Bryan ‘bparis’ Paris won a PocketFives Triple Crown while live-streaming on Twitch

Winning a PocketFives Triple Crown is hard enough. If you want one, you need to take down three $10,000 prize pool tournaments across three sites tracked by PocketFives within a week. Each tournament has to have at least 100 players and a real money buy-in. Satellites and qualifiers do not count.

For Bryan ‘bparis’ Paris, winning his fifth Triple Crown was special enough. Only a handful of players have ever booked five of them, and for Paris, his fifth was also his second of the month. And as if all of that weren’t impressive enough, Paris won each of his Triple Crown tournaments while live-streaming on Twitch.

All of them.

He wrapped up his fifth Triple Crown on Tuesday night with a win in the partypoker Heavyweight Weigh-In for $4,300. That victory came shortly after wins in the PokerStars.fr Night on Stars on June 25 and the Winamax XTASE one day after that. The latest Triple Crown bumped his career win total to 211.

“It feels amazing,” Paris said. “I’ve been aiming very high this month and I think setting goals has helped me achieve them. It was awesome getting to share it live with people too. After 10 years of doing this, I want to give back to the community. I’m in a somewhat unique position as an American player who can access all of the European sites and it seems like there is a gap for high-stakes action on Twitch. I plan on filling that gap and making America want to play poker again. Perhaps if we get popular enough, we can get some movement on the political front and get online poker legalized.”

Having an audience watch him roll through three Triple Crown qualifying wins helped push him along. And every cash is meaningful, as Paris is less than $50,000 away from overtaking Sebastian ‘p0cket00’ Sikorski for the second highest earnings total in online tournament history. Right now, Paris is at $9.41 million, while Sikorski is at $9.46 million. Whoever hits $10 million first will become just the second player ever to do so, joining Chris ‘moorman1’ Moorman.

Also growing is his Twitch following, which stands at 748 followers and almost 5,000 total views. “To have this milestone already under my belt is great, mostly for driving interest and growing the stream as fast as I can,” Paris said. “I wasn’t intending to Triple Crown-chase on stream. I’ve actually cut volume quite a bit, but I’m happy everyone got to see it go down live. It gives me hope for more milestones and storylines to come.”

Grinding while streaming means a ton of positive feedback from viewers. Who doesn’t want to watch the first Triple Crown ever unfold on a live stream, especially from a guy like Paris, who has been around the online poker community for a decade?

“We have a lot of positive vibes in the stream chat,” the five-time Triple Crown winner said. “Everyone is incredibly supportive and there are not a lot of trolls. It’s a great atmosphere that seems to be conducive to success. I plan on doing it three to five days a week going forward, hopefully for a long time.”

Paris’ stream also allows him to act as an ambassador for the game and, interestingly, throngs of Dutch poker fans have tuned in to watch him play.

“There’s a gap on Twitch for regular high-stakes action, and getting online poker entwined with the current boom in e-sports seems like a great way to build the game again,” he said. “I’m passionate about poker and spreading it to as wide of an audience as possible. I think it’s a fantastic game that deserves better than what it has gotten in America so far.”

With cashes on PokerStars.fr, Winamax, and partypoker in recent days, it’s obvious that Paris isn’t in Las Vegas chasing a dream of a World Series of Poker bracelet. In fact, he’s an ocean away in the historic city of Amsterdam, where he’s had his home base for the last three years.

“I moved here for a combination of lifestyle, access to online poker, and a desire to travel the EPT grind,” Paris said. “I’ve cut back on live travel since my wife’s pregnancy began, but we still love living here. It’s a fantastic place.”

His wife is due on July 14, which falls in the middle of the Main Event, and missing his son’s birth probably wouldn’t go over too well with the rest of the family.

“I also didn’t go to Las Vegas because of taxes and field strength,” Paris explained. “I can only be in the USA 30 days out of the year to get a big tax write-off, and June is always my strongest month online because so many good regs are gone.”

And while he’s busy playing tournament after tournament and hosting stream after stream, his sixth Triple Crown could be on the way in short order. In fact, he almost had a third Triple Crown in June, but ended up with two runner-up finishes and a win instead of three wins.

“I’m hoping to get my sixth Triple Crown within the next month before all the regs come back,” he said. “However, I know they don’t come along super often, so I’m not going to call my shot or anything. I’m just going to keep playing my best and keep streaming. If I get there again, that would be tremendous.”