Staking, loans, swapping action… Financial relationships between poker players can be complicated. The same could be said when it comes to life partners, with issues such as joint accounts, personal savings, income disparity and more offering plenty of areas for potential conflict.
So what if your relationship with your partner was also a poker relationship?
Poker-playing couples are not the rarest thing in the world - Kristin and Alex Foxen, in particular, have each been enjoying very visible success recently - but catching a glimpse inside such a relationship is not something we see every day.
That’s why a recent revealing conversation shared by Liv Boeree and Igor Kurganov on the former’s Win-Win Podcast caught our eye.
Watch the clip from the most recent episode above, or catch up with all episodes here.
‘It’s much more stressful watching than playing’
Liv Boeree on her way to a $2.8M payday at the 2024 WSOP Super Main Event.The conversation centers around the unusual circumstances surrounding Boeree’s recent record-breaking performance in the WSOP Paradise Super Main Event in The Bahamas. The British former pro made the final table of the $25K buy-in tournament, finishing in 4th place for $2.8M - the biggest-ever live tournament cash by a female poker player.
What made the situation unusual for Boeree was not having her partner Kurganov present to share the experience, due to him being unable to travel outside the US while he waits for his Visa. Therefore, while Boeree was running deep in The Bahamas, Kurganov was playing at the WPT World Championships in Las Vegas.
“Usually we’re always together, whenever we’ve played poker in the last 10 years,” says Boeree, “so we usually have the emotional support of one another being around, in the evenings and so on.”
For his part, Kurganov could only watch on from afar as Boeree ran deeper and deeper.
“It’s much more stressful watching than playing,” he shares, “When you’re playing, you’re in a specific mental state the entire time… when you’re an onlooker, you don’t do any of that, you’re just like ‘Argh! Is it going to work or not going to work?!?’
“As a passive onlooker you have nothing to do. You have no control and you’re just a slave to your emotions.”
Kurganov cashed in the WPT World Championship and made the final table of the WPT Alpha8.
Did Kurganov have a piece of Boeree’s action?
Being powerless to help one’s partner as they face individual challenges is a situation with which many couples will be familiar - though few will have had the experience of watching these challenges on a live stream, with millions of dollars in prize money on the line.
And speaking of money, it turns out that Boeree’s biggest-ever cash happened to come in one of the few events she’s played in recent years without Kurganov’s financial investment.
“Usually, I have a piece of you when you play,” says Kurganov, “outside of this time, which is really, really, really funny.
“It’s the first time, I think, in the last 10 years, where I didn’t have a significant chunk of your action, but actual zero. It’s really funny.”
“I’ll buy you something nice,” Boeree replies.
Watch the full episode of the Win-Win Podcast here.
Images courtesy of WSOP/WPT/Miguel Cortes/Win-Win Podcast
