The Historian Who Became Spain’s Number One: Ana Marquez on Studying Poker Into a Career

Most players find poker through a home game or a late-night television broadcast. Ana Marquez found it through a research paper.

The Spanish pro, now an ambassador for ACRPoker, grew up in Málaga without any exposure to the game. It was only when she moved to Washington, D.C. to study that poker entered her life, first as a curiosity, then as the subject of her university history thesis, and finally as a career that would take her to the top of the Global Poker Index rankings.

“Reading poker books was my first way of studying the game, so researching its history felt like a natural extension of that,” she says.

Tracing how the game evolved from the 1970s onward taught her something that still shapes how she improves today.

Every generation builds on the knowledge of the previous one. Learning from other players’ experiences became a big part of how I approached improving.

From a Thesis Topic to a Life Decision

Marquez did not wake up one morning and decide to turn pro. The shift happened the moment she stopped seeing poker as gambling and started seeing it as a strategic game.

That completely changed my perspective, she says. Once I realized how much I loved the game, I consciously gave myself a year to explore whether I could make a living from it. That year ended up changing my life.

She is candid that the path was tied to place as much as to talent. Poker was never part of her childhood in Málaga. It arrived through the accident of studying abroad.

I actually didn’t know anything about poker growing up. Living in Washington, D.C. introduced me to the game, so in many ways I owe my poker career to that experience. Being exposed to a completely different environment opened my mind to opportunities I never would have considered otherwise.

Two Years as the Best in Spain

The results came quickly. Marquez was named GPI Female Player of the Year in 2013, but the achievement she is most keen to underline is a different one.

For two years running, she was the number one ranked player in Spain on the Global Poker Index. Not the top woman. The top player in the entire country, ahead of every man in one of Europe’s deepest poker nations. She held that position until a young Adrián Mateos rose through the ranks and, in her words, “became unstoppable.”

It is a distinction she suspects very few women anywhere have matched, if any. In a game where women are still routinely underestimated at the table, topping a national ranking outright is a marker of exactly the kind of skill the sport claims to reward.

Preparing Like an Athlete

Ask Marquez how she gets ready for a major tournament, and she does not start with hand charts or solver drills. She starts with her body.

Preparation begins long before the tournament does. The key is building routines that are so well integrated into your daily life that, when it’s time to compete, everything feels automatic.

Her priorities are simple and ordered. Sleep comes first, training second, nutrition third.

If I get a great night’s sleep, do a maintenance workout, and start the day with a high-protein breakfast, I’ve already taken care of both my body and my mind. From there, it’s much easier to focus on making the best possible decisions at the table.

Why ACRPoker

Marquez has represented some of the biggest names in the industry, including PokerStars and 888poker before joining ACRPoker. She is quick to say she enjoyed working with all of them, but the reason ACRPoker fits this stage of her career comes down to involvement.

What I really like about ACRPoker is how involved the ambassadors are in helping the brand grow, she explains. There’s a real sense that our feedback is valued and that we’re building something together.

That feedback loop matters, because she has clear ideas about what European players want. Chief among them is a schedule that respects their sleep.

Many European players would appreciate healthier schedules and more reasonable playing hours. Online poker is global, and operators are trying to accommodate player pools from different continents. It’s a difficult balance to strike, but it’s something many players would welcome.

What Has Changed for Women, and What Has Not

Having competed for well over a decade, Marquez has a long view on how the game has shifted, especially for women coming up now.

The biggest change, she says, is access to information.

Today there are incredible study tools like GTO Wizard, training sites, and poker schools that simply weren’t available when I started. That has made it much easier for anyone who’s willing to put in the work to improve.

What has not changed is the thing that made her rise possible in the first place.

Poker still rewards skill, discipline, and consistency. Those qualities matter far more than gender.

One Fix for Recreational Players

For all her strategic depth, the most common mistake she sees does not require a solver to correct. It requires patience.

A lot of recreational players try to win the tournament in a single level instead of letting the game come to them, she says. Slow down, take your time with every decision, and remember that tournaments are marathons, not sprints.

A Message to Her Younger Self

Marquez ends where her story began, with the student finishing a thesis and unsure what came next. Asked what she would tell that version of herself, her answer is less about poker than about trust.

Trust yourself, enjoy the process, and don’t be afraid of where it might lead. You don’t need to have everything figured out. You just need to keep moving forward.

It is fitting advice from a player who turned a research assignment into a career, and a curiosity into a place at the very top of her country’s rankings. The history student, it turns out, became part of the history.