About Us
So who are the mad geniuses behind Simplify Poker?
The Coaches
Dara O'Kearney
Dara O’Kearney is a professional poker player, author and podcaster from Ireland. Prior to poker, he was an ultra-marathon runner who transitioned to poker as he approached retirement. Dara started his live poker experience by winning the European Deepstack Championships in 2008 and has since then gone on to be one of Ireland’s most successful players with over $1 million in live earnings.
He is better known for online poker where he has made millions online, most notably in satellites. Dara quickly established himself as one of the best satellite players in the world, making over $1 million in satellites alone and twice winning the PokerStars UKIPT satellite leaderboard. He is also a sponsored professional for Unibet Poker and the Irish Poker Tour, as well as being the co-host of the two-time Global Poker Award winning Chip Race Podcast.


Barry Carter
Barry Carter is a writer and certainly not a professional poker player. He is the editor of PokerStrategy.com and co-authored the best-selling Mental Game of Poker with Jared Tendler. He approached Dara about possibly writing a book on satellites, given Dara was widely considered the authority on the format.


The Origin Story
That book became Poker Satellite Strategy, a book which not only allowed thousands of amateur players to qualify for large events but also significantly increased the traffic to satellites live and online.
Dara and Barry quickly realised they had a natural partnership when it came to creating strategy content. Barry would come into a topic knowing (sometimes less than) nothing about it, whereas Dara was the expert. Dara would share with Barry everything he knew about a topic, then Barry would attempt to create a draft of a chapter from that knowledge. When it became clear that Barry had missed the point several times on important lessons, the two would hash it out again, and again. Eventually, when it got to the point that Barry was able to communicate Dara’s ideas with authority, the two knew that they had boiled down the information to a level which their target audience would understand. Barry served as a stand-in for the audience and was not afraid to ask the questions others would be embarrassed not knowing.
This became a winning formula and after several books had been released, they got a sense of who their target audience was. Smart recreational players and professional players who, for whatever reason, felt they had been left behind in the modern solver era. Players who had perhaps been winning players before, but have struggled in recent years to stay profitable.
Dara and Barry’s work is best described as simplifying the complex lessons from solvers in a way that anyone can understand, without having to spend 30 hours a week in front of GTO Wizard. It worked for Barry, who is by no means a crusher but has been a consistent winning player online ever since working with Dara.
That is the mission statement of Simplify Poker, whatever your level, our content is designed to save you time and stress trying to make sense of the modern game. You don’t need to feel left behind anymore and you can get back to winning ways in no time.