Brandon Wilson didn’t set out to become a poker player.
He set out to become a journalist.
Which meant doing the things journalism majors dream about when they’re sitting in college lecture halls imagining their future. Writing stories. Reporting the news. Maybe someday being on TV.
He went to Northwestern.
Graduated from one of the best journalism schools in the world.
Interned at Al Jazeera in Qatar.
That internship went… mostly well.
Except for the time he almost got arrested on the way to the gym.
Jet lagged. Early morning. Brandon leaves his dorm wearing a sleeveless workout shirt—the kind of thing nobody thinks twice about in Chicago.
But this was Qatar.
Within minutes security stopped him.
Apparently walking outside in a sleeveless shirt wasn’t exactly acceptable.
He didn’t get arrested… but he did get escorted back to his room and told to change before leaving again.
A small cultural misunderstanding.
But not the weirdest one.
A few days later he borrowed one of the public bikes on campus to ride across the street for a haircut.
While he’s sitting in the barber chair—half his head shaved—three police officers walk in.
“Is this your bike?”
Brandon says yes.
They drive him back across campus in the back of a pickup truck to return it.
Turns out those bikes weren’t allowed to leave Education City.
Sleeveless shirts. Bike theft.
The journalism career was off to a roaring start.
And then something strange happened.
Brandon graduated with honors… and realized he didn’t want to be a journalist.
Not really.
So he did what a lot of confused twenty-two-year-olds do.
He tried everything.
First: acting school.
Then: music.
A friend invited him down to New Orleans where he started rapping and singing on tracks. They even had a small record deal and some traction in the local scene.
But there was a problem.
He was broke.
Not struggling artist broke.
Negative money broke.
So he walked away from music.
Next came yoga.
He discovered a studio in New Orleans called Swan River Yoga and fell in love with meditation and teaching. Eventually he got certified, moved back to Chicago, and started teaching classes.
Finally—something that felt right.
And then COVID hit.
The yoga studio closed.
Classes moved to Zoom.
And suddenly Brandon had a lot of time.
So he started playing poker online.
$10 tournaments.
No grand plan. Just something to pass the time.
But the game hooked him.
Hard.
He started studying obsessively. Running solver trees. Writing down every hand he didn’t understand. Hours and hours every day trying to answer one question:
“What was the correct play?”
Most people quit poker after a bad run.
Brandon ran hot early.
Which meant he never had to quit.
One tweet eventually changed everything.
High-stakes pro Dominik Nitsche posted something along the lines of:
“Everyone sucks at poker.”
Brandon saw it, bought Dom’s DTO course, joined the Discord… and suddenly found himself surrounded by serious players studying the game.
Soon after he played his first live tournaments.
Then he started selling action and taking shots in bigger events.
Then he started final tabling them.
Fast forward a few years and the former journalism intern / rapper / yoga teacher now has:
♠️ Over $11,000,000 in live tournament earnings
♥️ A Triton $50K runner-up for over $1M
♦️ Wins in major European high-roller events
♣️ One of the most feared reputations in tournament poker
And the thing that separates him from most players?
Preparation.
Brandon says he’s written down every single poker hand he’s ever had a question about.
Every one.
Then he runs them in solvers.
Sometimes hours of simulations just to answer one decision.
It’s tedious.
It’s unsexy.
And it’s probably why he’s sitting at $125K final tables now.
When we asked him what drives him, his answer was simple:
“If I’m doing something, I want to be the best at it.”
Not for ego.
Just because if you’re not trying to win… why play?
That mindset took him from grinding $10 tournaments during lockdown to battling the best players in the world at Triton events.
And somehow it all started with a yoga teacher stuck inside during COVID.
Poker is weird like that.
If you’re new around here: every week (or so) we pull a gambler out of their seat at the table and ask how they got there.
This week Brandon walks through the entire journey—from journalism student… to rapper… to meditation teacher… to high-stakes poker pro.
Along the way we talk about:
• Getting called a “cancer” in his first live poker game
• The solver study process that shaped his career
• What it feels like to play $125K tournaments
• Why he refuses to coach players (for now)
• The preparation required to compete at the top of poker
It’s one of the more unusual origin stories we’ve heard.
And in poker that’s saying something.
Before you click play:
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🎧 Listen / Watch
Broke Rapper to Chip Stacker
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See you next week!
— Art & Justin
🃏 @artparmann & @justinyoung07
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