PhD in mathematics, but left before completing his dissertation.
- Ed Miller
Edward Raymond Miller is a professional poker player and an author of books about poker. He wrote "Small Stakes Hold 'em: Winning Big With Expert Play" with David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth in 2004. In 2005, he completed "Getting Started in Hold 'em", a beginner's book. In 2006, he co-wrote "No Limit Hold 'Em: Theory and Practice" with David Sklansky.
- Ron Rose
Ron Rose (born September 4) is an American poker player from Las Vegas, Nevada. Prior to getting involved in the poker tournament circuit, Rose was a mathematician and project engineer in the Air Force. Later he became an entrepreneur who started and sold two computer companies and an internet company. He also held a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and owned his own commodities firm.
- John Scarne
Orlando Carmelo Scarnecchia (March 4, 1903 - July 7, 1985) was born in Steubenville, Ohio and at some point anglicized his name to John Scarne (International Phonetic AlphabetHe moved to Fairview, New Jersey as a child. Leaving school after the eighth grade, he learned as a teenager from his father how to perform card tricks like Three-card Monte and to gamble using cards and dice.
- Jeff Shulman
Jeff "Happy" Shulman (born February 18 1975 in Seattle, Washington) is the editor of Card Player Magazine, and an American poker player, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is the son of Barry Shulman. Shulman finished 7th in the 2000 World Series of Poker (WSOP) $10,000 no limit Texas hold'em main event, winning $146,700 after losing two big pots to eventual winner Chris "Jesus" Ferguson. He also finished in the money of the same event at the 2003 (31st place).
- Henry Tamburin
Henry Tamburin is a gambling author with a background in mathematics and a doctorate in chemistry. He is best known for his book "Blackjack: Take the Money and Run" which explains basic blackjack strategy, managing a bankroll, side bets and advanced tactics like card counting. Tamburin is also well known for his prowess as a blackjack player and frequently teaches courses in blackjack across the United States.
- Amarillo Slim
Amarillo Slim (born Thomas Austin Preston, Jr. December 31, 1928 in Johnson, Arkansas) is a professional gambler, famous for his poker skills and proposition bets. He won the main event at the World Series of Poker in 1972.
- Jesse May
"The Voice of Poker" Jesse May is an American poker commentator and player. Jesse May was raised in Madison, New Jersey, where he first became hooked on poker playing with friends. In 1988 he started the University of Chicago, but he found that classes were clashing with his poker games, and so dropped out. For six years Jesse travelled the world playing poker. May found fame presenting the Late Night Poker television series.
- Lee Jones
Lee Jones is the author of "Winning Low-Limit Hold 'em" and a contributor of poker articles to Card Player Magazine. Jones earned his B.S. in Computer Science from Duke University in North Carolina in 1978, and his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland in 1983. From October 2003 to April 2007, Jones worked as the cardroom manager of the PokerStars online poker cardroom.
- Stanford Wong
Stanford Wong (born 1943) is a pseudonym for John Ferguson, a former professional gambler and gambling author. He is best known for his book "Professional Blackjack", which was first published in 1975 and is still in print. Wong's computer program "Blackjack Analyzer", initially created for personal use, was one of the first commercially available blackjack odds analyzing software.
- Thomas Keller
Thomas "Thunder" Keller (born October 14 1980 in Ann Arbor, Michigan) is an American professional poker player, residing in Scottsdale, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada. He is the brother of Shawn "Lightning" Keller. Keller graduated from Stanford University with a degree in economics. It was at Stanford where he began playing poker, having been influenced by the movie Rounders.
- Bob Ciaffone
Bob "The Coach" Ciaffone (born December 10 1940 in Brooklyn, New York) is the author of "Robert's Rules of Poker", and an American poker player, based in Saginaw, Michigan. Ciaffone finished third in the 1987 World Series of Poker (WSOP) $10,000 no limit Texas hold 'em main event, winning $125,000. In that same year, he finished fourth in the WSOP $2,500 pot limit Omaha hold 'em event and fifth in the WSOP $1,000 no limit Texas hold 'em event.
- Matthew Hilger
Matthew Hilger is an American professional poker player and author from Atlanta, Georgia. He also operates his own poker-related website.
- Arnold Snyder
Arnold Snyder is a professional gambler and gambling author. He was elected by professional blackjack players as one of the seven original inductees into the Blackjack Hall of Fame for his record as a blackjack player and his innovations in professional gambling techniques. He was the first blackjack authority to publish the importance of deck penetration (depth of the deal) in card counting, in his 1980 book "The Blackjack Formula".
- Michael Konik
Michael Konik is an American author, television personality, jazz singer, improvisational comedian, blackjack player and poker player. Konik has a degree in Drama from New York University. Konik currently resides in Hollywood, California.
- Vince Burgio
Vince Burgio is an American professional poker player based in West Hills, California. Burgio is a graduate of the University of Missouri. He moved to California in 1976 to set up a construction business and began playing poker tournaments regularly in 1987. Burgio came to note as the winner of the Best All-Around Player Award at the 1992 Four Queens Poker Classic. He first finised in the money of a World Series of Poker (WSOP) event in 1992 in the Ace to Five Draw event.
- Ben Mezrich
Ben Mezrich is an American author from Boston, Massachusetts, who started out writing fiction but now has made his foray into non-fiction. He graduated magna-cum-laude from Harvard in 1991. He has since published eight books which have together sold over a million copies in nine different languages. Some of his books have been written under the pseudonym Holden Scott. Mezrich is best known for his first non-fiction work, …
- Frank Scoblete
Frank Scoblete (born 1947) is an American author who has written works on casino gambling such as "Beat the Craps out of the Casinos", "Golden Touch Blackjack Revolution," and "Beat the One-Armed Bandits", with the majority of his books being about the games of craps and blackjack. He has also written under the name King Scobe. He is a frequent columnist in casino gaming magazines and newsletters, …
- Michael Shackleford
Michael "The Wizard of Odds" Shackleford (born in 1965 in Pasadena, California) is one of the world's foremost experts on the math behind casino games, and is best known for his website of gambling analyses, The Wizard of Odds. Before becoming known as the Wizard of Odds, Shackleford worked as a claims adjuster and later as an actuary for the Social Security Administration from 1992 until 2000.
- James Grosjean
James Grosjean is a gambling expert and author best known for his 2000 book "Beyond Counting: Exploiting Casino Games from Blackjack to Video Poker". He became a professional player while studying as a graduate student at the University of Chicago's Department of Economics. Grosjean's book provides a mathematical treatment of various forms of legal "advantage play" in casino games.
- Steve Badger
Steve Badger (born in Kaukauna, Wisconsin) is the alias of Steve Belling, a professional poker player and website entrepreneur. Badger began playing casino poker in Santa Cruz, California in the 1980s. Following the introduction of flop games to California, Badger played ring games across Northern California, but after relocating to Los Angeles he began to focus primarily on the budding poker tournament scene there.
- Michael Wiesenberg
Michael Wiesenberg made his living playing poker for 10 years before turning to a career as technical writer in the computer field. His books reflect those two careers: "Free Money: How to Win in the Cardrooms of California" (published by Gambling Times Press and distributed by Lyle Stuart, 1984), and "Puzzled Programmers" (Microsoft Press, 1987), a collection of short stories, each of which introduces a mathematical puzzle best solved by computer, …
- Shirley Rosario
Shirley "Siren" Rosario is a professional poker player and website owner. Born in San Pedro, California, she grew up in Torrance and currently resides in Downey. While working as a cocktail waitress at the Commerce Casino she got to know some of the best poker players in the world, and developed a passion for playing poker. Steve Badger is one of the professional poker players that she became friends with during that time and is her "poker mentor".
- Michael Craig
Michael Craig is an American lawyer and author best known for his 2005 book, "The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King" (ISBN 0-446-57769-3). Craig has written about poker since 2005 for Card Player and Bluff magazines, and wrote "Michael Craig's Journal" online, about his adventures in poker and as a working author. He now writes for the "Full Tilt Poker Blog by Michael Craig".
- Mason Malmuth
Mason Malmuth is an American poker player, and author of books on both poker and gambling. He is the owner of Two Plus Two Publishing, which publishes books and runs an online gambling discussion forum. The books are authored by himself, David Sklansky, and other writers including Dan Harrington, Bill Robertie, Ray Zee, Ed Miller, Nick Grudzien, and Alan Schoonmaker
- Anthony Curtis
Anthony Curtis (born Kurt Flowers in 1958) is a well-known blackjack player, gambling expert, and author. He is also the publisher of the "Las Vegas Advisor", a popular newsletter first published in 1983, about getting good deals in Las Vegas. Curtis became interested in gambling at the age of 16 when he received a book about blackjack as a gift. He made his first trip to Vegas shortly after turning 21 in 1979.
- Max Rubin
Max Rubin is a gambling expert and author best known for his book "Comp City: A Guide to Free Gambling Vacations". The book teaches players how to maximize casino perks with little actual wagering. Rubin is also a gambling analyst for television. He served as commentator for the first two seasons of the GSN "World Series of Blackjack" along with Matt Vasgersian and co-hosts the "Ultimate Blackjack Tour" with Nick GAS' Mati Moralejo on CBS.
- Steve Zolotow
Steve Zolotow is an American professional poker player from Las Vegas, Nevada. He was one of the regulars at the famed Mayfair Club. Zolotow has been on the poker circuit since 1988, when he finished in 5th place in that year's World Series of Poker $2500 Pot Limit Omaha tournament. In the years to come, he would earn bracelets for winning the 1995 Chinese Poker tournament (which also featured Doyle Brunson and Howard Lederer), …
- John Grochowski
John Grochowski is a gambling columnist and author. His weekly newspaper column began at the "Chicago Sun-Times" and is now syndicated nationally. He published his first gambling book in 1996 entitled "Gaming: Cruising the Casino with a Syndicated Gambling Columnist". He then began a series of books all aimed at answering questions about a specific topic or game.
- Barry Meadow
Barry Meadow is a professional gambler, blackjack player and author with more than 30 years experience in the gambling community. He is best known for his books on California harness racing. He has authored multiple books on the subject including "Success at the Harness Races", "Money Secrets at the Race Track" and "Professional Harness Betting".
- Don Schlesinger
Don Schlesinger is a gaming mathematician, author, lecturer and player who specializes in the casino game of blackjack. His work in the field has spanned almost three decades. He is the author of the book "Blackjack Attack - Playing the Pros' Way", currently in its third edition, which is considered one of the most sophisticated theoretical and practical studies of the game to date.
- Gary Carson
Gary Carson (1949 -) is the author of "The Complete Book of Hold 'Em Poker", "The Complete Book of Casino Poker", and multiple articles and essays focusing on poker, gambling, and probability. He is a frequent contributor to the newsgroup rec.gambling.poker. Several of Gary Carson's unorthodox strategies remain topics of fierce debate years after first being published. Born in Austin, Texas, Gary holds an MS in Quantitative Business Methods from LSU, …
- Avery Cardoza
Avery Cardoza (b. 1957) is an author and publisher. He owns Cardoza Publishing, which claims to be the largest publisher of gaming, gambling and poker books in the world. Cardoza Publishing has over 200 titles, about twenty of them written by Mr. Cardoza himself. He also launched Cardozagames recently, which is a site dedicated to teach people to play poker before they plunge into the online poker world. Avery Cardoza was born in Brooklyn, New York.
- Kevin Blackwood
Kevin Blackwood is a professional blackjack player, card counter and gambling author. He is best know for his novel, "The Counter", and his instructional book, "Play Blackjack Like the Pros". Blackwood has played in the World Series of Blackjack and the Ultimate Blackjack Tour, a televised 10 week blackjack tournament airing on CBS.
- David Matthews
David Matthews is an American professional blackjack player and writer. He has competed in the World Series of Blackjack and is the winner of the first season of the CBS elimination blackjack tournament series Ultimate Blackjack Tour. He writes articles on blackjack and tournament strategy for "All In" magazine and his articles have been published at Get21 in the ‘Learn from the Pros’ section.
- Lawrence Revere
Lawrence Revere (born Griffith K. Owens) was an author, casino pit boss, and professional blackjack player best known for his book "Playing Blackjack as a Business". Revere played under multiple aliases, including Leonard "Specs" Parsons and Paul Mann. Revere had a degree in Mathematics from the University of Nebraska. Revere developed and promoted the following card counting strategies, …