Joe "JoeIngram1" Ingram, is a mid-high stakes poker player who concentrates on Pot Limit Omaha. Ingram is equally well known (perhaps even more so) as a poker media personality and content provider and he hosts the popular and critically acclaimed "Poker Life Podcast".
Chicago boy Ingram wasn't always a successul player and admits to putting little to no effort into learning the game for the first few years - he would deposit $1,000 online and play way above his bankroll, run it up a little then go bust, re-depositing again once he'd earned enough from his waiting job.
This went on for about three years, in which time he had turned 21 and left behind online and started to play (and lose) in casinos. Things turned around for Joe after a friend advised him to take the game more seriously and helped him out with a $50 bankroll on PokerStars and he started to play $0.05/$0.10.
Ingram found he could beat the games, but he was still very much a degenerate and taking shots at games out of his bankroll and playing a huge number of tables simultaneously. Ingram estimates he played 5-6 million hands of mainly low-limit NLHE and admits he was more interesting in playing more tables than anyone else, putting in more volumes, and bragging on 2+2 about his "sick sessions" than he was about making money or genuinely working on his game.
His first real taste of fame came from taking on (and winning) some crazy prop bets including having to play 600,000 hands of NLHE in one month. He also took on a bet where he had to play 50,000 hands in one day and still turn a profit - he staged the bet at $0.25/$0.50 NL and finished the day +$800 (plus whatever he won in the prop bet) streaming the whole thing live 24/7. He was also posting short videos about his progress to his YouTube channel which have now been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. At this point, Joe was being staked by his friend and now fellow poker content king Doug "WCGRider" Polk.
It was soon after this that having tired of NLHE he switched to PLO, a game far more suited to such an action junkie. As he says "It was more fun, you didn’t have to fold to three-bets – and I hate folding to three-bets!"
The prop bets didn't stop though and one year, realising he was way off reaching Supernova Elite status at PokerStars he bet his roomate he would be able to achieve the required VPP's in the last 10 weeks of the year - a wager worth $40,000! In the end Joe ended up winning the bet on New Year's Eve after having to 24-table the whole time. He also broke two more records along the way - most PLO hands in a day (33,000) and most PLO hands in a month (450,000). Although he lost over $12k playing (mainly at $2/$4) the $40,000 prop bet win and the six-figure sum for making Supernova Elite made him a big winner overall.
By this time "ChicagoJoey" as he is known in the poker world (his 2+2 handle) had relocated to Vancouver in the wake of Black Friday and he started to really progress his PLO game. It didn't hurt that he made good friends with the likes of Brian "$tinger 88" Hastings, one of the best PLO players in the world at that time and other great US players who had been forced to relocate.
During his time in Canada Joe climbed his way up to high stakes online, playing tens of thousands of hands as high as $100/$200 PLO alongside the likes of Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky, Ben "Ben86" Tollerene, and Jens "Jeans89" Kyllonen. After going on a $1/4m upswing in the first half of 2012, Joe then hit a sudden $280k downswing, and since then he had primarily focussed on $10/$20, a game he says he can comfortably beat. He has also relocated back to the US, and as such no long plays on the JoeIngram1 account at PokerStars, although he is very active at other sites.
In mid-2014 Joe started his "Poker Life Podcasts" where he has interviewed some of the best and most influential people in poker. High stakes guests have included Dan "jungleman12" Cates, Jens "Jeans89" Kyllonen, Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky, Ben "Ben86" Tollerene, Doug "WCGRider" Polk, Dani "supernova9" Stern, and Fedor "CrownUpGuy" Holz and many, many more. He has also had on the likes of Daniel Negreanu, businessman and poker fan Bill "GASTRADER" Perkins, GPL founder Alex Dreyfus and other industry figures.
Ingram has garnered a hard-core following of fans, and the attention of the poker media. He has twice been nominated at the American Poker Awards. Last year he was nominated for "Media Person of the Year", and this year (2017) he is up for "Podcast of the Year".
Joe continues to grind poker, love poker and produce poker content on YouTube. He has recently successfully completed another prop bet for a mere $2k this time) - to write and publish a 40,000 word book which he completed in just 11 days entitled "Chasing the dream: the qualities of a successful poker player". For anyone interested, it is currently available on Amazon!