Phil Ivey

The strongest poker player among gambling addicts or the most gambling player among poker players? Either way, Phil Ivey is inextricably linked to risk and excitement - whether it's in tournaments with many thousands in buy-ins, heads-ups with millionaires or sports betting, Ivey is the sort of person who would wager a million dollars to become a vegetarian, only to pay a $150,000 kickback three weeks later for eating a juicy steak.

A complete list of his poker accomplishments is unlikely, with no news sites publishing the results from closed cash games in Macau and Las Vegas. Ivey won $16.6m in three days in a famous heads-up game against billionaire Andy Beale in 2006 - how many of his private sessions have been like this behind closed doors? But even his public list of tournament wins is impressive: every World Series appearance since 2000 has come with a final table, winning 10 bracelets, being WPT champion and twice coming close to victory in the WSOP Main Event. He has had his share of success in cash games on the High Stakes Poker, Poker After Dark and Million Dollar Cash Game shows.

Online, he dominated the highest stakes Hold'em, Omaha and mixed-games tables for years, first in his own name as a Full Tilt Poker pro, then on PokerStars as RaiseOnce and Polarizing. But by the mid-2010s new names appeared on the poker scene: young professionals with a mathematical approach to the game show that it is no longer possible to win on skill and talent alone. The era of solvers had arrived.

At some point Ivey finds himself in the midst of several scandals: first the Crockfords Casino in London refuses to wire Phil his £7.3m winnings, and two years later he is sued by the Borgata Casino in the US for $9.6m. In both cases Phil beat the casino in baccarat using a factory card fault. The poker community is on the player's side, but the law takes the casino's side.

After that, Ivey goes into the shadows: since 2015 he had not appeared in major tournaments for two years, only playing once in the Triton Super High Roller Series. In 2017 he was inducted in to the Hall of Fame - but did not play a single World Series event that year. The more time passes, the more rumours about Ivey's sad financial condition grow, with high-profile casino lawsuits costing him millions of dollars, and fellow high rollers in non-public conversations talking about large debts.

This, however, has not prevented him from playing in tournaments with six-figure buy-ins and remaining a legend.