Ylva Thorsrud
Ylva Thorsrud is a professional poker player and streamer from Norway, who is also an ambassador for online poker website Coolbet. For more than a decade she is an active player in the live circuit as well as in the online felts. Being the Norwegian Ladies Champion of Poker in 2021 is just one of many achievements she managed to collect throughout the years. By showing off her skills at the virtual tables through her stream, she is a real asset to the poker community in general.
Poker Career
Ylva started playing poker while working as sales manager back in 2005, just after the Chris Moneymaker poker boom. The first period she initially only played online freerolls, until the moment she came in touch with live poker roughly a year later. By discovering various communities, she fell instantly in love with the game and has played ever since. Also, she started to write a blog about her adventures such as a travelling and live poker, this gave a perfect view of how someone is experiencing the first baby-steps in poker. And more importantly, she went full-time as of 2007. Never did she had any other job on the side, so she is doing decently well for herself in the poker industry.
Her first registered live results came in 2008 by competing during the Norwegian Championships 2008 in Nottingham, UK. Many of such championships are being held elsewhere as Norway, due to the restrictions by the Norwegian gaming commission. The next three results came in the following years, ironically enough during the Norwegian Championships as well. Within this year she also managed to get a sponsorship deal with Unibet, which allowed her to visit some of the Unibet Open stops.
From the get-go she started to combine No-Limit Hold’em with PLO, and eventually it turned out that she became a decent mixed-games player. As we all know, changing your gears within the poker industry is sometimes just inevitable. So did Ylva when she started to focus more in mixed games the past two years. It is a common aspect within a player’s career, to become stuck in something for too long. She mentioned to us that it became a bit ‘lazy’, playing games which, she had been playing for that long already.
When looking at her results in the live poker scene, you can see she has dozens of results in all different kind of formats. From Pot-Limit Omaha Hi/Lo to Omaha 4/5/6 cards, from No-Limit Hold’em to 8-Game. All with buy-ins from as low as $30 all the way up to $10,000 (World Series of Poker Main Event + European Poker Tour Main Event). In 2020 she collaborated with Coolbet, being an ambassador for the poker games.
Just recently she managed to scoop her biggest win with a $11K score during the $1K Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo during the European Poker Tour in Prague, where she eventually finished 3rd. With over 800 live tournament participations this might seem a bit on the lower side, but her main income is being collected at the cash games, throughout all her career.
Streaming on Twitch as ‘jevakim’
When the pandemic hit our planet earth, it also struck Norway. Ylva was stuck at home and being alone with her dog wasn’t the most ideal situation. As innovative as she is in the poker scene, she decided to start streaming her online poker games. We know her as a very social person, and you can instantly make this remark when you are checking out her streams.
Whenever she is playing online poker, she is turning up the stream as well. Since February 2020 she has streamed for over 3000 hours. That’s roughly 3 hours every single day until this very day. Just imagine! The reason why she does stream is the main thing she loves in poker, community. She interacts with her audience at any time.
Another interesting fact about her is that she never really got into studying the game until the moment she started off with her stream. Bankroll management always has been key for her in the process, and it turned out reasonably well for her we can say.
If she must mention her biggest highlights which flowed out of her streams she mentions – ‘’The love for mixed-games happened during streaming as this is when I first got in touch with such games. However, the biggest highlight of it all was to win the Norwegian Championship in Online Poker, live on my stream. This happened in March 2021.’’
We surely recommend you check out her streams. They are interesting, social, and educative, to say the least. She has often guest streamers on board, mostly of course from Europe. Jevakims Spesial Satellites are becoming a real deal nowadays, do not miss out on them:
Why do we think she deserves a spot in our Women in Poker Series?
- Ylva Thorsrud is one of the great examples of Women in Poker who are perfectly able to compete against the best in any kind of format. She is a well-known face in the European live circuit.
- Poker is all about communities. Someone who is so dedicated to the game, and loves the interactions with other poker players, is absolutely contributing to the whole picture.
- Streaming for over 3000 hours in the past two years is not an easy task to accomplish. But if you love the social part of our game, streaming is what it takes to be able communicate with other online grinders.
- With her ambassadorships and her streams, Ylva Thorsrud is a real asset to the poker community in general. It especially shows that Women in Poker can easily succeed as well, as well as Norwegians!
Women in Poker
As mentioned before, Ylva Thorsrud is a good example to show women around the world that it is possible to make a living out of poker as a female. In general, the female population is not certain about this topic due to the low number of women in poker. By showing her poker skills and great character, Ylva is proving day-in-day-out by streaming her experiences on the world wide web. This makes an example of her, and we are positive that it won’t take that much longer before next steps are being made to eliminate uncertainties towards this subject in the poker world.
Creating communities is where the poker world is based on. Its fundamental for the game we love so much to keep growing to be able to have more opportunities all around the world in terms of organizing poker games. Not only the usual No-Limit Hold’em games, but especially the mixed games which are until today, still very underrated. Although PLO has made big steps, a dozen of other variants of the game are still very much unknown to players. Someone like Ylva Thorsrud, who loves mixed-games due to its dynamics and the social aspect of it, contributes to create attention for these games. She mentioned to us: ‘’When sitting at mixed games live cash game tables everybody is so extremely social and helpful, this is what I really like about these games.’’
And she is completely right in this. Especially in the recreational/semi-pro, environment of live poker, it is highly common that the ambiance is already great by itself as it just feels like you are playing board games with your family. On top of that, there are games like ‘Sviten Special’ who have their origins in the Nordics part of Europe. Other notable games are Open Face Chinese, Razz, Stud, 2-7 triple draw and Soko.
We would like to thank Ylva Thorsrud for her contribution to this article. She has shown she is a true warrior in the mixed games and hold’em tournaments, both live- and online poker games. We strongly recommend checking out her streams, which are currently in English by the way! Thank you as always Ylva, and let’s ship big in 2023! Starting with The Festival Series in Nottingham which will take place from 13-19 February in Nottingham, UnitedKingdom, where Ylva will give acte de presence.
Do you want to join Ylva on her trip around the world together with Coolbet? And follow all her poker results? Make sure to follow her social media pages:
