The Sharks Who Moved Upstream: How 2025's Most Dominant Poker Players Diversified Beyond the Tables

When thinking of your typical professional poker player, it’s easy to conjure up the image of a cool customer in shades and a hoodie who never leaves the felt of the poker table.

Yet spend any time following 2026’s most successful players, and a different picture may come to mind.

Poker’s sharpest minds are now putting their skills to wider use by building broader casino gaming portfolios so that they can rely on several income streams rather than just one. It turns out that the same analytical edge can be applied elsewhere.

But where are the smartest players taking their skills and what can we learn from them? This article seeks to find out.

What the top pros are actually playing away from the poker table

Top poker players tend to look for areas that hold a lot in common with their favorite game.

Phil Ivey is perhaps the most famous example of a poker mind making waves in another field. He started competing in high-stakes baccarat and even got involved in legal clashes with some casinos that accused him of “edge sorting” — a technique where a player identifies tiny imperfections in card backs to determine their value before they're revealed — during important matches. Legal proceedings ended in July 2020 after six years.

Beyond this, streamers Kevin Martin and Lex Veldhuis have built lucrative partnerships with casino brands across sports betting and live casino verticals as part of a wave of players who are branching out into other casino areas.

Meanwhile Bryn Kenney took a different route entirely, co-founding 4Poker and expanding into staking other players, diversifying at the industry level, not just the table level.

It appears the lines between poker ambassador and casino partner is now more blurred than ever.

Where US players are finding the best of both worlds

Diversifying into other areas isn’t so simple for top US poker pros. The US market is famous for its regulatory patchwork, with rules varying from state to state.

Finding casinos that offer both a serious poker product and a full range of compliant casino games is much harder, and thus more difficult to secure new commercial deals.

This, however, is changing. A whole generation of new USA online casinos are gathering momentum that are both fully compliant with local regulations and seek to serve players a broad gaming range. These are independently reviewed options that cover everything from game variety and software quality to banking speed and bonus structure.

This type of all-in-one ecosystem is important. It lets them both practice their poker discipline and explore fresh opportunities, all without leaving a trusted platform.

Why poker skills transfer so well

Many elite poker players get to where they are because of a unique skill set out of the reach of most people. These skills are valuable across the gambling world, whether for games of chance or skill.

Bankroll management is an obvious area. The top poker pros know how to calculate risk and protect their capital – this lets them survive those inevitable downswings that come along. They can assess sports markets accurately and play other card tables with clear strategies.

Poker pros are also masters of emotional control. They’ve spent years learning not to chase losses or abandon their logic after one bad session. Most gambling environments are best met with this type of mentality.

Top players also get how expected value works. They can see the full long-term picture rather than just the short-term wins that casual players get so obsessed with.

Building brands beyond the game

Many modern pros have taken diversification to the next level so that it’s now more about who they are than simply what they play.

Streaming, coaching, content creation, and brand partnerships are all now popular income streams for household poker names. These have become just as lucrative as actual tournaments, something extremely useful during quieter stretches on the live circuit.

Take Lex Veldhuis, for example. The Dutch pro and PokerStars ambassador has built a streaming operation that now spans Twitch, Kick and YouTube – and his Twitch income alone is reported to exceed $294,000 annually, before sponsorship deals are factored in. That figure surpasses what most mid-stakes tournament players earn from the felt in a year.

Many poker figures now operate more like entrepreneurs than gamblers, with staff that negotiate sponsorships, and build businesses around their expertise.

What casual players can learn

Most people don’t get to play in the famous “nosebleed” poker games or multi-million-dollar tournaments, but they can still learn some lessons from poker’s sharks.

The first is not to rely on one game. The skills that make us a useful poker player can be applied to other games, which may just open a new door for us in the future. Spreading our skills in this way also makes us more resilient to downswings.

Secondly, discipline should come before excitement. Yes, we play for fun, but if we want to stay in the game as long as possible, be it poker or any other, it’s important to control impulses – just like the top pros.

Finally, we should always be ready to adapt. The players who stay ahead are rarely the ones who stand still.