Jason Koon is one of poker’s greats. He’s third on the all-time money list with an incredible $66.6 million in career earnings. Half of this ($33.6 million) has come exclusively from Triton, where he’s won 12 titles — seven more than anyone else. He’s got an incredibly top-heavy record, with 31 wins in total, and as many top-five finishes as cashes outside the top 10 (almost 100). Koon has also represented the two biggest online poker rooms — first GGPoker and now PokerStars.
We caught up with Jason at the recent EPT Barcelona festival, where he cashed three times and got a runner-up finish in the PLO High Roller, and quizzed him on his record, why he signed with PokerStars, the recent nosebleed heads-up games between Monarch and Jungleman, and much more.
Jason Koon on his top-heavy poker record
I play small fields. I don't think it's necessarily that I'm playing above the rim. I think I've been heads up 14 or 15 times and I've won 12 of them. That is not me being an elite heads-up player, that’s me running really, really well.
You look at someone like Ike Haxton, who's one of the greatest heads-up players of all time and he hasn't won a Triton and he’s been heads-up six times. There's a ton of these statistics that look cool, and I can really lean into and brand myself as ‘The Closer’ if I wanted to. But, really, I'm playing small fields and I'm probably running really well when I do.
On the all-time money list
Being top of the all-time money list isn’t what drives me. One of my closest friends in poker is Stephen Chidwick. He’s number two on the list at the moment and it's inevitable that he’s going to be number one. I think he'll be number one by a wide margin because he plays a ton of volume and he loves it. And he just can't get enough of poker, whereas I love to play, but I hate what grinding the mega stops does to my health. I hate it.
99% of the things that I do, I love. I love to play poker, but the international travel and staying up until 4am, that’s just not for me anymore. I think that that will take me out of the running for the number one spot.
The thing that means the most to me is to use my time wisely and to win the most money that I can. And I've done a really, really good job of that. I've been an extremely profitable poker player for a very long time. I've played the biggest cash games in the world for over a decade and that's probably what I'm most proud of.
On Isai Scheinberg and the push to get him in the Poker Hall of Fame
There's a growing movement to get him in and I think he should be there. It's an absolute no brainer. Not only did PokerStars change the lives of millions of people by getting Moneymaker into the WSOP Main Event and winning it from a satellite, but when things got the darkest for poker players and we were all screwed, he [Isai Scheinberg] came in and bought Full Tilt’s bad debt. He paid back everybody, he made us all whole. There were a lot of kids my age that had over half or more of their net worth with these poker sites.
I don't think it's ever been done in history where, via the government, he bought a defunct business and squared up everybody. It's just an incredible, selfless decision by him. I personally know hundreds of people whose lives he changed by doing that. I've known him for a very long time and he’s just an honorable, incredible guy, and he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame as much as anyone.
On signing with PokerStars
In terms of inflection points in my life, my first big win was the Sunday Storm. It wasn't called the Sunday Storm at the time, it was the Sunday $250K or $300K or something, but it was an $11 tournament that had over 25,000 people playing on PokerStars and I won it, no chop, for $25K or something. Then, that same Sunday, I got second and third in another tournament. I had a $40K-plus Sunday off an $800 bankroll. And that was the start.
I was in college and I think I blew about a third of it at the bar the next day. I remember we went on a track and field… It was like a Spring Break, but we were also running track meets, and our coach got all pissed off at us for partying too late, and he told us that he was going to drive the bus home and take all the players back early. I told him, ‘Coach, I got enough money, I'll fly everybody back.’ I thought $40K was like $10 million, you know?
PokerStars has a nostalgic place in my heart, but it’s also one of the only pure brands that exist in poker, with a history of doing the right things, and it's a legacy brand — it's multiple decades old, there aren't that many of those.
I'm happy to be here. I've seen it all. I've been involved in every part of the industry, and I think that I'm a perfect kind of middle ground between the new guard and the old guard, and I hear and understand both sides. I think that I can offer perspective, and that’s why I joined.
On the recent Monarch vs. Jungleman heads-up matches
I think it's great. That isn't fake money. Those dudes are legit playing for that. It's one of those rare moments in poker where the world gets a glimpse at what's actually happening out there. People think these high-stakes tournaments are the peak of poker. There are people all over the world who play $1 million buy-ins all the time and people just don't realise it.
It's cool to get to see it, and hopefully I can sit down and play with him. I put a feeler out there myself [to Monarch on X]. If somebody wants to play $2 million heads-up matches, I'm your huckleberry.
I'll put it out there that if he wants me to have over half of myself in every single match, I will do that without question. If we start playing $5 million dollar tournaments, I'm going to need to piece out. But if you want to play $2 million heads-up sit & gos, I'll play with at least half of myself. He can know that.
On his X post: 'Being genuinely happy for your competition’s success is a superpower'
I'm definitely not one of these self-help dudes. I'm just saying things that have improved the quality of my life or my career.
But I will say that, especially when you're younger and you have so much to prove, and you feel like you deserve something that you're not getting, and you focus on someone you've seen that makes all these bad plays and achieves success — that’s just a really toxic way to approach poker. You see so many players get eaten up by that mindset — it pulls their attention away from what matters.
I was playing with a kid yesterday who’s on a really big heater right now. He was talking about how he was deep in a $250K tournament, and he got all-in A-K to queens and got eliminated on the final two tables for some enormous amount of equity. And then, three days later, him and that same guy are playing in a $25K tournament. And they get it all-in again with A-K to queens, but this time the kid wins. And the guy's like, ‘You always run so f***ing good against me,’ and runs off. He completely forgot that he won the flip for 10x the size.
That kind of mindset always eats people up. When you talk about the long game, I always say we're not necessarily competing against each other as much as against rake, taxes, and our own sanity.
Having an appreciation for your competition and the fact that they've been able to stick around and battle through is important. Because life's going to throw shit at them as well. Being happy for people when they win, genuinely happy, is such a freeing feeling and it allows you to open up yourself to play a better form of poker.
On playing in the 2025 National Heads-Up Championship
It was amazing, really cool. I love heads-up poker — it’s my favorite format. It’s how I started playing poker.
Just the other day, my mom sent me an old desktop computer from, like, the early 2000s that I had, and I got to watch recorded sessions of me playing heads-up as a 22-year old, which was really, really cool.
I’ve played thousands of heads-up sit & gos, and heads-up cash games. But I never got to play the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, and I always really wanted to. Getting to go back on the set and sit at the feature table was really cool.
On the characters in the modern game
One problem that I've talked about time and time again is that people say new-school players are boring robots. What they refuse to accept is that as poker became more competitive, there was less room for being sloppy. As the market became more efficient, maybe characters got weeded out because they weren't competitive enough, or they just had to focus hard enough that they don't get to be their full selves because they’d give too much away. It's not that people are any less interesting than they used to be.
The high-stakes game doesn't reward people for dancing around and being emotional. It rewards stoics that are focussed and competitive and give nothing away. That’s the market, it's not the people.
If you put one of these guys in a game where some dude is just dumping millions of dollars, and you want them to kind of dance around and laugh, they can do that. But if you're playing five Chidwicks at the table, if you do anything, they're going to see it. That's just the nature of the beast.
If we’re going to do one of these documentaries on players, they need to take these guys that aren't allowed to show themselves, and let them really see who those players are. They're dealing with immense amounts of stress and constantly pushing themselves. They're wonderful, down to earth, guys. Would I be interested in being a part of it? Sure, I'd be interested.
Chidwick is the perfect example. He's one of the most lovely people, such a giving, thoughtful guy, and he’s a genius. This guy just sits around and reads classic philosophy from the 1700s for a good time. He’s such a wonderful friend and father, and he’s very funny. But you're never going to see that side of him when he’s playing for millions of dollars. It's not the way it works.
Images courtesy of PokerStars. Data courtesy of The Hendon Mob.
