Pro Players Drew Gonzalez on Finding His WSOP Flow and Trusting His Instincts Owen Gaines Owen Gaines is a professional poker player and author who has played an estimated ten million hands and written four poker strategy books. September 4, 2026 The second interview in ACR Poker’s weekly 2026 WSOP series follows BetOnDrew through a freer summer schedule, the challenge of creating content while playing and the live reads that pulled him outside the theoretical lines.ACR Poker’s 14-part weekly interview series continues with Drew Gonzalez, better known online as BetOnDrew. Gonzalez has been an ACR Pro since 2020, but the two roles at the center of this conversation – professional poker player and content creator – go back much further. The Pennsylvania native left his day job in 2010 to pursue poker full time and later built an audience through streaming and digital content.That dual identity shaped his 2026 World Series of Poker. Gonzalez deliberately entered the summer without the rigid schedule he had used in previous years, giving himself more freedom to choose when to play and when to create. The early returns included a 10th-place finish in an Orleans Summer Open Sunday Special for $3,050 and a Day 3 run in the $1,500 WSOP Monster Stack, where he finished 237th out of 11,933 entries for $9,000.Interview quotations have been shortened and lightly edited for clarity, repetition and spoken filler while preserving Drew Gonzalez’s meaning and intent. A Looser Schedule, More EnergyFor Gonzalez, one of the biggest experiments of the summer happened before he ever took a seat. Rather than lock himself into a long list of events and pieces of action, he stripped away some of the administrative pressure and gave himself room to decide each day what made sense.ACR Poker: What role did the 2026 WSOP play in your year as both a professional player and a content creator? “This was the first year I experimented with not having a strict schedule. I didn’t sell much action - I only sold for the Main Event - because I wanted to see what my energy would be like if I just played when I wanted to play and didn’t have to keep track of refunding bullets and everything else. I wanted to simplify it and go with the flow. I definitely felt like my energy was a bit higher than in past years.” The extra space also changed how Gonzalez approached content. Instead of trying to fit filming around a fixed tournament calendar, he could treat the WSOP floor itself as part of the work. “My content felt more natural and more in flow. At one point I spent six hours just walking back and forth between the poker areas at Horseshoe and Paris, asking people questions and running into people. It was amazing to be able to hang out and be part of the WSOP in so many different ways. And as a player, I started the summer really hot. I cashed the first three or four tournaments I played, bubbled the final table at the Orleans and made Day 3 of the Monster Stack. I attributed a lot of that to having that more free-flowing schedule.” Why Live Poker Changes the BaselineThe flexibility Gonzalez found off the table has a parallel in the way he thinks about live poker. Online, he wants his decisions to stay close to a theoretical baseline. Live, the extra information available from the player in front of him can justify moving away from it.ACR Poker: What is the most difficult online habit to eliminate when returning to live poker? “Maybe not as much for me personally, but in general, the first thing that comes to mind is playing too close to GTO or a theoretical baseline when you’re live. The default tendencies are different, and live you have so many other things you can look at for information. Online, you can’t see whether somebody looks recreational, how they put their chips in the middle or whether they seem tilted from the last hand. There’s just a very different feel.” Gonzalez pointed to population tendencies as part of the adjustment. In the live games he plays, he sees less check-raising and three-betting, more flatting and more opportunities to exploit what opponents are actually doing rather than what a balanced strategy says they should be doing. “Online, I’m going to try to stay as close to a theoretical baseline as possible. Live, I’m willing to go outside those lines more because I think there’s an edge there. At the mid to low buy-ins, if you’re too theoretical, you can miss opportunities. At higher stakes you may want to lean more into the baseline against certain players, but I think you can get away with a lot more at the mid to low stakes live than you can online.” Martin Kabrhel Was Hard to MissNot every memorable presence of the summer had to come from sharing a table. Gonzalez’s answer went instead to Martin Kabrhel, the Czech pro whose table talk and personality made him one of the most visible figures of the 2026 series.ACR Poker: Which live table or opponent gave you the most memorable experience of the summer? “The first person who comes to mind is Martin Kabrhel. I played Day 3 of the Monster Stack and he was behind me. If you were on social media this summer, he was everywhere. Over the last year or so he’s really grown on me. I think he’s kind of understood what’s more playful, fun, engaging and endearing with his personality versus what can become annoying or played out. I think he’s really starting to find flow with that. He’s still polarizing - some people love him and some people hate him - but I think more people are shifting toward the love.” Gonzalez did not actually share a table with Kabrhel during that run, and no other opponent immediately came to mind. The answer was less about a specific hand than the atmosphere of a WSOP where some personalities are impossible not to notice.The Cost of Creating Content at the TableFor a player whose public identity includes streaming and vlogging, content is part of the job. Gonzalez is also clear that it is not free. Every camera check, note and remembered board card takes a small piece of the same attention needed to play.ACR Poker: Did creating content improve your focus, or did it become an additional distraction during the series? “Honestly, creating content does not improve my focus. It can definitely take away from it. It’s similar to streaming online, where I can’t play as many tables because I also have to look at chat and manage the stream. Live, if I’m vlogging, I’m also thinking about the hands I need to take notes on afterward: Did I get the camera set up correctly? Did I catch that moment? Am I going to remember this flop? Can anybody see my phone or my hand? Am I slowing down the action?” Gonzalez said he can prepare mentally so that split attention does not hurt his focus too much, but he has also noticed another wrinkle: once players know a camera is involved, the game itself can change. “It doesn’t improve my focus at all, but I can prepare mentally so it doesn’t hurt my focus too much. I still enjoy doing it and I think there’s value there. You also have to realize people can play differently when they know you’re vlogging. How many times over the years has somebody shown a bluff “for the vlog”? There are things that change when you’re creating content at the poker table, and you have to adjust for them.” Field Player Over Theory in the MarginsThe most revealing answer of the conversation came when Gonzalez was asked what had changed in his game beneath the results. His own label for the shift was simple: in close live spots, he has been leaning more toward being a “field player” than a purely theoretical one.ACR Poker: What did you learn about your game in 2026 that may not be visible in the results? “I do a lot of reflection every year on what I’m doing and what’s working. There are years when I’m very much a field player - I’m trusting my instincts, starting from a theoretical baseline but adjusting from there. Then there are years when I tell myself I’m just going to play very theoretically and do what I think is correct regardless of the opponent. This year I’m still relying on the baseline, but I’m coloring outside the lines a little more.” He used a close all-in decision with ace-queen as an example. The theoretical baseline may support getting the money in, but if the opponent in front of him is unlikely to arrive with the bluffs that make that decision work, Gonzalez is increasingly comfortable passing and looking for a cleaner edge later. “I might make a fringy or nitty fold that I wouldn’t make against a lot of people because I’m focusing more on navigating the tournament. If a spot feels close to neutral EV against a player who I don’t think has the bluffs they’re supposed to have, do I really need to take it right there? Live, people don’t bluff enough in some spots, don’t check-raise enough and don’t defend their big blind enough. There are so many other profitable spots that I don’t need to take every marginal one.” His analogy was not about avoiding risk altogether. It was about choosing the road that best fits the actual conditions rather than the one that looks fastest on paper. “It’s like driving. One road might theoretically get you somewhere a little faster, but there’s more danger and more caution required. Another route might be a little slower, but it’s easier to navigate with fewer hurdles. I’ve been leaning into that a lot more this year, and I’ve had more success personally with the way I process and play the game. When I’m playing my best, it’s typically when I’m leaning into my field-player instincts a little more than pure theory.” The Gladiators Group Sweat That Stuck With HimWhen Gonzalez was asked to pick one memory from the entire series, he did not choose an individual cash. He went to the $300 Gladiators of Poker, an 11,185-entry event near the end of the summer, and the group experience surrounding a Jon Pardy WSOP vlog.ACR Poker: What is the one moment you will remember most from the 2026 WSOP? “The first thing that comes to mind is the Gladiators. Pardy bought action on seven of us for his YouTube video, trying to save his summer. The concept was really fun because the story lived on even after he busted. There were seven of us sweating everyone and pushing everyone, and we had a group chat. It was toward the end of the series, so everybody was just having fun. That was a really fun moment for me. Hannah, my girlfriend, ended up making the final three tables, and Boski made a deep Day 2 run as well.” That answer fits the broader picture Gonzalez painted of his summer. Giving himself more room in the schedule did not only affect which tournaments he played. It gave him more time to experience the WSOP as a player, creator and member of a group going through the same grind together. What the 2026 WSOP Taught HimThe interview kept returning to the same tension: theory provides the foundation, but live poker still asks Gonzalez to trust what he sees and feels in the moment. His final answer reduced that idea to one sentence.ACR Poker: Complete the sentence: “My 2026 WSOP taught me that…” “You have to trust your instincts. I sleep well at night when I trust my instincts, even if I make a mistake. But I don’t sleep as well when I go against an instinct or a gut feeling, because a lot of the time I end up beating myself up over it. My 2026 WSOP taught me that trusting my instincts is worth more than anything.” More WSOP Stories Are ComingGonzalez is the second featured player in ACR Poker’s 14-part weekly interview series looking back at the 2026 World Series of Poker through the people who played it. His installment lands on a different kind of takeaway than a bracelet story: a summer can change not only through a result, but through the way a player chooses to structure the grind, process information and decide which instincts are worth following.Follow ACR Poker News for the next interview in the weekly series.