Caitlin Comeskey Makes Playing Characters and Cards Pay Off
In just a few short years, the former NYU acting student has gone from cash game grinder to award-winning content creator and PokerStars Team Pro by putting herself out there.
The drive from Austin, Texas to Union City, New Jersey is a little bit more than 1,700 miles and assuming the driver obeys the posted speed limits and no traffic snafus appear, the trip takes about 27 hours. In early January, Caitlin Comeskey sat in the passenger seat as her fiancé, James, happily handled every single minute of that drive.
It’s the opposite of how Comeskey has handled her career the last several years where she has very deliberately taken the wheel. She’s been a cash game grinder, playing more than 100 hours in a month in cash games in Texas. She was (and is) a social media sensation, combining her pre-poker world and her poker life. Now she’s moved on - literally and figuratively - to her newest incarnation.
Caitlin Comeskey: Streamer Edition.
Comeskey moved to New Jersey a few months after signing with PokerStars as a Team Pro. New Jersey is one of three states the online poker giant is available in the United States; being there allows her to stream while she plays on the site on her YouTube channel.
She first made a name for herself in the poker content world thanks to some short punchy multi-character comedic sketches she posted on social media that shined a light on her acting and comedy background. Now, she’s turned the livestream camera on and plays for hours at a time, something that is proving to be a different experience altogether for her and her growing audience.
“It's a lot more vulnerable because you don't get to put the edit knife to it when you're done. Everything's in the moment,” Comeskey said. “It's a lot harder because you're trying to play and be entertaining at the same time and that's still a balance that I'm working to find.”
In her college days, Comeskey studied at NYU’s Stella Adler Studio of Acting just across the Hudson River from the apartment she now calls home for 2-3 weeks each month when she’s not traveling to play live poker. NYU is where she began to develop the skills that have allowed her to resonate with the poker community through her content. Her day-to-day life in New Jersey also comes with a new routine and lifestyle.
“I'm definitely more the cliche of the really fit, healthy poker player that wakes up, does their exercising, is eating whole foods all day, is counting calories, is meditating, is saying their affirmations,” Comeskey said. “I prepare for the stream like I do getting ready for a performance. You’ve got to get in the zone, but I'm also getting ready as a performer, so I warm up my voice in the shower, I think about what I'm going to talk about … if I want to do any ukulele breaks.”
Having to plan ahead for what can sometimes be an hours-long stream is very different from those sketches she’s used to doing. The stream requires her to be quick on her feet, engaging with her audience all while attempting to play strategically-sound poker so as not to turn off viewers. She’s used to putting in the work to entertain an audience, those funny social media videos could take just as many hours to put together.
“The sketches are more a labor of love,” Comeskey said. “If all the stars align and we have an idea and we have the audience, then probably it takes me a day and a half just to think about it in my head and write it. And then once I have it on paper, it'll take probably two to three hours of prep to get the costumes and wigs ready and to plan that all out to create a shooting schedule.”
She has parodied some of the biggest names in poker in those videos, including Phil Hellmuth, Doug Polk, Daniel Negreanu, and nearly every single one of her fellow poker content creators. The videos are always a hit with her fans and the poker world at large, as evidenced by her 2022 and 2023 GPI Global Poker Award wins for content. Despite regularly skewering some of those big names, she’s never heard a complaint from any of them and chalks that up to the respect and admiration she has for those same people.
“I've been very lucky that people appreciate it and think it's funny and I think it's because it truly doesn't come from a bad place,” Comeskey said. “I've never made fun of someone that doesn't bring me joy, that I don't think is funny or interesting or brilliant in some way.”
While her chops in front of the camera have created a career for her, it also introduced her to her best friend. In 2023, Comeskey was planning on going to the GPI awards alone. Her friend Katie Lindsay suggested she bring along a friend of hers who was looking to go but didn’t have a ticket. That friend turned out to be Nikki Limo and the two have grown close ever since.
“We supported each other as we were building our careers in poker. We manifested the same things for each other that even when it was hard, or maybe we weren't getting the views that we wanted, or things were kind of falling apart,” Comeskey said. “We supported each other, we had each other's backs and we're like, ‘This is what we want. We're going to get major brand sponsorship, we're going to do it’.”
The manifestations and daily affirmations paid off. Not long after Comeskey joined Team PokerStars Pro, Limo announced she had signed on with ClubWPT Gold.
It was a bit of divine intervention that pushed Comeskey from cash game regular to influencer. Somewhere along the line she saw a sketch video from Marle Spragg and felt like that was an avenue she could excel in. A few months later, Spragg made an appearance in the first piece of poker content that Comeskey made - even though they had never actually met. Now she’s part of an ongoing support system that also provides invaluable feedback and sounding boards for each other.
“I have a group chat with her, Melissa (Schubert) and Nikki that we get going every day and it's really nice to have smart, funny women you can bounce stuff off of and we definitely do check with each other like, ‘Hey, do you think this is funny?’,” Comeskey said.
They’re all competing for the same sets of eyeballs and the same limited number of sponsorship and partnership opportunities, but Comeskey believes that by cheering each other on has no downside in an attention economy.
“I think there's room for everybody. I mean, this is a very fast content culture world and we both make short-form (content). You're saying you can't watch the minute mini vlog I put out and the minute sketch Nikki watches in the same day?,” Comeskey said. “I think we share fans and I feel no competition with her truly, and Marle too, and all the other women in poker, like Abby (Merk).”
“There's so many great content creators and there are eyeballs for everybody.”
She also recognizes that the work she, and her fellow vloggers, creators, and streamers are doing is a vital piece of helping poker reach new audiences. While the work Comeskey and her colleagues produce sometimes gets eyerolls or criticism from some of the more traditional set in the poker world, she just wants to help take poker to places where the audience is watching.
“I think especially from the Zoomer kids that are coming up, they get a lot of shit from the old guard that's just like, ‘This is zany, this is corny, this is dumb’. but it's like, this is the language of the internet, maybe not the corner of the internet that you are on, but this is the language of the internet and this is how we get young people into our industry, and so that poker doesn't die out with the current generation.”