Lex Veldhuis

Lex Veldhuis Background

Alexander “Lex” Bastiaan Martin Veldhuis, born December 29th, 1983, is a long-time Dutch poker player and PokerStars Ambassador. Lex Veldhuis has been among the top Poker streamers on Twitch for many years and regularly broadcasts his play to thousands of viewers on his Twitch as well as his YouTube channel.

Lex Veldhuis Early Poker Days

Veldhuis studied criminology at Erasmus University in Rotterdam and spent his free time competitively gaming, mainly strategy games, his specialty being StarCraft. Whilst establishing himself in the online gaming community Lex became acquainted with other players like Victor Goossens and Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier, who encouraged him to get involved in the online poker scene, as it was gaining popularity for being a strategy game where you could win big money. 

His gaming friends sponsored the first $10 into a PokerStars account and 4 years later after climbing the ranks of tournaments both online and live, he reached the highest level of poker. In January 2009, PokerStars set out to create a Dutch branch and Lex was one of the first picks for the team of ambassadors. 

Later in 2009, a video of Lex bluffing his opponents at a WSOP main event went viral and led to him gaining popularity and being known for his bluffing. Subsequent to that video, the most elite cash game at the time ‘High Stakes Poker’ invited him to the show, where he proved himself worthy of playing with the best. He made his debut appearance in season 6 of the show in 2010 and played against some of the biggest names in Poker, including Doyle Brunson and Daniel Negreanu. 

In 2011 Lex and long-time friend Elky made a pledge to fitness and decided to have a competitive kickboxing match where there was more than $100k on the line. Spoiler Alert, Lex won.

Poker Results

Lex’s first ever live cash-out happened in 2005 when he finished 8th in an €820 Master Classics of Poker tournament, earning him €7,168. The very next year he would claim his first live main event poker win at the Dutch Poker Open for €61,200. In 2009, just 4 years after he started playing online poker, he cashed the largest amount of his career to date, finishing 7th in the WSOP $40,000 NLHE event for $277,939.

In 2013, Lex returned to his online roots and switched from PokerStars Team Pro to PokerStars Team Online, playing millions of hands each year and reaching the highest volume of play tier, SuperNova Elite, three years in a row. 

Lex Veldhuis Twitch

In 2016, Poker was booming on Twitch, and Lex, being familiar with the platform from watching other gaming streams, decided to jump on the train. Veldhuis’ channel has since become one of the most popular Twitch channels for poker content, achieving the “Poker Streamer Of The Year” award back to back in 2018 and 2019. 

In September 2018, during a PokerStars $5,200 WCOOP Main Event, Lex was going deep and consistently gaining viewers with every hand. His run ended when he got knocked out in 58th place out of 2044 competitors, cashing $28,632 and breaking a Twitch poker streaming record (at the time) with 32,839 concurrent viewers.

In the 2021 WCOOP, Lex set his personal record for biggest cash on stream, $172k, while also cashing the most he’s ever cashed in an online tournament, two personal records in one!

Lex would set another Twitch viewership record for poker in May 2020 when his stream reached 58,799 viewers, and his channel held the number 1 spot on all of Twitch for a short period. 

The Struggles

In the summer of 2018, Veldhuis went on one of the biggest losing streaks of his career – while streaming all of it live to his viewers. The reality of this impacted him greatly and resulted in him cutting down on his playing and streaming to relieve stress and re-evaluate his strategies. 

In addition to the mental battle he was fighting, Lex was dealing with physical health issues as well. In 2018, he collapsed on the street and was taken to the hospital. Upon examination, it was observed that Lex had heart irregularities and it was speculated that it was related to stress and fatigue, most likely derived from his circumstances at the time. Fortunately, he made a fast recovery and was back at home the next day. 

Family Life

In November 2018, Lex got engaged to his high school sweetheart and they now have 2 children. In August 2020 we saw Lex take a break from streaming for a solid two months after the tragic passing of his father. He was completely inactive until October 2020. 

Lex Veldhuis YouTube

Lex has been producing highlight content of his streaming on YouTube for many years as well as reviews of hands he’s played in a “Learn With Lex” series. In 2023, he expanded his live-streaming to YouTube, now streaming on both Twitch and Youtube. 

Conclusion

Lex has made a full recovery from his stress related issues and is in good health. His poker results are on an upswing. He will continue to stream his play regularly on Twitch as well as Youtube. Lex made a recent comeback to the live scene at an EPT tournament and, as of the publishing of this article, Lex’s most recent live tournament was on the 19th of February 2023 at an EPT event in Paris where he cashed for $4,759. 

Links

Hendon Mob: https://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=51769

Twitch: https://twitch.tv/lexveldhuis

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@LexVeldhuisTV

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexVeldhuis

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexveldhuis