Turner has been astoundingly successful in his online play. To date he has won almost $2.9 million in online play. He has won the $1,000 buy-in $1k Monday on Full Tilt Poker for over $44,000, chopped the Pokerstars Sunday Million heads-up for $100,000, and won the nightly $163 on Full Tilt Poker an astonishing five times. In the live poker world, he has also been successful. He came in 18th place in the first World Series of Poker event he ever played, and hasn’t looked back. Other notable live finishes include 8th place in the Mixed Hold’em event at the 2007 WSOP, and 3rd place in event #7 during the World Poker Tour’s Borgata Classic in 2007. All told, his live winnings total over $380,000.

Turner is currently a “red” pro at Full Tilt Poker and can be found playing there on a regular basis. He is the co-author of Winning Poker Tournaments: One Hand at a Time,” along with fellow pros Jon “apestyles” Van Fleet and Eric “Rizen” Lynch. All three can be found as guest pros on PokerXFactor.com where they share strategy and poker knowledge through videos, hand histories and blogs.

Lynch has made a name for himself in the live poker world, as well. His impressive list of cashes includes 24th place in the 2006 Main Event at the World Series of Poker, and two WSOP final tables (2nd place in the 2006 Pot Limit Hold ‘em and 3rd place in the 2007 Pot Limit Omaha event). He cashed five times during the 2007 WSOP. His live winnings total almost $850,000.

Tournament play is not Lynch’s only strength. He has also set out to become a dominant cash game player and has made a number of training videos about his play at various stakes. Since October 2007, Lynch has been a columnist for Bluff magazine, after writing guest features for them in the past. Along with fellow poker pros Jon “apestyles” Van Fleet and Jon “Pearljammer” Turner, he is the co-author of “Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time, Volume I” and is currently at work on Volume II. He maintains a blog about his poker play at Rizenpoker.com, and is a featured pro for PokerXFactor.

November 2006 brought Van Fleet’s largest online win, second place in the Pokerstars Sunday Million for over $135,000. He dominated the final table, falling behind in heads up play when his pocket Kings were cracked by Queen Ten. Apestyles has won an incredible $1.6 million playing online. He has stated before that he strongly prefers online play to live play, and as a result has played very few live events.

In December 2007, it was announced that Jon Van Fleet was going to co-author a poker strategy book. The book, titled “Winning Poker Tournaments: One Hand at a Time,” is also authored by Jon “Pearljammer” Turner and Eric “Rizen” Lynch. Van Fleet is a guest instructor on PokerXFactor. Members can view the entire animated hand history of his Sunday Million second place finish, a live video of a $163 freezeout, and a multitude of content from various other PXF pros.

Image courtesy of Cardplayer.com

Not long after being introduced to poker, Haber encountered a group of young men who expressed to him a desire to turn the poker world upside down through their combination of youth and unconventional play. Haber liked what he heard, and agreed to back them in tournament poker. The young men referred to themselves as “The Crew” and included World Series bracelet winners Scott Fischman and Brett Jungblut, as well as the infamous Dutch Boyd. The investment proved to be a lucrative one and Haber has continued to back a number of other poker players with great success.

In March of 2005, Haber joined with his good friend Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy to launch the poker training site PokerXFactor. Widely considered to be the premier training site on the Internet, “PXF” compiles videos, hand histories, articles and blogs from not only Haber and Josephy, but also a steadily growing group of well-known Internet professionals, such as Eric “Rizen” Lynch and Jon “PearlJammer” Turner.

As of August 2008, Haber has over $1.1 million in online winnings. In March 2008, he won the WSOP championship event at Caesar’s Palace Atlantic City for just over $431,000. This long-awaited live win help cement his status as a threat in the live poker world as well, and boosted his total live winnings to almost $700,000.

Since then, Saul has become one of the most well-known players on the Internet, with scores of railbird fans and abundant imitators. He helped to pioneer the aggressive style of poker that is closely associated with online poker today. He is extremely adept at building a large stack and knows how to use his chips effectively when he gets them. On Pokerstars alone, Saul has made over 160 final tables and won 28 tournaments.

Kevin Saul’s poker prowess isn’t confined to simply the online world. He has made a name for himself in the arena of live tournament play as well, with live tournament winnings of nearly $1.8 million. He has cashed in numerous WPT and WSOP events and made an impressive run in the 2006 World Poker Finals. However, he is best known for his first-place performance in the Bellagio Cup III Championship Event in July 2007. Saul defeated Mike “The Mouth” Matusow heads up in the $10,000 buy-in event, winning $1,342,320 for his efforts and sealing his reputation as a force to be reckoned with at any poker table.

In August 2008 during Full Tilt Poker’s FTOPS IX, Saul made an impressive run, taking 4th place in Event 12, 10th place in event 16, and 2nd place in Event 17, giving him FTOPS IX winnings totaling well over $200,000. His performance in the FTOPS brought his online poker winnings to date to over $2.2 million. You can find Kevin Saul as a guest instructor on the poker training site PokerXFactor.

His relative anonymity lasted until the World Series of Poker in summer of 2005, when he was knocked out of a preliminary Hold ‘Em event and decided to play that afternoon’s Seven Card Stud event. He entered on a whim, never having played in a Stud tournament before and only having played Stud a handful of times in the past. With a few minutes of quick coaching from a couple of his bracelet-holding friends, Josephy won the event, pocketing over $192,000 in prize money and adding a WSOP bracelet to his already-impressive poker resume. The online poker world could finally put a face (and a name!) to JohnnyBax.

In April 2005, PocketFives.com deemed him the #1 ranked player in the online world. “Bax,” as he was often referred to in forum conversations, held onto this honor for the next seventeen months. He has remained ranked in the top 100 ever since, and as of August 2008 was ranked 11th.

Josephy is one of the founding partners of what many consider to be the premier poker training site, PokerXFactor. Along with fellow pro Eric “sheets” Haber and software wizard Scott “mindwise” Pendergrast, he launched the site in March of 2006. The site features training videos, hand histories, player blogs and articles created by not only Bax and sheets, but also numerous talented Internet pros.

This father of three typically saves his weekends to spend time with his family, meaning he often misses out on the weekend majors and some of the most massive paydays online. Still, his largest online cash to date is just over $60,000 for a win in Pokerstars’ shark-infested $200 rebuy. Live poker has afforded Josephy a shot at that big payday, and he has several six-figure cashes, including a high-profile final table at the Aruba Poker Classic, when he got 2nd for nearly $450,000. As of July 2008, his online winnings total almost $1.9 million and his live winnings are over $1.8 million.

PTP: Could you give our readers a quick background on how you got involved with online poker and what your move up the buy in ladder was like?

Started off getting killed in live games in high school (had no clue what I was doing) , because I’m hyper competitive I wanted to get better… eventually went to $50 deposits onto stars in college… did really bad for a while, eventually did well grinding up the 1-table turbos (and def playing over my BR at times)… had a 10k score in the stars aboutt 2 yrs ago and haven’t really looked back since. (some downswings but nothing too drastic). started playing full time a year and a half ago, now playing strictly MTTs (live and online)

PTP: What are the can’t-miss tournaments weekly for you at the moment?

monday: ftp 1k
tues: super tues
wed: ftp 100r/stars 320
thurs: day off
fri: day off
sat: stars and ftp 300’s/ftp 100r
sun: all majors including 5k freezeout (PS/FT/UB)

daily: stars 100r’s, ft 163s, stars hundred grand

PTP: Multi-accounting has obviously been a big topic in the tournament community lately. Do you think the major rooms are doing enough to prevent the practice and to punish players who are caught breaking the rules?

It’s sad to say I don’t really concern myself with it. I stay honest and play by the rules and play hard and just do what I can to take chips. I think in general the sites do an excellent job of busting multi-accounters, especially those who hit a big score and/or repeat offenders. the problem is when someone is smart, motivated, and rich, it became very difficult to prevent them from doing what they want in a community so large and (overall) unregulated. I think multi-accounting will be existent (if not prevalent) until the govt regulates online poker to the point where cheaters can be prosecuted by law.

PTP: Is there a particular player or group of players whose style has had a lot of influence on your game?

Learned a decent amt in my initial stages from watching/listening to mrsmokey1, but mostly it’s been a lot of trial and error, and random strategy conversations with countless different people that have added up over time. I can’t pinpoint any one person or book (didn’t ready any) or website that really improved my game by leaps and bounds. I was lucky though in that I grew up in a town that ended up having a nice group of poker players/minds that I was/am friends with, and at times along the way we’d definitely feed off each other.

PTP: Are you doing any coaching or training videos? What are your thoughts on the massive proliferation of online coaching services over the last year or so?

just started as a guest pro for pxf (www.pokerxfactor.com), made one video (100r win already up), with a video of my 320 freezeout win on the way (eventually). I think in general training sites are very helpful, tremendously more helpful than any of the literature that is out there. nothing compares to being able to watch a video of the top players in the world as they break down their strategy play by play. some people complain that these sites are making the competition so much harder than its ever been, but I think its just the game and the community as a whole evolving in general.

PTP: How tough is it for you to maintain a balance between your poker and non-poker lives?

its pretty simple I make a schedule (typically I play sat-wed, with mixed in days off) and I treat it like a job (try not to take random days off w/o good reason, etc). if youre going to be one of the best in the world you HAVE to have an extremely good poker work ethic. I am currently living at school @ indiana university but not taking classes… so on the weekends I have my fun. I’ve also done a great amount of travelling through poker that’s felt a lot more like vacation time than work. but I’m going back to class in the fall to get my degree, so I’m sure its going to be a lot harder to balance things out then.

PTP: Do you see the popularity of online poker as currently peaking, or do you think there’s still significant room for growth?

I feel like it should be peaking, but I don’t think it is. I definitely don’t see prize pools/guarantees getting smaller any time soon, as it seems like sites can pretty much put any tournament with a fair guarantee in any time slot, and it’ll fill up pretty well. I also think sites like UB have so much potential to step up and be a solid third site (addition to PS and FTP) if they just had better customer service and idea men. the addition of another major site that welcomes all players would be a huuuuuge boost to the community… so there definitely is room for growth.

Image courtesy of PocketFives.