Brian Rast (born November 8, 1981) is a professional poker player from Las Vegas, Nevada who won the 2011 World Series of Poker $1,500 Pot Limit Hold'em event and the $50,000 Player's Championship.

Rast was born in Denver, Colorado but raised in Poway, California, where he graduated as valedictorian from Poway High School in 2000. He attended Stanford University before dropping out in order to pursue a career as a full time poker professional. He began playing poker in 2003 after being inspired by John Dahl's 1998 film Rounders.

Online, Rast is known as tsarrast on both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars. Some of his online tournament results include finishing 3rd in PokerStars Sunday Million for $73,490 and 3rd in Full Tilt Poker's FTOPS III Main Event for $114,203.50.

Rast is one of the pros from the online poker training site Poker VT and he is also a Victory Poker Pro Team member.

Rast has two World Series of Poker bracelets, both of them he won at the 2011 World Series of Poker. His first was in the $1,500 Pot-Limit Hold'em event where he earned $227,232 after he defeated poker professional Allen Kessler heads-up,

Philip "Phil" C. Laak (born September 8, 1972) is a professional poker player and a poker commentator, now residing in Los Angeles, California. Laak holds a World Poker Tour (WPT) title, a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet and has appeared on numerous nationally-aired television shows.

Laak was born in Dublin, Ireland, raised on the East Coast of the United States, and now lives in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. He graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1987^{[citation needed]} with a degree in mechanical engineering and worked as an engineer, a repo man, a dishwasher on Cape Cod, a stock day trader, a gardener and a real estate investor, prior to getting into open poker games in California. He is a former roommate of fellow professional poker player and close friend Antonio Esfandiari. Prior to his move west, Laak lived for several years in New York City where he honed his skills as a world-class backgammon player before he turned his focus to poker.

Laak learned to play poker as a child. His first major tournament victory was at the World Poker Tour (WPT) Celebrity Invitational in February 2004. He has made two other WPT final tables since: sixth place in both the season two Battle of Champions and the 2005 Five Diamond World Poker Classic.

Sam Trickett (born on 2 July 1986 in East Retford, United Kingdom) is a professional poker player. He started playing poker in 2005 after suffering a knee injury that ended his career as a professional soccer player with Hartlepool. Sam soon became a regular in poker events in Sheffield. He started playing also online in $10 Sit ‘n’ Go’s. In 2008, Trickett played at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Vegas and finished fourth in the $5,000 No Limit event for $245,000.

He won Grosvenor UK Poker Tour (GUKPT) Luton Main Event in 2008 taking $210,000 in prize money.

He is considered to be one of the best UK high stakes cash games players.^[who?]

Since March, 2010, Trickett is sponsored by Titan Poker.

Trickett has cashed 6 times in the 41st World Series of Poker: $ 141,168 for 7th place in Event #52 $25,000 No Limit Hold'em - Six Handed, $25,838 for 17th place in Event #45 $1,500 No Limit Hold'em, $5,620 for 22nd place in Event #39 $ 1,500 No Limit Hold'em - Shootout, $505,725 for 2nd place in Event #17 $5,000 No Limit Hold'em, $11,694 for 40th place in Event #11 $1,500 No Limit Hold'em,$3,792 for 100th place in Event #8 $1,500 No Limit Hold'em.

Phil Hellmuth (born July 16, 1964) is an American professional poker player. He is best known for holding a record 11 World Series of Poker bracelets, for winning the Main Event of the 1989 World Series of Poker (WSOP) and for his temperamental, "poker brat" personality. He is also a member of the WSOP's Poker Hall of Fame.

Phillip Jerome Hellmuth, Jr. was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison for three years before dropping out to play poker full time. He now lives in Palo Alto, California with his wife Katherine Sanborn (a psychiatrist at Stanford University) and their two sons Philip III and Nicholas.

As of 2011, his total live tournament winnings exceed $13,000,000. He is ranked fourth on the All Time Money List, behind Erik Seidel, Daniel Negreanu, and Phil Ivey. As a poker player, Hellmuth is known for taking his seat in tournaments hours after they begin.

In 1989, the 24-year-old Hellmuth became the youngest player to win the Main Event of the WSOP by defeating the two-time defending champion Johnny Chan in heads up play; his record has since been broken twice, when Peter Eastgate won in 2008 and Joe Cada won in 2009. Hellmuth holds the records for most WSOP cashes (85) and most WSOP final tables (45), overtaking T. J. Cloutier.

Daniel Cates (born November 14, 1989) as known as jungleman12 or w00ki3z is a professional poker player from the USA, considered to be one of the best heads-up No Limit Texas Hold 'em players in the world. His online cash game earnings at Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars are almost $7m. In 2010, he won over $5 million making him the biggest winner for the year.

Cates was born and raised in Bowie, Maryland and began playing poker aged 17. He has said that at first he was a big loser and even took a job at McDonald's in order to refuel his bankroll. He describes his childhood as “weird, a bit aloof and mostly spent alone”. He spent much of his time playing Command and Conquer and had an uncontrollable obsession with video games. He studied Economics at the University of Maryland before dropping out of college to make poker a full-time career.

Cates began playing online poker at the $0.25/$0.50 level as well as losing money in his local casino game before employing "reverse game selection" in order to take on and beat the best players at his stakes in heads-up matches before moving up the limits. This saw him go from $0.25/$0.50 to $25/$50 in the space of just two years. In 2009 Cates lost most of his bankroll to Viktor Blom at Full Tilt Poker before rebuilding. In 2010 he began to play higher and higher stakes, racking up victories against many noted pros including heads-up specialist Tom Dwan. In August 2010 Cates agreed to take the Durrrr Challenge, playing Dwan at four tables of $200/$400 NL for 50,000 hands. If Cates should beat Dwan by $1 or more after 50,000 hands then he will win $1.5m from Dwan. As of April, 2011, the two have played 19,335 hands and Cates is up over a million dollars.