As big as online poker has gotten, there are still plenty of well-known online grinders who are unknown to the general poker population. In fact, many of these players have to win something at the WSOP in order to gain any sort of fame at all. Steve Billirakis aka “MrSmokey1″, Jeff Williams aka “yellowsub86″, and James Mackey aka “mig.com” were just a few of the online studs who became more famous after making WSOP final tables.
As a sort of preview for which online players to watch out for this year, I’d like to mention a few names that I think might do well at the WSOP. Alex “AJKHoosier” Kamberis is definitely one player to watch for since he’s had some huge cashes in 2008 and is at the top, or near it, of about every online ranking system on the Internet. In all, Kamberis has earned about $2 million in lifetime earnings through online poker.
Another person to keep an eye out for during the WSOP is Steve “gboro780” Gross who’s having an unbelievable year in online poker and made over $400,000 in the month of February alone! Some of the finishes that helped propel Gross to this massive amount of money was a win in the Ultimate Bet $200,000, a second place finish in the Full Tilt $1 Million Guaranteed, and a win the FTOPS Event #10.
One more person to watch out for is Shaun “shaundeeb” Deeb who plays an enormous amount of online tournaments and has the most experience out of the bunch. Deeb is a threat in both smaller and bigger tourneys No Limit tourneys so look for him in all of the NLH events. I definitely think that the 2009 WSOP will turn up another big online winner, but we’ll have to wait till June and July to see.