Daniel Dvoress has been a fixture in PokerStars' highest buy-in live events since 2015. Back then, the 28-year-old from Toronto, Ontario had already been renowned for his coaching sessions, widely considered to be one of the best poker mentors in the world. His breakthrough to the high-rolling waters came at EPT11 Malta, where he took €263,000 for third place in the €25,000 event. At that time, Dvoress had already recorded a deep run in the EPT11 Barcelona Main Event, finishing 17th for €54,700. He topped that result the following season when when he appeared on the EPT12 Malta final table, earning €91,550 for a seventh-place finish. In total, he's racked up more than $2.1 million in live cashes, good for 40th place on the Canadian all-time money list. Dvoress also cashed in the last year's edition of the Super High Roller here in the Bahamas; he walked away with a $286,920 seventh-place prize back in January 2016. That was Dvoress' biggest live cash until last November, when he secured close to $300,000 for a runner-up result in the 2016 Asia Championship of Poker (ACOP) Macau High Roller. And he's a beast online too. Known as "Oxota" on PokerStars, Dvoress recently notched up a SCOOP title worth $317,911.
Connor Drinan is a 27-year-old professional poker player from the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. Drinan is part of an small and unfortunate group of players who are best known for taking a brutal bad beat on national television. Drinan got his first 15 minutes of fame when he had his pocket aces cracked by the other two aces (held by Cary Katz) in the inaugural $1,000,000 Big One For One Drop in 2014. It’s a shame, because his other tournament results are remarkable, as you’d expect of a man who’s putting up seven figures to enter events. Since 2011, Drinan has won more than $10 million in live tournaments, including a pair of side event victories that came two seasons apart at EPT Barcelona. He’s also accumulated countless wins and more than $3.5 million in earnings on PokerStars, playing under the screenname “blanconegro”.
Jason Koon is a 31-year-old professional poker player from Weston, West Virginia. He’s only been playing live tournament poker since 2008, a year in which he earned just less than $2,000 from the game. Since then, he’s gone on to earn more than $6 million, with nearly half of that coming during a career-best year in 2016. And a half-million of that has been won right here at Atlantis resort, including near misses in the $10,000 Main Event and $25,000 High Roller in consecutive years. Koon has quickly become a fixture in the richest poker events in the world, widely feared as one of the most dangerous players in any given tournament he enters.
