Once upon a time, our best shot at seeing people beyond our local friends play was through those quite interesting (back then) but now yawn-inducing one-way communication live TV shows like World Poker Tour (WPT), Poker After Dark and World Series of Poker (WSOP). You’d get to watch the pros play beyond your usual casual games.
But there was no direct way to get stuck in or learn on the fly, like you can now with the blessing that is Twitch, YouTube, and other streaming platforms.
Seems like some poker brainboxes have been itching for this, as nowadays, they’re channeling their passion through these platforms, chatting with you and their other knowledge-hungry followers about what’s going on in their heads as they play their hands.
It’s turned into big business now, but without sacrificing that educational value.
We’ve rounded up the 4 best poker streamers that’ll give you that entertaining-educational one-two punch.
Proudly Dutch, Lex Veldhuis is one of the biggest names in poker streaming these days. His poker journey kicked off in a bit of an odd way, though.
He wasn’t some young poker nut to start with, just a man playing StarCraft, that popular Blizzard Entertainment sci-fi game.
Then, one day, he bumps into French poker player Bertrand Grospellier, who was so keen to get Veldhuis into poker that he deposited $10 into Veldhuis’ PokerStars account back in 2005. That was Veldhuis’ first taste.
Veldhuis has been a proper poker victor ever since, making a strong showing at the 2009 World Series of Poker by advancing to Day 2, and loads more, with live poker winnings topping $700,000.
After years in the live game, Veldhuis decided to try online poker streaming on Twitch under the name LexVeldhuis with PokerStars Pro Team Online.
Now, he streams high/mid-stakes tournaments on PokerStars with average monthly buy-ins of $40,000, giving him the pace he couldn’t get in live poker.
That, along with his top-notch commentary, is what keeps his audience hooked. His stream even hit a poker-streamer-record breaking 58,780 viewers in 2020.
His stream has clocked up over 183,680 watch hours and 323,780 followers on Twitch.
The poker journey kicked off in 2012 with cash games for British poker player Ben “Spraggy” Spragg, fresh out of university.
When he switched over to tournament poker, Spragg hit the big time in the streaming space after winning a laughably tiny $7.5 low-stakes tournament—though you would think it was the World Series final by his reaction.
The husband of Marle Spragg and another face on the PokerStars team got his start with the Twitch channel Spraggy, initially teaming up with his fellow streamer friend Fintan Hand.
Those low-stakes tournaments that put Spragg on the map are still his bread and butter today, though he covers high rollers, too.
He breaks down his gameplay on Twitch with proper engaging chat and loads of knowledge to share, plus some standalone teaching content (especially on YouTube). It’s earned him over 170k followers and a whopping 101,390 watch hours on Twitch.
Lots of people think this Canadian shot to fame mainly through his stint on Big Brother Canada 2 back in 2014.
But my unpopular opinion is that what really got the spotlight burning was when he went mental three years later, quitting his car salesman job and streaming for an insane 1,000 hours over 125 days straight. That’s when fame couldn’t help but notice.
Arlie Shaban has kept that “go big or go home” attitude in his content, taking on the Herculean Challenge from the Poker Gods which landed him a nice $30,000 Platinum Pass from PokerStars.
As of October 22, 2024, he has over 56k Twitch followers who can’t get enough of this madman approach—it’s one of the main things that makes Shaban’s streams click; now, he’s a proper PokerStars Ambassador.
The bookie of our list, Kevin Martin, grew up in a small town in northern Alberta where he’d devour poker strategy books like they were going out of fashion. On his entry into the poker space, he knew he’d found his home.
Starting with small cash games bouncing around Canadian casinos, Martin worked his way up to online tournaments once he’d built himself a decent bankroll.
He’s accumulated over $200,000 in live cash across 4 Calgary tournament wins, with his biggest payout coming as runner-up at Run It Up Reno VII Main Event, pocketing $48,210. This was after he’d joined Team PokerStars Pro Online in 2016.
Martin was one of the early users of Twitch and one of the earliest poker streamers on our list. Like Arlie Shaban, he’s done his time on Big Brother Canada. He has been streaming his poker since 2015; Martin’s a pioneer who’s always pushing forward but knows when to take a breather.
His break came in 2019 after banking that massive $200k. When he came back, he joined partypoker Team Online, but that didn’t really feel like home.
GGPoker’s GGSquad, the following year in 2020, was where he really found his feet and blossomed into their main ambassador.
Martin, who started out as a losing low-stakes player, if you can believe it, is now smashing it in high-stakes games. He even claimed the 2022 Global Poker Award for Streamer of the Year.
These days he’s taking his audience along for the ride on his live streams, entertaining over 115,000 subscribers and clocking up more than 28.09 million lifetime views on his Kmart Poker YouTube channel, which is where he’s putting most of his energy nowadays.
