Meet Alexandra Botez: Chess Master and Newest GGPoker Ambassador!
GGPoker revealed last week the name of their new brand ambassador, and she is not quite unfamiliar to the poker crowd! Alexandra Botez, a Chess greatness from Dallas, became an online streamer in 2016, with currently over 1,000,000 followers. Not too long ago, she set her eyes on taking it up against the world of poker!
Botez was born in Dallas in 1995, as her parents settled down in Vancouver after emigrating from Romania. She has a younger sister as well, called Andrea, and with her, she started the successful stream channel ‘BotezLive’.
While studying at the University of Dallas, she became the president of the Chess club. In 2013, she became FIDE champion. FIDE, widely known in the chess community, is an international organization established in 1924 in Paris, France. Nowadays, FIDE unites 191 national federations from all across the world and is the perfect place to compete against both- amateurs and professionals. Following the ranking of FIDE, Botez now has a rating in Standard Chess of 1986, and a career-high Blitz ranking of 2066.
Between 2013 and 2016, she was rated over 2090 in Standard Chess.
What Brings a Chess Master Into Poker?
It is not uncommon for chess players to take a shot in the world of poker. The world’s number one chess player, Magnus Carlsen, is known for competing in live- and online poker games around the world.
Chess players have great minds and are often multiple steps ahead of their opponents, but that doesn’t make them automatically successful in poker. There is still a lot of knowledge to gain when entering another game completely blank, but it's not unthinkable that chess players have an advantage over non-chess players who enter poker games for the first time, just because of their great mind(set) and all that comes with it.
Alexandra Botez on a Poker Mission
Alexandra Botez entered the poker world a couple of years ago, during the COVID-19 period. Since then, she has starred in one of the world’s greatest cash games such as Hustler Casino Live, where she competed against Tom Dwan, Mr. Beast, Phil Helmuth, and other major influencers. She also starred in Season 13 of Poker After Dark.
Where her live tournament results are not extraordinarily rare, with ten cashes within 3-years time, she is definitely a player who is on a mission. In February 2023, she secured her first victory in a $550 Hyper Turbo tournament, beating a field of 79 entries, and taking home the trophy and $10,815.
After having promoted several other poker operators, Botez is now officially a member of the GGPoker Ambassador Team. With the help of poker talent Landon Tice, and top regular Chance Kornuth, she is making incredible steps in her game, all to become successful in poker, just like she does in chess.
The way GGPoker revealed her ambassadorship was quite the thing, having Canadian poker revelation, and GGPoker ambassador, Daniel Negreanu daring her for a Heads-Up match to introduce her to the world as a member of the GGPoker team.
Heads-up Against Daniel Negreanu
During the Heads-Up match, she explained to Daniel that she came in touch with poker because of her father, who is actually a big fan of Daniel Negreanu. Not only does Botez answer some very great questions from Daniel, but she also fires back with great questions and tries to let Daniel give some tips about ‘reads and tells’ in poker.
She does recognize in the interview, that she is still new to the game. And then the comparison with chess comes. She mentioned she played 3x at the World Series of Poker, and at all times she busted out of the tournament with pocket Kings.
The swing in emotions of poker is the toughest part for her she admits, while Negreanu confesses to not fully having his emotions under control in certain spots either.
Chess is her main sport, and she will keep on competing at the highest level, despite her focus on poker nowadays.
We from PokerListings, are confident enough to say that Alexandra Botez is a really good signing for GGPoker. If that is because she brings a whole new community in touch with poker, or of the chance of becoming very successful in poker, people start hesitating, but we won’t!
Welcome to the world of poker, Alexandra Botez!
