Josh Manley: Poker Dreamer Turned Twitch Streamer

Professional poker Twitch streamers have been around for years, and as the game continues to grow and gain more popularity, more people being to join the ranks. We caught up with Josh Manley, who after being made redundant from his job during the first UK lockdown, decided to take the plunge and try his hand at becoming a professional poker player to find out more about what it takes to become a poker professional and his reasons behind the decision to start straming.

Poker is a very popular game. In fact PokerStars, which is by far the most popular online poker site, surpassed 100 million users half a decade ago. So it's reasonable to assume that many people around the world dream of leaving their day jobs to play poker and earn a living.

This is easier said than done, as Josh explains, ''I started playing in like 2009. I was pretty bad up until 2011 I lost pretty consistently for a while but then the penny kind of dropped and I began putting together some results in the micro stakes. For years after it was just a side income or hobby.''

After redundancy due to Covid-19, Josh decided to use that opportunity and try to start making a decent monthly income off the back of playing multiple big field micro stakes tournaments. ''It worked straight out of the gates and I was like cool, this is what I'm going to be doing for a while now. I'd say the best piece of advice is to build up your bankroll, slowly get better at the game and make sure you're comfortably beating the stakes that you're at.

''I go to bed and I'm like buzzing for the next day, I'm doing what I love and I'm like, let's go again!''.

The World Championship of Amateur Poker

Talent can only take you so far with poker. It's a nuanced game and it's essential to study in order to get ahead. Josh said that ''It's important to study the game as deep as you can., I try to do an hour a day to keep on top of things because intuition can only take you so far.

''When you're playing the sort of fields I'm playing, which are day time tournaments and are packed with regs, you need to stay one step ahead or you'll be left behind. I thought I had a good grip on the game until I got coaching and then it was like, no there's so much more to learn here, it was pretty eye-opening actually''.

Being a professional poker player comes with a lot of variance, no one can win all the time, ''at the start I won a few tournaments in a row and felt really good, it was like, okay, here we go then! But then obviously the downswing came and, I suppose in general it goes round in roundabouts, you just have to remind yourself of that because it can be very stressful at times.

At times I've been on a downswing and had the thought of, well, if this continues then I'm just going to have to give it up.''

When asked why Josh decided to start live-streaming his sessions, it seemed to be a combination of different factors. Josh had been watching other streamers for a while and he thought it was a cool idea to film something he'd be doing anyway and be able to interact with people while doing it, ''I just chat nonsense on stream for hours and it kind of gives me company because you just get to hang out and have a chat with the people watching.''

''It's really really fun to be honest. I love interacting with the people in chat and when something big happens you can see me get really excited and like jump out of my chair.''

Check out more of Josh's Twitch clips in our Videos section

But the main inspiration for beginning this journey that Josh has now been on since August 2020 was his girlfriend, ''It may sound cheesy but my main inspiration was actually my girlfriend, she was just like, why don't you just stream if you're always watching it.

I was like no, but she said, ''yeah, let's sit down tomorrow and figure out what you need''. She comes from a design background and she got her design friends involved to make my stream overlay and I think it looks really good.''

The artwork used for Josh's overlay.

The very first stream just had Josh's friend watching from home and his girlfriend from another oom, but the community is growing and Josh is happy about where he's at currently, getting to wake up and do what he loves every day. ''I didn't like my job really, so it's nice to be doing something I genuinely enjoy, streaming is very very fun and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested. Just give it a shot.''