Alex Botez enjoyed tremendous success as a Canadian child chess prodigy, and in recent years, she’s thrived alongside her sister in the world of online streaming. Her ventures into the poker world in recent years have brought several notable results, but her latest deep run was the 31-year-old’s most lucrative tournament performance.
Over the weekend, Botez won ClubWPT Gold’s Poker Champs event, taking down the eight-player heads-up shootout with a $500,000 prize pool to earn $250,000, the largest recorded score of her tournament career.
In her opening-round victory on Sept. 24, Botez defeated Eric “Erobb221” Lamont Robbins Jr., locking up at least $50,000.
Chess Pro Alex Botez takes down streamer Erobb221 for 50K 😳@alexandrabotez moves on to play in the next round of Poker Champs tomorrow🏆 pic.twitter.com/yenymsLFPY
— ClubWPT Gold (@ClubWPTGold) September 25, 2026
Two days later, Botez was two heads-up matches away from victory. First, she battled “PaymoneyWubby” in the semifinals of the tournament. Botez opened up a lead of more than 2:1 as the match went on. As the blinds climbed up, everything came to a head in a hurry. Botez opened for a min-raise on the button with K♥3♠. Wubby clicked it backed for one additional big blind, and Botez called. The flop was K♦10♠4♥, Wubby bet three big blinds, and Botez called.
On the 10♥ turn, Wubby committed himself, betting nine big blinds and leaving himself four big blinds behind. Botez went into the tank, activating her 60-second timebank, eventually shoving. Wubby called, tabling two red queens, and the 2♦ river sealed the victory for Botez.
Path To Victory
With $125,000 locked up, Botez awaited her opponent in the finals. That match would ultimately be against Thomas Chance Morris, better known as “Sodapoppin”.
The moment Alex Botez won 250K in Poker Champs pic.twitter.com/wCuQe62AXt
— ClubWPT Gold (@ClubWPTGold) September 27, 2026
In the first match of the best-of-three finale, Botez turned the nuts with a jack-high straight and caught Morris bluffing with king-high.
Botez opened up a lead once again in the second match. On the tournament-clinching hand, Botez called Morris’ all-in bet with pocket tens on an A♦A♠2♠ board, and she once again caught Morris bluffing with king high. The 6♦ turn and J♣ river changed nothing, and Botez locked up the victory.
Alex Botez at the WSOP
Prior to this heads-up tournament victory, Botez had several notable poker tournament results to her name. She made the money in the 2023 World Series of Poker main event, finishing in 1,040th place.
Botez made runs in two major events at WSOP Paradise in 2024, finishing 60th in a $10,000 event and 187th in the $25,000 WSOP Super Main Event for a total of $89,490. She also claimed a trophy in a 2023 side event at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, winning a $550 freezeout for $10,815.
Beyond tournaments, Botez won $456,900 in a famous edition of Hustler Casino Live back in 2022, which featured Phil Hellmuth, Tom Dwan, Alan Keating, Mr. Beast, and Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins.
In chess, Botez has the title of Woman FIDE master. Along with her sister, Andrea, Alex rose to prominence in the streaming world around 2020. What started as primarily chess-based content expanded to a variety of other content streams, with a YouTube channel that recently surpassed 2 million subscribers, and a Twitch with 1.3 million followers.
Screenshot via BotezLive Twitch stream.
