Nathan "BlackRain79" Williams Net Worth, Bio & Poker (2025)

If you’re new to the industry, almost always, it’s as if poker games scream big money. It’s true you can easily win a million-dollar pot in one night, but there’s so much more about the games than those chunks of cash.

There are what you call small stakes events, and that’s what Nathan Williams is very good at. In fact, he is known as the “Microstakes King” because he has achieved shocking results playing low bets. So if you are just starting out and want to take it easy, you might want to know more about him.

Aside from being a genius in poker, he is also an author, educator, and blogger. He also recently announced about his brand new training course for poker enthusiasts.

*Use the code **NETWORTH** at the check out to get **$100 OFF**!*

There’s just more to BlackRain79 than what meets the eye, so let’s discuss it here.

Full Name: Nathan Williams
Age: In his 30s
Birthplace: Vancouver, Canada
Profession: Pro poker player, author, blogger, YouTuber, founder of BlackRain79 Elite Poker University
Wife: N/A
Online Poker Career Stat: All-time #1 2NL & 5NL
Net Worth and Career Earnings: $1+ million

Table of Contents

Nathan Williams Bio

There’s only a little bit of information on BlackRain79’s personal life. He was born and raised in Canada, Vancouver in particular. According to the pro player, he graduated in one of the country’s top universities with a degree in History and Philosophy.

While those are definitely not something you’d think a poker player’s degree, it probably helped Nathan develop his effective winning strategies until now.

As a child, he loved playing all sorts of sports, mainly hockey. Williams said in one interview that since this game required a lot of money and his parents didn’t have much at that time to support the dream, his passion eventually faded as he grew up.

Anyway, right after he graduated college, he got exposed to the online poker world and instantly fell in love with it. He just didn’t love the game, he because obsessed with it. Nathan wanted to learn how it’s done, and the strategies to take in order to win. He was always playing every minute of the day back then.

He got several jobs after graduating, but he couldn’t find meaning in all of those things. Nate wanted to do something more and believed that there’s more to life than being tied to the typical job you get after college.

Fast forward to a year later, his friend introduced him to poker and that’s where it all began.

Poker Career

Just like Viktor “Isildur1” Blom and Jnandez, Nathan started playing poker online after being introduced to Texas Hold’em.

Just like many others who play for fun, he signed up for an online account and played hard until he learned the ropes. Since the virtual room provides daily replenishment for the bankroll, they had plenty of fake money/chips to spend without worrying about incurring actual losses.

So, he used this opportunity to practice and hone his skills.

He got so good at it while everyone was still feeling the tide. He was able to accumulate millions of these fake chips and there were so many who were willing to trade it for real money. He was able to sell 5 million fake chips for $60. So, he just realized how big of a potential the industry have.

Soon, he started playing for real cash. Afraid of losing money, he started with the lowest buy-ins and the lowest stakes. He never invested his own money on the game. He just used that $60 and it eventually got bigger and bigger.

There was a time he started entering virtual rooms with $100 to $200 buy-in. However, his bankroll wasn’t stable enough for this yet and it got low, causing him to worry about losing money. So, he went back to playing small.

After grinding so hard under the shadows, he ranked first on the all-time money list for the lowest stakes. As you might have expected it, not everyone saw this as good news. For a pro player, everybody expects you to bag millions. But that’s just not for BlackRain79.

BlackRain79 As Poker Coach

After gaining popularity from being ranked first on microstakes events, he thought about teaching others about the game. At first, he didn’t really believe he had anything worth sharing with others because he thought everyone would think playing low stakes is as easy as 1-2-3.

He started sending out inquiries via email about becoming an instructor.

While now he doesn’t coach students privately, he does provide a TON of free and paid information, that you can find on his Instagram, YouTube, in his books, and in his newly released course for poker enthusiasts called BlackRain79 Elite Poker University (review).

I myself enrolled in his course because I know he’s AMAZING when it comes to crushing the low stakes poker. And he’s delivered.

(You can pay through PayPal, credit card, and even Bitcoin and Ethereum if you send him an email.)

Join BlackRain79 Elite Poker University >>

Author Career

Nathan is also a very passionate writer.

He started his website to keep track of his poker activities. It was more of a personal journal for him than it is a site for attracting traffic. But when started becoming more popular, the site gradually gained traffic so he pushed out more content with the hope of helping other enthusiasts master some game strategies.

Aside from that, he also offers coaching and video lessons to help other aspiring players. He mainly focuses on low-stakes strategies, which he is definitely good at. In fact, he just released a new course called BlackRain79 Elite Poker University.

This is an extensive lesson for advanced players. It has about 17+ hours of video-recorded classes where you can learn everything about his personal strategies in topping the ranks for micro stakes.

Moreover, he also wrote several articles for one of the biggest authority websites in this niche like UpswingPoker and PokerNews. These articles most likely discuss tips and techniques in various gameplay scenarios involving low bets/stakes.

(By the way, Doug Polk‘s Upswing Poker Lab has consistently been Nathan’s #1 advanced poker training program.)

And if you think his career as an author ends there, then I hate to tell you that you’re wrong. He also released an ebook which became very successful. His best-selling one is entitled Crushing The Microstakes.

When asked in an interview as to why he thought his ebook was a huge success, BlackRain79 humbly admitted that he didn’t know it’s gonna be that big at first.

He said the words just came out naturally and it only took him about a month to complete the book. To him, what made it successful was that his readers saw how effective the book is because of what he has achieved in his professional career.

Life as a Traveling Poker Pro

The thing about playing online for a living is that you get to do it anywhere in the world, literally. That’s what happened with Nathan Williams.

He suddenly booked a one-way ticket to Thailand, without any plans of staying for long. However, he fell in love with the country and has been traveling to several places in it.

And just like that, he’s now in Cha-am, Thailand living his best life.

He also mentioned that Chiang Mai, where he stayed the longest, is a really cool place for many poker players. Because of its awesome weather, laidback lifestyle, and lower cost of living, who would say no to this place?

BlackRain79 always said that living overseas amongst a ton of professional players he gets to meet a ton of talented folks, who he admires and even interviewed them on his website:

Willian “KhalDragon” Mates
Kieran “KieHa” Harding
Aaron “abarone68” Barone

He even interviewed a renowned poker mental game coach Jared Tendler! (I highly highly HIGHLY recommend his books “The Mental Game of Poker“.)