Poker Pros – The World’s Top Players

Gone are the days when poker was a card game played with friends on a Friday night over a couple of drinks.  This popular game has evolved in a major sport with rich financial gains to be won by its top players.

Different players have different strengths, and the most skilled might not necessarily have the most cash wins.  With skills based games becoming more popular in casinos, we’ve created a list of some of who we think are the best all round poker players today, in no particular order.

1.           Daniel Negreanu

Daniel Negreanu is a Canadian born player and has a list of accolades in professional poker as long as your arm.  In 2014, he was recognized by the Global Poker Index as being the best player of the decade due to his consistently excellent performances in the live arena.   He has won 6 World Series of Poker gold bracelets, as well as 2 World Poker Tour Championships.  He has had 6 separate cash winnings of $1 million or more – the biggest of which being $8.28 million which he earned by winning the $1 million buy-in Big One for One Drop at the WSOP.  He is the only player in the world to have ever won WSOP bracelets in Australia, Europe and Las Vegas and is also the only player i to have won the WSOP Player of the Year twice – once in 2004 and then again in 2013.He also plays online and sites like River Belle casino and other establishments have been known to welcome him to their virtual tables.

2. Antonio Esfandiari

Formerly a professional magician, Antonio Esfandiari is nicknamed “the Magician” on the            professional poker circuit due to his elaborate magic tricks with the chips.  Antonio has been placed first at 2 World Poker Tour events, and has 3 World Poker Series Bracelets to his      name.  His biggest win to date was when he beat Sam Trickett at the WSOP The Big One for One Drop in 2012, with a cash prize of over $18 million.  This gave him the title of the highest cash winner of all time for poker winnings, although he would be usurped in that category by Daniel Negreanu in 2014.

3. Sam Trickett

Sam Trickett hails from Nottinghamshire in England, and is currently number 5 in the list top     cash winners in the sport of poker.  After a knee injury ended his professional football career, Sam began playing poker, and it has turned out to be a very lucrative switch in sports             for him.  In 2011, he was named the Best European Poker Player of the Year, and Britain’s Best Cash Player also in 2011.  2011 was clearly a good year for Sam, with 2 major cash wins just within days of each other.  $1.5 million by winning the Aussie Millions A$100,000 top event, and just a few days later, scooping up the second prize at A$250,000 event, taking home a further $1.4million.  His biggest moment to date comes in 2012 however, when he was one of only 48 players spend $1 million on the buy in and compete for the biggest first prize in poker history – the WSOP The Big One for One Drop. He played until the end and eventually surrendered to Antonio Esfandiari to be placed second, but taking home winnings of just over $10 million for that prize.

4. Phil Hellmuth

Hellmuth was born in Wisconsin United States, and has a mind blowing 16 WSOP bracelets to his name.  In 1989 at just 24 years of age Phil Hellmuth won the main event at the WSOP, making him the youngest player in the history of the event to do so.  He was inducted in the          Poker Hall of Fame in 2007, and went on to win the main event in the World Series of Poker Europe in 2012.  His accumulated tournament winnings currently stands on over $21 million, and he holds the number 7 spot in the list of all time cash winners.

Android Operating System

Research shows that Android is the most popular mobile operating system around these days, even overtaking the popularity of iOS.

Android made its software open source, meaning the software for the original code is made freely available for redistribution and modification.  This has allowed developers worldwide to share their expertise with Android’s operating systems, making it among the most innovative software available.   It stands to reason therefore that gaming companies have ensured that their very best offerings are available for Android.

There are a myriad of categories and games available for Android on the Google Play Store, and these are continually added to as mobile gaming just keeps growing at a rapid pace.  Here are just a few top examples in no particular order:

1. Crashlands

This game was released in 2016.  The game revolves around an intergalactic trucker who is forced to crash land on an alien planet.  Players are then required to build themselves a base, collect and sometimes craft the different tools required, and save the world from an evil plot.  One of the best aspects of this game however is that there aren’t any in-app purchases.

2. Hearthstone Heroes of Warcraft

Released at the end of 2014, this game remains one of Android’s most popular.  It is similar to Pokemon or Magic in that you collect cards at The Gathering, build decks with those cards, and then face-off with your opponents using those decks.  This game has constant new expansions which help keep it new and engaging.

3. Diggy’s Adventure

This is a game full of puzzles and tasks you need to complete in order to play the game.  Add to this it’s fun script and interesting characters, and you can see why this game has made its way onto this list.

The aim of the game is to find your way out of a large maze or digging your way out of a mine, and this is achieved by solving over 1000 puzzles and riddles, and interacting with other characters along the way.

4. Dead Trigger 2

If blasting zombies to smithereens is your cup of tea, then Dead Trigger 2 is a good option for you.  The game has been around for a while, but due to constant updates and upgrades, it has remained popular enough to attract a large number of players, meaning there are always plenty of options of opponents to challenge, in a variety of different modes.

The game has a main story mode, as well as missions on the side, allowing players to earn extra component parts, plus earning cash in order to upgrade weapons.

5. Minecraft Pocket Edition

Minecraft is well known all around the world, and attracts players of all age groups.  This game puts you in a world where you mine resources and beat up villains.  There are several different modes – for example a survival mode which requires you to mine your own resources as well as food, and also a creative mode, which gives you unlimited access to everything in the game.  This game is constantly being upgraded and updated, much like the games you’d find at Canadian mobile casinos, and this keeps it hugely popular among loyal fans.

6. Pokemon Go

Pokemon Go erupted onto the gaming scene last year.  Although not the first augmented reality game to have ever been released, it was the first that made it into mainstream gaming and its huge runaway success makes it one of the best Android games ever.

In the game, you walk around in the real world, catching Pokemon, battling for Gyms and restocking supplies at Pokestops.  The game gets updates all the time, despite being advanced for its time when it was first released, and continues to captivate audiences the world around.

Video Games and How They Began

When video games were first introduced into society, they were largely considered, for want of a better description, as science nerd projects.  The very first historical example of a video game was launched by Dr Edward Uhler Condon, a nuclear physicist and associate research director, in 1940 at the New York World Fair.  He designed an electromechanical machine which played the game of Nim, an ancient strategy and numbers game.

During the 6 months the machine was displayed, the game was played by an estimated 50,000 people.  The computer was reported to have won more than 90% of the games.

Over 10 years later, an American electrical engineer, mathematician and cryptographer, Claude Elwood Shannon wrote the first guidelines for a chess playing computer program.

Fast forward a further 10 years, and the US Defence Department came up with a war game known as STAGE.

The Father of Video Games

However, the concept of video games being played on television sets, was devised by a man called Ralph Baer.

Ralph Baer was a German born engineer, game developer and inventor, whose family fled Germany in the second world war, and settled in America.  He is known as “the Father of Video Games” – based on his myriad of contributions to the industry during the second half of the twentieth century.

Ralph Baer was asked by his bosses to build the world’s best television, and during that project, came up with the idea to create games that could be played on any television set.  His bosses rejected the idea at the time, but he did not give up, and in 1967, he and his colleagues finalized the development of the very first multiprogram, multiplayer video game system ever introduced.

His bosses were hoping to licence the technology aimed at a commercial environment, so Baer felt that the games had to be enjoyable or investors interest would not be piqued.  Baer was quoted as saying, “The minute we played ping-pong, we knew we had a product.  Before then we weren’t too sure”

They launched the “Brown Box” which was a vacuum tube type circuit which could be connected to any TV and allowed two players to chase cubes around the screen that were controlled by the Brown Box controllers.  They were licenced to a company called Magnavox in 1972, but at the time of their release, only 300,000 consoles were sold, before they were discontinued.

The lack of popularity of the consoles was largely attributed to the fact that the in-store marketing drives were mismanaged but also because up until this time, gaming from the home, was a completely alien concept to most American citizens.

Despite the initial setbacks however, Ralph Baer’s achievements are considered as the first in what is a multi-billion-dollar industry today, the industry of gaming.

The Next Phase

In the 1970s, the companies, Taito and Sega brought the games, Periscope and Crown Special Soccer into mainstream public.  The competitive nature of the games among players able to record what their high scores were, sparked the interest of gamers playing across the globe.

In 1972, the company Atari, pioneered by Nolan Bushnell, known in the industry as the godfather of gaming, moved things forward even further.  They developed their games in house, but they also started a whole new aspect to the industry around the arcade, selling the first genuine electronic video game, Pong.  It was then that arcade machines began to pop up in shopping malls and bowling alleys.

This created a surge of interest across the world and in the next 12 years, 15 companies or more started to develop video games.

From Then Until Now

Since the mid 1980’s the gaming industry has continued to boom.  Multiplayer games were introduced, the first of which was Empire, which allowed 8 players to compete against each other in this turn based strategic game.

From then on, the rest is history.  Home computers became commonplace and players were able to play all the online craps Canada has to offer and just about every other game you can think of too, on their PC’s, in the comfort of their own homes.  With the advent of the internet, the market was opened up to an almost endless audience, and gaming continued to grow and flourish.

These days there are a myriad of different options for gaming enthusiasts.  There are games to suit every taste, there are a variety of devices on which to play which allow players to play in any location or time, and there are an army of technological experts in the background working away to keep expanding the industry.  From its humble beginnings, to the massive industry gaming is today, it’s exciting to think where it will go next.