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Parker Talbot has the life that many poker players might dream of.
He plays professionally, streams his online play via Twitch, and has won millions of dollars. The 33-year-old Canadian is also a PokerStars ambassador and travels to casinos around the world to play in live tournaments.
It’s certainly a life that he’d have never dreamed possible.
When Talbot began getting into the game, Twitch streaming seemed like a fantasy world.
Now millions of viewers tune in daily to watch others play cards. The medium has helped bring more players into the game over the last decade.
“If you would have asked me or any of my friends when I was 20 years old, there would have been zero shot anyone would have said that I was streamed,” he says.
“I had to make social media accounts just to stream. I didn’t have a Twitter, I didn’t do anything that you would do if you were going to be a streamer or social media man. That kind of just happened, but I would not have thought 15 years later I’d still be doing it to be honest.”
Talbot was among a huge turnout for the recent PokerStars North American Poker Tour stop in Las Vegas in November and spoke with Insider Gaming on site about his unique poker journey.
Getting in the Game
Originally from Toronto, Ontario, Talbot took an interest in poker as a teenager after watching the World Poker Tour on television.
He later began playing with his father before his first venture into a casino at age 18. By 2014, he won an online event for more than $100,000 and never looked back.
“I just kind of ran up a bankroll when I was 18 in school before I ended up dropping out of school to pursue poker,” he says. “I didn’t come to (this career) from super planning. It kind of just happened for me. Streaming kind of just happened, but I would not have thought 15 years later I’d still be doing it to be honest, but I kind of did as well. I don’t know. I’m really not a big planner, to be honest.”
After finding online success, some shifts in the industry left Talbot considering other career options.
But the popularity of Twitch and the possibilities on the platform changed that.
“I was debating on whether or not to continue playing poker or not,” he says. “I kind of quit for six months or so, and that’s when I found streaming. Streaming reinvigorated my passion.”
Talbot is pleased to see the NAPT and PokerStars returning to the U.S. A test series played out in 2023 at Resort World Casino and returned this year with a full-scale tournament series.
“I was here last year for the relaunch, and then I was here for the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in the summer,” he says. “So I’ve been fond of Vegas recently.”
That run in Sin City included finishing 308th in the WSOP Main Event, considered the biggest event on the poker calendar each year, for $45,000.
He followed that up with a runner-up finish in the Maryland State Poker Championship for $73,719 and then a fourth-place finish in the European Poker Tour Barcelona stop for $254,102.
In recent years, Talbot has cut back on his streaming schedule and used more of his time for traveling and live poker.
He planned on playing the Brazilian Series of Poker this year and also more stops in Europe.
If not playing poker for a living, Talbot might have been found in the classroom.
“I was in school to become a teacher,” he says. “My dad’s teacher. I thought I’d be a lawyer when I was young and then I got to school, and I had a partial scholarship in mathematics. Then I did one year of that, and I was like, ‘Okay, this is much too hard for my pea brain.’ I thought I was smarter than I was, so I switched to a bachelor of arts, majoring in history. Then dropped out one year later.”
A full-time poker career beckoned and that turned out to be a wise decision when looking at his results.
Becoming a Pro
Many players may dream of becoming a poker pro and living a bit of that lifestyle themselves.
Talbot offered some tips on making that transition and some major things to keep in mind when considering such a change.
“I think easing your way in for most people is going to be the way to go,” he says. “If you have some kind of steady income or job, just sort of playing poker at 10-20 hours a week, and phasing more over time with studying. Unless you’re just young and you don’t really have much to lose. You have nobody else in your life that depends on you, or anything like that. You just have a couple grand and deciding whether you want to go to college or whatever.
“Then you can just kind of go all in. I would say give it like six months and try to grind really hard. I would just say bankroll management is always huge, setting aside amounts of money, or having some kind of income for rent, living, etc.”
Skill Building
For those who don’t want to pursue the game full time, poker can also be a nice side gig and Talbot offered some advice for newer players looking to get better.
One of the keys is to simply play more and see many hands –that can even be playing for free or at micro stakes.
“The most important thing that I tell people when they first start playing poker, especially these days in the day of the solver and study, is still playing poker and just getting your reps in and playing lots and lots and lots of hands is by far the best way to learn the game,” he says.
“See situations that are going to come up over and over and over again.”
“It’s a lot more important than trying to learn GTO (game theory optimization) and learn your ranges and everything right away. I just tell people to play a lot. And that’s the biggest advantage you can get from playing online.”
That includes even playing multiple tables to get more experience and also manage higher-pressure situations with some many hands in play.
“You can play six, seven, eight tables, and learn poker at the same rate that a guy’s learning and playing live poker playing 20 hands an hour compared to 80 hands an hour on six tables online,” Talbot says.
“You’ll just learn a lot quicker if you’re interested in learning and committed and putting the hours in. The same guy who puts eight hours in online is going to play it just an insane amount more hands, even if you only played two, three, or four , you’re still going to play10 times the hands.”
For those going the other direction and transition from the online game to live poker, Talbot says it’s important to be ready to shift gears.
“It took me a few years to really respect the difference between live and online poker because I definitely came at it from like an online pro in my early days,” he says. “But it’s a really different game. I would say the game does play differently.”
“People use much bigger sizes in certain situations. So if you only play online, and you’re going to move into playing some live poker, I always recommend if you’re coming for your first live tournament, when people win a satellite or something, go to your local casino, come a day early to the event and try to get some reps in some cash games. Get the feel for the flow because it is, it takes a bit of getting used to at the beginning.”