Juneau’s Jeremy Hamey has gone from making jumpers to making a living at the poker table.
The former Alaska high school basketball star is having a career year as a professional poker player based in Los Angeles, where this week he won back-to-back tournaments and bagged his fourth five-figure payout of 2024.
On Sunday, Hamey won the Fall Kickoff Poker Tournament at Larry Flynt’s Lucky Lady Casino in No-Limit Hold’em to rake in $12,500. The next day he won the Big O Tournament in the game of Omaha for cool $1,800.
“I have played tournament poker for 15 years but really became a pro in the last two years,” said Hamey, 50. “The hobby turned into something serious as I got better and better.”
Hamey’s career earnings have exceeded $240,000, including the $25,000 he pocketed after his top-900 finish out of 10,112 players at the World Series of Poker Main Event in Las Vegas.
His biggest payday of $35,00 came in 2022 after a fifth-place finish at the No Limit Hold’em Big Poker Oktober at Bell Gardens in Los Angeles.
Thirty years ago, Hamey was a two-time first team all-state guard for Juneau-Douglas High School who went on to play for NCAA Division III Southern Maine University.
“When my playing and coaching years ended, I found tournament poker a way to satisfy my competitive itch,” he said.
Today, he plays four to five days a week at Los Angeles area casinos and hits up Vegas from time to time, most notably for the WSOP.
“Thankfully I have a very supportive wife who is amazing,” he said. “Her name is Estela. We recently got married.”
Hamey is always running into fellow Alaskans in Lower 48 card rooms, including Anchorage’s Adam Hendrix, the most accomplished poker player from Alaska with career earnings of nearly $7 million.
“I talk with Adam. He is not just the best player ever from Alaska – respect to Perry Green – but the ‘Ice Man’ is currently one of the best players in the world,” Hamey said. “There are many great players in Alaska, particularly in the Anchorage area.
“There is definitely a kinship with Alaskan players. I regularly meet my Alaskan friends at the WSOP for dinner and stuff.”
• This story was originally published by the Alaska Sports Report.
