Jason Koon Talks About Making The Online To Live Poker Transition

Jason Koon broke out on the online poker tournament scene in 2008 and in just over three years won over $2.5 million. Online success, however, didn’t immediately translate into big, live tournament scores, and Koon struggled to make the transition.

The West Virginia native nabbed a fourth-place finish in the 2010 WPT Festa Al Lago main event, but failed to find any sort of consistency until this year.

After opening 2012 with a fourth-place finish in the $25,000 PCA High Roller event for $271,950, Koon has been on a tear at this summer’s World Series of Poker, having cashed six times in the 12 events he has played.

Card Player caught up with Koon to find out what he’s done to finally turn the corner with his live game.

Julio Rodriguez: You’ve had a pretty solid summer so far, with six cashes in 12 events for just over $205,000.

Jason Koon: Last year I cashed in 40 percent of my WSOP tournaments and this year I’m at 50 percent. A good live tournament player can probably expect to cash at around 20 percent, so obviously I’m running well, but I still need to make the most of it when I get those opportunities. I’ve had a good summer, but of course I’m thinking about the situations where I could have played better or done something differently.

JR: Do you think it’s possible for anybody to sustain that high of a cash rate?

JK: I do now. I remember Scott Clements saying that he thought he could cash in 40 percent of the tournaments he entered over the course of a year. At the time, I thought he was crazy, but now I think you could definitely get pretty close. Some people’s playing styles just always put them in position to get deep and if you know what you are doing, there are plenty of spots to accumulate chips early on in these events. As the tournament goes on, the money becomes a bigger factor for some people and it becomes your job to identify those players and take advantage. It’s all about finding value, not giving it away and playing pots with people who will.

JR: Do you think that there is still a big gap in live tournament knowledge for online players looking to make that transition?

JK: There are plenty of young, great online players who are still making a ton of mistakes in live tournaments. Honestly, I could name 30 off the top of my head who just don’t get it yet. I won’t call them out like that, but it wouldn’t be hard. I totally understand too. I’ve been playing live poker since 2009 and I’m just now getting the hang of it. Things are just now starting to click.

I’ve just put a lot of time into thinking about the differences between live and online play and the adjustments I’ve had to make over the last three or so years. I really thought about how I could change my playing style so that it’s more conducive to taking advantage of the common mistakes that live poker players tend to make.

JR: What factors do you have to consider when playing live tournaments that don’t come up online?

JK: There are a lot of different variables that you have to think about when playing live. So many that it has made me an almost entirely different player. One of the biggest changes I made is that I have embraced the structure of a tournament more, meaning I let the structure dictate more of my play, rather than focusing solely on my stack, my opponents and my cards. I’ve realized that there’s quite often a better spot for me to pull the trigger on a certain play and that I don’t need to wait for marginal situations when a better opportunity could present itself shortly.

As far as my actual decision making goes, I think I’ve tried to play a lot more flops these days, rather than just three-betting my good hands preflop and forcing an unnecessary coin flip for my stack. You can’t control luck, but you can limit the amount of times that you need to get lucky.

The other change I’ve made is to not let my ego get in the way of a making good decisions. A lot of times when you can see a player’s face, there’s a tendency to go to war with someone, even if the right spot never comes up. You end up forcing it and getting yourself into trouble, just because you felt like you had something to prove. I don’t need to be the table captain and I don’t need to win every pot. I can sit back and let the game come to me a little bit and change gears at the right moment to keep myself in contention.

A Look At Jason Koon’s Schedule This Summer

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