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The Internet has not only transformed the way poker is played, but it has changed the caliber of player excelling at the game. Ryan “gutshtallin” Welch is a perfect example of an Internet prodigy who has turned into a live professional.

Welch, who hails from Nashville, recently captured the most elusive prize in poker, a World Series of Poker bracelet. He took down Event No. 51 (no-limit hold’em $3,000 Triple Chance) for an amazing $560,000.

He started playing poker in 2004 with a high school friend who introduced him to Party Poker. He dabbled in sit-n-go tournaments and small events but was never really that interested in the game until he joined PokerXFactor, an online training site.

“I joined the site in 2008 and that’s what finally pushed me over the edge and gave me the poker bug,” Welch said. “It’s been a complete 180-degree change for me because I am now a PXF Pro instructor for multitable tournaments.”

Welch is one of the most admired, yet feared, players in the game today. He’s been on a tear the past few years online, having won a ridiculous amount of tournaments. Some of his career highlights include wins in the PokerStars Sunday Warm Up ($99K), Full Tilt $1K Monday ($80K), and a runner-up finish in the PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker (Event 20, $215,000). Over his short time playing, he has amassed more than $3 million in tournament earnings.

Many factors contribute to success in poker, including talent, patience and determination. These, however, aren’t the only aspects of a great player as Welch would say internal support systems are just as important. He explained how the support of his friends and family helped him win the coveted WSOP bracelet.

“Unfortunately, my family couldn’t make it to Vegas during my win, but they have always supported me 100 percent throughout my poker career,” he said. “It was awesome to have so many of my friends come support me throughout the last day of the tournament. Also, my wife Kristin is my No. 1 supporter and I’m very lucky to have a wife that understands poker and the ups and downs that go with it.”

Welch is building a home in Las Vegas where he can live out his dream as a poker professional. He plans on playing and teaching poker for as long as possible.

“I love the freedom that poker gives you,” he said, when asked about his future in poker, “I absolutely can’t think of anything else on Earth I would rather be doing. I know what it’s like to work a 9-to-5 job and there’s no way I’m going back to that!”

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Darryll “DFish” Fish of Ft. Lauderdale is one of the most recognizable and respected players in the online poker world. He’s also a highly admired online-poker-forum contributor, who goes into profound detail about hand histories, strategy and analysis of online play. His credentials come from his amazing success in live and online poker. Some of his career highlights in live poker include a final table at the 2009 World Series of Poker pot-limit hold’em championship ($77K), a PLO victory in the 2008 Binion’s Poker Classic ($25K) and a final-table appearance at the California State Poker Championship ($28K).

Fish has been on a tear on the live circuit recently, but his roots always have been online. He has wins in the Full Tilt $1K Monday ($81K), PokerStars $1K Super Tuesday ($87K) and his most recent triumph came in Stars’ 2009 World Championship of Online Poker (Event 33) for $160,000.

Ante Up’s Garrett Roth talked with Fish about his success, his influences and his thoughts on uncapped poker in Florida.

What initiated your interest in poker? After I had heart surgery in 2001, I met a kid who was really into the game Magic: The Gathering. He introduced it to me and I fell in love with it. I traveled and played competitively for a couple of years and in 2003, when Chris Moneymaker won the WSOP, our group started playing poker online. We started out with the $1 sit-n-go tournaments. I quickly became obsessed with the game and started doing everything I could to get myself to a competitive level. I went to the local dog track to play $1-$2 limit hold’em a few days a week, and then months later moved to Gainesville to live with some friends who were attending the University of Florida. I did really well in those games and eventually decided to put $50 on Party Poker. I played limit hold’em starting at $.50-$1 and within four months I was multitabling $5-$10 limit. I eventually moved into no-limit cash games and then a little over two years ago I got into tournament poker.

Who has been the biggest influence on your game? My biggest influences in poker have really been two people in particular. Adam “Roothlus” Levy and I have been friends for many years. He got into poker a little sooner than I did and I always looked for guidance when moving up. We remain very good friends and are always bouncing ideas off each other and trying to help each other grow as players. Another major influence would be Matt “mattg1983” Graham. I became friends with Matt in early 2008, and when he moved to Vegas that summer, I decided to give it a shot and moved out there to live with him. I was just starting to play a lot of tournaments and I learned a lot of solid tournament fundamentals by watching him play. He also saw a lot of potential in me and offered to stake me in high-stakes tournaments. This allowed me to advance through the ranks rapidly and I quickly became a winner in the highest stakes tournaments online.

What has been the most memorable moment in your poker career? I think thus far, the most memorable moment I’ve had was making the final table of last year’s $10,000 pot-limit hold’em event at the World Series of Poker. It was my first $10,000 buy-in event and I had a bunch of friends there rooting for me. Although it was short-lived, it was still very exciting and gave me a great deal of motivation to do even better in the next WSOP.

What do you think of the new poker limits going up in Florida and what do you think it will mean for the state’s poker community? I can’t even begin to explain how excited I am for this change. I have been waiting for this change ever since I first got into hold’em. Having played in the low-limit games at the dog tracks and the Hard Rock in Tampa, I knew the average caliber of poker player in Florida was extremely weak compared to most areas. I think it will be a positive thing as far as the state is concerned, as it will bring a lot more people in to gamble and spend time in Florida. I think the games are going to be extremely lucrative and the action will be big. There is especially a lot of money in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale area, where I currently reside, and I plan on putting in a ton of hours at the local cardrooms after the WSOP. It will also make it possible for the state to run even bigger tournaments than they already do. Now that Florida will be able to attract big cash-game players, I think there will be a strong pull for big buy-in tournaments as well.

What are some of your future aspirations and goals? I tend to just go with the flow of life and I’m not really one to plan things out very often. I think life is full of surprises and if you just live in the moment, things are a lot more exciting. After this summer’s WSOP, I plan on getting a place in the Ft. Lauderdale area and grinding the cash games in the area very frequently. I will also continue to travel the tournament circuit because my favorite form of poker is high-stakes live poker tournaments, such as WPTs and WSOP circuit events. I hope to someday use the money I’ve made from poker to open a restaurant, or maybe a bar, and try to travel the world as much as possible.

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The past three years have been anything but average for poker professional Raj Vohra. Vohra, who lives in Wellington, Fla., has quickly been rising to the top of the poker world. He’s making a substantial name for himself, live and online. His largest wins include the Full Tilt Online Poker Series Event 22 ($430K), Poker Stars Super Tuesday ($74K) and a 2008 World Series of Poker Event 21 final table ($196K). He also has won two Ante Up Poker Tour events ($60K combined) and cashed in the Florida Million ($6K, 18th). Over the past three years, Raj “BadcardsAA” Vohra has amassed more than $1.8 million in tournament winnings. Impressive, considering he didn’t even know the rank of hands before Joe Hachem’s WSOP win in 2005.

The former tennis pro has learned how to take his aggressiveness and competitiveness on the court and translate it into world-class play on the felt. Vohra has taken poker as his new viable sport and has shown through his results what an outstanding contender he really is.

Vohra met with Ante Up’s Garrett Roth to discuss his journey from tennis pro to poker superstardom.

You started as a tennis player and now have transitioned into a poker phenomenon. How did you make the transition and what factors have helped you succeed? I have always been a very competitive person and that showed in my tennis career. I played since I was 8 years old and eventually became a professional player for India. I still play whenever I can, but my main focus now is on poker. I received my degree in accounting as a backup to tennis in case I was ever injured. That education has helped me tremendously in my transition to poker. I was very aggressive and always attacking the net in tennis, which has also translated to my poker game.

How did you get your start online and what are some of the main differences you see apart from the live arena? After moving to Florida to coach tennis, I started watching poker on TV on my time off. I got extremely interested in the game after seeing Joe Hachem win the main event in 2005 and wanted to learn more about the game. About eight months after experimenting in the local casinos, someone told me that everyone was playing online, so I started grinding Party Poker cash games and was actually doing very good. I turned $200 into about $6K and after a few months, I started playing multitable tournaments. I actually won the first online tournament I ever played, which was the Party Poker $200K Guarantee, which I chopped for $40K. A few days later, I won my WSOP Main Event seat and was hooked after that.

What are some of the factors that separate you from the typical poker player? I am a very visual player. I don’t read or try to get much information from any poker books or videos. I’ve seen a lot of guys making mistakes and not changing what they are doing. Every day the game is changing and I want to make those adjustments first, before anyone else. All the online kids nowadays are so genius and all they do is play poker 24/7. You have to be one step ahead of them if you have any chance of competing with them. There are so many new trends in poker that your average player might not even think of. Today’s game is not about playing conservative or upscale hands. You don’t need good cards to win. I like to take control of the table and play a lot after the flop. I would say that about 90 percent of my game is post-flop play. I like to put my opponents to a difficult decision and wait for the right spots. It will make a huge difference in your game if you know and understand concepts like stack sizes, bet-sizing and pot control.

Since you have had so much success in such a short period of time, what is some advice you can give to fellow players and what are some of your upcoming plans for your poker career? The game is getting so complex that you must learn advanced strategy. Training sites are good tools to use for learning fundamental tips, but you have to have the experience for yourself. You have to make your own mistakes and learn what to do to make it better. I can remember hands that I played more than six months ago and having a visual memory like that is what is going to help you succeed. Even though I have some success live, I want to play a lot more tournaments. I traveled a lot when I played tennis, so I’m trying to get used to traveling again for the big tournaments. As far as my future plans, I’m definitely going to win a bracelet this year. I’m so confident in the way that I’m playing that I am totally prepared for the World Series of Poker in June.

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Last month Ante Up reported on Harrison Gimbel’s record-setting PCA victory. AU correspondent Garrett Roth was on the scene in the Bahamas and caught up with Gimbel after his remarkable victory.

While most teenagers are making minimum wage, Harrison Gimbel is making millions.
Gimbel won the PokerStars.net Caribbean Adventure’s main event for $2.2 million in January. … not bad for a kid who just graduated high school.

Gimbel, 19, was born in Boca Raton and now lives in Jupiter. He started his poker career like many other players, with the Moneymaker boom in 2003, when he wasn’t even a teenager yet. He began playing $5 and $10 home games while sharpening his skills, but soon began to play online, where he was known as gibler123.

As soon as he was old enough to play in local cardrooms he jumped in and won the Florida State Championship at the Isle Casino at Pompano Park, pocketing nearly $68K.
He hasn’t strayed from his online roots. He had a massive amount of earnings online in 2009, having final-tabled virtually every major tournament, including the Stars $1K Super Tuesday ($57K), Stars Sunday Million ($47K), Stars Sunday 500 ($25K), Full Tilt $1K Monday ($45K), Full Tilt Sunday Brawl ($17K) and a handful of other titles on other sites.

“I’ve only played a few live tournaments in my career, and never a $10K buy-in,” Gimbel said moments after his victory in the Bahamas. “Live is more fun than online, though, because you can get facial reads on people and you can interact with them a lot more.”
He had planned on buying directly into the main event, but won a $1K satellite just a few days before the tournament.

Gimbel’s confidence was evident throughout the tournament as he steamrolled to the chip lead, increasing his stack to about 1.5 million after the first few days. But it was a hand with another young gun on Day 3 that helped make Gimbel the youngest PCA champ in history.

“The most crucial hand of the tournament for me was a hand I played against Justin Bonomo,” said Gimbel, who once attended the University of Alabama.

Gimbel held AC-JC on a board of 4C-9C-6C. Bonomo bet 70,000 on the flop, 190K when the 7D dropped on the turn, and then moved all-in for 700K on the river when the board paired with the 9D. Gimbel just called on all streets and Bonomo mucked his hand. Gimbel won a 2.5-million-chip pot with the ace-high flopped flush.

“This hand gave me the chip lead and propelled me to the final table where I never lost focus,” he said, “I had played with most of the players before and was extremely confident that I was going to win.”

Ultimately, Gimbel’s pocket 10s held up against Tyler Reimen’s pocket eights when they were heads-up for the title. They both made sets to add a little more drama, as if the moment needed it.

Gimbel says he plans on spending more time traveling the circuit and playing in the biggest events around the world.

“I hope at the time this article gets published, I will have found a sponsorship deal,” he said.

That shouldn’t be too difficult to accomplish given his past successes. About the only thing he can’t do in poker is win a World Series bracelet, but that’s only because he’s not old enough yet.

Photo courtesy of Neil Stoddart and PokerStars.

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Family first, poker second. This is how Don Baruch describes not only how to be successful in poker, but in all aspects of life. Baruch is a Tampa resident who won Event 21, the $1,500 no-limit hold’em shootout at the 2007 World Series of Poker, capturing nearly $265K for his victory.

Baruch has been playing poker since his childhood and started playing seriously in 2003.
“I read every book, watched every show and started playing in all the local cardrooms,” Baruch said, using all resources necessary to improve his game exponentially, especially how to dominate single-table tournaments. These days you’ll most likely find this Hard Rock Tampa regular following the highest stakes’ tournaments in the Tampa Bay area.

Baruch, who recently finished fourth in an undercard PLO event in Biloxi, Miss., says he entered 2007 WSOP with the intention of playing well and finding his strengths. He came away with a suitcase full of cash and a gold bracelet. He defeated a field of 900 runners and a final table that saw the likes of top pros Erick Lindgren and Daniel Negreanu.
“There are a lot of good things that came out of my win,” Baruch said, “but there’s a dark side to everything. Ultimately, it’s still gambling.”

Since Baruch won one of the most coveted prizes in poker, he has the experience and insight to give advice to fellow players.

“It’s very common to think you’re the best player in the world after a big win. It can cost tens of thousands of dollars to figure out the reality. Find out what you’re good at and realize that there are very few players who can play both cash games and tournaments. It’s rare to see a guy like Phil Ivey, the ‘Tiger Woods of Poker,’ who can play every variation at any stake.”

Baruch, who owns a mediation business, Final Table Mediation, uses his negotiation and persuasive skills to dissect his opponents at the poker table.

“I try to find the motivation of a particular player,” he said. “Are they there because they want to waste time or are they there because they really want to win?”

He talks a lot at the table to figure out what opponents (or clients) really want in a certain situation.

But Baruch switched his focus from the felt to his family after he won his bracelet.
“I’m a father, first and foremost,” he said when asked if he played Internet poker. “Online poker can get obsessive and compulsive and it takes away from my family time. I can at least schedule live poker around my family and my work schedule.”

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Every poker player’s dream is to win a major tournament and score a six-figure cash. Now, just imagine doing that four times … in six months. That’s exactly what University of Florida student Steven Burkholder did from October 2008 to February.

Burkholder, 22, was born and raised in Largo, where he’d always play penny poker with his family, but never thought he’d one day rise to the top of the online poker spectrum.
Burkholder, whose online screen names are “PiKappRaider” (PokerStars) and UFman2 (Full Tilt), started his poker career on the felt at Derby Lane in St. Petersburg.

“I would go to Derby three to four times a week just to play $1-$2 limit hold’em,” he said. “It really gave me a foundation for the game and I learned quickly that poker could be very profitable with the right mind-set and determination.”

Burkholder, who has been featured in CardPlayer, graduated from $1-$2 limit to multitable tournaments. “The tournaments were a lot more exciting to me than cash; they had larger payouts and it’s a lot more exhilarating when you can bet and raise thousands of units rather than one or two dollars.”

He began playing online tournaments in 2006, starting with $1 single-table tournaments and working his way up. The first tournament Burkholder won was a $1 rebuy, which earned him $200 and a starting bankroll that allowed him to play $5 tournaments. Once he started going deep in most of those tournaments and solidifying some nice results, he found a financial backer to stake him in larger buy-ins. It turned out to be a great decision as he learned very quickly how to beat large buy-in fields. There were some modest cashes in the beginning, but little did he know about what kind of accomplishments were to follow.

Burkholder started his “major” success by winning the Full Tilt $750K guarantee for $135,904. This $200 buy-in tournament was the largest cash of his poker career at the time. When asked what it was like to ship his first six-figure score, he said, “It was by far the most intense feeling in the world. Being able to have such a large score under my belt gave me the confidence I needed to take my game to the next level.”

Just one week later he had another outright victory: The PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker Event No. 29, which was a $500 rebuy tournament that earned him $211,134 and a gold bracelet. He since has had wins in the $100 rebuy on PokerStars ($31K) and the $150 rebuy on Full Tilt ($61K). After these wins much of the online poker community labeled him a lucky player on a sick run. When he got wind of these comments he let his results be his response.

“I told my friend I was going to win the Million Guarantee on Full Tilt,” Burkholder said. “I don’t know what it was, but I had the sickest feeling about it. When I was getting really deep, I stopped saying it so I wouldn’t jinx myself, but I kept looking at him and gave him that ‘I’m winning this’ look.”

Turns out he’s a bit of a clairvoyant as well. His premonition was spot on as he won the tournament for his third six-figure cash ($201,848). This score cemented Burkholder in the online poker rankings and gave him some much-deserved attention in the online poker community.

But just when it seemed like his amazing run had come to an end, Burkholder took down one of the most prestigious events on the Internet, the Full Tilt Online Poker Series $300 rebuy Event 17. It was his fourth major online tournament victory and it pocketed him a cool $245,696.

This Derby Lane local, who had never cahsed for more than $10K, had prizes totaling more than $1 million in a span of six months. At press time he was ranked No. 1 in Florida and No. 8 in the world in online tournament play on pocketfives.com.

“You know, it’s all about dedication and commitment,” he said. “Everyone is going to take the nastiest beats and have the worst luck at times, but it’s the players who stick through them that will receive the good luck that comes their way. I see people all the time that can’t get over even the last beat they just took and that will affect everything about their game and their all-around attitude for poker. Discuss hands with friends, be patient, Oh… and run good. Next stop … WSOP ’09.”

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