Parker “Tonkaaaap” Talbot

Parker “Tonkaaaap” Talbot is a Canadian poker player who has seen large success in the poker scene both live and online since 2012. Despite not fitting the norms of a traditional live poker player with most of his playing and winnings having occurred online, Parker undoubtedly has elite-level poker skills and the ability to make big calls. The notorious “tonkaaaa” and “tonkaaaaP” online screen names were an alias given to him by his hockey coach and it stuck with him.

Parker “Tonkaaaap” Talbot: Early Poker Days

Parker gained an interest in poker at 13 when he watched The World Poker Tour on TV with his parents. Following that he and his dad would play for small amounts until his 18th birthday when he went to a casino and played live poker for the first time. Parker spent the next 6 months playing $1/$2 live games in his free time from studying before quitting college to pursue a full-time online poker career and he never looked back. 

Parker achieved SuperNova Elite status in his very first year playing under the screen name tonkaaaa on PokerStars in 2012. He would go on to achieve SuperNova Elite status for 4 consecutive years. In the same year, he made it to the final table and finished in second place in a $215 Sunday Warm-Up MTT for $88,288, a huge cash-out so early in his career. 

Poker Results

In September 2014, Parker hit the $100k online tournament cash-out milestone, in the $1,050 Super Tuesday, cashing out $100,890. By this stage, he had been playing the occasional live tournament, having cashed out in Spain, Germany and England.  Parker’s next notable live cash-out came in 2016, where he finished 7th at a High Roller event at EPT Barcelona, cashing $180,000. The first-place prize was $780,000, a testament to the level of poker that he was playing at. 

At a WSOPE main event in November 2017, Parker narrowly missed a seat at a major WSOP final table with a mammoth prize purse. He carried his successful momentum into 2018 where he won $203,000 at an EPT Main Event in Prague.

Parker “Tonkaaaap” Talbot Twitch

2016 was the year that Tonkaaaap started streaming play to his twitch channel which quickly gained popularity as he was playing extremely high stakes and had an entertaining personality that had viewers returning. After PokerStars play tier rewards were no longer available, Parker mainly played MTTs. In January 2019, he finished in second place in one of the highest stakes online events, The Sunday Million, and cashed out $110,610. Talbot’s popularity on Twitch has led to numerous sponsorship deals, including partnerships with 888poker and PokerStars.

In July 2020, Parker cashed out his largest online tournament winnings to date, finishing in first place in the $2,100 Stadium Series Freezeout Weekly Final and walking away with $261,489. Parker continued to deliver promising performances in 2021, where he won just over $50k in a $5,200 Titans Event early in the year, followed by winnings of $108,730 and a WCOOP title in September.

Conclusion

Despite never having converted into a traditional, professional live poker player, it’s safe to say that Parker Talbot has the talent and tenacity to play poker with the biggest names in the game.