Twitch.tv has slowly been gain momentum in the poker world. But what exactly is Twitch? Twitch is a live streaming video platform and it’s owned by Amazon.com. It focuses primarily on video gaming, including playthroughs of video games by users, broadcasts of esports competitions, and other gaming-related events. Twitch launched in 2011.
Twitch has failed to attract big time poker streamers until recently. Much of poker’s popularity on Twitch has to be attributed to Jason “JCarver” Somerville who has gained a large, loyal following to his streams. He made it to the final table of a WCOOP event recently and had almost 38,000 followers at the time he busted out from the tournament. This is the new record for Twitch poker audience, beating his own previous record of 21,000 viewers. Jason is not just some random streamer, he’s part of the Team PokerStars Pro team and holds one WSOP bracelet and has total live tournaments winnings of 3.5M according to thehendonmob.com. You can find his entertaining streams at http://www.twitch.tv/jcarverpoker. He already has a total of over 8 million views on his channel.
Another Team PokerStars Pro who has been actively streaming during the WCOOP is Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier, also a highly successful MTT pro. He has a strong background in e-gaming, he’s a former Starcraft Champion and the first European pro gamer in Korea. He has win over $10m in live tournaments and is a 2x WCOOP champion and SCOOP Champion. Let’s see how ElKy does in this year’s WCOOP, his Twitch channel can be found at http://www.twitch.tv/elky/
Third Team PokerStars Pro actively streaming his poker action is Jaime Stapler and he will also be streaming his WCOOP play. He specializes on MTT’s and you can follow him at http://www.twitch.tv/pokerstaples
Even some of the poker’s old school heavyweights, such as Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth have been streaming their poker play recently, but not during the WCOOP. Twitch offers a great platform for this long-time poker pros to give something back to the community. You can find their streams at http://www.twitch.tv/dnegspoker and http://www.twitch.tv/philhellmuth, respectively.
Some of the online poker’s giants have started their Twitch streams as well, although their streaming is not as consistent as for example Jason Somerville’s production, who streams on an almost daily basis. Randy “nanonoko” Lew, another Team PokerStars pro and online poker’s ultimate grinder streams at http://www.twitch.tv/nanonoko and Viktor “Isildur1” Blom, the king of online poker, has done streams for Unibet poker at http://www.twitch.tv/unibetpoker
In the PLO world the most active Twitch streamer has been JNandez whos is the middle of his $100k in 100 days challenge at the moment. You can follow him at http://www.twitch.tv/jnandezpoker. Another PLO streamer worth checking out is Rohit “GodlikeRoy” Bhasin, PokerStars Team Online Pro, at http://www.twitch.tv/godlikeroy/
Who would you want to see Twitch stream their poker action in the future? Choose one of the option on the poll or write down your suggestion in the comments field:
