My name is Zach Elwood. I’ve got a book on poker tells and live poker psychology coming out near the end of 2011. It will be called ‘Reading Poker Tells’. You can check out my Twitter account at @apokerplayer or email me at info (at) readingpokertells.com.

I’ve always been primarily interested in the psychological aspects of poker. I like studying people, figuring out their personal strategies and tendencies, and trying to use that knowledge to my advantage. I love calling a big bluff, betting someone off a hand when I sense weakness, and reading the psychological ebb and flow of individual players and the game as a whole. I think poker is a tremendously deep game; the more I have studied it, the more psychological complexity I find.

For the aspiring long-term winner – aka the advantage player – it goes something like this. First you memorize Basic Strategy: whether to hit, split, double down, or stand, based solely upon the value of your hand and the dealer’s upcard. Hit sixteen versus seven. Always split aces, never fives. Double ten against nine or less. And so on. In a single deck game, well-executed basic strategy brings you neck-and-neck with the house, advantage-wise.

Then, as seen in the movies, you learn to count cards.

Name’s Shamus, a.k.a. "Short-Stacked Shamus." I play poker. Strictly recreational. Mostly micro, or "low" (hence the moniker). Primarily cash. The occasional tourney. Basically your average jingle-brained sap. Have also scribbled some for various pokery sites and publications -- besides this one you're currently perusin', that is -- both as "Shamus" and under my real name, Martin Harris. That includes articles and reviews, as well as some reporting from the WSOP, WSOP-C, WPT, EPT, NAPT, and various online events. So if you're lookin' for a hired gun to do such, drop me a line at shortstackedshamus at earthlink dot net.

Each entry in the following table is the result of 1,000,000 simulated hands of hold 'em played to the showdown and represents the percentage of pots won (including partial pots in the case of splits) by the indicated hand against the indicated number of opponents holding random hands. "s" means suited; "o" means unsuited (offsuit).

Change100 is a San Francisco-based freelance writer. She spent seven long years working inside the Hollywood film development machine during the early and mid-2000's before joining the ranks of the self-employed. Change100 was a stupid name she picked for herself during that fateful lunch hour in the summer of 2005 when Pot Committed was born. It's a reference to her brief, losing stint as a blackjack player and unfortunately, it stuck.

Poker chose me to be her slave when I was but a boy. For the first 15 years of servitude, I complained bitterly about the pain and injustice of it all. Then I became a professional poker player in 1990 and over the next 15 years, I started to see that everything is always fair. And now I thank poker, my tormentor, for this and hundreds more life lessons.

Easy going guy who's caught the poker bug. My family comes first but poker is becoming my adopted child

This study provides a first glance at the personality type of online poker players within the framework of the Five-Factor model. Participants from two online poker forums were asked to complete a questionnaire that contained the Big Five Inventory personality assessment as well as questions pertaining to their poker gameplay. Our results indicated significantly lower scores for online poker players compared to the general population on the Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness personality traits. Additionally, interesting personality correlations with particular poker gameplay statistics (such as Win Rate, Aggression Factor, and Went to Showdown percentage) are uncovered, the most notable being lower scores on Neuroticism correlating strongly with poker success. Finally, the notion of whether one’s psychometric personality matches one’s “poker personality” – their playing style – is analyzed. Further research directions are proposed for a more comprehensive assessment.

 I don’t play poker for the money…I play poker because I love the game. Although I moved to Las Vegas from Brooklyn in 1992 the first time I played Texas Holdem was in 2005 when I was living in Illinois. It was home game where I was hustled and then berated for my play. The next day I purchased some poker books, highlighters, a note pad and an account on Party Poker. I was terrible, but I was on a mission to redeem my shattered ego. When I moved back to Las Vegas in 2006 I found that live games were easier than online games. I continued to work on my game and by 2008 I was making a small but regular profit.

 Historically I have been exclusively a cash game player; coincidentally I began my blog about the time I decided to switch my game over to tournaments. This blog is dedicated to discuss my evolution as a tournament player and the thought processes that drive it.

Paul 'Dr. Pauly' McGuire is a writer originally from New York City. He has lived in Las Vegas, NV on and off since 2005. He covered the World Series of Poker and numerous other major poker tournaments for Tao of Poker, LasVegasVegas.com, Bluff Magazine, Poker Player Newspaper, Fox Sports, MSN, High Roller Magazine, Poker News, Poker Stars Blog, Bluff Europe, and Rise Poker. His poker travels have taken him to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Atlantic City, Connecticut, Spain, Denmark, Monte Carlo, Australia, New Zealand, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Hungary, Mexico, the Bahamas, Argentina, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Peru, and the UK.