Joe Ingram's Life: Biggest Profits and Losses, Private Life and Net Worth

– General Information –

Joe Ingram, aka “Chicago Joey” is an American professional poker player and podcast host. He was born on June 24, 1982 in Chicago, Illinois.

Throughout his professional poker career, he stuck with his favorite poker format, online Pot Limit Omaha cash games, rarely venturing into anything else, be it tournaments or Hold’em. He’s best known in the poker community for his popular podcast titled Poker Life which he streams on his YouTube channel. On that same channel, he made videos about UFC fights that have garnered millions of views, far more than any of his poker content ever.

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Making my debut on Poker After Dark after watching this show on TV for over 10 years now. We’re playing $25/$50 Pot Limit Omaha on PokerGo today + tomorrow. I used to dream of being able to play on a show like this when I was just starting in poker. I spent 100s of hours watching older episodes on NBC late night and on YouTube/other video sites. Watching shows like this and High Stakes Poker would get me so motivated to work hard at the game and keep getting beter and better OR at least TRY to keep getting better. It didn’t always work that way. I’m sure I played to high of stakes many times trying to become a high stakes regular at a faster pace than I was ready for. I feel pressure on myeslf playing in games on stream like this because I rarely play on stream and if I do something dumb, I’ll never hear the end of it so hopefully that won’t happen today. Okay, lets get started. Thanks for all the support in the comments and in messages, LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOO. You can watch on PokerGo.

A post shared by OOL J O E Y 🚀 I N G R A M (@papigto) on Apr 8, 2019 at 3:14pm PDT

– Key Career Dates –

2011: He starts playing high stakes PLO cash games on PokerStars.
2014: He starts his podcast Poker Life where he interviews various figures from the world of poker.
2018: He finishes 17th in the $10,000 Pot Limit Omaha championship at the WSOP for $28,502. That is the biggest single live tournament cash of his career to date.
2018: His video about the brawl after the Conor McGregor vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov UFC fight receives over 10 million views on YouTube.
2021: He finishes first in the $400 No Limit Hold’em Heads-up event at the Bally’s Power Poker Series in Las Vegas for $4,429.

– Joe Ingram’s Career –

→ Beginnings ←

Ingram started off playing NLHE cash games both online and in land casinos. As he told Bluff Magazine Europe in an interview in 2014, his poker career didn’t have the most promising start.

“When I first started playing I was one of those fish online, who would deposit $1,000 and play $1/$2, $2/$4, $3/$6. I had no idea how to play poker, and I would run it up to a couple of thousand dollars and lose it all. (…) Once I turned 21, I started going to the casino. I would take all the money I made working as a waiter and I would go and lose it all.”

It would get to a point where his friends and family would worry he has a gambling problem. He started playing lower stakes on PokerStars after a while and eventually turned into a winning cash game player.

→ Live Tournaments ←

Ingram is focusing on online PLO cash games in his professional poker career.

In 2019, he received a tournament package to the PCA Main Event after a publicity stunt conducted by Arlie Shaban and PokerStars. That was one of the rare occasions Ingram played a big, highly publicized NLHE tournament – however, he failed to make it in the money.

He only cashed in one event outside the WSOP – however, he won that one.

In February 2021, he took down the $400 No Limit Hold’em Heads-up event at the Bally’s Power Poker Series, held at Bally’s Casino in Las Vegas. Ingram pocketed $4,429 for his victory.

HOLY SHIT 🔥🔥🔥

HUNL trophy acquired ✔️
5 up 5 down ✔️ pic.twitter.com/3gntK1tYXU

— Joey Ingram #passion (@Joeingram1) February 13, 2021

His heads-up NLHE success came in the wake of him extensively covering his friend, Doug Polk’s high stakes heads-up challenge against Daniel Negreanu.

→ World Series of Poker ←

As we wrote, all but one of his recorded live tournament cashes are from the World Series. However, those are only a mere 3 ITM finishes for a total of $37,552.

The first time he cashed was in 2016: he came in 39th in the $3,000 PLO event for $6,658. After that, he was keeping a slow but steady pace with exactly one WSOP cash per year. In 2017, he finished 99th out of a huge, 3,186-player field for $2,392 in the $565 PLO tournament.

The biggest of his three WSOP cashes is the most recent one, from 2018. In the $10K Pot Limit Omaha championship – essentially the Main Event for PLO – he managed to make it in the money by taking 17th place. He got $28,502 for that performance.

→ Live Cash Games ←

In 2017, the popular poker streaming site Live at the Bike hosted a “Joe Ingram week”. During that week, Ingram played $5/$10 live PLO cash game sessions on stream. He also took on the role of the commentator at times.

→ Online Poker ←

As we wrote above, Ingram got his start in small stakes NLHE cash games on PokerStars – that’s where he became a winning player. Later, he transitioned to his favorite poker format, online PLO cash games. He’s a vocal proponent of Omaha over Hold’em.

HighstakesDB has over 23,000 hands tracked on his PS account, JoeIngram1. The earliest hands are from March 2011. Those hands are mostly high stakes PLO. However, he lost around $38,000 over the course of those hands.

→ Internet Persona ←

Joe Ingram created his YouTube channel in 2007. He debuted his Poker Life podcast on May 12th, 2014. His inaugural guest was fellow high stakes PLO pro Bart Hanson.

Poker Life eventually became one of the most popular poker podcasts on the web, and with that, Chicago Joey’s channel grew too. In October 2019, he reached 100,000 subscribers on YouTube.

His most popular videos aren’t related to poker at all, however. They are analysis of the post-fight brawl that broke out after the UFC match between Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov. The most viewed one has over 24 million hits.

→ Sponsorship Deals ←

Ingram has an affiliate deal with his personal friend, Doug Polk’s poker coaching site Upswing Poker. For a while, he hosted another interview show of his on Live at the Bike’s site. In 2017, he also hosted a short-lived prop betting reality show on PokerGO.

→ Scandals ←

The Alec Torelli Interview

In the summer of 2017, Doug Polk called out Alec Torelli for possibly angle shooting Daniel “Cletus” Wolf on an episode of Poker Night in America. Allegedly, Torelli hid his big denomination chips behind his small ones, so when Wolf shoved all-in on him, he thought he was playing for $10K less.

Torelli denied the allegations which grew into a big online poker drama. Almost a year later, Ingram had Torelli on his LATB show as a guest. Evidently, the angle shooting case came up. Chicago Joey was so unimpressed by his guest’s explanation, and his overall “fake” persona, that he ended the interview abruptly and only 40 minutes after he started streaming.

The ACR bot scandal

In February 2018, Ingram noticed some very unusual activities from a player at a high stakes PLO cash table on America’s Cardroom. He decided to make a video about it, suspecting they were bots. He really dived into the matter, conducting his own investigation for weeks. He found some accounts with unrealistically high ITM finish rates in MTT’s. They were all from Eastern European countries and they were playing in the same tournaments most of the time. Turns out, ACR had a huge flaw with their online tournament seating: if the players bought in after each other, they would be seated next to each other. This allowed Eastern European bot rings to operate, colluding against the real players.

At first, Winning Poker Network (ACR’s network) CEO Phil Nagy denied that bots are cheating on his site and was mad at Ingram for making the video. Eventually, however, Nagy admitted the problem exists and issued refunds to players.