The Top 5 Coolest Poker Moments in 2024

#5 Maria Ho Became A Two Times Celebrity Poker Tour Winner

For one of the most famous female poker players Maria Ho 2024 was a year of making history (again).

In March 2024 she won an inaugural Celebrity Poker Tour – CPT Game Night I taking a nice prize of $10,000 and gold CPT belt trophy.

That event was a sort of test: Sit&Go format with only 8 participants including a few poker pros and a bunch of influencers from different areas.

Maria battled against Tommy Unold, Austin Ekeler, Brad Owen, Alexander “Wolfgang” Seibt, Trent “BookitWithTrent” Attyah, Bryce Hall and Ethan “Rampage” Yau.

The only person besides Maria who won anything was the tournament runner-up Tommy Unold, who took home $5,000.

Half a year later Maria repeated her success by winning the Celebrity Poker Tour 2024 Championship – CPT II. This time she overcame a field of 62 entries and secured $50,000 with the belt as a trophy again.

The second event was a classic MTT where all nine finalists won prizes between $2,500 and $50,000.

Maria was relaxed on a final table and constantly tried to comfort a pile of influencers before busting out some of them in a most brutal manner. However, after winning the tourney Maria announced that she is going to donate the whole prize to charity 

The poker community praised Maria for this success so much that one of the craziest spots with her even scored more than 452K views on PokerListings YouTube channel during December 2024.

#4 VeniVidi1993 Finished His $1,000,000 Challenge

From January 2023 to October 2024 Dirk “VeniVidi1993” Gerrits pursued the one major poker goal: build bankroll in poker rooms from $66K to $1M.

The initial plan was set for one year but due to different challenges Dirk just couldn’t reach the goal at time. There was everything you can’t desire for your challenge including:

• “Locking” of GGPoker account because Dirk “lost too much money”
• Total bankroll loss
• Constant delaying to start promised streams
• Restart of the challenge with a slightly new terms and conditions

But in 2024 Dirk managed to ride on luck and flow smoothly up to +$1,134,662 bankroll. As he described in a post on X (ex-Twitter):

“The million-dollar challenge is complete, and our incredible run has pushed us past the 1.1MM mark. It feels amazing to finish the challenge I set for myself at the start of last year. While 2023 was full of struggles, 2024 has been nothing but a steady climb.”

This result was especially remarkable since no other player tried to do something similar during 2024. And Dirk not only tried but achieved it with glory, donating 10% of his winnings to charity.

By the way, you can learn more about Dirk and his challenge in PokerListings articles — we published three articles about him in 2024:

• Veni, Vidi, Got Carried Away: The Continuing Challenge of VeniVidi1993
• How The Star of VeniVidi1993 Was Born
• VeniVidi1993: “Sometimes, Being in the Right Environment Is All It Takes”

#3 Liv Boeree Set A New Poker Record For Women

Even when Chinese young poker star Yinan Zhou ended the $26,000 WSOP Paradise Super Main Event $50M Gtd as a crowned champion, his success was outshone by the unbelievable return of Liv Boeree.

One of the most talented female poker players retired from poker in 2019 after stepping down as PokerStars ambassador along with her partner Igor Kurganov.

For the next five years Liv was reappearing on the poker arena occasionally and literally made only two ITMs in live events — both on WSOP in 2022 and 2024 — before hitting a record score on Bahamas.

Liv finished the Super Main Event in 4th place taking a $2,800,000 prize. This is the biggest one time winning by a woman in the history of poker so far.

After being busted out, Liv gave a brief interview where she talked about her experience in the event and plans for the near future:

“It was just the dream, just the most fun! When I retired from poker a few years ago, I’d kind of honestly fallen out of love with the game because I’d fallen into this weird almost stagnant trap where I had stopped being imaginative and trying new stuff and just was burnt out. And having now taken that time off or something…. I feel like I can just see it with fresh eyes. […]

I don’t know whatever happened — it feels like the game got the best of both worlds now  [GTO and field play] and it’s just was so much fun.

However, I probably won’t be playing poker more than a few times per year. My focus is growing this “Win-Win” movement thing that I want to do, I need to do. So many of the world’s problems are caused by Game Theory gone wrong. These screwed up incentives make it hard for people to coordinate and collaborate and everyone’s sort of stuck playing these rivalrous dynamics. […] And win-win is basically the pursuit of figuring out how we can design our systems better. So it’s truly like an omni win whatever it is we do.”

By the way, in her speech Liv praised poker as one of these games which can help people  to compete safely and healthily:

“The game makes people smarter, it’s very social, and brings people together… And it’s also a really healthy way of funneling competition. I feel like if people played a bit more games, there would be a little bit less war.”

#2 Daniel Negreanu Won A Coveted WSOP Bracelet

It’s hard to find a year when Daniel Negreanu isn’t losing money on WSOP but even harder to find one when he is winning at least one event.

Luckily for him, 2024 was exactly from the last list because Danny finally won his seventh bracelet after 11 years of hoping and praying.

This victory was significant not only because of all the years of waiting but also because Negreanu won his most beloved event — $50,000 Mixed Games: Poker Players Championship 7-Handed, taking a $1,178,703 prize.

He described its significance for him in a post-victory interview, stating: “There is one event in the world that I want to play more than any, and I wanted to win more than any, and it’s this one.”

#1 Patrik Antonius Was Inducted In The Poker Hall Of Fame

In 2024, the most popular Finnish poker player Patrik Antonius was nominated to the Poker Hall of Fame for the second time.

Three years ago people passionately voted for him but Izraeli-American Eli Elezra became 2021 inductee instead.

So, when Patrik was included into the list of nominees again, his fans and friends didn’t want to miss a chance and voted him in.

The hero himself did not expected this outcome and reacted quite emotional:

“Thank you very much! It’s obviously a very big honor to become a new Hall of Famer. It was a little bit unexpected for me at this young age.

Big thanks to all the family, all the closest friends, all the poker fans, all the colleagues and players. Everywhere I’ve been playing around the world, I’ve been getting really nice support and fans. So this has been really one of the nicest things.

I’ve always been a big fan of the game and a student of the game. I think I’m going to stick around for a long time. My plan is to keep playing the highest tournaments and cash games.

I really think that’s the key for my results — that I’ve always had so much passion and love for the game.

This is the happiest life I can have and it’s really nice that so many people have found poker in this passionate way.

We can all do it together, right? So, let’s keep our game growing. And thank you to everyone who’s been supporting me and voting for me.”

The Coolest Man Of The Year — Gambledore

In 2024 there was the only man, who made every poker player in the world love him, adore him and root for him no matter who his opponents were. What can we say, even his opponents sympathises with him so much that they became really upset if they accidentally busted him out of the tournament.

The name of the living legend is Vladimir Korzinin from Estonia — but the poker world also calls him “Gambledore”, “Gandalf” or just “The Wizard”.

No one knows who he was and who he is now. But when the warm-hearted, kind and friendly 69-year-old poker player — with less than three months of experience — appeared on Triton Monte Carlo, no one wanted to break his spell of secrecy.

But not only his demeanor made Korzinin loved and adored. He showed the poker world that even the most creative amateur players can playfully and joyfully make money without becoming whiny and sobby after having losses in the game.

Over a week of November 2024, Korzinin scored on Triton Monte Carlo three times:

• $31,000 for 26th place in $42,4K NLH – Mystery Bounty 7-Handed
• $3,470,000 for 2nd place in $210K The Special Triton Invitational
• $4,350,000 for 1st place in $159K NLH 8-Handed

Vladimir brought a lot of fun and sweet moments from these events into the poker world. For example, he gave away his trophy for the only victory to the runner-up and his countryman Ossi Ketola because Gambledore has “no room for that”. He also was very happy to lose one of the hands to Patrik Antonius in the HU for the title in $200K Invitational because he didn’t want to stop playing yet, but when he decided to end the event — he just light-heartedly gave up and congratulated Patrik for the victory.

This man truly embodies everything good and right in poker. That’s why PokerListings chose him as the greatest and most impactful player of 2024.