Profiles of the Top Poker Players in 2024

Poker is a fun game and it attracts many who wish to pursue tournament playing as a full-time career. But it has attracted even more who have earned livings – some modest, and a few, extraordinary – by playing it.

The systematic, ‘quant’, discipline-oriented approach (owing in part to his degree in sports and former career in finance) has won him many accolades over the years. Shane Koon is a live high-stakes best player.

Phil Ivey

Phil Ivey is a ruthless poker player. He takes his game to Sin City. He started playing poker when he was a teenager in New Jersey – with fake IDs – but when he turned 21 he could up his game.

Ivey is one of the greatest tournament players ever, and his unblinking glare across the table has blazed him into history’s small pantheon of tournament players. Of the three all-time WSOP bracelet winners, after Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan (who have 10, and 11, respectively), Ivey’s 10 bracelet wins put him in this rarified class of poker pro.

Calculated risk-taking, Ivey argues, is the secret to good poker. He recommends that you size up your opponent’s betting patterns, styles of play and table talk, and look out for specific tells so that you can then select a strategy to deploy. He also stresses the importance of patience and consistency. Ivey has just released a series of online masterclasses offering his strategies – the course includes Poker maths, bankroll management, game theory and more.

Jennifer Tilly

She has been nominated for an Academy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, and won Saturn Awards, beasts of fantasy prizes, along with awards from Fantasporto and the GLAAD Awards, all for her acting in Bonds Girl, Liar Liar, and the Seed of Chucky. Her name is Jennifer Tilly.

Besides being a successful actress, Jennifer has been especially lucky in poker. She won a 2004 World Series of Poker gold bracelet, and she folds to pockets kings in the televised high stakes cash games.

Through her acting career and her career as a professional poker player, Jennifer has created a substantial amount of wealth, but she is also financially secure because of royalties from past work, most notably from the Child’s Play franchise in which she played Tiffany Valentine which, as you can imagine, gained her a huge fan base and royalties of more than $10 million. And, as Jennifer mentioned on Twitter, her dead husband is still ‘making bank’ for Jennifer through royalties for The Simpsons.

Phil Hellmuth

Phil Hellmuth is one of the most recognisable poker players in the world, dropping out of high school at 19 years old to become a professional poker player. He soon became known as a ‘tournament player’s tale’ as he built a lucrative income playing cash games around his tournament schedule, and then, at the tender age of 24, won his first WSOP Main Event title. Today, with five consecutive championship titles and more than $17 million won through tournament cashes, it’s fair to say that Phil has achieved a life most of us would consider a fairytale immersed in money, fame and notoriety.

Hellmuth, with his outbursts of bad temper and bombast at the felt, was in the past and still is today the best one of the table players that you’ll ever see. You either love him, or hate him, but regardless of your views Hellmuth is without doubt one of the best poker players of all time.

He has won 17 bracelets at WSOP, as well as being an author and an entrepreneur and philanthropist. Phil Gordon is an example of the power of positive thinking and self-belief that can change your life and the lives of others.

Victoria Livschitz

A housewife and tech and business leader from Phoenix and, more recently, a high-roller tournament player at one of poker’s premiere live rooms, PokerGO in Las Vegas, Victoria Livschitz ascended poker’s ladder from recreational tournament player to regular high roller tournament player – all in the space of less than six years. She did so, it must be noted, with little reference to old assumptions that those who excel at poker require deep pockets or younger shoulders if they wish to make a living at the game.

She has begun only recently – it’s been only 2021, in fact – yet her high roller tournament career has begun with a bang. In May, she won the Venetian High Roller for $60,000, and later the same month she placed fourth at another high roller at Aria for another $60,000, for a total of nearly $1.75 million in tournament cashes since going up against some of the toughest poker players out there. Her multi-table tournament study began at … Upswing Poker!