Liv Boeree retired from professional poker in 2019 soon after her breakout TED talk (3 Lessons on Decision-Making from a Poker Champion) and is now focused on speaking, broadcasting/content creating, philanthropy and her popular podcast, Win-Win.
She has a passion for education especially when it comes to inspiring others with the rational thinking techniques she has learned through both poker and Effective Altruism.
In December of 2024, Liv Boeree was invited to play in the World Series of Poker Paradise at The Atlantis Hotel in the Bahamas. She made it through to the final table of The Super Main Event. She placed fourth, scooping an incredible $2.8m. This impressive win not only catapulted Liv into fourth place on the woman’s all-time money list (overtaking Maria Ho, and sitting only behind Vanessa Selbst, Kristen Foxen, and Kathy Liebert), but also saw her break the record for the biggest-ever cash by a female poker player. (Previously $2,013,733 held by Annette Obrestad.)
Liv first caught the poker bug when she was picked to take part in a reality poker TV show in the UK back in 2005. Soon after she became a regular host on various poker coverage shows, and it wasn’t long before she was making waves at the table herself. Liv’s first major live cash came when she won the European Ladies Championship in 2008 for $42,000, followed by a string of other impressive money finishes at events around the world. Highlights included an impressive run at the 2009 Five Star World Poker Classic in Las Vegas, where she final tabled two side tournaments and made a top 40 finish in the $25,000 WPT Championship Main Event.
Then came the moment that would change Liv’s life forever, and make the poker world give her the credit her game deserves. Liv travelled to Italy to play at the European Poker Tour (EPT) Season 6 Sanremo event in 2010 – a tournament that proved to be one of the biggest ever, with a packed field of 1,240 runners. After days of intense action, Liv found herself on the final table, and duly went on to crush the remaining players to take the title and a massive $1,698,300 payday, confirming Liv’s status as one of the finest players the UK has ever produced.
Born in Kent, now residing in Austin Texas, Liv is a self-confessed nerd with a first-class degree in astrophysics from Manchester University. Liv combined her science background and passion for games to become one of the most recognizable faces in professional poker before going on to be a globally in demand speaker, content creator and philanthropist.
Are you having problems making decisions in your business? Like poker, business is a game of high-stakes decisions under uncertainty. As a poker player, Liv earned over 4 million dollars making high-stakes decisions. In this riveting talk, Liv explores the thinking techniques of top poker players. Audiences will come away learning how to reduce cognitive bias, control their emotions, and use intuition in their decision-making.
Competition has been a driving force for humans since the dawn of time. It can push us to achieve greatness, to create and innovate in ways we never thought possible. But as with all things, there is a dark side to competition as well.
The world of game theory has given birth to what is known as “Moloch’s trap.” This dangerous force is responsible for many of the social problems that plague our society today.
And now, it threatens to derail the entire AI industry. Scientist and poker champion Liv introduces us to this powerful concept, seeking to shine a light on the destructive force that competition can become, and the dangers that lurk behind the veneer of victory.
We live in an increasingly complex and uncertain world. Your business faces uncertainty in markets, energy, and politics. So how can you keep your sense-making capabilities in top shape? Drawing from her background in science, poker, and applied rationality, Liv explains how to upgrade your prediction skills. Audiences will learn how to use expected value thinking and the Bayes Rule to predict what happens next.
Women are underrepresented in boardrooms and leadership positions. So how can a woman succeed when there is a bias against them? As a female professional poker player, heavy metal enthusiast, and physics graduate, Liv is very accustomed to being the only girl in the room. In this talk, Liv discusses the pros and cons of being a woman in a male-dominated industry and the techniques she used to succeed.
Artificial Intelligence is poised to be the most impactful technological breakthrough of the 21st century. Games are a great way of measuring its progress. In just a few decades, algorithms have advanced from rudimentary tic-tac-toe solvers of the 1950s to powerful AI defeating world champions in notoriously complex games. In this talk, Liv explores what sets these technologies apart from the human mind, and what their implications are for our future.
Philanthropy is undergoing a scientific revolution. Previously, charity and the act of “doing good” was a fuzzy, unmeasurable concept that most people felt couldn’t — or maybe even shouldn’t — be evaluated or compared. But nowadays, improved data and evidence allows us to better measure the impact of our philanthropic actions. In this illuminating talk, Liv discusses how, and why, we should prioritize between cause areas, and how we can maximize the positive impact we want to achieve on the world.
How far does the Earth stretch if you cut it into one metre cubes and lay them out in one long line? When is a positive medical test result still more likely to be false than it is to be true? And which likelihoods are closer together: 50% and 1%, or 1% and 0%? Prepare to have your mind blown as Liv explores fascinating counterintuitive concepts that defy our deepest instincts.
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