Top 3 professional card players – and how to follow in their footsteps
Playing cards is more than just a game, it is a profession. Although only a very few numbers of people succeed in making a career within card games, some are lucky enough to call themselves the best in the world within their field. Here are some of the most successful and famous card players in the world.
Fulvio Fantoni: A champion or a cheater?
For many years, the Italian bridge player, Fulvio Fantoni, and his playing partner, Claudio Nunes, were ranked number one and number two as the best bridge players in the world. However, maybe you shouldn’t want to follow in this guy’s footsteps. Rumors of cheating were circulating, leading Maaijke Mevius, a physicist from the Netherlands, to observe something unusual in a video of the Italian Bridge partners playing. She had discovered that Fantoni and Nunes sometimes placed their card on the table vertically, and other times horizontally.
In 2016 the American Contract Bridge League stripped Fantoni and Nunes of their titles. The European Bridge League banned them for five years and forbade them to ever play as partners again. The Italian Bridge Federation banned them for three years, however, after the lawsuit against the European Bridge League ruled in Fantoni’s favor, the Italian Bridge Federation reversed its decision.
Unfortunately, the bridge is a game that makes cheating easy. Still, it is a fun game to play. Click here to learn how to play bridge, so you don’t have to cheat like Fulvio Fantoni and his partner in crime Claudio Nunes.
Carlos Mortensen: ‘El matador’ of poker
In bridge, you may not be allowed to observe your partner too closely and pick up on cues, but poker is all about observing the other players, and the Ecuadorian poker player, Carlos Mortensen, also known as ‘el matador’, is an expert at that. In 2001 Mortensen won the World Series of Poker main event, two years later, he won again, and in 2016 he was inducted into the poker hall of fame. It’s safe to say that Carlos Mortensen is among the best poker players in the world with total live earnings of more than 12 million dollars.
Carlos Mortensen is especially famous for his loose play, his bluffing tactics, and his unusual chip-stacking style. To learn how to play like Mortensen, practice your online playing skills. Find out more about online poker games here and improve your skills as a player.
Don Johnson: Atlantic City’s worst nightmare
Blackjack is a game between the player and the casino. Usually, the casino has the house edge, but the American blackjack player Don Johnson managed to become a casino’s worst nightmare when he succeeded in winning more than 15 million dollars from three different casinos in Atlantic City, singlehandedly making the Top’s table-game revenues for April 2011 the second lowest among the 11 casinos of Atlantic City.
Don Johnson understands the gambling industry and he knows how to play the casino. That is the secret behind his success. If you want to play blackjack like Don Johnson, you must read up on the industry and learn everything about the casinos.
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