Pro Players Jon Pardy on WSOP ‘Summer Camp,’ Reality-TV Pressure and Learning to Be Prepared 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. October 16, 2026 The fifth interview in ACR Poker’s weekly 2026 WSOP series follows the Big Brother Canada winner and ACR Pro through the social side of Las Vegas, the overlap between reality television and tournament poker, an unforgettable Phil Ivey stare and the lesson he took from a difficult summer.ACR Poker’s 14-part weekly interview series continues with Jon Pardy, better known on ACR as JPARDS.The series is built around first-person conversations with ACR Poker Pros, ambassadors, creators and personalities looking back at the 2026 World Series of Poker. Rather than treating the summer as a list of cashes and final tables, each installment focuses on the moments, pressure, relationships and lessons that do not always show up in a results database.Pardy arrives at that idea from a different route than most poker professionals.The Newfoundland native first became widely known after winning Big Brother Canada Season 2 in 2014. Hockey had been his first competitive obsession, but injuries changed that path. Poker came later through the reality-TV and streaming world, including time with Bill Perkins’ Thirst Lounge project and fellow ACR Pro Drew Gonzalez. Pardy joined the ACR Poker Team Pro roster in 2020 and has since built his place in the game as both a player and an entertainer, streaming and producing poker content on Twitch and YouTube.His live resume also includes repeated WSOP cashes and a step into the high-roller world. In 2023, Pardy won an ACR high-stakes package to Triton Poker London and later finished 17th in a $42,400 Mystery Bounty event for $38,600. That experience provides the setting for one of the most memorable stories in this interview: the moment he found himself watching Phil Ivey deliver the same stare Pardy had seen for years on television – until Ivey turned it on him.But Pardy’s 2026 WSOP conversation is not really about a single hand or result. It is about why the summer still feels like a reunion, why cameras can actually make him more comfortable, how reality television taught him to stay engaged for long stretches and what happens when a player arrives in Las Vegas without enough time to prepare for the grind ahead.Why the WSOP Feels Like Summer CampFor Pardy, the social side of the World Series of Poker is not something that happens around the tournament schedule. It is one of the main reasons he wants to be there in the first place.A long Las Vegas summer can create pressure in obvious ways. Buy-ins add up. Bad runs stretch across days or weeks. Every tournament can end in one decision. But when Pardy looks at the series as a whole, his first thought is not the stress. It is the people he gets to see again. ACR Poker: How did the social side of the 2026 series compare with the pressure you felt at the tables? “The social side is literally why I enjoy the WSOP so much. They don't call it summer camp for adults for no reason. You get to see people that you haven't seen since the last WSOP, you get to have dinners, you get to compete with your friends, and you get to have your friends go deep in tournaments. The overall atmosphere - the overall social atmosphere the WSOP brings - far outweighs the pressure. Considering myself more of a content creator and a poker personality, I would say that I lean into the social side of the 2026 WSOP far more than I do the pressure side. We obviously still want to win, but we aren't expecting it.” That last line says a lot about Pardy’s place in poker. He still sits down trying to win, but the experience is not reduced to whether the summer produces a trophy. The dinners, the rails, the friends making deep runs and the feeling of being around the same community all count as part of the return.For a player whose public identity has always included content and personality alongside competition, the WSOP gives him both at once. Reality TV Made the Cameras EasierSome players feel an immediate shift when cameras arrive at a table. Decisions become more visible. Reactions become part of the show. A crowd can turn an ordinary pot into a performance.Pardy has already lived through a version of that problem on a much larger scale.ACR Poker: Does your reality-television background make you more comfortable when cameras or spectators arrive during a poker tournament? “I think my reality-television background definitely makes me more comfortable when the cameras or spectators arrive during a poker tournament. I feed off that energy. Big Brother was a little bit of a different dynamic because I didn't have those people to feed off. I didn't have those people, you know, to kind of help me with the energy, but I did know that my family back home, my friends - everyone - was rooting me on. So I do think that having that experience through the show, through meet-and-greets after, being camera-trained and PR-trained from a young age with hockey as well, definitely gives me a lot more comfort in front of the cameras and in big crowds than others would have.” The distinction matters. Big Brother asked Pardy to live inside the camera rather than wait for it to arrive at a poker table. The audience was largely invisible while the show was happening, but the awareness of being watched never went away.Poker gives him something different: people nearby, a live rail, a table reacting in real time. Instead of adding pressure, that attention can become energy. The Pressure Is Staying Dialed InThe most interesting overlap between reality television and tournament poker, in Pardy’s view, is not the cameras. It is the duration.One decision rarely exists in isolation. A player can make the right choices for hours and still undo an entire day with one lapse. Reality competition can work the same way: attention has to survive long after the initial adrenaline wears off.ACR Poker: What poker situation creates the closest psychological pressure to a reality competition? “I think the closest psychological pressure in poker to reality TV is just the longevity of having to stay dialed in. Big Brother, that reality television show I was on, lasted 71 days. It's a game where if you say one wrong thing or make one wrong move, your journey is over. And that's almost exactly like a poker tournament. You make one wrong move, you take one second off, you make one blunder, and that could be it. And again, if it's not it for you, then you're going to have a lot of work ahead of you. You're going to have to make some moves. You're going to have to stay patient. You're going to kind of have to let the cards fall where they may. I think those are two very similar crossovers.” Pardy is describing pressure as endurance rather than spectacle. The difficult part is not simply making one big decision while everyone is watching. It is maintaining enough focus to keep making good decisions after the novelty is gone, the sleep has accumulated and the easy part of the experience is over.That idea becomes even more relevant later in the interview, when he explains why his biggest lesson from the summer had nothing to do with a particular hand. The Phil Ivey Stare Became RealWhen Pardy was asked about the most memorable person he had ever shared a table with, he reached beyond the 2026 WSOP and back to Triton Poker.Pardy had already watched Phil Ivey do what poker fans have watched him do for decades: sit motionless, lock onto an opponent and make an already uncomfortable decision feel heavier. Seeing that stare from another seat at the same table was one thing. Getting it redirected at him was another.ACR Poker: Who was the most memorable person you shared a table with, and what made that table stand out? “This story goes back to a poker series I had no business ever playing in, and that was Triton Poker. I sat down at the table with the one and only Phil Ivey. He was in seat four, I was in seat nine. He was heads-up with the guy in seat one, and he was giving him the old-school Phil Ivey stare. I couldn't believe it. This is stuff I've seen on TV - the exact stare. I was looking at him and I was like, 'Oh my God, this is a little bit intense. This is crazy. I can't imagine if I was the one getting stared down right now.' And Phil Ivey felt my eyes on him. He breaks contact with the guy in seat one and just shoots his eyes over to me and gives me the death stare. I wasn't even in the hand. I immediately looked down at my lap and hoped he wasn't looking anymore.” It is a perfect Pardy story because the punch line does not require a pot, a bad beat or a heroic bluff. He was not even playing the hand.He was simply watching one of poker’s most recognizable table presences from a few seats away – and learned very quickly that staring at the stare can have consequences of its own. A Birthday Break From the ChaosNot every memorable part of a WSOP summer happens under casino lights.Pardy describes the 2026 series as chaotic almost by default. There are tournaments everywhere, different venues competing for attention and something happening nearly every night. The grind can become the rhythm of the entire summer unless a player deliberately steps outside it.His birthday gave him one of those breaks.ACR Poker: What was the funniest, strangest or most chaotic moment of your 2026 summer? “That is a great question. I would say overall, it was a pretty chaotic WSOP. I think anytime you're in grind mode and there are so many tournaments, so many venues and so many things going on every single night, that just breeds a chaotic environment no matter what. To pinpoint a specific time or a specific moment, I would say my birthday was pretty fun and pretty chaotic. We went out to watch an England game at Blondie's, got tied one on, then went to Topgolf with the boys and my girlfriend and another girl - I forget what her name was, but she was cool. Yeah, I think that night was pretty chaotic, but it's nice to have a break from just the normal, everyday WSOP grind.” The story is deliberately ordinary compared with the scale of the WSOP. That is what makes it useful.A long poker summer can become so consuming that a night watching a game, going to Topgolf and spending time with friends starts to feel like a reset. For Pardy, the social side of the series is not separate from surviving the grind. It is part of what makes the grind worth returning to. The Lesson Was PreparationPardy’s final answer changes the tone.The summer may have felt like adult summer camp socially, but that did not make it easy. His biggest takeaway from 2026 was that a long WSOP cannot simply be dropped into the middle of an already complicated stretch of life and expected to go smoothly.In the weeks before Las Vegas, Pardy says he went through a major move and appeared on Poker Wars, Kevin Martin’s reality-poker competition. By the time the WSOP arrived, he did not feel as mentally, physically or emotionally settled as he wanted to be.ACR Poker: Complete this sentence: “My 2026 WSOP taught me that…” “My 2026 WSOP taught me that you need to be prepared. I wasn't prepared this summer. When you come into the WSOP, you need to be prepared. I went through a big life move right before the summer. I was on a show called Poker Wars, and I didn't really have the time to dial in and be mentally, physically and emotionally stable enough to come in and weather two months of getting absolutely destroyed.” Preparation in that answer means more than studying ranges or choosing a tournament schedule.It means arriving with enough stability away from the table to absorb what the WSOP can do at the table. A two-month poker grind asks for attention, patience and emotional recovery day after day. When those reserves are already depleted before the first tournament begins, every downswing has more weight.Pardy’s interview starts with the reason he loves the summer – the people, the dinners, the shared runs and the atmosphere – and ends with the condition that makes it possible to enjoy all of that. Show up ready.More WSOP Stories Are ComingPardy is the fifth 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 is a reminder that a poker summer can be memorable without being defined by one result. For Pardy, the WSOP is part competition, part reunion and part endurance test. Reality television made him comfortable with attention. Triton gave him a Phil Ivey story he will probably be telling for years. Las Vegas gave him another chaotic birthday night.The harder lesson was simpler: if you want to survive a long summer of poker, preparation has to begin before you sit down at the table.The series continues next week with another first-person look at the 2026 WSOP.Follow ACR Poker News for the next interview in the weekly series.