Liv Boeree started the final table of the WSOP Super Main Event in fourth place. She ended with parity, finishing in fourth place and cashing for $2.8 million. Or, as Boeree put it, a “shit ton of money.”
Even by top-end poker standards, $2.8M is a lot of money. And it not only catapulted Boeree into fourth place on the woman’s all-time money list (overtaking Maria Ho) but also saw her break the record for the biggest-ever cash by a female poker player.
It’s a remarkable achievement for a player who retired from the game a few years back to focus on her new project, the Win-Win Podcast, described as “a series of conversations with leading thinkers in search of solutions to humanity's biggest dilemmas.”
Over the past week in The Bahamas, Boeree has kicked back a bit and focused just on solving poker’s biggest dilemmas.
And she came very close to working them out enough to come out on top of one of the toughest $25K buy-in fields ever assembled.
Liv Boeree with her colleagues from the Super Main Event final table. Rolling back the poker years
It turned out that the answers, for Liv at least, came from trusting her instincts and going with “vibes,” a refreshing antidote to the GTO play that is more familiar in elite poker. It’s a strategy that even her partner Igor Kurginov, himself a successful pro more versed on the GTO streets, endorsed.
“He was just like, ‘No, just keep following your gut. Don't worry, don't try and study charts or anything like that, just feel it out,’” Boeree told us after she was eliminated.
“I think genuinely as you get older you just get better at picking up social vibes and cues," she added. "Also, not to harp on about it, but it is a thing that women have in droves. That is one of our many strengths and I'm finally comfortable with leaning into that and being like, ‘Yeah, let's screw the math; let's just read people.'
"Sometimes you just get vibes and it's hard to put your finger on it, but you should listen to it.”
Many players would have been devastated at coming so close to a major bracelet win but in her exit interview with Jeff Platt, Boeree was jubilant.
“It was just the dream, just the most fun,” she said. “You know, when I retired from poker a few years ago, I'd kind of fallen out of love with the game because I had fallen into this weird, stagnant trap where I stopped being imaginative and trying new stuff and just was burnt out.
"And, you know, having now taken that time off, I feel like I can just see it with fresh eyes.”
Boeree always looked like she was enjoying herself despite the high-pressure environment.
Boeree: Insane amount of money
Talking with PokerOrg’s Tiffany Michelle, Boeree’s eyes lit up when she was told she’d moved to fourth on the women’s all-time money list to sit behind only Vanessa Selbst, Kristen Foxen, and Kathy Liebert.
“Wow! Okay,” she said. “It’s a shit ton of money,” Boeree said. “I don't know what people think, and I don't want to talk about money, but that's an insane amount of money for me.”
And how is she planning on spending the money?
“Actually, I know what I'm going to do,” Boeree told Tiffany. “Before this tournament started, I said to myself, I'm going to pledge 20% of whatever I win to help get rid of factory farming or at least improve the conditions for animals on factory farms, because it is literally the worst thing on earth, what's going on there. I won’t get into it.
“I haven't figured out exactly how and what are the best charities yet, but luckily I know people who know how to do that.”
It's a feel-good end to a feel-good story.
And while the massive win hasn’t convinced her to come back to the game full time – her Win-Win project is too important to her for that – we hope it inspires her to carry on making the sort of cameo appearances that even Elon Musk takes notice of.
Photos courtesy of WSOP.
