Thursday, 28th March 2024 14:30
Home / Uncategorized / Jason Somerville begins 70 days of streaming on Twitch

Today, PokerStars’ newest Team Pro, Jason Somerville, will begin a campaign unlike most you have ever seen. For the next 70 days, he’ll be streaming his play for an average of four hours a day on Twitch. If you noticed a ripple of excitement around these parts, you now know why.

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Jason Somerville playing on Twitch today

Somerville’s role with Team PokerStars will be about many things; the future of how poker is presented to people for one, but also the part he hopes to play in that. But the Somerville story is about something simple, the old fashioned Horatio Alger tale of applying yourself to something, working hard, and achieving great things.

Forgive us for a moment if we sound like your high school guidance counsellor or the inspirational quote from someone you once unfollowed on Twitter. But if you push past the schmaltz you find people like Somerville who have done just that and achieve something great. Actually, it speaks volumes for his character that aged just 27, he’s done it twice.

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Jason Somerville (left) with Joe Stapleton, doing one of the things he does best

In the first instance he dedicated himself to becoming the best poker player he could possibly be. And we mean dedicate. He took every opportunity to learn and put in the hours, gradually working himself into a position where he could take a seat opposite the best players in the world. You can see the results for yourself. More than $6 million in prize money, a WSOP bracelet and countless cash finishes in major events around the world.

But at the same time he also excelled in another passion. It wasn’t by accident that last quarter alone Somerville could count three million Twitch views of his Run It Up series. It was only after a lot of effort, working on the things he needed to learn and telling the stories that he’d wanted to tell — and doing it well – that he built such a following.

It’s hard not to take a little inspiration from this, regardless of what aspect of your life you seek to improve. But for poker players, if you want to succeed take note from Somerville. It’s not impossible, but it will take dedication, although that process that can be as fun as it is rewarding. Oh and a little good fortune never hurt. You’ll see what we mean if you read Somerville’s account of his first encounter with Daniel Negreanu in his interview with Brad Willis for the PokerStars Blog.

So whether you’re an amateur player, whether you play nothing more than a post-pub sit and go, or even if you play the big game in your local casino; there is always more to learn, and the best way to do that is to watch the best in the game, like Somerville.

If like us, this has got you in the mood to reinvigorate your own poker routine, then we’re glad to hear it. And what’s more you’re in the perfect place. Check out all the facilities PokerStars offers to start improving your game, Poker School Online for instance, but even more so the new PokerStars Twitch stream, where today you will find Somerville (and soon other Team Pros) demonstrating what it takes to succeed in this game like never before.

Who knows, maybe it will make your experience of the Sunday Majors this weekend a life changing one. Or maybe you’ll just learn something new that makes defeat a little easier to bear. As Somerville himself put it, the experiences of the past decade have certainly changed him for the better.

“Having that confidence to be able to say, ‘Look, I’ve done the work, I’ve put the time in, I’ve spent every day of my waking hours from when I was 18 to when I was 23 trying to learn and study the game.’ The results are there to say, ‘Yeah, you are right about these things.’ That was a tremendous boost I confidence because I was able to take that confidence and say, ‘Now I can tackle these other issues.'”

Anyway, that’s enough schmaltz for one day. Check out the new PokerStars Twitch page here, and read the full interview with Jason Somerville here.


Stephen Bartley is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.

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