Meet The Upswing Poker Pros
Jake Abdalla -"JLlama"

Hi, I'm Jake Abdalla, aka JLlama, and I'm the mixed games specialist here at Upswing.

I played a lot of poker in high school and college, eventually dropping out of UC San Diego in 2006 to play full time. I started with mainly limit hold'em, but dabbled in other formats like SNGs, tournaments, and even dealer's choice with friends for fun.

I grinded for Supernova Elite in 2008, then shifted to quality over quantity in 2009. It was around that time that I moved to Vegas, and shortly after became friend with Doug Polk, Dan Cates (you probably know him as Jungleman), and Ryan Fee.

After Black Friday I got a place with Doug in Vancouver, where I watched him rapidly progress from playing $1/$2 HUNL to $50/$100 HUNL vs top regs. This inspired me to make my own run at HUNL in 2012, and I made the same progression from $1/$2 to $50/$100 in short order (with a little more game selection).

I switched to mixed games in 2013 and quickly moved up to $400/$800. By the end of 2014 I was playing the highest stakes online and beating Phil Ivey heads up, the poker dream.

My PokerStars graph (screen name: JLlama). I played on Full Tilt as HoldemJill9.

I haven't played many live tournaments, but I have a 4th in the 10k WSOP Dealer’s Choice event, a few deep runs in the 50k PPC, four cashes in the WSOP Main Event, 2nd in the 2016 SCOOP 25k HUNL and a near-miss 10th in the 2016 WCOOP Main Event.

I’m probably one of a few poker players that has won at almost every game spread online. I'm also probably also one of the few to have grinded a $109 tournament and 1.5k/3k mix in the same day.

You can learn my mixed game strategies in my Mixed Games Mastery course.