Liv Boeree

Current Residence	London, United Kingdom
Born	July 18, 1984
Birth Place	Kent, United Kingdom
Total Winnings	$3,861,839

Olivia ‘Liv’ Boeree is a British sciene communicator, television presenter and former professional poker player who has won several major titles such as the European Poker Tour Main Event, and the World Series of Poker Tag-Team event. Even though she has retired in 2019 from playing poker, she still ranks among the top ten women in poker history on the All-Time money list and is ranked the #1 female poker player in the UK.

A New Star in Town

Born and raised in Kent, UK, she studied first at Ashford School before earning a First-Class Honors degree in Physics at the University of Manchester. Throughout her college period she played in a heavy metal band called ‘Dissonance’ as a lead guitarist, and she modelled for several clothing brands.

In the year 2005 a new poker reality show aired called Ultimatepoker.com Showdown. The British channel ‘Five’ took their chances and rolled out a new poker series where amateur poker players would be coached by professional poker stars. Liv was coached by Phil Hellmuth, Annie Duke, and Dave ‘Devilfish’ Ulliot. A couple years later, having played barely any live tournaments, she won the $2,000 buy-in Ladbrokes European Ladies Championships for a wealthy $42,000.

A new star was born, and Liv Boeree would turn her career into a professional poker career.

Winning the (Former) Biggest First Prize in Poker History on European Soil

After her great win in 2008, she played mainly a couple of lower buy-ins with some shots at the higher buy-in tournaments such as $25K WPT Championship Event in Las Vegas and the $5K Aruba Classic in Palm Beach. Not without any success, because she cashed in both, but no notable cash. It would not take long for Boeree to realizing her biggest poker dream, winning a major live event.

In 2010, during the European Poker Tour Main Event in San-Remo, she managed to scoop the biggest first prize in European poker history at that time, besting Swedish Jakob Carlsson heads-up, and taking home the grand first prize of $1,698,300! Usually there are some big names popping up during the final table, but here we can only see Swiss Claudio Rinaldi (9^th) and Russian Alexey Rybin (5^th) who could be considered as notable names.

Not long after, PokerStars, the organizer of the European Poker Tour, introduced Liv Boeree as their brand-new member of Team PokerStars Pro in 2010. A position she would eventually full fill for nearly a decade, after waiving poker goodbye in 2019.

World Series of Poker Bracelet Hunt

Since her extraordinary win at the EPT San-Remo, Liv Boeree stayed mostly who she was. Bit rough to say, but usually players would start play much higher buy-ins, but Liv kept it relatively real. She kept playing $1K events all over the world, mixing it up with a couple $10K events. The hunt for a WSOP bracelet started in 2010, and without having any great success for the next six editions she wouldn’t come close to winning a bracelet, but then there was the year 2017. Together with her boyfriend, Igor Kurganov, she would win alongside him, the WSOP #2 Tag-Team event for an impressive $136,982. And above all, a golden bracelet. She would become the first ever female player to win an EPT title and a WSOP bracelet.

In between her two famous victories she almost took down another great event in Barcelona. During the EPT High Roller with a buy-in of $25K, she would become 3^rd for $449,383. Just coming short to her fellow countryman Mark Teltscher and German poker pro Martin Finger. An amazing result as other hot guns of poker were also part of the final table such as Mike McDonald and Isaac Haxton.

Other Poker Achievements

Liv Boeree started her career with a televised poker series, and throughout her career she was part of many more televised events as part of her PokerStars ambassadorship of course, but also in the likes of the famous Poker After Dark saga. The televised show, where everyone pays a buy-in of $25,000 and the winner would walk away with $150,000. Igor Kurganov (boyfriend), Eric Worre, Greg Mueller, Jason Koon, and Randall Emmett, nobody was able to stop Liv Boeree from winning it all fair and square.

Earlier it was mentioned that Liv Boeree became three consecutive years Female Global Poker Index (GPI) of the year. In 2016 she was announced as Team Manager of the Global Poker League team ‘The London Royals’

Poker Is Not Everything in Life

In 2014, Boeree co-founded a charity called ‘Raising for Effective Giving’, a organization that promotes rational approach to philanthropy, and provides advice on choosing charities based on certain criteria. As of 2020, they have raised up to $14,000,000 for their chosen charities. In 2017 she also became a member of ‘Giving What We Can’, a group who pledges to give minimum 10% of their income to charities.

Besides her great work for charity, she is also working as a writer and as an actor. Her latest appearance on TV was in 2020 during the presented film ‘The Host’, a movie from Dutch origin. She appeared in many more TV shows such as ‘Codex’, ‘Christmas University Challenge’, ‘BBC Breakfast’, just to name a few.

Liv Boeree Tournament High Scores

Date	Tournament Name	Buy-In	Place	Cash Prize
May/08	Ladbrokes Poker European Ladies Championship, Sky Sports	$ 2.000	1st	$ 42.000
Apr/10	European Poker Tour Main Event, San-Remo	$ 5.300	1st	$ 1.698.300
Oct/10	European Poker Tour side-event, London	£ 2.150	2nd	$ 80.326
Jan/14	UKIPT Main Event, Edinburgh	£ 1.100	2nd	$ 97.057
Aug/15	European Poker Tour High Roller, Barcelona	$ 25.500	3rd	$ 449.383
May/17	WSOP #2 Tag-Team, Las Vegas	$ 10.000	1st	$ 136.982
Aug/17	Poker after Dark, Season VIII, Las Vegas	$ 25.000	1st	$ 150.000