Jason Koon: Tournament Pro with more than $33 Million in Lifetime Wins
There are some poker players who manage to thrive when the big cash is on the line. Jason Koon is certainly one of those players. Between 2016 and 2019, Koon enjoyed eight cashes of a million dollars or more. With five of those paydays coming from wins.
These successes have seen Jason Koon move into the top ten of the all-time tournament money list. Jason Koon was recently named as an ambassador for GGPoker.
You will find in battling it out online at surprisingly low stakes – look out for the special avatar at www.ggpoker.com
Jason Koon’s Biggest Live Tournament Successes
The two biggest wins of Jason Koon’s poker career came a year apart at the same event.
In May 2018, Koon entered the Triton Super High Roller Series HK$ 1,000,000 No-Limit Hold'em Short Deck Ante Only event. 103 players entered the event and Koon would find himself at a final table that included Phil Ivey (who finished third) and head up opponent Xuan Tan. Koon won out in the end and picked up a cheque for more than $3.6 million.
In March of the following year, he entered the same event again and once again made the final table. This time around John Juanda was an opponent (who finished 7th), with Koon’s heads up opponent being Paul Phua. There was no stopping Koon regaining his title and this time around he picked up a check for almost $2.9 million.
Three More $1 Million+ Wins
Three more wins of $1 million or more have come his way. In August 2016 he entered the $5 Million guaranteed event at the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open and his first-place finish pocketed him exactly $1 million.
In 2017 he won the PokerStars Championship in the Bahamas winning $1.65 million in the $100,000 No-Limit Hold’em event. He won another $100,000 buy-in event at the 2018 Aria Summer High Roller series, winning $1,039,000.
His third biggest cash win in his career came at an event in which he didn’t win. At the 2018 Super High Roller Bowl he finished third in the $300,000 No-Limit Hold’em event (Justin Bonomo and Daniel Negreanu finished 1st and 2nd respectively), but he won’t have been disappointed with the $2 million he walked away with.
Jason Koon: Yet to Win a WSOP Event
Many successful live tournament players have made much of their cash at the World Series of Poker. This hasn’t been the case for Koon, although he has enjoyed more than 50 cashes and pocketed more than $2.5 million. In 2021 he broke his duck and won his first ever bracelet, winning the $25,000 No-Limit Hold’em heads up event, collecting $243,000 in the process. In the final he defeated Gabor Szapo.
His best ever run at the main event came in 2011 when he finished 660th.
Koon has featured on Poker After Dark, notably winning a huge pot off Doug Polk. In 2021, he made his debut on the popular High Stakes Poker TV show.
Poker Playing Style of Jason Koon
It’s clear that Jason Koon is one of the most analytical players in world poker. While opponents usually need to deduce how a player approaches the game, Jason Koon has published his exact though processes that go into every hand. In any situation, he will ask himself up to 20 questions, which include the following:
- What range of hands do I continue with here?
- What is my opponent(s) range?
- How does the board interact with those ranges?
- What is the stack to pot ratio?
- Who is my opponent, what history and reads do I have on them?
Having considered these and the many other questions in his mind, the decision is made. This analytical approach certainly works for Koon and stands him in good stead when the pressure is at its highest.
Quick Bio: About Jason Koon
Jason Koon hails from Weston in West Virginia. One of the first loves of his life was track and field, with distance running his specialty and he had the talent to consider running for the US. However, soon after entering Wesleyan college, he tore ligaments in his hip and his serious running days were over. He now turned his attention to poker. He studied the game intensively and read every piece of poker literature he could find. He learnt the game online (where he has made more than $3 million) before transferring to the live tournament scene.
In 2019, Koon married his fiancé, Bianca Armstrong, who he first met on the track team during his college days. They welcomed their first child in September of 2021.
At the 2021 World Series of Poker, it was announced that Jason Koon had become a Global ambassador for GGPoker.
You can play against him in online tournaments - see www.ggpoker.com for the latest events now!
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