Ali Imsirovic: Personal and Professional Life, including his Wealth and the Magnitude of his Gains and Losses

Ali Imsirovic at the WPT – Introductory Materials

An accomplished poker player, Ali Imsirovic hails from Bosnia. On January 29th, 1995, he entered the world in the city of Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Ali Imsirovic

In the highest stakes games, he is a regular fixture. More than $15 million of his total earnings came from live tournaments. In Bosnia, where he was born and raised, he naturally holds the record for the most wealth.

At the 2018 Poker Masters high stakes tournament, he took home the coveted Purple Jacket. This is a yearly, high-stakes tournament series, and the winner receives a substantial cash prize for having the best overall year. After sweeping 14 (!) high-stakes tournaments in a single year, he was named the PokerGO Tour Player of the Year in 2021.

On the 8th of August, 2020, he won the largest online poker pot ever in a Texas Hold ’em cash game. He beat Tan “tan4321” Xuan in a $500/$1,000 No Limit Hold’em cash game on GGNetwork and took down the pot for $975,000.

• Due to ankle injuries, he had to surrender basketball and instead focused on poker, which he began playing online while still a minor.
• This year, he earns £900,00 for his second-place finish at the £252,500 No Limit Hold’em – Super High Roller Bowl London. That is the most money he has ever won in a single live tournament.
• In 2020, he breaks a record on Natural8-GGNetwork’s $500/$1,000 No Limit Hold’em cash game by winning a pot worth $974,632.
• At the US Poker Open in 2021, he wins Event #9 for $10,000 No Limit Hold’em at the Aria in Las Vegas, earning himself a first-place prize of $217,800.
• After dominating the high stakes PokerGO Tour in 2021, he is named the inaugural Player of the Year.

Professional Career of Imsirovic

Kick Off of His Poker Career

Imsirovic was raised in Bosnia and Herzegovina, marking his impressive career’s start. Unfortunately, the Balkan war of the 1990s forced his family to leave their homeland. They eventually found a new home in the USA.

As a kid, Ali was a huge basketball fan (like Antanas Guoga, another great poker player). Around the time that ankle problems made it impossible for him to pursue a job in his favorite sport, he discovered poker as a new passion.

To begin with, he invited his dad to attend his home playoff game, but his father refused due to his strong opposition to gambling for his son. Because of this, Imsirovic began playing online just before Black Friday’s busiest shopping weekend of the year in the United States. Imsirovic was able to start college at the age of 16 because of his outstanding academic performance. Online, he continued to grind away at freerolls and low-stakes tournaments in his spare time.

When he turned eighteen and could legally gamble in Washington state, he began competing in live tournaments. Right from the start, he was able to enjoy considerable success. His first live tournament was a $60 NLHE tournament in Portland, Oregon, and he won it.

Ali Imsirovic at Live Tournaments

As per his Hendon profile, Imsirovic has won a total of $15.051 million in live tournaments. This total is the accumulation of 128 ITM finishes spread out over a span of 6 years and 128 unique live events. He has a commanding lead on Hendon’s all-time Bosnian money list.

While speaking with Cardplayer Media for their Poker Stories Podcast in 2013, he mentioned that he had just won his first ever live poker tournament, a $60 tourney in Portland. That outcome, however, is not documented. Instead, his profile doesn’t start showing any cash earnings until November of 2015. At the Caribbean Poker Tour in the Dominican Republic, he placed 46th in the $1,650 Main Event, winning $3,630.

After that, in 2016, he won a couple of cashes in various US-based mid-stakes tournaments. He traveled to Europe in 2017, bringing back money from Rozvadov, Czech Republic, and Seefeld, Austria.

In January of 2018, he made his first live score of over $100,000. He won $160,050 at the $10,150 No Limit hold ’em event at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas. The title was won in a heads-up match against the American poker pro, Ryan Riess.

In the latter part of 2018, he ended up winning the Purple Jacket at the Poker Masters’ high-stakes tournament. Since its inception in 2017, this high-stakes tournament has honored the season’s best player with the Purple Jacket.

In that year, Imsirovic competed in three Masters tournaments, two of which he won. He was awarded a total of $462,000 for his victories in the $26,000 NLHE and $52,000 NHE tournaments.

For the month of September 2019, he placed second at the Super High Roller Bowl London, which had a buy-in of £252,500, winning £900,000. His previous high in a single live tournament was this amount. PokerGO founder and multi-billionaire hobby player Cary Katz defeated him in a head-to-head final for the championship.

The first WSOP Circuit Ring he ever won was in February of 2019. He won $96,659 in the WSOPC’s $2,200 No Limit Hold’em High Roller event at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. He won his second championship in 2021.

The US Poker Open was held at the Aria Casino in Las Vegas in June 2021, and Imsirovic had a fantastic run there. In five of the ten tournaments he entered, he won money.

He has recently won the $10,000 NLHE Event #9 for $217,800 and the $10,000 Short Deck Hold’em Event #10 for $75,600.

He continued his impressive play throughout 2021 on the PokerGO Tour. He was successful in defeating an incredible 14 (!) of their contests. He had the series’ two largest cashes after winning the $25,500 No Limit Hold’em tournament in November for $695,355 and the $50,000 Super High Roller Bowl Europe tournament in Cyprus for $598,000 back in September.

It goes without saying that his outstanding play in the inaugural year of the PokerGO Tour earned him the Player of the Year award.

Word Series of Poker Appearance

Ali Imsirovic has not yet taken home a gold bracelet from the World Series of Poker.

There was a time in 2019 when he almost achieved that goal. For his second-place finish in the $10,000 Super Turbo Bounty event, he pocketed $213,644. He also made the final table of a $50,000 No-Limit Hold’em tournament that same year. In the end, he lost $212,292 and finished seventh.

At the end of the World Series, Imsirovic had 29 cashes worth a total of $669,762.

Cash Games in Real Time

Imsirovic has never been much of a cash game player, preferring instead to compete in live poker tournaments. No public cash games featuring him have been broadcast on television or streamed online.

However, he did make two appearances on Poker After Dark, PokerGO’s revamped version of the show. Sit-and-Go tournaments, rather than cash games, were played in those episodes.

Ali as an Online Poker Player

As we mentioned above, Ismirovic got his start in poker at the tender age of 16, when he began competing in freerolls and low-stakes tournaments on a secret online poker site.

In recent months, he has been using the aliases “ali23imsirovic” on Americas Cardroom and “allinali23” on WSOP.com, in addition to his real name, “Ali Imsirovic,” on the Natural8-GGNetwork. A majority of poker sites have recorded a few of his web results, but they do not track his overall career earnings from online MTTs.

In July of 2018, for instance, he won $90,500 at the $500 buy-in BOSS #1 – $500,000 GTD event on ACR.

At the Poker Masters Online on partypoker in April of 2020, he won the $25,500 NLHE event for $446,250. Just a few days later in May of that same year, 2020, he finished in second place at the $25,500 WPT Super High Roller online event on partypoker, winning a total of $428,750.

In August of 2020, Imsirovic made headlines when he won the largest pot ever played in a No Limit Hold’em cash game. At a $500/$1,000 NLHE table on Natural8-GGNetwork, he defeated Tan “tan4321” Xuan’s two pair, 9s and 5s, with a flush using the AK of spades on the river, winning him $974,631.

Keep in mind, though, that this is only the largest cash game pot ever played in a matchup of No Limit Texas Hold’em on the Internet. In November 2009, Patrik Antonius and Viktor “Isildur1” Blom played a hand of $500/$1,000 Pot Limit Omaha to set a new world record. The prize pool was at least $1,357,000, and Antonius was the lucky winner.