Marle Spragg will be glad to be back on her "home turf" when the North American Poker Tour comes to Las Vegas in November.
She returns to Vegas, her home for 10 years, for the first time as PokerStars Ambassador — a role that has extended her reach as a content creator on the European Poker Tour, where Spragg earned her stripes with a final table finish at the 2023 EPT Prague Main Event.
"I didn't make it last year because we were at UKIPT, but I cannot wait," Spragg told PokerOrg at the EPT stop in Cyprus. "Resorts World is the best venue and playing poker in America is important to me. It just makes everything way better. I lived (in Vegas) for 10 years and it's like the EPT, but better to me because it's like home turf, you know?"
Back in Las Vegas
Spragg moved to Las Vegas when she was 14 years old. Her dad played full time and she gained an early appreciation for the lifestyle. "I just always had a very good understanding of what was going on. And then I also saw the swings and from an early age — I just saw how it was. That's how I got interested in it. But I was an actor and wanted to do other things, so I went to New York for school."
She came back to Las Vegas after graduation and tried a normal job before the inevitability of the poker world drew her in for good. After building an early following with her short-form poker videos, Spragg married streamer and fellow PokerStars Ambassador Benjamin "Spraggy" Spragg in 2021. They set up shop on the other side of the pond and bounced around EPTs and regional tours with trips to the WSOP in between.
Now it's time for Spragg to return to the United States for this year's NAPT Las Vegas, a ten-day splash from November 1-10 with 36 events, including a $330 Women's tournament with a $30,000 guarantee on Tuesday, Nov. 5. Spragg and others will try to unseat the defending champion, Kyna England.
New events, new players, more comfort level
The event is part of a push to support the growing demand for women's poker that also includes a Women's Winter Festival in late November at the Hippodrome Casino in London, which Spragg will attend. She will headline the first-ever women-only £1,100 High Roller event along with fellow ambassadors Jen Shahade and Kerryjane Craigie, the designer of the new festival.
The goal, for Spragg, is to increase the comfort level of new players, who are more likely to enjoy themselves if the environment makes an effort to be welcoming.
"My dad and I played at Bellagio, and it might have been my actual first time. I remember I was just so afraid about the little things like holding chips wrong and not knowing what was on me. He sat right next to me and he really guided me. And I felt like that's the biggest thing if it's your first time, to have someone you trust at the table with you in a cash game or whatever, so they can just kind of nudge you and tell you how to feel comfortable."
"The more resources you have, whether it's a boot camp, a women's event, PokerPower, Pocket Queens — just a study group, whatever it is that just makes somebody feel comfortable. The more things you have, and the more comfortable you can make the environment, the more people are going to get involved."
Photos courtesy of Danny Maxwell/Manuel Kovsca/PokerStars
