Hcm1008: The Taiwanese Twitch Star

There’s someone up there amongst the big boys of Twitch poker streaming, and his popularity is a sign that no matter what the ups and downs of poker in the west, the eastern boom is real – with Taiwanese poker streamer ‘Peter’ Xiao Ming top of the table!

The married 33-year old father who works by day and studies by night might seem to be an unlikely candidate as an Asian Jaime Staples, but with 53,000+ followers and counting he is obviously doing something right – and with a poker market growing faster than you can pronounce his baby boy’s name (Hsieh-Bao for the record) who knows where it will stop?

As with many poker players, perhaps Bertrand 'ElkY' Grospelier being the best known, ‘Peter’ has a deep love of eSports and mixes his poker streams with Hearthstone play and various other games.

"My dream is to represent Taiwan for world-class competition”, he says on his TwitchTV channel, adding that he wants to “compete with other skillful e-sport contestants! In the same time, I also try to balance my life with my roles as husband, daddy, streamer, commentator, white-collar worker, and student.”

His poker play, under the name Hcm1008, is focused on the Natural8 site, a rising star in the Orient which I discussed back in December describing the player pool as:

"All but guaranteeing a decent Western-schooled player of an advantage, for the time being that is! The Wild West of yesteryear is now the Wild East of today, so enjoy it before everyone learns to play properly.”

Peter, as he likes to be known to Western fans, streams mainly in Chinese – either commenting on his own play or following the antics of well-known Natural8 pro Kitty Kuo for example – and while your author here has a limited knowledge of Mandarin (limited equalling precisely sod all!) the man’s enthusiasm and commitment to the game shines through regardless.

“I am glad to see many audience and friends here,” he writes in his blurb in English, although it’s unlikely he’ll ever be taking viewers away from the likes of Jason Somerville’s ‘jcarverpoker’ stream (200,000+ followers make him the daddy of Twitch TV poker!), or Jaime ‘pokerstaples’ Staples and his loyal 85,000 fans, or even JeffGrossPoker with some 23,000 followers.

But one thing is for sure, Peter Xiao Ming is only the start of an ‘Eastern revolution’in the poker streaming world, and if the millions of players in the Far East decide to get involved and listen to the pros, it could spell trouble for the rest of us who’ve gotten somewhat used to the stereotypical outright gambling approach they’ve employed up ‘til now!

So remember, you heard it here first! Peter and co. are Twitching for a fight!