“Hey Liv, wanna come play deep-stacked cash against some sickos on TV in a couple of weeks?”

As a long-time tourney player with comparatively little cash experience, this question gave me a twang of apprehension. Obviously not one to often turn down an opportunity for major TV exposure, I said yes. Reminiscent to my schooldays as a slacking, last-minute-approach teenager, it was time to do some homework, and fast.

I started off by jumping in some $2/5 Zoom games and playing a few thousand hands. I then marked off all of my speculative/interesting hands on Hold’em Manager and did some major post-game analysis with Igor Kurganov, who I’m sure you know is a bit of a beast at poker. It was a hell of a steep learning curve in such a short space of time, but my confidence was massively renewed and it was time to go to New York to play.

The show is called Poker Night in America and these episodes were filmed at the Turning Stone casino in the leafy Upstate. The line-up was stacked with banter, including Shaun Deeb, Phil Hellmuth, Jen Tilly, Antonio Esfandiari, Jesse Sylvia, Igor and Phil Laak to name a few.

I’m not going to give too many spoilers, but I can report that my homework paid off nicely, especially in a couple of hands against my favourite poker needler, Shaun! However, the highlight of the weekend was playing guitar again for the first time in years, and on stage with a full, and very talented band! We’d squeezed in a quick practice during the cash-game dinner break, and as expected, my right and left hands no longer communicated with their harmonious union of yesteryear. Nonetheless, a couple shots of JD gave me fuel to take the stage. If you want to see (and hear!) the results, here you go:

Hey, at least there was a fire backdrop. Rock on.

Liv Boeree is a member of Team PokerStars Pro

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