– General Introduction –
Kristen Bicknell is a Canadian professional poker player. She was born on December 29th, 1986 in St. Catharines, Ontario.
She has three WSOP bracelets, one from the 2013 Ladies Event, one from the 2016 $1,500 Bounty No Limit Hold’em event, and one from the 2020 $2,500 No Limit Hold’em 6-Handed online event. She’s one of the highest ranked female poker players in the world – she won the GPI Female Poker Player of the Year Award three years in a row 2018-2020.
She’s also a prolific online poker player, winning over $5 million on MTT’s on three sites: GGPoker, PokerStars, and partypoker.
– Key Career Dates –
- 2006: She starts playing online poker in her freshman year of college.
- 2013: She wins her first WSOP gold bracelet in the $1,000 NLHE Ladies Event for $173,922.
- 2016: She wins her second WSOP gold bracelet in the $1,500 Bounty No Limit Hold’em event for $290,768.
- 2018: She appears on PokerGO’s revived version of Poker After Dark, the classic high stakes poker show.
- 2018: She finishes second in a $10K partypoker POWERFEST event for $210,000.
- 2018: She wins the HK$ 80,000 No Limit Hold’em – APPT National High Roller (Event #2) at the Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) Macau for $279,549 and comes 4th just a week later in the HK$ 100,000 No Limit Hold’em – APPT High Roller (Event #18) for $194,081
- 2019: She wins the $ 25,000 No Limit Hold’em – Poker Masters #6 $25K NLHE in Las Vegas for $408,000. That is the biggest single live tournament cash of her career to date.
- 2020: She wins her third WSOP gold bracelet in the $2,500 No Limit Hold’em 6-Handed online event for $356,412.
– Kristen Bicknel’s Career –
→ Beginnings ←
Bicknell’s bio on partypoker claims she “fell in love instantly” with poker when she took part in a college poker night with her friends.
In an interview for PokerGO, she said that she often watched the classic NBC poker show Poker After Dark. She particularly liked Jennifer Hartman, one of the best female players, who she drew great inspiration from to play the game.
She started her career as an online player during her freshman year at college, playing MTT’s on PokerStars under the screen name krissyb24, and on Full TIlt under the screen name krissy24.
→ Live Tournaments ←
Bicknell’s Hendon page shows 117 individual ITM finishes for a combined $5,098,014. That puts her in the top 20 among Canadian players, and in the top 300 among all players.
Her first recorded live cash is from May 2006, when she came in 13th in a $200 tournament at the Turning Stone Resort & Casino in Verona, WI and won $845. Her first 6-figure cash is from the 2013 WSOP.
The biggest single tournament cash of her career is $408,000. She earned that sum by winning the $ 25,000 No Limit Hold’em – Poker Masters #6 $25K NLHE in 2019.
Her other major live tournament achievements include a victory at the HK$80,000 Asia Pacific Poker Tour high roller event for $279,549 from 2018; another victory in a $5K event at the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic for $199,840; a runner-up finish in another $5K event, this time at the DeepStack Championship Poker Series for $200,000 from 2017; as well as a 6th place finish in a A$100K Aussie Millions tournament for $209,010 from 2019.
In March 2020, she won the $2,140 No Limit Hold’em – 6-Handed event at the WPT L.A. Poker Classic for $71,970 just two days before her partner Alex Foxen took down the $25k High Roller at the same series.
→ World Series of Poker ←
Kristen Bicknell has won 3 WSOP bracelets. This makes her tied in 1st place among female players, tied with Vanessa Selbst, who also has 3 WSOP golds.
Her first World Series cash was her first bracelet as well. In 2013, she won the $1,000 Ladies Event – the WSOP tourney which only female players can register for. She got $173,922 for that title.
Her second bracelet is from 2016. This time, she claimed that after beating a “co-ed” field in the $1,500 Bounty NLHE tournament. She beat the Hungarian Norbert Szecsi heads-up for the $290,768 first prize.
In 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic forced every World Series event to be played online, she managed to top an 892-player field in the $2,500 No Limit Hold’em 6-Handed event. She got awarded no less than $356,412 for her victory.
→ Live Cash Games ←
In January 2018 Bicknell appeared on PokerGO’s revived version of the classic poker show Poker After Dark during their “Femme Fatale” week. She played a $100/$200 NLHE cash game session on a live stream in an all-female line-up.
She considered it a great honor to appear on a PAD stream since, as we mentioned above, was a big fan of the original show, especially Jennifer Harman.
→ Online Poker ←
Bicknell started her poker career as an online MTT player. She began playing in 2006, during her freshman year in college under the screen name “krissyb24″ on PokerStars.
Her first recorded online MTT cash is from July 2006, from a $300 tournament on Stars in which she finished 17th for $918. A year later, in 2007, she bested a 2,477-player field in a $3 tournament and won $4,923. That is whooping 1,640% ROI on that tournament buy-in for her!
Overall, she has cashed for a total of $1,889,766 on her Stars account, according to PocketFives, a reliable online MTT database.
Her biggest single online tournament cash on that site is $269,011. She got that for finishing 4th in a $1,050 SCOOP (Spring Championship of Online Poker) NLHE Main Event in May 2019.
She also cashed for $103,472 in the $10K SCOOP High Roller the same month after coming in 5th.
Despite all her success on Stars, she doesn’t actually have any WCOOP (World Championship of Online Poker) titles. Her highest finish in that famous online tournament series is 11th – she got that score in a $5,200 PLO event and earned $23,978 for it.
She started playing on partypoker in 2016. She uses the same moniker, krissyb24, in that online room as well. Her first cash on that account is a humble $45 she got after finishing 83rd in $22 tourney.
The second biggest online tournament payday of her career is on partypoker. In May 2018 she finished second in a $10K POWERFEST event and won $210,061.
Later that year, in December 2018, she won a $2,600 buy-in tournament for which she got $54,138. She managed to top a field of 71 players. She also has first place finish in a POWERFEST event – POWERFEST is partypoker’s semi-annual tournament series, much akin to PokerStars’ WCOOP and SCOOP. In September 2018, she won the $215 PKO POWERFEST event for $21,898.
She has more tournament earnings on partypoker than on PokerStars – and impressively she’s passed $1 million on both sites. On partypoker, she has won a total of $1,175,104 playing online MTT’s.
Bicknell started playing on GGPoker in May 2020. She passed the 7-figure mark on that site as well, in a matter of months.
She won her 3rd WSOP gold bracelet on GG as well. She took down the $2,500 No Limit Hold’em 6-Handed event for $356,412, which is the biggest single online MTT cash of her career to date.
→ Sponsorships ←
In 2017, Kristen Bicknell joined Team partypoker, a group of poker pros who are signed to promote the online poker room.
#POWERFEST on @partypoker is starting today 👐👐👐!!! Up bright and early in Vancouver 🇨🇦 to start the grind. Buy-ins from $5.50 all the way up to $25,300!
Check out the promotion running where you can win a share of mine and other pros winnings! ⬇️https://t.co/kIWCbFwd4e pic.twitter.com/4Uf370BJhY
— Kristen Bicknell (@krissyb24poker) March 31, 2019
→ Scandals ←
In June 2018, Bicknell and her boyfriend, Alex Foxen were accused of soft playing against each other in the $5K DeepStack Championship NLHE tournament. The couple both made it in the final 3 where they made plays that made quite a few people in the poker community suspicious, including Doug Polk and the eventual third place finisher himself, the Australian Kahle Burns.
Some people believe that GPI Female Poker Player of the Year Award, the award Bicknell won in 2018 and 2019, is also controversial. Some in the poker industry feel that it is redundant to award the best player in one sex, since men and women compete in the same competitions in poker, unlike in physical sports. Cate Hall was one of the people who voiced this opinion while receiving her award in 2017.
– Kristen Bicknel’s Private Life –
As for her personal life, her boyfriend is fellow poker pro Alex Foxen. In March 2018, Bicknell won the HK$80,000 Asia Pacific Poker Tour High Roller for $279,549. The next day, her boyfriend, Foxen, won the HK$400,000 Super High Roller in the same tournament series for $963,880.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BwFmktMgh0p/
– Kristen Bicknel on Social Media –
Twitter: https://twitter.com/krissyb24poker 9,000 followers Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristen_bicknell/ 6,000 followers
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