partypoker Qualifier Kristen Bicknell Testing the Live Circuit Waters

Back in the day, if you were looking for partypoker qualifier Kristen Bicknell, the most likely place to find her was going to be at an online poker table. Or 30 of them.

Currently, Bicknell is best known in the poker world for being a two-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner, but online cash players had known her screen name long before she came to live tournament prominence. Nowadays though, her focus is on the live tournament circuit.

“For the last year now I have pretty much just been playing live poker, playing live cash a little bit, but mostly just tournaments,” she explains. “I love the environment of live tournaments, the competitiveness. I am really having a lot of fun. I think this year I am going to go full-out and go to all the stops. See what happens and re-evaluate at the end of year.”

So far, things have been going alright for Bicknell, who cashed three times at the Aussie Millions last month and is sitting on a six-figure stack early in Day 2 of the Season XV partypoker.net WPT Playground Main Event. In late 2016, she made a run in the Season XV partypoker WPT Caribbean event, finishing 29th. She then followed that up with a third-place finish worth C$128,425 at the DeepStacks Poker Tour event in Calgary in November.

Just because she is committing to giving the live circuit a go does not mean she has abandoned her online roots completely. Bicknell still plays Sundays online and qualified into this event via a partypoker satellite.

When partypoker was offering satellites to the Caribbean Poker Party last September, you could find her on the site quite a bit.

“In September and October I was playing on partypoker a lot for the [Caribbean Poker Party] packages,” she admits. “I won, like, four packages.”

As for her motives, a vacation sounded nice, but she also saw an opportunity for value.

“I did [want to go to the Caribbean], but it was also such a good promotion,” she says.

She did not just capitalize on the value of the satellites, she left the Caribbean with a profit thanks to her cash in the partypoker WPT Caribbean Main Event.

Pragmatism seems to be a prevailing influence in Bicknell’s career decisions. She started finding success in live tournaments, so started playing more. Plus, she realized the career she had was not necessarily sustainable.

“I would say with the environment of online poker right now, what I was doing six years ago isn’t really an option anymore,” she says, referring to mass multi-tabling online cash games all day.

But in addition to being pragmatic, the friendly Canadian also enjoys the travel and social component of live poker. Bicnkell has been jet-setting quite a bit, but a tournament in her home country was not something she could pass up.

“I love playing in Canada,” she says. “Currency-wise, it is nice. There are no taxes. It is also that Canadians are all just so nice and it feels a little bit patriotic playing here.”

She isn’t lying. Bicknell has a reputation for being a very tough no-limit competitor, but like many of her fellow Canadians, her reputation for being a nice, friendly, and increasingly familiar face on the tour stands out as well.