Famous Poker Players: John Juanda

A young, rising star among professional poker players today is Indonesia's John Juanda. Although he was born in that nation on October 8th, 1971, he attended college in the United States at Oklahoma State University and then Seattle University. Juanda has an MBA, was a college track star in the 200 and 5,000 meter races, and has done stints as a door to door bible salesman. Sure to become one of the famous poker players of the future, Juanda loves medicine and has said that if he hadn't taken up professional poker in 1996 he would probably be a doctor today.

Today, the Indonesian native lives in Marina del Ray, California, with his personal poker empire--an empire that he did not start building until 2001 when he won the World Poker Open Championship.

"J.J" Juanda has been regarded by his peers as one of the best all-around poker players in the game since 2002, when he became Tournament Champion of the Year after winning three World Series of Poker titles as well as a World Poker Open Championship title that year.

Continuing his string of successes, he won the first Professional Poker Tour event in November of 2004 (he also made 15 final tables that year) and then, In January 2006, Juanda beat a heavyweight professional poker player field that included Jeff "The Iceman" Lisandro, Tony "The Lizard" Bloom, Jason Gray, Mike Sexton, Barry Greenstein, Tony G., and the great Phil Ivey en route to winning the $1,000,000 ($732,901 USD) first prize at the Crown Australian Poker Championship speed poker event.

As of today, Juanda has captured four WSOP bracelets, the 2008 WSOP Europe Main Event grand prize, three Best All Around Player awards, and more than $8.5 Million in career tournament earnings. (Bet he wouldn't have made that much money by now even if he had become a doctor!)

It was in October 2008 that he won the 2008 WSOP European Series Main Event Championship in London which gave him his fourth WSOP bracelet and over $1.5 million in prize money. But even more, this included a history-making final table which set WSOP records for duration at 19 hours and 10 minutes as well as the number of hands played with 484. In just one week, J.J. added more than $570,000 to his earnings as he finished second in the EPT London £1 Million Showdown.

If you would love to learn some of the tricks of the trade from one of the future famous professional poker players, J.J. can be found playing online exclusively at Full Tilt, along with other professional poker players who will give you a run for your money...so watch that bank account, if you dare!

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