In April, Ignition announced that it had proudly partnered with Xuan Liu. Her poker skill, strategic insight, and influence align with Ignition’s mission to provide players with a trusted environment to compete, explore, and enjoy poker at every level. Through this collaboration, players can expect a behind-the-scenes look at her life as a professional poker player, following her travels to high-stakes tournaments around the world, along with insights, tips and advice, plus access to freerolls and exclusive giveaways. So be sure to follow along on social media:
Ignition:
Xuan:
Since the early 2010s, Chinese-Canadian poker pro Xuan Liu has been making her mark on the global circuit both online and in live play, with some massive wins that have put her undeniably into the top 20 female poker players in the world.
Those following the global circuit will likely know her from her 21 WSOP cashes, or perhaps from her recent signature win, where she became the first woman ever to take the top spot at a Triton Poker event. In May 2025, she won the $25K WPT Global Slam tournament, hauling in a prize of $860,000 and stepping instantly into the global poker spotlight. The coming years will no doubt have even greater rewards in store for one of Hold’em’s fiercest competitors, but she wasn’t always in the limelight.
From Tianjin to Toronto
Xuan Liu was born in Tianjin, China, but her family raised her in Toronto, Canada. She didn’t discover poker until a friend introduced her to it in college while at the University of Waterloo. The game took hold of her and did not let go. But like any other player, it took several years of study and play to grind her way to major success. She sharpened her tournament strategy skills at tables in Toronto card rooms and online poker sites, and eventually started to take stabs at big live tournaments.
Taking Over the Tables
One of Xuan’s first big breakout wins came in 2011 when she finished third at the Main Event at EPT San Remo. She cashed for a staggering $524,705. The following year, she would finish fourth at the Main Event at PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, earning $600,000. She continued scoring nice wins, including a WPT title at the Fallsview Poker Classic, and continues to make deep runs at events around the world.
Her most impressive win thus far came with her first-place finish at the $25,000 WPT Global Slam at Triton Montenegro in 2025.
Crushing the 2025 Triton
In nearly a decade of events, no woman had ever won the top spot at the Triton Poker Series. That isn’t, of course, due to the softness of the competition. The most elite players in the world come to do battle at Triton events. With buy-ins in the tens of thousands, the lineups are consistently stacked with the best players in the game. Poker’s most feared names – players like Phil Ivey, Jason Koon, Bryn Kenney, and Alex Foxen – routinely dominate games at the Triton.
She entered the Global Slam as one of 155 entrants, and told herself she was “going to make it really count.” She got some good luck early when she won a triple-all-in-hand and got some chips to work with. She continued to battle her way through the tournament and ultimately found herself at the final table in fourth place with 31 big blinds. David Peters and Daniel Dvoress were the chip leaders with 71 and 63 BB, respectively. She had her work cut out for her, including tangling with another woman contending for history: Kristen Foxen.
The two would be pitted against one another towards the end.
Foxen in the small blind tried to steal Liu’s big blind with a preflop raise, but the two wound up all in together instead. Foxen was holding K-8, and Liu’s K-J had her in bad shape going to the runout. The runout brought no help for Foxen, leaving her eliminated in fourth, and sending Liu on to contend for a shot at the big win.
By the time she was heads-up with her final opponent, however, she was in rough shape. She had only 16 big blinds to Dvoress’s 61. Mathematically, she was not a favorite to climb any higher. With a chip and a chair, however, anyone can be a threat to win. She locked in and grinded away, eventually staking her tournament life on a pair of pocket fives that prevailed in a coin flip against an AQ held by Dvoress. After that, she was the chip leader and could breathe a little more freely. She didn’t have to wait long for her moment to arrive. The very next hand, Dvoress went all in with a dismal 10 3, and Liu called with 76o. A seven on the flop gave her a win in the hand and the victory in the entire tournament. She was officially the champion.
She was riding high: “Obviously, this is a career highlight. I don’t know if I can ever top this in poker, to be completely honest.”
In 2026, she continues to add to her stack. At the WSOP Europe series, she cashed right behind Shaun Deeb in the Super High Roller €20,800 buy-in event, earning €41,000. With five pages of results at Card Player (and a cover feature in the magazine of the same name), she shows no signs of slowing down.
Beyond the Tables
Xuan Liu isn’t content to simply destroy competitors and cash checks. She’s quite active away from the tables as well, commenting on events, educating poker students, entertaining through online content, and even advocating for various issues.
She has spoken at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, and is widely recognized for an outstanding ability to analyze the game and communicate about it to audiences at any skill level. For that reason, she has become one of the more trusted voices in the online poker influencer community.
T.V. poker fans have likely caught one of her many appearances. She has visited Hellmuth’s Home Game presented by Poker Night in America, a celebrity poker show on CBS Sports featuring some of the game’s biggest names. Catch her on an episode decked out in Ignition Casino gear, tossing chips alongside legends like Dan “Jungleman” Cates, Hellmuth himself, Tom “Durrrr” Dwan, Stanley Tang, and Randall Emmett.
Her content resonates with players as she gives and inside look into the realities of life on the professional poker circuit, from travel to preparation to dealing with variance at the tables.
A Voice for a More Inclusive Game
Only about ten percent of professional card players are women, which offers a largely untapped opportunity to grow the world’s favorite competitive card game. Representation in the form of influencers like Xuan Liu can be hugely beneficial to help women see that it is not only possible to play with the boys, but to crush them if you have a lot of skill.
Xuan is the proof. Her career is not built on being the exception, but simply on being an outstanding card player. She competes against the same fields as everyone else and wins. There’s really no better way to show other women that the path to poker greatness is absolutely open to them.
Through public speaking, Xuan has also addressed how to handle the mental demands of a very challenging game. Poker demands mental resilience. In fact, you can only win big prizes if you are resilient and have great endurance to stay sharp over hours upon hours of play. A single mistake can lead to elimination, so Xuan talks about how to handle self-doubt and manage the demands of high-stakes competition. She has also expressed a desire to build a genuinely inclusive poker community. Advocacy of this kind is just what poker needs to grow into a broader game enjoyed by all.
