Kasey Lyn Mills added another cash to her stellar year on Sunday in the $3,800 buy-in World Poker Tour (WPT) Choctaw Championship, and she still has a healthy stack playing for her share of a $2.1 million prize pool.
On the Day 2 dinner break, the Oklahoma native who now resides in Dallas, Texas spoke with PokerNews to discuss her background in poker and to share her thoughts on why she’s taken her tournament game to the next level in 2024.
Confidence is Key
At the time of publishing, 76 players remained in the WPT Choctaw Championship at Choctaw Casino & Resort in Durant, Oklahoma. Mills exited the tournament room on dinner break with 475,000 chips, and the blinds were at 4,000/8,000. With now surpassing $140,000 in The Hendon Mob cashes in 2024 — and potentially much more depending how she finishes in this event — she’s already having the best year of her tournament career.
“I think I’ve been leaning into really believing in myself and my skillset,” Mills said of her performance this year. “I think I had some confidence issues previously. We all do at times, and they still pop up from here and there. But I really have worked on mindset as well as my game over a lot of years. But mindset has made a huge difference for me, and self-confidence.”
Nearly Won a WPT Title on a Cruise Ship
Mills, a sponsored pro for the Poker Now online poker club, is fresh off a seventh place finish in the $5,000 buy-in WPT Voyage Championship event, which paid $42,000. But her career-best score came in a World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) $1,000 buy-in Monster Stack event in January, beating out 352 entrants for $66,609. That was her first career Circuit ring, and then she won her second just two days later in a $400 buy-in tournament for another $22,433.
Both of those events took place at Choctaw, the same casino she’s attempting to reach her first official World Poker Tour final table. What makes her tournament accomplishments in 2024 (and also 2023) so impressive is that she doesn’t grind the tournament circuit like many pros. In fact, she only plans to enter “six or seven” events this summer at the World Series of Poker (WSOP).
“I am a mom as well, and being a mom always my priority, number one, whereas some people can grind tons of tournaments and go to every stop,” Mills said. “I don’t get to play that amount of volume, so I really have to make it count, and that’s what I’m trying to do when I do play.”
Mills certainly has made it count when she’s found the time to play poker this year, her biggest year since she began playing poker in 2009. But she almost ended up in a completely different field, working as a field biologist.
“I went to school to be a biologist,” Mills explained. “I love nature and animals, actually wanted to be a primatologist and study primates, which is what I feel like I do now as a poker player.”
The skilled poker player and poker livestream commentator said she “fell in love with the game” in 2009, and began to take it seriously “about 10 years ago.”
“It’s been a slow development, but I will tell you that I don’t know if I know anybody that has the love for the game that I do. I freaking love what I do, I have such a passion for it. So, I think that’s what helps keep it engaged. I’m also an ADHD person, and I feel like (poker) really caters to my strengths as an ADHD person,” Mills said.
Mills is open about having been diagnosed with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AHDH) because she feels it can help others with the same issue.
“A lot of people suffer from AHDH, and it can be a really challenge in our society,” Mills stated. “But there are careers and avenues and things that we can do that cater to our superpowers and our strengths that people don’t realize that we even have, and I feel like poker is one of them.”
Mills will attempt to use her superpowers to spin her above average stack up and reach the WPT Choctaw Championship final table, which takes place May 30 in Las Vegas. The winner will take home $361,600, virtually doubling her career live tournament cashes if she goes on to take it down.
*Images courtesy of the World Poker Tour/Enrique Malfavon.
