Images courtesy of World Poker Tour
Over the past few years, Johnnie ‘Vibes’ Moreno has been on a self-inflicted content freeze. Stepping back from content creation and moving from cash games to tournament poker has been a blast.
We spoke with Johnnie to find out about his emergence in the tournament poker scene, which saw him cash 11 times at the 2025 WSOP, his brotherly support and how a former world champion helped him take on the recently revived National Heads-Up Poker Championship.
Coming Back to Content
Johnnie ‘Vibes’ Moreno is a name synonymous with content creation and poker. With a recent global recognition of the craft from Global Poker Awards to brand partnerships now coming on the back of content, YouTube and poker go hand in hand.
In some ways, this makes it all the more sensational that Johnnie had taken over two years out of the content creation scene.
Previously posting cash game videos that were at the top of the poker content subscriptions, Johnnie stepped back two years to work on a new project with his wife Olga only returning to upload a poker video to his personal channel for the first time in two years the other day.
Everyone says on YouTube that if you aren’t consistent, your channel will die. I’ve found that’s not really true, says Johnnie. I took two years off and uploaded a video, and it’s gotten a lot of views.
I think the reason why is because you just have to make a good video. You don’t have as much leeway in putting out any old video if you take that much time off!
The algorithm is different too, of course. In 2025, there’s a ranking system to posting poker content on YouTube. The site will tell content creators how well the latest video is doing compared to their previous ones. Johnnie’s video wasn’t doing well.
It was a 10 out of 10, meaning out of the last 10 videos, it was performing the worst. Over time, because of the number of people engaging with the video and leaving comments, YouTube recognised that people were liking it so it started showing it to more people. Now it’s in the top half of my videos in terms of viewership.”
That’s impressive stuff for someone who has 53,300 subscribers to his YouTube channel, where the 15-year cash game pro turned tournament hustler has enjoyed millions of views in his content creation career.
A Voyage of Discovery
Johnnie revealed all to us about his growth in poker content creation and it turns out he sees many parallels with his poker career.
When I first started doing it, the novelty of being new at something meant the strides I made were so big. From your first video to your fifth, there’s massive improvement because you just don’t know so much.
It’s the same in poker. When you sit down at a poker table and you really don’t know anything, the amount you can improve even in a couple of sessions is massive.
That work ethic around Johnnie’s natural curiosity sustained his poker and content creation career for many years. With so much to improve at, that’s what he did.
In his career in corporate business then in music, video creation, and poker, that desire for conquered unchartered territory is one he ‘vibes’ with. As he told us, however, that can’t keep you going on its own.
At a point when your improvements become small and incremental, you need more than just the love of improving. My path definitely wasn’t entrepreneurial at first because I was a product of my environment.
I grew up low income; if you could find a great job, you held onto it. The only reason I escaped that path was because my little brother, Andrew, was playing poker and doing well. He opened my eyes to an alternative path.
Risk and Reward
Once Johnnie saw Andrew succeeding at poker, their close relationship pushed Johnnie to join his brother in choosing poker as a career.
As Johnnie describes, once he gained the confidence of being on his own and realising he had everything he needed to make his own money, it was a game changer. From there, he pursued bigger risks…and the rewards came.
For me, those other risks were creating content, says Johnnie. Even though I wasn’t a big moneymaker at first, it’s become the biggest financial benefit for my family.
My wife Olga and I parlayed it into a YouTube channel for her, and she’s turned that into a six-figure business. I think it could turn into a seven-figure business based on how things are progressing.
Johnnie’s love of Las Vegas is one he shares with Olga and as he describes, Vegas has something for everyone.
Depending on the speed you want to live life and how crazy you want it to be, Vegas has that. If you want to live a normal life, wake up at 8am, go to sleep at 11pm and raise a family, you can also do that in Vegas.
If you have a high level of discipline, Vegas is kind of the perfect place because it allows you to live as slowly as you want, and also partake in a fast life, taking risks and being around other people taking risks – there’s something for everyone.
We caught up with @JohnnieVibes to talk about what his biggest goals are this summer and how consistency plays a big factor! #WSOP2025 pic.twitter.com/nLDqHx2iCc
— WSOP – World Series of Poker (@WSOP) June 22, 2025
A Pandemic Partnership
Johnnie says that bringing the reality of moving to Vegas to life with Olga has been life changing. The couple, who have been together for almost as long as Johnnie has been playing poker have been married seven years and the COVID pandemic brought them even closer together.
The first seven years, she had a normal job and I played live poker, so we’d see each other at night. The pandemic changed all that. She started her own consulting business, I started playing more online poker, and we spent so many hours in the same room.
That was the first time we really had to grow in our relationship. I think a lot of people had that realisation when they were with their partner for every hour of every day for months.
Now, Johnnie sees that period of time as a ‘warm-up’ for the pair’s shared YouTube endeavour, which helps others move to Sin City and ties in with the property market.
About two years ago, she moved into real estate and needed marketing to attract clients. That’s when I came in. I’ve learned how to tell stories on YouTube. I thought ‘Let’s provide value for people interested in moving to Vegas. If we provide value, they’ll reward you by becoming a client.’
Johnnie creates the content and runs the website while Olga works the real estate side of the business and is the on-screen talent.
Sometimes I’m like, “Hey, did you see that this lead came in? Did you call them back yet?” I don’t want to overstep my bounds but I’m doing my job!” Johnnie laughs.
Brotherly Love
In Andrew Moreno and his wife Kristy Arnett Moreno, Johnnie has one of the best poker support systems possible. Johnnie says his brother and sister-in-law have been ‘hugely instrumental’ in his poker career, even saying ‘I would not even be playing poker let alone a winning player if it wasn’t for him’.
Andrew’s mentorship has clearly been incredibly valuable to Johnnie on a personal level as well as a professional one.
Tournaments are significantly harder than cash games, says Johnnie. There’s much more variance, and the technical aspects are more involved because of stack sizes.
In cash games, everyone typically has over 100 big blinds, so the game tree is narrower. In tournaments, stack sizes vary wildly – big, small, short, medium – and you also deal with the payout structure, money jumps, and how close you are to the bubble.
The game tree expands so wide that if you aren’t addicted to studying, you’ll only ever be average at tournaments, even if you’re great at cash games.
Johnnie had the tournament blueprint by watching how his brother studied, quizzing him on spots, and talking through hands all the time. Seeing Andrew’s approach to the game, Johnnie realised that he could follow the path Andrew had shown him. In the summer just gone, Johnnie leant into content creation, before cashing an incredible 11 times from 27 bullets in the 56th annual WSOP.
To work with my wife, spend less time on poker tournaments, yet still have that summer of tournaments to feed my competitive juices and share it with my brother was exciting. I was still heavily involved with creating content with my wife, we haven’t actually missed a weekly upload in a year and a half.
Johnnie’s routine during the summer months saw him utilize the maximum late registration he could, and it worked out as an optimal strategy in terms of pacing himself physically and mentally.
It allowed me to get some work done during the day, go in, and play one strategy well. Playing the 20-30 big blind strategy well versus going in early and not being able to work on the business with my wife then having to play a 100-big blind, 80-big blind and 50-big blind strategy well was an easy choice.
The Heads-Up Challenge Ahead
A last-minute entry into the $25,000 National Heads-Up Championship, Johnnie drew TV writer and the former World Poker Tour Player of the Year Matt Salsberg in the opening round. Johnnie has a huge amount of respect for a player he admires.
The community is pretty small on X, and he’s funny!, says Johnnie. I’ve interacted with him online over the years and he’s obviously been a prominent figure in the game.
As soon as I drew him, I did a little bit of research, and I saw that he had played quite a few heads up matches en route to winning tournaments and the WPT Player of the Year award. He asked me if I have much heads-up experience, I said, “Not much!”
With Salsberg’s enviable record of 12-2 in ranking heads-up matches, Johnnie sought some help after the 2020 WSOP Online Main Event winner Stoyan Madanzhiev offered his assistance free of charge. The Bulgarian’s kindness, advice and time is something Johnnie values a lot.
We had never talked, never met, and he was so gracious. He knew I was playing the next day, so we got on a call [and] went through some x’s and o’s, some ranges, how often I should be raising on the button, and then what the ranges of hands that I should be raising, the sizings that I should use, how often I should call a raise, how often I should fold and reraise – it was like a crash course!
After some initial advice, Stoyan played Johnnie heads-up online in a couple of games to put those tips into practice.
He destroyed me twice!, laughs Johnnie. Then, after about forty-five minutes of playing, we watched back the session on his screen, and he kind of walked through why he was using certain sizings, why he was betting certain board textures.
We walked through some of my sizings, and just from that session, I was able to make a couple of adjustments heading into my match.
Johnnie says the structure of this National Heads-Up Championship was even better than the original from over a decade ago, with added minutes to blind levels and an electric atmosphere. The tournament will premiere exclusively in the fall on Peacock, the NBC streaming platform, as well as on PokerGO.
I think that my session with Stoyan definitely helped me come in with a better gameplan and gave me some reps before playing; I felt like I was 10 times more prepared going into the match than I would have been if I would have just went in blind. He was very gracious with his time and I was fully prepared to send him money, but he didn’t ask for any.
The Future is Female
With so many exciting adventures on the horizon, the biggest is one in Johnnie’s personal life, with him and his wife Olga expecting their first child in September. Johnnie will center any poker tournaments he plays around his family situation at the time.
I don’t really plan on doing much too much traveling for poker. I plan on leaning back into content because out of my entire poker career, the thing that has really paid the most dividends financially has been content creation.
Number one, I enjoy it. And number two, it, it has the potential to provide for my family, at scale versus when I sit down at a poker table.
As Johnnie tells us, his daughter is due in September, and as he and his wife Olga prepare for life to change, he’s done ‘trading time for money’ in his forties.
When you start to get into that, if you’re not careful, then you end up trading away too much of your life. I love poker. It’s part of my life. But in terms of maximising the amount of money I make for the amount of effort I put in, content is the way to go. I want to spend as much time at home as possible.
As life grows around him Johnnie Moreno always seems to have good vibes. The newest addition to the Moreno family couldn’t have better role models around them.
