Kelly Minkin Poker
Kelly Minkin Net Worth: Kelly Minkin’s life story is one of success and determination. With two degrees in medicine and law, her intellect is a force to be reckoned with. This comes as a result of her tenacity and dedication, which extend beyond her law career.
However, she doesn’t just keep her skills to the courtroom as a medical malpractice attorney. Kelly chooses to spend her free time raising the stakes in the poker across the country. With a high net worth, she is one of the faces to remember in poker.
At yesterday’s WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open final table, Kelly Minkin played a series of two consecutive hands which left the live stream commentators flabbergasted. Dealt Queen-Nine suited twice in a row, she first decided to fold it from the button, and next to make a minimum-raise with it from under the gun. Kelly Minkin is notorious for pulling some gangster moves on the felt. She recently made some legendary plays at the 2018 World Series of Poker Main Event, i. Kelly Minkin, Female player of the year award, attends the American Poker Awards during the Global Poker League Draft Day on February 25, 2016 in. Sorry, your search returned zero results for 'kelly. Pat Lyons Doubles Through Kelly Minkin Main Tour WPT L.A. Poker Classic Season 2019-2020 2 1,000/500-1,000 Kelly Minkin Eliminated in 7th Place (CA$85,000) Main Tour WPT Montreal Season 2019-2020 4 120,000/60,000-120,000 Three-Bet From Joseph Cheong Main Tour WPT Montreal Season 2019-2020 4 100,000/50,000-100,000 Kelly Minkin Doubles Through Martin Jacobson Main Tour WPT Montreal Season 2019. Best of luck to Kelly Minkin as she attempts to take the grand prize at WSOP’s Main Event. Everyone in the legal profession is rooting for you. Minkin last woman standing again in WSOP’s Main.
Her nickname MachineGunKelly, tells you all you need to know about her playstyle. Extremely fierce and competitive, she will give any of her opposition a run for their money as she makes a name for herself in poker. Watch out for her meteoric rise.
Early Career
Raised in Arizona, Kelly Minkin always wanted to be a doctor, but fate had different plans for her. She went to the University of Arizona to get a double major in Cellular and Molecular Biology, quite an impressive feat. However, when it came time to take her MCAT, she balked procrastinating because of her perfectionist nature.
Although she was a severe go-getter student who didn’t spend any time partying, Kelly felt unprepared to take the MCAT. On the other hand, she did find the LSAT to be more straightforward, requiring more logic than memorization and tried her hand at it. When she passed well, she decided to go to Arizona Summit Law School.
Initially, she planned to go there for a while and then go back to medicine, however, she enjoyed her studies, and that pushed her to keep going. When Minkin finished, she became a Medical Malpractice Defense Attorney. Despite the demanding nature of her job, she was able to find time to pursue her other affection, poker.
Kelly Minkin had been involved with casinos for a long time before going pro. She had learned to play poker with her father and brother before starting to go on her own to relieve some boredom. In college, she began to get more serious, raising her stakes from $3-$6 to $4-$8.
Professional Poker Career
Everything changed when her father encouraged her to sign up for 1,000 USD buy-in Arizona State Poker Championship. Proceeding to do this, she was able to win big coming in at second place with a grand $151,983 winnings. Before this, she had never been involved in tournaments, but now she decided to move into tournament play.
In 2015, Kelly participated in the $500 preliminary event at the L.A. Poker Class in January, where she won USD 54,630. The following month, she made her biggest winning with 3rd place at the $3,500 buy-in Championship for the Lucky Hearts Open, earning her a whopping $262,912 at the Poker World Tour.
In the summer of the same year, she placed 29th in World Series with an earning of 211,821 USD. At this point, Kelly was 28 and an active attorney. However, she went inactive mostly for 2016 and 2017 not making any big wins saving for the $1,675 Hold’em at which she made 95,000 USD.
Minkin returned with a vengeance in 2018 cashing in $156,000 at the $10,000 Hold’em – Main Event Championship in July. Here she came in 50th place, but she was the last woman holding on in the event. Also, her skill and confidence won her a strong following. Unfortunately, the cards were against her; she was forced to withdraw.
She continued to have some smaller wins throughout the year with one big win at the $5,000 pay-in Hold’em with No Limit – World Poker Tournament best bet Bounty Scramble Championship in October. Here, she came in at third raising the Kelly Minkin’s net worth by $146,000. These two successes remain her most significant victories to the present day, which is no small feat.
In 2019, she failed to repeat any of her major successes coming in 595th place in the No-Limit Hold’em, raking in only $24,000. Kelly made her most recent cash-in in Canada of all sites, coming in at 7th place with a prize of 64,000 USD. The future has yet to show what will become of this tenacious poker player.
Kelly Minkin: Achievements at a Glance
Kelly Minkin’s Biggest Cashes
Kelly Minkin’s Recent Earnings
Kelly Minkin Net Worth
Kelly Minkin, despite all her success, still works as a lawyer who pays pretty well but nothing in comparison to what she has made in her career as a Poker player. With only seven years of active playing, Kelly Minking net worth is approximately $1,486,434 over her whole career.
Overall, her position isn’t too bad. With what she has achieved, many have high hopes for her career. In poker, her popularity stands at 147th place, and she is ranked in Global Poker at 321st place. Not a bad place for her position in her early thirties with her prime years before her.
In Arizona, Kelly stands at 14th place for the All Times Money list. While that is pretty impressive, in the whole U.S., her position is in the top 1000 for the same directory, which makes her one wealthy individual by any standard. One may wonder why she hasn’t quit her day job and just gone into gambling full time.
Personal Life
As mentioned earlier, her brother and father heavily supported her deafening rise in the world of professional poker. She is an extremely private person with little about her personal life on social media, so there is not much to learn about her life other than her poker career.
She is recently married, but with her lack of presence on social media little is known of her husband. Also, in other news, in August of 2019, she moved on in her work career to become a partner at The VerStanding Law firm in Potomac, Maryland, which seems to indicate she also moved from her home state of Arizona where her earnings are listed.
This VerStanding Firm helps to support poker players in their attempts at making money in the game legally. They assist small companies as well as assist in bankruptcy and criminal defense. Kelly’s life passion of playing cards has been able to make its way into her professional career since the change.
Conclusion: The Brilliant Life
Kelly Minkin is a successful lawyer and poker player. Now as a partner in her own firm, it is a wonder that she is able to still keep playing poker even as a part-time profession. Kelly Minkin’s net worth is estimated over $1 million, making her someone to keep an eye out for as a poker enthusiast.
As the last woman standing two times in the World Series of Poker Main Event in 2015 and 2018, Kelly Minkin is a formidable face in poker. Her participation in various online tournaments has been significant. At this rate, she will rise to become one of the best female professional poker players in the world.
Sources
There just aren’t enough hours in the day for Kelly Minkin. The Phoenix, Arizona native spent her childhood bouncing from one activity to the next and that go-hard mentality followed her into college, where she excelled in the classroom.
Intending to go to medical school, Minkin instead took the LSAT on a whim and scored well enough to get into law school. After passing the bar, she took a job at a law firm as a medical malpractice attorney. But despite the demanding schedule her profession requires, she has never strayed away from her other passion of poker.
She burst onto the scene in 2013 and has already made a World Poker Tour final table and was the last woman standing at the 2015 World Series of Poker main event. In total, the 28 year old has more than $750,000 in live tournament earnings, which isn’t bad for a part-time player with a challenging day job.
A Bright Mind
Minkin was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin and grew up in Milwaukee, but moved to Phoenix when she was just eight years old with her real estate agent mom, property manager dad and two brothers, Ronnie and Donny.
“Growing up I was definitely a tomboy,” she admitted. “I was really into sports. I played softball, basketball, volleyball, and ran track. I was even into water skiing. The bottom line is that I was very active. Then I played piano and got really into painting. I’ve never had a problem keeping myself busy.”
After deciding to stay close to home by attending the University of Arizona, Minkin opted for dual majors in Molecular and Cellular Biology.
“It’s known for being a party school, but I don’t party at all,” said Minkin. “I went to one frat party during my entire undergraduate career and I hated it. It wasn’t my scene. I was more in to having friends over for game night. I guess you could say I was a bit of a nerd.”
Despite her intentions of becoming a doctor, she found herself looking at law school as her undergraduate studies came to an end.
“My whole life I wanted to be a surgeon, so the plan was to get good grades and get into medical school. I ended up procrastinating though. I had a lot of anxiety about taking the MCAT, so I just kept putting it off. Someone told me that the LSAT was more like an IQ test in that it’s more based on logic and reading comprehension, so I decided to take that as kind of a practice and also just for fun.”
She doesn’t remember her exact score, but Minkin did well enough to be considered a lock for most law schools. Suddenly, she changed course and enrolled at Arizona Summit Law School nearby.
“I figured I’d give it a try,” she recalled. “If I hated it, I would just quit, take the MCAT and go to medical school like I originally planned. But I ended up loving it.”
Poker Beginnings
While in school, Minkin would occasionally visit the local casino with her college boyfriend to play limit hold’em for fun. Once her boyfriend went overseas to play basketball, she found herself at the casino more and more, hoping to find a cure for her boredom.
“I had played poker with my family growing up, so I was familiar with the game. The more I went to the casino, the more I won. I started moving up in stakes going from $3-$6 to $4-$8. Then I switched from $1-$3 no-limit to $2-$5. I was slowly grinding my way up.”
Then in 2013, Minkin’s father encouraged her to play in the $1,000 buy-in Arizona State Poker Championship. She ended up finishing in second place to Joe Kuether for a huge score of $151,983.
“I really had no idea what I was doing because, at the time, I was just focusing on cash games,” she admitted. “My dad was excited to see me play, so I did it mainly for him. But after that, I decided to start traveling the circuit and playing more tournaments.”
With her competitive background, it was only natural for Minkin to be interested in tournament poker.
“My personality is drawn to anything that is competitive. When I played cash games, I enjoyed that aspect of it more than the gambling. I’ve never had any desire to go play blackjack or anything like that because then I wouldn’t be playing against other people.”
Getting Her Law Career Started
Minkin began traveling to various regional stops on the tournament circuit, but she never considered abandoning her day job. After passing the bar, she took a job working at a Phoenix law firm as a medical malpractice attorney at Kent and Wittekind.
“The key to happiness and success is balance,” she says. “I love playing poker and I love my day job. Having both of those things makes me appreciate the other even more. When I play poker, I can enjoy the highs that come with winning. When I’m experiencing the lows that come with variance, I have stability and consistency to come back to with my job. Then, when the job is feeling a little monotonous, I have the excitement of poker waiting for me.”
Minkin’s firm is very generous with her hours and allows her to schedule poker trips so that she can continue playing. She also believes that her poker skills come in handy when she’s working, even if it means just being extra competitive when it comes to negotiating a settlement for a client.
“I wish there was more hours in a day and days in a week so that I could do both things full time, but that’s just the way it works when you are trying to find that balance. Poker is great for building up my confidence and for feeling a sense of accomplishment, but it can also be very self-serving. Law is rewarding in ways that poker can’t be. When I’m able to help other people who can’t help themselves, that’s a feeling that I can’t find in poker.”
More Tournament Success
In January of 2015, Minkin won a $500 preliminary event at the L.A. Poker Classic for $54,630. Then in February, she earned the largest score of her still young career when she took third in the $3,500 buy-in WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open Championship for $262,912.
“I play poker by adapting to my surroundings,” she said. “I’m a naturally aggressive player and I like to be the one applying the pressure, but I realize that sometimes you have to pull back a bit and respond to what the rest of the table is doing, even if it seems a little passive.”
Then this summer, Minkin added another $211,821 by becoming the last woman standing in the WSOP main event, eventually busting in 29th place overall.
“I’ve busted in some pretty big spots before, like when I made the WPT final table, but it doesn’t compare to the feeling of busting the WSOP main event. I’ve felt disappointment before, but that day I actually felt sick. I just wanted to cry, but then you have all of these ESPN cameras in your face and you don’t know what to say. I didn’t want to be rude, but I also wasn’t in the mood to do interviews either. I try not to beat myself up too much after I bust out from a tournament, but it’s hard. I think anyone with an analytical mind is going to second guess their decisions after the fact. It’s natural. But at the end of the day you have to live with the result.”
Moving Forward
Despite all of the success she’s found on the felt, Minkin isn’t in a hurry to recommend poker to the rest of her law firm coworkers.
Kelly Minkin Poker
“I would never recommend that anybody play poker for a living. It’s a tough life. If you spend any amount of time on the circuit, you are going to make friends and at the end of the day, that conflicts with the self-driven world and competitiveness you need to be successful.”
Minkin also worries about the volatility involved with playing poker for a living and is happy to have something like her law career to fall back on when variance rears its ugly head.
Kelly Minkin Married
“Poker is very unstable,” she said. “Even if you are the best player in the world, you have to accept that there are going to be many days where you lose. For someone like me, that’s a hard pill to swallow. Thankfully I have something else to come back to on those days, which is why I can stomach when I make a bad play or run into some bad luck.” ♠