Daniel Kelly

Born in 1989, Dan is a legitimate phenom. He found poker whilst still in school and in just a few years rose to become the biggest online MTT earner in 2009 at the age of 20. To achieve this insane accomplishment, he bagged $1,696,666 playing tournaments in 12 months on PokerStars under the alias ‘djk123’. This came after Kelly had already made over $1,000,000 between high school and the start of college – not bad going for a youngster that wasn’t even able to play poker in casinos in Las Vegas yet.

As soon as he was legally able to play at the poker capital of the world, he did so in spectacular fashion. At the age of just 21, he entered one of the largest tournaments on the 2010 WSOP schedule – the $25,000 No Limit Hold’em Six-Handed event. Just four days later, the youngster earned himself not only a seven-figure prize but a gold bracelet after triumphing over one of the toughest fields going. Amongst the final twelve were Daniel Negreanu, Isaac Haxton, Brynn Kenney, Sam Trickett, Jason Somerville and Eugene Katchalov – all of which were no match for the youthful Kelly. He managed to claim this title before he’d even graduated from university with his mechanical engineering degree in 2011.

Since then, Kelly has continued to run over the WSOP fields and has made at least one final table at the series each year consecutively between 2011 and 2016. Fellow poker pro and WSOPE Main Event winer Annette Obrestad listed Kelly as one of the players that she would least likely to concede position to at the table, explaining ‘djk123 always owns me’. A particularly notable run included his fifth-place finish in the 2013 $1,500 No Limit Hold’em Millionaire Maker event, where Daniel earned $302,104 after getting past almost everyone in the huge 6,343 line-up.

One year on, the Virginia-born poker talent picked up his second bracelet after winning the $2014 $1,500 No Limit Hold’em event. Kelly’s live tournament earnings now exceed $3,600,000.

Amazingly, Kelly has actually pocketed more tournament earnings in the online world than on the live circuit. Between 2007 and 2016, he has racked up more than $5,800,000 playing on PokerStars alone. He currently has a total of five WCOOP titles to his name as well as a fourth-place finish in the 2009 WCOOP Main Event that earned him a massive $643,200.

A lover of Open-Face Chinese poker as well as the casual game Words With Friends, Kelly goes down as one of the most talented tournament players of the young generation.