Liv Boeree

Liv Boeree was born in 1984 in Kent, England.⁠[1]

By her own account she had a British country upbringing: her family rode horses, kept gundogs and stalked gamebirds, and the local economy revolved around animals.⁠[2]

She studied astrophysics at the University of Manchester and graduated with a first-class degree.⁠[3]

She recalled that after graduating in 2005 she was unsure whether to continue in physics and took a gap year; she answered an advertisement for a TV show that turned out to be a reality series recruiting five poker beginners.⁠[4]

The show was UltimatePoker Showdown, on which she was coached by Phil Hellmuth, Annie Duke and David Ulliott; afterwards she travelled the European Poker Tour circuit as a host for a British TV station.⁠[5]

In 2006 she worked as a journalist and presenter for Gutshot TV covering the 37th World Series of Poker, and later worked as an internet reporter at European Poker Tour events for Challenge TV.⁠[1]

In 2008 she won the European Ladies Championship for $42,000, her first major live cash.⁠[6]

In April 2010 the 25-year-old from Milstead, Kent, beat 1,240 rivals in Sanremo, Italy, to win the European Poker Tour main event and about £1.1 million.⁠[7]

She had qualified through a €500 satellite, and the first prize was €1,250,000; she said at the time that her goal was to be one of the best players in the world, not just among female players.⁠[5]

By her own account, in 2014 she and poker friends, inspired by effective-altruist philosophers from Bern University, launched Raising for Effective Giving (REG) to encourage poker players to donate to a selected list of highly impactful charities.⁠[8]

In July 2014 the newly founded REG, started by Igor Kurganov, was providing members with information to identify cost-effective charities, and Boeree was among its members.⁠[9]

In June 2017 she and Igor Kurganov beat 102 teams to win the inaugural $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Tag Team Championship at the World Series of Poker for $273,964, the first WSOP bracelet for both; they said they would donate 50% of their winnings to REG.⁠[10]

In November 2017 Great Big Story released a video featuring her about Libratus, the AI that beat professional players, and the potential uses of its algorithms in other fields.⁠[11]

In 2018 she gave the TED talk “3 lessons on decision-making from a poker champion,” discussing luck versus skill, expressing beliefs as probabilities and the limits of intuition.⁠[12]

Then a PokerStars Team Pro, she argued in the talk that poker had changed so that top players could no longer rely on pure intuition but on slow, careful analysis.⁠[13]

On November 30, 2018, she published an article on Bayes’s theorem in Vox; her author note described her as a science communicator and TV host specializing in astrophysics, rationality and poker.⁠[14]

In November 2019 she and Igor Kurganov left Team PokerStars; she wrote on X that she had played little in the past year and had shifted to giving talks and creating science, rationality and effective-altruism content.⁠[15]

The two were in a relationship; by then she had accumulated over $3.8 million in tournament winnings.⁠[16]

On August 2, 2022, The Tim Ferriss Show published episode 611 with her, introducing her as a TV host and YouTuber focused on game theory, futurism and rationality.⁠[4]

On August 24, 2022, she appeared on episode 314 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, introduced as a poker champion and science educator on game theory, physics and complexity; topics included poker and game theory, bluffing, the simulation hypothesis, Moloch, existential risks, AI and aliens.⁠[17]

In October 2022 she gave a keynote at the SAS Explore technology event; in an interview she said she first focused on poker because it paid more than an entry-level job and helped pay off student loans, and that big decisions should rest mainly on analysis with intuition only as a supplement.⁠[3]

In March 2023 she appeared on the Future of Life Institute podcast to discuss Moloch, beauty filters, game theory, institutional change and artificial intelligence.⁠[18]

On November 2, 2023, the Clearer Thinking podcast introduced her as an educator and researcher at the intersection of game theory, technology and catastrophic risk reduction, then focused mainly on risks from AI and other exponential technologies, and as a co-founder of REG.⁠[19]

On November 1, 2025, she published “Factory Farming is a Blight” in Palladium, arguing that factory farming has made the present the worst time in history to be a domesticated animal; her author note said she hosts the Win-Win podcast.⁠[2]

As of October 2026 her website describes her as a researcher, strategist and creator studying the intersection of game theory, physics, AI and risk; she hosts the conversation series Win-Win and states that she has personally donated more than $500,000 to farm animal welfare.⁠[20]

Personal website: Public link: https://www.livboeree.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[18]

X: Public account: https://x.com/Liv_Boeree (opens in a new window)⁠[17]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/@LivBoeree (opens in a new window)⁠[20]

Win-Win: Official website: https://www.winwinpodcast.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[20]

Raising for Effective Giving: Official website: https://reg-charity.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[8]