Denmark’s Jonas ‘Palsgaard1’ Christensen talks about dropping Twitch in order to join a poker stable

Sometimes secrets are made to be kept. For Denmark’s Jonas ‘Palsgaard1’ Christensen, joining a stable and learning more about poker than he ever thought possible meant his Twitch career had to come to a halt. After all, being in a stable meant a moratorium on spilling the beans.

This is the same Christensen who won the Winamax Summer Shots Main Event in June for $55,000, one month after he started being backed. The same Christensen who reached an all-time high of #142 worldwide in the PocketFives Rankings last year.

He streamed on Twitch for eight months, a hobby that abruptly ended in March. He had over 63,000 views of his stream and over 4,400 followers. He rubbed elbows with Twitch elite and tried to make a name not only for himself, but also for his home nation.

“I had to pick being a streamer or giving everything to improve my poker skills and making sure I could keep playing the stakes I wanted,” he said. “Now, I am extremely happy about my decision. My game has improved so much since I started playing on stake because they give elite coaching to their horses.”

“They didn’t want me to tell everything they tell me to everyone else,” he said. “The information is too valuable to spew it out to the Twitch community.”

It was the same dilemma guys like Taylor Caby faced when they started training sites, in Caby’s case CardRunners in 2005. Would sharing poker wisdom cut into a person’s bottom line? Would the games become exponentially tougher as a result? No matter what the outcome actually was, training sites – and stables – have flourished.

While Christensen was busy streaming and focusing on that aspect of the game, he ran head-long into a major downswing at the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016.

“I was left with the smallest amount of money I had since I started playing professionally,” he said. “It made me think a lot and I realized I needed to learn a lot more. It opened my eyes. I had always been self-taught and had never used a HUD.”

He was at a crossroads: find a coach on his own and move down in stakes or get a backing deal and play the stakes he wanted to. The latter could even mean getting coaching from his backers, but would mean giving up financial independence.

“I had always played with my own money and in the poker community, for some reason, it is not well-seen being staked,” he said. “But, here I am. I would never want to change that decision.”

Christensen, who is nearing $1 million in career online tournament winnings and won the Sunday Warm-Up at the end of 2013 for $88,000, got into streaming courtesy of Twitch poker pioneer Jason ‘JCarver’ Somerville.

“I am a huge fan of his and was lucky enough to meet Jason in Las Vegas last year,” he said. “He was co-hosting the PokerNews podcast and I was lucky enough that they brought me on the show. When I came back to Denmark, I knew that if I wanted to stream I would have a huge head start. So, I started streaming and, sure enough, some of the viewers recognized me from the podcast.”

You can understand why leaving his Twitch fans hanging was a difficult decision. Somerville even gave Christensen shout-outs and Christensen’s passion for streaming continued to blossom.

“The biggest thing was to promote myself,” he said. “I am a young kid from Denmark with a huge dream of being a Team Pokerstars Pro someday. I felt streaming was the best way for me to get some international attention.”

He streamed almost exclusively on PokerStars, three to five times a week and daily during COOPs. Cash games, sit and gos, and tournaments were all in his wheelhouse.

But nowadays, rather than stream, it’s all about backing and coaching for Christensen as he tries to push his game to the next level. He receives group coaching twice a week and one-on-one coaching a couple of times a month.

“It feels like being part of a poker family where everyone is rooting for each other and we are trying to crush poker as a group more so than as individuals,” he said.

One of the most-improved areas of his game since joining the stable, and one that’s absolutely vital to success in poker, is game theory optimal play. The Dane was behind the eight ball from the start in the mathematics of poker and said, “I had never used a HUD and had always played with my gut. So, they are teaching me how to analyze my own game using a HUD and different programs like Hold’em Resources.”

However, despite his success in the last three months, he hasn’t lost his passion for Twitch. In fact, he still recommends it to anyone looking for entertainment and perhaps a free tip or two.

“Watching streams has improved my game financially and the coaching from the stable has taken my game to crushing an average buy-in of around $25,” he said. “I would recommend Twitch to everyone. There is a lot to learn from that community that’s free. Of course, if you want to know the mistakes you are doing personally, then you need a coach, but I am pretty confident you can become a winning small-stakes player only from watching streams.”