A Poker Life -- Liv BoereeFrom Astrophysics to Poker |
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With a killer dark-haired, blue-eyed combo, Liv Boeree turns heads wherever she goes, but especially so when she saunters into a typically male-dominated poker room. While she may stick out like a sore thumb looks-wise, when it comes to the level at which she plays, Boeree is fitting in right with the best of them.
Tomboy From the Start
Boeree was born in Maidstone, UK, on July 18, 1984. Until the age of 10, when her parents separated, she was an only child, and admits to being a bit spoiled.
“When they split up, my mum remarried my step dad, who has two kids around my age who are awesome. And my Dad remarried, too, so I ended up with four wonderful parents. I got really lucky.”
The optimism Boeree has today is also a reflection of her as a child, but the unique and mostly girly style she sports today is not.
“I was a complete and utter tomboy. I lived in the country with lots of animals, so I grew up horse-riding and playing in the mud and climbing trees.”
Though mostly outgoing, Boeree describes herself as a bit socially awkward growing up. She preferred playing sports and satisfying her inherent competitive nature, rather than putting on makeup or chasing after boys. That was until age 15, when she discovered both the advantages of impressing the opposite sex, as well as a passion for … wait for it … heavy metal.
“A friend of mine played the Black album by Metallica for me, and also Rage Against the Machine, and I was like, ‘Why hadn’t I heard this before?’ I never could work out why I wasn’t into the music that the girls played at school, and that’s because no one played rock or metal. It just totally clicked, and then I was like, ‘OK, get me a guitar, I need to learn how to play this stuff.’”
Boeree first learned on her step mother’s brother’s jumbo acoustic guitar without learning to read music. Playing mostly by ear, Boeree learned rapidly, and at 17, she decided it was time for her to buy her own. Purchased from eBay, Boeree’s first electric guitar was a bright sunburst Epiphone Les Paul.
“I treated that thing like it was a child. I think I actually just used to stare at it and stroke it. It was so beautiful to me.”
Despite having a ton of extracurricular activities, Boeree was a straight ‘A’ student, and attributes that to her talent for taking exams. She finished near the top of her class and headed straight to university in Manchester to study physics and astrophysics.
“I truly wanted to be a world-class research scientist and discover something amazing. I love physics, and it always came naturally to me, so it seemed like the right path at the time.”
Boeree studied hard, but by the time she finished her degree, she knew she didn’t want to spend her life as a researcher. Thrown into the real world with no structured plan laid out for her as she’d always had in the past, Boeree decided to do something a little out of character. She applied to be a contestant on a reality TV show.
Reality Star
Of the tons of people who applied, Boeree was one of five selected to be on the show. There was only one problem — she had no idea what the show was for. Once filming began, the contestants learned that they were going to learn how to play poker, and on the first episode, Bellagio tournament director Jack McClelland came out as their poker instructor. Having always been a quick learner, Boeree picked up whatever she could, but ultimately, it wasn’t enough in the final competition.
“Unfortunately, I made a straight on a four-diamond board and didn’t notice the diamond until I’d committed most my chips. That’s about as bad as it gets, right?” Boeree laughed. “It’s so embarrassing to think that I could have made such a rookie mistake, but then again, I’d played my first hand of poker just two weeks before, so I guess it’s not so bad.”
At the end of the show’s filming, Boeree took with her the skills she acquired, but after some pressure from both sets of parents to get a real job, she did. Boeree took a position in London at an Internet advertising company as a mathematician. She number-crunched during the day and began frequenting the local poker club at night. Boeree won the first tournament she ever played at London’s Gutshot poker club, beating 125 players in a €5 rebuy.
Boeree continued to have success playing and was approached by the club to host European Poker Tour events. She quickly went through her allotted vacation time at her day job in order to travel to Europe’s biggest poker events, and after winning a package online to the Five-Diamond World Poker Classic in Las Vegas, she called it quits from the advertising company.
In December 2007, Boeree entered life as a poker pro, but was a little taken aback by the move at first.
“I was thrown into the deep end, as I had very little experience playing any big tournaments over $1,000. In fact, that Five-Diamond $15,000 buy in was absolutely terrifying. There were so many pros I’d heard of at my table, and I played horribly,” Boeree admits.
Among the pros Boeree rubbed elbows with was Phil Hellmuth, who introduced her to the representatives of Absolute Poker. The site was looking for a new spokesmodel, and they found one in Boeree. The opportunity allowed Boeree to travel, play some bigger buy-in events, and get poker advice from some of the game’s top players, including Annie Duke.
Boeree immediately started seeing positive results. In May 2008, she won the Ladbrokes European Ladies Championship for $30,000. She continued to make major tournament cashes, including a couple at the World Series of Poker that year, but she had her most successful run this past April at the Five-Star World Poker Classic. She made two final tables in $1,500 buy-in no-limit hold’em preliminary events, won her seat into the $25,000 World Poker Tour Championship event, and then cashed in that event for another $40,000.
Since then, Boeree has been touring the world and grinding both live and online at UB.com, where she is now a signed pro. She’s got tough and persistent ambition, a tomboy-at-heart attitude, an impossibly charming and often self-deprecating sense of humor, and smarts to boot. And although she doesn’t get to rock out as much as she’d like these days, Boeree likes the path her life is on.
“Right now I’m really happy where I am, working on my game and pursuing titles and cashes.”
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