“It’d be bad to go over this thing, right? Like, it’d be over.”
Nick ‘Nicky P’ Palma laughs as he peers over the edge of a fourth-floor balcony inside the Hilton Prague Atrium, eyeing the polished tile floor below.
He’s in Prague chasing his first ever live WSOP bracelet, having won one online back in October.
But for Palma, poker has never been just about trophies or money. Not even close.
In fact, his drive to etch his name into poker’s history books goes all the way back to the late 1990s in the Bronx, New York when, at eight years old, life dealt him a hand no one should ever have to play.
A young Nicky P’s relationship with tragedy
Born Nicholas David Palma on October 10, 1989, he spent the first 18 months of his life with his biological mother. Palma was too young to remember the uncertainty of these unstable times. But, struggling with drug addiction, she was unable to care for him and Palma was taken in by his godmother.
“She just happened to be one of the better people I’ve ever known in my life,” he says.
This became Nicky’s life for the next five-and-a-half years. An early childhood filled with devotion, stability and love. He remembers the time fondly.
Then, when he was just seven years old, he came home from school to find a house full of people crying hysterically. They told him that his godmother had died while he was at school, and he was crushed.
It was the day before he turned eight.
The loss uprooted everything. Palma returned to live with his biological mother, who was still fighting her own demons – and for the next year and a half, he was basically on his own.
“If I didn’t wake up, get dressed and get myself to school, I wouldn't go to school. It was all on me.”
18 months later, his mother was unable to go on caring for him. This time, his uncle – the man he was named after – stepped up and became the first father-figure that Nicky ever knew. It felt like stability had replaced uncertainty again, but Nicky was already unknowingly in line for another tough deal.
On the day of his fifth grade graduation, spirits were high. After graduating, Palma looked back to find his uncle and his uncle’s girlfriend, Carmen, standing behind the stage. They got into the car and went out for dinner – for what Nicky believed was going to be a celebration. Instead, his uncle told him that his mother had died that morning.
“Basically, I lost every single person that was close to me every couple years,” Palma says. “Literally.”
Nicky’s teenage years
The next couple of years, things got rough at home as his uncle developed a drug addiction of his own.
Palma stayed there until he was 13, when he went over to his friend Andrew’s house to hang out for the weekend. Andrew was on the same baseball team as Nick and his father Jeff was their coach.
What was supposed to be a weekend sleepover turned into an unofficial adoption. Until Nicky was old enough to go it alone, he would never leave.
Palma speaks of the family that took him in all those years ago as if they were his own. Andrew became his brother, Andrew’s mother Rose Marie became his mother and his former coach Jeff became his father.
Listening to Nicky talk about them, it’s easy to feel how deeply he loves these people, but tragedy wasn’t done with Nicky P yet.
In 2018, Palma woke up to EMTs rushing into the home trying to save Jeff’s life. They couldn’t.
“I’d like you to say that I love Jeff and I love Rose and that I’m so grateful for what they did for me,” he says. “I need you to say that. Without them, I wouldn’t be alive.”
Palma had lost his mother, his uncle, his grandparents and other close family members. The only two Palmas he had truly known were himself and the uncle he was named after. But, by this time, drug addiction and depression had taken hold of the elder Nicky P.
In 2020, a few months into the COVID pandemic, online poker was hotter than it had been in years and Nicky P was on a heater to end all heaters. Up $400K over the course of just a few months on ACR, Palma was in full flow and felt like he couldn’t be stopped.
A phone call brought it all crashing down. His girlfriend called, hysterical, to tell Nicky that his uncle had taken his own life.
That was it. The last connection to his name had gone, and the family construction business and plot of land that the family’s construction yard sat on for 70 years went to Carmen and her son.
The drive to etch the Palma name in stone
As the dust settled around him from a lifetime of loss, Nicky P realized that if his name was going to mean anything, he’d have to take the reins and make it happen himself. It lit a fire inside him.
“Life is tough but everything that happened made me me,” he says. “I just want me and my uncle’s name to live on forever. I’m working on it.”
Palma is a polarizing figure in the poker world. He wears his heart on his sleeve and doesn’t shy away from confrontation. But, regardless of what side of the fence you’re on, his honesty is undeniable.
And his motivation is different from most. It’s not about riches or trophies, but building something permanent.
Palma has become a force in the poker world, continuing to up the volume and the stakes, racking up online titles, six-figure scores and chasing down the best tournaments the world has to offer. These results only tell half of the story, though.
Behind them is a lifetime of loss that would have stopped most other people in their tracks. Palma keeps showing up – ready to take on whatever the next storm wants to throw at him.
The story yet to be written
As our conversation draws to a close, I ask Nicky P what he'd like his legacy to look like. His answer paints the picture of someone who loves the game as much as anyone ever has.
"Not to be dark, but as long as I'm alive, I'll be in the Hall of Fame and be a top player. I'll be up there. I'm not saying I'll be number 1 but I'm gonna try my best. And that doesn't mean just skill. That means hard work, dedication, longevity... a lot of players came and went but you need to stand the test of time, and that's what I plan on doing."
Talking to Nicky, one theme keeps recurring: his enduring and consuming love of the game.
There's a saying that goes, 'Fear the man that life has offered a reason to fear nothing'. Nicholas Palma is the living embodiment of that statement at the poker table. A person whose heart is always in the game with a drive backed by the love of the people that kept him alive during the toughest times a person can endure.
For Nicky P, it's never a question of check-call or check-raise; it's a question of motivation and legacy. A life or death metaphor that only the green felt can provide... and at the tables, Nicky is always hungry for life.
Additional image courtesy of WSOP Europe.
