Niman Kenkre: How to Become a High Stakes Poker Player

His story is one of the more unusual in the world of high-stakes poker – a highly-intelligent graduate who has played pro football (soccer) in Iceland, became a US Master at chess, and turned $25 into $millions as an online player before being snapped up by Phil Galfond to coach on his training site. The man in question? Niman Kenkre.

Kenkre’s story has been highlighted in the Boston Globe this week, a ‘where are they now’ type affair which briefly chronicles Kenkre’s rise to poker fame – ‘at the height of his career, Kenkre faced off against celebrities such as Ben Affleck, Kevin Hart, Michael Phelps, and Tobey Maguire at casinos like the ritzy Borgata in Atlantic City’, says the Globe’s Cindy Atoji Keene – and looks at what makes him a still-successful player.

For tournament pros, winnings are generally out there in the open for all to see, but cash game players such as Kenkre are rather more coy, the Cambridge, Massachusetts pro admitting he’d “rather not say what’s the most money I’ve won, but I did win six figures in a single cash game session three times. My biggest loss in a single session was just under $100,000.”

Not too shabby for a guy who deposited $25 online back in 2003 against the wishes of his other half, his alter ego ‘Samoleus’ running it up several thousand-fold until Black Friday put a stop to his main source of income, forcing him out into the world of the live cash game.

As someone who claims he is “lucky to have a toolset that aligns very well for success in poker… a prolific mathematical background and a very good memory, but also a good sense of human psychology,” it was never likely to be a huge problem translating that online success into live mastery, but a divorce and gaining custody of his young son didn’t exactly make it easy.

Limited to only a couple of days play per week at most, and with huge chunks of time off the coach football – his son’s favourite sport, at which he excels – Kenkre has to somehow make his poker living “on Wednesdays and Thursdays, when my son is with his mother, putting in 12-15 hours each day”.

Add in his view that the “poker economy has also gotten a lot tougher in recent years, and the biggest regular game on the East Coast now is only $5 to $10 blinds” - a far cry from the $100/$200 games he has played at in the past - and despite describing his “casino of choice” being a “rather depressing place, but it’s convenient for me” Niman Kenkre still can’t imagine doing anything else for a living.