HOI AN, VIETNAM — Jeff Sluzinski sits still in silence, two cameras trained on his face. More than 24 hours through multiple airports, security lines, and customs officials have taken him from his home in Las Vegas, where he resides as a professional poker player, to a Korean barbeque restaurant in Hoi An, Vietnam.
One of the cameraman calls for action. Sluzinski, or Jeff Boski as he’s better known on his many social media channels, launches quickly into a freestyle stream of consciousness that lasts throughout his 30-minute meal of wagyu steak.
Boski seamlessly transitions from multiple topics: the benefits of marbling in steak, the Maillard reaction’s role in creating sear, the dangers of consuming ice for tourists in Vietnam, and his recent exploits in spending $125,000 in entry fees for poker tournaments over the past week.
He’s competing for prizes well north of a million dollars as part of the Triton Super High Roller poker series, comprising 15 tournaments staged in the casino downstairs over the next two weeks.
MORE: Results, schedule for Triton Poker Super High Roller Series
Boski’s not a regular on the high stakes poker scene, or a food critic for that matter. But he takes whatever life throws at him, filming what his life is like along the way. The fact that he struggles to even order a bottle of water in Vietnamese hasn’t stopped him from throwing himself into these recent challenges. He’s come too far to quit now.
The beginnings of Boski’s poker journey are fairly common among his peers. Growing to love the game after watching Chris Moneymaker take down the World Series of Poker on ESPN back in 2003, Boski quickly grew his skill level playing in home games with friends and online tournaments. He eventually got good enough to quit his job as a manager at a call center and drop out of college.
In 2008, Boski moved out to Las Vegas to see if he could cut it as a professional poker player.
“I had barely any money, but I said f– it,” Boski said.
Anyone who has been in poker as long as Boski knows that the journey never goes smoothly. There were some big successes along the way. He started off on a high note, winning over $100,000 in a week of online tournaments in August of that first year.
Downswings as big as 20 or 30 thousand dollars eventually led him back down to his last $1000. He went back to grinding out $6 tournaments online, earning about $10 an hour and trying to get ahead of his bills until his next big score. The ebbs and flows of a career as a poker player continued for years.
There’s a saying in poker that players don’t get into the profession because it’s easy. Rather, they do it because they thought it would be easy.
The grind of playing 4000 poker tournaments online per year was starting to catch up to Boski. At times, he considered transitioning to something else.
That's when Boski first saw fellow Las Vegas poker player Andrew Neeme documenting his day-to-day life on YouTube, around the end of 2016. Neeme is widely credited with helping to launch an industry of poker vlogs that have spread like wildfire among the community. Boski would not be far behind. When he started his poker vlog in 2017, he was one of handful. Now, there are hundreds following in those footsteps.
Boski never expected for his channel to gain interest in the way that it did.
“I made it to show my mom, this is what it’s like to play a poker tournament. She’d always wonder how I’m doing. Like, how I’m really doing.”
Poker vlogs from Neeme, Boski, and others exploded in popularity over the next few years. Today, Brad Owen leads the poker community with over 600,000 subscribers on his channel. Boski still maintains one of the more popular ones, with 50,000 subscribers.
After he passed the 1,000 subscriber mark, his channel started to become monetized, allowing him to take some of the pressure off having to earn a living solely on the felt. It wasn't much, but it was a start to something bigger.
“Everyone has different revenue based on their audience,” Boski explains. “A general guideline [for poker vloggers] would be around $2,000 per million views in a given month.”
Boski eventually added a popular Twitch stream alongside his YouTube channel, where viewers could follow alongside him while he played in poker tournaments online.
“If you want to see what it’s like to play online poker for a living, or see how I turn $10 into $1,000 some nights, I’m still streaming at 5 or 6 Pacific Time almost every night.”
For hours on most nights, Boski loads up multiple tournaments on his computer screen and narrates his thought processes to his viewers or answers questions that they pose to him in chat. For some, it's unnerving to open themselves up to criticism. Boski thrives off it.
"It keeps me focused, in the zone. I think it makes me play better now. If I f– up, everybody’s watching and they’ll let me know I f–ed up."
Like his poker vlogs on YouTube, Boski had an early mover advantage in building up his poker Twitch streaming channel. Even with his 24,000 subscribers, he doesn't make much money from the company.
“If you stream a hundred hours a month with a hundred viewers, you’d be lucky to make a thousand bucks a month,” Boski says.
But there are other benefits if you’re willing to hustle. And like poker, YouTube, and Twitch, Boski knows how to play that game too.
Boski’s Twitch and YouTube audiences have allowed him to parlay his influence into a sponsorship deal with poker site America’s Cardroom. He was a first-mover there too.
“I took the initiative,” Boski said of the arrangement. He asked if the site sponsored any pros. When they revealed that they did not, Boski suggested that he’d make an excellent addition to help promote them. He’s now been there for five years, and they’ve expanded their sponsored player list to 12 members.
“It’s about getting your hands in a lot of pies,” Boski explains. Along with his revenue from YouTube, Twitch, and America’s Cardroom ("use promo code 'BOSKI' to sign up," he urges), he also promotes a poker training site called Raise Your Edge, CBD company Viva Oils, clothing line Kounterfeit, and a strip club in Vegas called Peppermint Hippo.
When Boski first started learning the game back in Michigan 20 years ago, he couldn’t imagine where he would be today. Moneymaker, the man he watched on TV to bring his interest into the game, is now one of his peers as a fellow sponsored professional player at America’s Cardroom. And Boski’s gone from $6 buyins on his home computer up to $50,000 buy-in tournaments in Vietnam without batting an eyelash.
Boski had won his tournament entry fees on America's Cardroom prior to arrriving in Vietnam. He blew through the first $100,000 of those fees without a single dollar to show for his efforts during the first week of the tournament series.
On the last tournament that he planned to play, Boski went back to the cashier, his final $25,000 that he brought for his trip in tow. He sat still for a moment in silence. And then he dove headfirst against 104 of the best minds in poker.
Ten hours later, he was eliminated from the tournament in seventh place, earning him $121,000. It was the biggest score of his life and took him over $1 million in career live tournament cashes. For Boski, it was another day in the office, and one that his viewers will live alongside him when he puts the journey on YouTube when he returns home.
The life of a professional poker player may seem full of intrigue to those out of the know. But get to watch Boski's videos, and you realize that he's a regular guy who has made it to extraordinary places in life by being willing to go a little bit outside of his comfort zone.
“It’s humbling to have that much reach. What makes me so special that people want to watch this? It’s amazing to me. That’s the coolest thing.”
