Juneau’s Jeremy Hamey has gone from making jumpers to making a living at the poker table.<\/p>\n
The former Alaska high school basketball star is having a career year as a professional poker player based in Los Angeles, where this week he won back-to-back tournaments and bagged his fourth five-figure payout of 2024.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Hamey won the Fall Kickoff Poker Tournament at Larry Flynt’s Lucky Lady Casino in No-Limit Hold’em to rake in $12,500. The next day he won the Big O Tournament in the game of Omaha for cool $1,800.<\/p>\n
“I have played tournament poker for 15 years but really became a pro in the last two years,” said Hamey, 50. “The hobby turned into something serious as I got better and better.”<\/p>\n
Hamey’s career earnings have exceeded $240,000, including the $25,000 he pocketed after his top-900 finish out of 10,112 players at the World Series of Poker Main Event in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
His biggest payday of $35,00 came in 2022 after a fifth-place finish at the No Limit Hold’em Big Poker Oktober at Bell Gardens in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
Thirty years ago, Hamey was a two-time first team all-state guard for Juneau-Douglas High School who went on to play for NCAA Division III Southern Maine University.<\/p>\n
“When my playing and coaching years ended, I found tournament poker a way to satisfy my competitive itch,” he said.<\/p>\n
Today, he plays four to five days a week at Los Angeles area casinos and hits up Vegas from time to time, most notably for the WSOP.<\/p>\n
“Thankfully I have a very supportive wife who is amazing,” he said. “Her name is Estela. We recently got married.”<\/p>\n
Hamey is always running into fellow Alaskans in Lower 48 card rooms, including Anchorage’s Adam Hendrix, the most accomplished poker player from Alaska with career earnings of nearly $7 million.<\/p>\n
“I talk with Adam. He is not just the best player ever from Alaska – respect to Perry Green – but the ‘Ice Man’ is currently one of the best players in the world,” Hamey said. “There are many great players in Alaska, particularly in the Anchorage area.<\/p>\n
“There is definitely a kinship with Alaskan players. I regularly meet my Alaskan friends at the WSOP for dinner and stuff.”<\/p>\n