Liv Boeree

Liv Boeree won an EPT Main Event, shared a WSOP bracelet with Igor Kurganov and then stepped away from professional poker. Five years after announcing her retirement, she returned to a $25,000 tournament in the Bahamas and collected $2.8 million for fourth place. Some players have quite a comeback.

Her story also stretches well beyond the felt. The former Team PokerStars Pro has an astrophysics degree, helped establish a poker-focused charitable initiative and now works on a podcast about game theory, incentives and the problems people cannot solve alone.

Who Is Liv Boeree?

Olivia “Liv” Boeree was born on 18 July 1984 and grew up in Kent, England. She studied physics with astrophysics at the University of Manchester, earning a first-class degree in 2005. Music was another serious interest: she played lead guitar in a heavy metal band before poker became her career.

Unlike players who learned the game online as teenagers, Boeree was introduced to poker through television. That unusual start eventually led to major tournament titles, years representing PokerStars and a second career explaining risk and strategic thinking.

How Liv Boeree Got Into Poker

In 2005, Boeree applied for a television competition advertising the chance to win money through skill and deception. She discovered that the programme was a poker training show, with professional players helping newcomers learn the game. Among the instructors were Phil Hellmuth and Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott.

She did not win the show, but she had found something worth studying. She went on to work in poker broadcasting and reporting, including coverage of the WSOP and European events, while improving her own tournament game. In 2008 she won the European Ladies Championship, an early result before her biggest breakthrough.

The 2010 EPT Sanremo Win

Boeree’s first major title came at the European Poker Tour in Sanremo in April 2010. The €5,300 Main Event attracted 1,240 entries and generated a €6,014,000 prize pool. She beat Sweden’s Jakob Carlsson heads-up to take the €1,250,000 first prize.

It made her the third woman to win an EPT Main Event. Victoria Coren Mitchell had become the first in London in 2006, with Sandra Naujoks following in Dortmund in 2009. Boeree’s victory put another British woman on the EPT winners’ list and changed the scale of tournaments she could reasonably enter.

She later acknowledged that winning so much so early affected her judgement. In a TED talk, Boeree explained how she began overestimating her own ability and taking on tougher fields without putting in enough work. It is a familiar poker lesson: one big score does not settle the question of whether you are beating the game.

Team PokerStars Pro and Life on the Tour

Boeree joined Team PokerStars Pro after the Sanremo win and became a regular presence at live festivals and in poker media. The sponsorship provided a platform, but it was her results and willingness to discuss the maths behind decisions that helped her build an audience beyond tournament railbirds.

She also spent years among the leading women in live tournament poker and was named European Female Player of the Year three times. Her career ran through an era when the EPT, WSOP and high-stakes international events were becoming increasingly competitive.

Winning a WSOP Bracelet With Igor Kurganov

In 2017, Boeree and fellow professional Igor Kurganov won the $10,000 WSOP Tag Team No-Limit Hold’em Championship. They defeated 101 other teams and shared the $273,964 first prize, worth $136,982 each. Both collected their first WSOP bracelet.

The tournament also brought them up against a team including Daniel Negreanu, which finished third. Boeree and Kurganov committed half their winnings to charity, a decision connected to work they had already started away from poker.

The $2.8 Million WSOP Paradise Comeback

Boeree announced her retirement from professional poker in 2019, although that never meant she would stop playing altogether. In December 2024 she entered the WSOP Paradise Super Main Event in the Bahamas. The tournament drew 1,978 entries, with $6 million waiting for the winner.

She eliminated Chris Moneymaker in tenth place to reach the final table, then finished fourth for $2,800,000. Yinan Zhou won the tournament. At the time, Boeree’s payout was the largest single live tournament cash recorded by a woman, and it remains the biggest cash of her own career in the available results.

Since that event, Poker Type has covered the debate over WSOP Paradise rake, a reminder that big prize pools and the cost of entering are different things. Boeree’s fourth place was not a title, but it was worth considerably more than her Sanremo victory in dollar terms.

Liv Boeree’s Biggest Tournament Results

How Much Has Liv Boeree Won Playing Poker?

The Hendon Mob lists Boeree with $6,699,290 in recorded live tournament earnings as checked in November 2026, with the $2.8 million Paradise finish her biggest cash. She also returned to the WSOP Main Event in 2025, finishing 645th for $27,500.

As with every tournament earnings total, that number is not net profit. It does not deduct buy-ins or expenses and tells us nothing about private cash-game results. It is a record of cashes, not a balance sheet.

Boeree’s Poker Style: Probabilities Over Hunches

Boeree’s scientific background is an obvious part of her public identity, but she has never suggested that a physics degree removes poker’s uncertainty. Her talks focus on measuring probabilities, separating good decisions from fortunate results and recognising when intuition is poorly calibrated.

Those ideas are useful whether somebody is playing a $5 home game or an EPT final table. A player can make a correct call and lose, or make a bad one and win. Anyone curious about their own tendencies can try Poker Type’s free Poker DNA assessment.

Science, Philanthropy and the Win-Win Podcast

In 2014, Boeree and other poker players co-founded Raising for Effective Giving, known as REG. The project encouraged players to assess charitable causes using evidence and expected impact. Boeree says the initiative raised more than $12 million during its operation.

Since leaving full-time poker, she has concentrated on science communication, game theory and the Win-Win podcast. Her discussions range from cooperation to artificial intelligence and the incentives that drive people into decisions which may be bad for everyone involved. It is a different application of the same interest in how people think under pressure.

Liv Boeree on Decision-Making: Video

In this TED talk, Boeree explains three lessons poker taught her: distinguish luck from skill, express uncertainty with numbers and give intuition only the weight it deserves. It is a useful companion to her tournament record because she discusses mistakes as well as the big win.

Quick Facts About Liv Boeree

• Full name: Olivia “Liv” Boeree
• Born: 18 July 1984
• From: Kent, England
• Education: First-class degree in physics with astrophysics, University of Manchester
• EPT Main Event titles: One, Sanremo 2010
• WSOP bracelets: One, 2017 Tag Team Championship
• Largest recorded live cash: $2,800,000
• Recorded live tournament earnings: $6,699,290 (November 2026)
• Former sponsor: Team PokerStars Pro
• Other work: Science communicator and Win-Win podcast host

Liv Boeree’s Legacy in Poker

Boeree has a career that does not fit neatly into the usual bracelet-count argument. Her EPT title came during the European poker boom, her WSOP bracelet was a shared win, and her biggest score arrived years after she had stopped treating tournaments as a full-time job.

She also belongs in the wider story of British women winning open-field events, alongside players such as Coren Mitchell and the more recent Renee Xie. The results stand on their own, while her work beyond poker makes the biography worth reading even after the final hand.