WSOP

Once upon a time, Darren Woods was a respected poker player who won a gold bracelet in a 2011 WSOP Limit Hold'em event ($213,431). But now, he's branded a cheater after pleading guilty to defrauding online poker players and his former sponsor site. And Woods received the punishment for his crimes, which includes a 15-month prison sentence and an order to repay £1 million that he illegitimately won.

Two and a half years ago, Jan-Peter Jachtmann was on top of the world after winning the 2012 WSOP $10k Pot-Limit Omaha Championship along with $661,000. Now, he's feeling quite low after losing his gold bracelet and a "five-figure" sum in cash to a home robbery in Reinbek, Germany.

It wasn't hard picking the one poker player who shined over the rest in 2014. Dan Colman, who won several huge tournaments along with $22,389,481 overall, was recently named the 2014 Bluff Player of the Year. Here are the final standings from Bluff:

1. Daniel Colman – 1,447.70 points
2. Mike Leah – 1,149.64 points
3. Dan Smith – 949.35 points
4. Ami Barer – 930.79 points
5. Ole Schemion – 927.56 points

Shortly after April 15th, 2011 - a.k.a. "Black Friday" - many predicted the fast decline of poker. After all, the game was being hit in the worst possible way, with PokerStars no longer being able to accept American players, and Full Tilt, Absolute and UB Poker all going offline. The latter two sites would never return, taking $20 million worth of player deposit money with them.

The World Series of Poker released the highlights of their 2015 schedule, which includes 60 separate events spanning from May 27th to July 14th. But of these 60 events, most players can't stop talking about one - "The Colossus."

In recent years, some of the WSOP Main Event champions have either quit playing poker or just not played the game well (see Jamie Gold, Jerry Yang, Ryan Riess) following their victory. But it doesn't look like this will be a problem with 2014 WSOP Main Event winner Martin Jacobson, who's already performing well in more tournaments.

With 8 WSOP gold bracelets and over $20 million in tournament winnings, Erik Seidel is one of the most-knowledgeable poker players in the world. But little do many people know, he's also quite proficient in the business world.

Over the past few days, there's been heavy discussion about a former high stakes online poker player who cheated others out of "several million Euros." The player is currently being investigated by Denmark’s Economic Crime Department, and charges have already been leveled at two individuals in the case. However, police are still waiting to charge the poker player until their investigation has concluded. But if it were up to the TwoPlusTwo community, the mysterious player would have already be deemed guilty.

With all of the money involved in the WSOP One Drop tournament, it's sometimes hard to remember one of the biggest purposes behind this event - providing clean drinking water to impoverished areas. As for the 2014 WSOP One Drop, most people choose to focus on the negative side of things - a.k.a. Dan Colman expressing his dark view of poker following his victory and $15.3 million prize. But behind the scenes, Colman, Olivier Busquet and the Team One Drop did some very nice things for charity recently.

Phil Ivey used to be the biggest winner in online poker with over $19 million in earnings. However, he's struggled in recent times ever since Full Tilt reopened following Black Friday. Under his "Polarizing" account, which was created in late 2012, he had lost $5.2 million leading up to this month.