3 Reasons Why Poker Needs Villains
For now, hang on to your opinions about poker villains. They might get under your skin and enrage their opponents, but they add something to our beloved game.
There’s a balance that is needed. Today’s poker villains don’t always get this right and often fall on the wrong side of public opinion. The line between entertaining and unacceptable is extremely fine.
But we do need poker villains, perhaps, more than you think. Of course, we mean villains in the sense of entertainment, not villains who cheat in poker. Players like Ali Isrimovic and Mike Postle bring no redeeming qualities to our sport.
Reason 1: Live Poker is Becoming Boring
During the 2003 boom, and for some time after, poker enjoyed the glory days. Seats were filled with amateurs and stoic regulars, but the balance was there.
Nowadays, tuning in to watch a live tournament can induce narcolepsy in someone who's not a poker fan. Expressionless players stare ahead blankly, meticulously waiting for some pre-determined time before acting. Unlucky viewers might tune in when Christoph Vogelsang is playing (face covered, mirrored sunglasses on), and risk entering a poker-induced coma.
Even at the World Series of Poker, the only exciting parts seem to be final table all-ins. In between these moments, the table is silent, the players' faces are blank, and action is painfully slow. Commentators do a lot of work to keep things engaging.
It might turn the cranks for experienced players, but that isn’t the crowd that made poker explode with popularity. Everyday folk like your convenience shop owner, the waiter at your favorite restaurant, the UPS deliveryman—are they entertained?
If not, it’s bad news for poker’s future.
👍 How Poker Villains Can Help Here
Obviously, poker villains are the opposite of GTO robots and strategy-focused regs. They don’t care about wearing concealing hoodies, and they aren’t taking two minutes per preflop decision. Hate them or love them, they breathe life into live poker.
For the average player to connect with our sport, they need to see life at the tables. Otherwise, what is their impression of the game?
Without villains, poker tables look daunting, boring, and intensely strategic. These are definitely not elements that will attract new players.
Reason 2: Anti-Heros Add Narrative
Martin Kabrhel going on a spree of wins in 2025 wouldn’t mean as much if he weren’t so controversial. Winning is always spectacular, but it means much more when someone like Martin is hoisting the trophies.
Even someone like Will Kassouf (a much less popular figure) mixes things up in the right direction. Even though he’s made many questionable moves and been extremely rude to opponents at times, let’s think about his effect. Without the moments he creates, would you have been watching that tournament from a decade ago, or this year’s WSOP when he got removed?
These incidents, regardless of right or wrong, create highlights that still capture attention years after they happened. Millions of views, millions of eyes on poker, and games that would have gone unseen without them.
We all remember Will Kassouf's moments against Griffin Benger. Afterwards, on ESPN SportsCenter, a correspondent said, “If poker was like that all the time, I’d watch poker all the time.”
Without Kassouf, it’s just a classic Kings vs Aces cooler. With him, it's a timeless classic that etched “Check your privilege” into the poker world’s memory.
👍 How Poker Villains Can Help Here
Without our villain’s narrative-changing moments, how many live poker moments will we look back on? Big personalities like Negreanu or Isildur will always turn heads, even far into the future.
But that’s just one side of the coin, and heroes need anti-heroes. Games, like life, need the classic good vs evil dynamic. It brings more viewers, and that’s great for our game in the long run.
Average viewers don’t tune in to watch the top pros stare into space and slowly count out their bets.
Average viewers tune in for personalities, the unexpected, and enthralling narratives—and poker villains bring each aspect.
Reason 3: Villains Change the Table Dynamics
Viewers look at villains one way, but how about their peers at the table? Having an infamous player like Kabrhel in the hands changes everything, making players call light and generally rattling their composure. In a recent game, one player even flipped up his hand early, giving Martin a paved path to the right decision (and his 5th WSOP bracelet).
Poker doesn’t always need a villain to be a wild game. Without them, we’d still see unbelievable calls, courageous bluffs, and jaw-dropping missplays. However, they make these things happen more often. For that, we’ve got to tip our cap to them.
👍 How Poker Villains Can Help Here
Does poker need villains to shake up the action? Not always. Even online, without faces or words, this game gives thrills. Cash Game World Championships and Online WSOP Events are prime examples.
But in live poker, villains can break up the flow of games. They’re the wildcard, the one that some others can’t wait to stack.
When Do Poker Villains Cross the Line?
Most of the time when we talk about villains, we mean it in the theatrical sense. It’s usually someone who plays the role of the bad guy, but doesn’t cheat. Ideally, they stay within the rules (mostly).
But sometimes, true villains make their way into our games. These characters are the real bad guys, not looking to entertain, but to enrich.
Here are 5 ways poker villains take things too far:
- Cheating: Actions that make poker unfair are always unacceptable. Cheating instantly makes the player detestable to the audience and peers, if proven. After enough evidence, a cheater is permanently branded as persona non grata. Players like Mike Postle and Ali Imsirovic even top Doug Polk's cheater tier list, and will probably never shake their disgraced images.
- Serious Angle Shooting: Acting to pretending, to gain information or force a player to do something, is angle shooting. Once in a blue moon, among friends, an angle shoot can be a laugh. But players who do it consistently, in large field tournaments, or among strangers, are always looked down upon. These feigns can cost others big money, like this possible angle shoot in the European Poker Tour.
- Rude Table Talk: The poker community tolerates a certain amount of edgy table talk, but not when it becomes malicious or unfounded. For example, saying something unpleasant after a tilting hand might be quickly forgotten. Someone who is consistently rude to opponents is never welcome.
- Breaking Rules Often: Slip-ups happen, and rules are broken by accident, but some players may do it to gain an edge. Often, breaking rules is either angle shooting or cheating. But less severe lapses, like acting out of turn, moving away from the table, and talking during multi-way pots can make a player hated as well.
- Crimes Against the Poker Community: Some people become poker villains, not because of what they did at the tables, but what they did to the community. After mishandling Full Tilt funds and criminally mismanaging the company, Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson got away with slaps on the wrists. Players lost everything on Black Friday, until PokerStars heroically bailed them out later on. To this day, they are easily two of the most despised personalities in the industry.
Now let’s check out some of the most well known poker villains in 2025, going into 2026.
Who Are the Most Well-Known Poker Villains Right Now?
Who’s doing it best right now, and which villains are staying in people’s minds long after the games end?
Martin Kabrhel
If you’ve been around for the past few years, there’s no way Martin Kabrhel is a new name to hear. Slow rolling, tanking, and questionable etiquette are just par for the course with this player.
This Czech has been getting under the skin and into the minds of plenty of opponents for a few years. He doesn’t always come out positively in the public eye, but lately his arc has been moving from hated to enjoyed. Part of the reason is that Martin is clearly super-talented, though he came close to tanking his reputation several times.
In 2023, it appeared that he was marking cards in one of WSOP’s most expensive tournaments. But when Doug Polk interviewed him about the scandal, Martin came out on top. His explanation was well-received by many, even though the owner of a card manufacturing company said the behavior was in line with card marking. But these days, this scandal isn't what defines Martin.
In a PokerGO poll:
- 46% of voters said "he keeps me entertained"
- 39% of voters said "he's annoying"
- 10% of voters said "he creates a hostile environment in High Rollers"
Even though many would happily call Kabrhel the most annoying player on the planet, he’s keeping a lot of eyes on live poker.
Will Kassouf
Some poker villains play long enough to become the heroes. Others go too far and become almost universally detested.
From the poker world’s first sightings of Will Kassouf, it was clear that he wasn’t here to make friends and chat about the weather. His mouth moved at a million miles an hour, and he seemed hell bent on angering his opponents, regardless of how below the belt his methods were.
One of the most memorable clashes happened in 2016 between Will and a player called Griffin Benger. Will had Kings, Benger had Aces. After a huge 4-bet, Kassouf probed his opponent aggressively for two minutes until the clock was called. Benger told Will he was being abusive and needed to check his privilege, and eventually, Will shoved. The board didn’t help his pair improve.
He wasn’t loved back then, but things got much worse in 2024. During the WSOP Main Event, slurs, name-calling, delays, and overall bad sportsmanship were handed out on a never-before-seen scale. As he busted the event, his tablemates chanted “Na Na Na Na Hey Hey-ey Goodbye” and happily waved him off. Then, Will Kassouf was told by tournament officials there would be “no more events” for him, and he was escorted off the property.
It seems that Will is no longer able to see where entertainment ends and alienation begins.
Nik Airball (Nikhil Arcot)
Action and annoying are both fine descriptions for Nik Airball. He hopped onto the scene in 2022 at the Hustler Casino Live and was unforgettable for a myriad of not-so-good reasons.
Nothing frustrates viewers like a player with a seemingly bottomless bankroll, mid-level poker skills, and the inability to keep quiet. Something about being able to endlessly rebuy and show up in the biggest games also rubs some viewers the wrong way.
Nik may also hold the record for the longest tank in live poker history. Holding and the lowest possible straight on the board, he thought for an agonizingly slow 22 minutes. Luckily, his opponent had a nearby couch to use.
Eventually, Doug Poker came in and let the room know that they were catching up to the live stream, since Nik had thought for so long. He folded 60 seconds later, and apologized.
To boil it down to a simple explanation, Nik Airball is probably a poker villain because he’s obnoxious at times, isn’t reserved like other players, and plays the whale role a little too well. Despite these qualities, he’s bringing attention to live poker cash games, and even signed with CoinPoker recently.
