The Heart of Poker Podcast

In case you haven’t noticed after 26 episodes, Heart of Poker is about a lot more than just poker. We’ve had incredible guests from the top of the game share insights into their lives off the felt, including some of their most personal and intimate moments and struggles they’ve overcome. Enter Xuan Liu. Over a star studded career in poker Xuan has won over $3,000,000, but these days she’s just as...

Patrick Leonard is an online superstar. He has collected ​​$13 million in online tournament cashes so far, regularly just crushing online MTT fields. He’s no slouch on the felt either, with more than $2.5 million in live tournament cashes. That’s a huge amount of money in anyone’s book - even if money is ultimately irrelevant and we’re all just living in a simulation. That’s just one of the pretty...

Quite simply, Fedor Holz is one of the best poker players of all time and one of the most emblematic players of poker’s modern era. At just 28 years old, Fedor has more than $32,000,000 in live cashes alone. What makes all of this even more remarkable, is that poker is just one string to Fedor’s bow. As Kara says in this episode, he’s a true modern day Renaissance man and he’s a dream guest on Hea...

Ebony Kenney is so much more than just a poker pro. She’s a model and a content creator. She’s an entrepreneur, a women's advocate and a life coach. And this week she’s joining Kara on Heart of Poker. Heart of Poker is all about stripping back the layers and getting to, well, the heart of each guest - and Ebony couldn’t be more open to the experience. Kara uses a specially modified set of question...

This week’s guest on Heart of Poker is one of the biggest and warmest personalities in the extended world of poker. Kristy Arnett is a poker player and former poker journalist, but she is still very much in the world of media and content creation. As she mentions in the episode, Heart of Poker is right up Kristy’s street. Over her career presenting poker coverage for PokerNews and others, she deve...

It’s an exciting time to be Vanessa Kade. Fresh off by far her biggest win after taking down $1.5 million dollars at the Sunday Million, Vanessa sits down with Kara to discuss how she got to this point in her poker career. It’s been quite a journey - from moving to New Zealand alone at 16, to travelling around South East Asia and even a near death experience on an icey Canadian highway. As always...

Heart of Poker is a podcast built around guests opening up and letting Kara into their personal lives - but this episode is something else. Right from the off, Kara and Ali dive into some of the biggest questions of all, from spirituality to dealing with loved ones passing away. For the first time ever in public, Ali talks with grace and clarity about dealing with personal tragedies and grief earl...

With the 888poker WPTDeepstakes events beginning just around the corner on April 15th, Kara is talking to yet another of the most recognizable voices from the World Poker Tour. It feels like Vince Van Patten has already lived a couple of lifetimes’ worth of experiences. He’s been a professional tennis player, a Hollywood actor and screenwriter, and now a beloved poker personality. But this intervi...

In honor of the first ever WPTDeepstacks and 888poker online collaboration (April 18-26th on 888poker), Kara speaks to professional poker player and WPT commentator Tony Dunst. If you’ve ever tuned into a WPT broadcast, Tony’s voice is going to be instantly familiar. Only this time, instead of analyzing bet sizing and ranges, he’s answering Kara’s special menu of “36 Questions to Fall in Love”. To...

We are thrilled that Episode 18 of Heart of Poker is our first ever family sequel! Last week we had Phil Galfond answer Kara’s set of specially designed psychological questions, and this week it’s the turn of his wife Farah Fath Galfond. Farah is lucky (and talented) enough to have made it in two separate careers: acting and high stakes poker. She starred in Days of Our Lives for almost a decade,...

Phil Galfond is one of the most thoughtful and interesting people in poker, and his wide ranging personality is plain to see in the latest episode of Heart of Poker. Phil is an OG in online poker and his PLO Galfond Challenge matches against some of the best players in the game have become legendary over the last few years. He’s also got 3 WSOP bracelets for good measure. Using her menu of psychol...

Few people have seen more of the poker world than Mori Eskandani, albeit Mori has done most of it from behind the camera. Known as "Uncle Mori" to players and crew, Eskandani is the visionary behind many of poker's most iconic television broadcasts. A poker player himself, Mori is also a long-time friend and mentor of Kara Scott. In this episode of Heart of Poker, Mori shares fascinating stories f...

Televised poker was a phenomenon and it drove the game's growth for years. Poker on YouTube is no less a force and in this episode of Heart of Poker, we talk to one of its pioneers. Andrew Neeme has been vlogging about poker for almost a decade and he puts it all out there on his channel. Even so, he told Kara Scott that this was the most personal interview he's ever done. As someone that makes a...

Poker Hall of Famer Jennifer Harman has seen it all. As one of the few women to battle her way into the high-stakes Las Vegas poker scene, she knows firsthand how exciting and challenging the poker world can be. We're so excited to have her on the Heart of Poker and even more excited to dig into her life away from the felt. Harman is an organ-transplant survivor and in this candid interview with K...

We are SO excited to have Vicky Coren on the podcast. An accomplished writer, television personality and a massively successful live poker tournament player, Coren is one of the most intriguing guests we've had the chance to speak with so far. In this far-ranging and intimate interview, Coren is famous in the poker world for being one of the only people to win two EPT championships, and the only w...

Next up on the Heart of Poker Podcast by 888poker is the one and only Jennifer Shahade. Competitive chess player, poker pro and podcast host, Jennifer is one of the most interesting and engaging characters in the poker world today. In this episode, Kara and Jennifer have a far-ranging conversation that touches on tons of interesting topics. How will AI and data-mining change relationships in the f...

On the latest episode of the Heart of Poker Podcast, Kara speaks with ultra high-stakes poker pro Jason Koon. Known best for his huge high roller wins and his ability to compete and win against the best poker players on the planet, Jason is also an extremely thoughtful and down-to-earth human. Don't judge a book by its cover. Jason Koon might look like a tough guy, and he is, but he's also very ta...

Poker pro, podcaster, broadcaster ... political activist? Jamie Kerstetter is all over the poker scene. In this episode of Heart of Poker, Kara Scott goes in-depth with the woman who won Twitter personality of the year at the Global Poker Awards. Kara and Jamie are long-time friends and their bond makes for an intimate and fascinating conversation that goes way beyond the poker table. Kara' probin...

We're so excited to welcome American poker pro and entrepreneur Faraz Jaka to the Heart of Poker. Faraz is an outstanding candidate for this podcast. He's intelligent, thoughtful and has more interesting experiences every year than a lot of people capture in a decade. If you've listened to the show before, you know it's not your average poker interview. Our goal is to get to know the people behind...

British poker legend Barny Boatman doesn't always open up in interviews, which is why this episode of The Heart of Poker is so special. To put it mildly, Boatman has seen a thing or two during his decades as a poker pro. It turns out that his personal life was just as varied and compelling. According to Wikipedia, Boatman has worked as a bartender, builder, English teacher, journalist, computer pr...

You might think you know poker pro Danielle Andersen. After all, her life was explored in-depth in the documentary Bet, Raise, Fold. We love that documentary but with all due respect (and humility), this podcast episode is 1,000 times better. Kara and Danielle have been friends for a long time and their familiarity with and trust in each other is obvious right from the jump. This conversation goes...

Dominik Nitsche and Kara Scott have known each other for a long time which is probably why this episode of the Heart of Poker is instantly one of the most candid so far. The high-stakes tournament pro has a lot to say and for once, not much of it is directly about poker. Dominik opens up on a long list of topics, some of which he's never talked about in interviews before. Stories, honest feelings...

Kara Scott's next guest on the Heart of Poker Podcast is David Williams. If you've followed his career, you'll know that Williams is anything but boring. He was runner-up in the 2004 WSOP Main Event and a finalist on Season 7 of Masterchef. In this interview we learned that he's also very comfortable participating in deep conversations. Kara and David cover a lot of ground. The questions range fro...

In the fourth episode of The Heart of Poker Podcast, Kara Scott interviews poker VLogger extraordinaire Brad Owen. Brad's poker YouTube channel has almost 200,000 subscribers and his videos get millions of views so he's no stranger to opening up to the audience. Nevertheless, this is far and away Brad's most personal and revealing interview ever. Kara has tweaked the questions developed by psychol...

If you're a fan of Vanessa Selbst, this is a must-listen interview. It runs the gamut from fun topics like how Vanessa would fare in a zombie apocalypse (horribly) to much more personal revelations about being a first-time mom with a second baby on the way, mortality, life goals and much more. Selbst is one of the most interesting players in poker, hands down. She's a Yale-educated lawyer with alm...