The Vlogger Who Made Poker Human Again
When Brad Owen moved to Las Vegas with a $10,000 bankroll, he didn't look like a future media mogul.
He looked like every other grinder with a dream. Young, broke, and chasing the idea that maybe, just maybe, he could make a living playing cards.
For years he did what poker players do best. He played the long game.
Grinding $2/$5 and $5/$10 cash games. Logging long hours in smoky rooms. Running well, then running bad. It was a job built on variance, loneliness, and self-belief. Brad loved the game, but even love wears thin when every session feels like a coin flip between freedom and ruin.
After one particularly brutal stretch, his bankroll hit zero.
He packed up, moved home, and took a desk job. Accounting. Spreadsheets. Meetings.
The kind of quiet, "safe" life that drains you one day at a time. Brad lasted a few months before realizing he'd rather lose big chasing something he cared about than win small at something he didn't.
So he quit the job, went back to poker, and did something no one in poker was doing.
He started filming it.
In 2016, poker content on YouTube was split between two worlds. Slick highlight reels of televised high-stakes games, or dense training videos for pros who spoke in solver code. Nobody was telling the real story—the $2/$5 grind, the emotional swings, the community that keeps players coming back.
Brad saw that gap. And instead of trying to sound like a poker genius, he did the opposite.
He spoke plainly. He showed his mistakes. He cracked jokes at his own expense.
He wasn't trying to teach you how to play like Phil Ivey. He was showing you what it felt like to play like Brad Owen.
The result was lightning in a bottle.
Every vlog felt like sitting next to a friend at the table. His audience didn't just watch his hands. They rode the wins and losses with him. They rooted for him. Because for the first time, poker didn't look unreachable. It looked human.
And that was his edge.
While others hid behind GTO charts and hand histories, Brad built a brand on honesty and accessibility. He didn't try to impress people with theory. He made them care about the story. Every upload was a new episode in a bigger narrative—one where the hero wasn't a millionaire pro, but a guy just trying to make it in Vegas.
He turned poker into a serial.
He made it bingeable.
And in doing so, he built an empire.
Brad's vlogs now pull hundreds of thousands of views. He's hosted massive live events with fans lining up to play beside him. He's co-owned one of the biggest card rooms in Texas. He's a partner and ambassador with the World Poker Tour.
But the thing that made all of it work wasn't luck or timing or some viral algorithm.
It was intention.
Brad didn't start vlogging to get famous. He started because he saw something missing. He wanted to make poker relatable again. He wanted to show that the grind could be fun, that there's humor and community in the variance.
He built a bridge between the player and the fan. Between the game and the story.
And in the process, he did what every great player dreams of doing.
He found a way to win when everyone else was just trying to survive.