Poker Stories Podcast With Jeremy Ausmus

Poker Stories is a long-form audio podcast series that features casual interviews with some of the game’s best players and personalities. Each episode highlights a well-known member of the poker world and dives deep into their favorite tales both on and off the felt.

Age: 38
Hometown: Lamar, Colorado
Live Tournament Earnings: $5.2 Million

Top Five Tournament Scores

Jeremy Ausmus went into the final table of the 2012 World Series of Poker main event as the shortest stack, but managed to navigate his way to a fifth-place finish worth $2.15 million. The Colorado-native may have been a relative unknown to the home audience at the time, but he had already spent years establishing himself as a respected cash game pro in Las Vegas.

In the time since, the husband and father of two has split time between his usual daily cash game grind at Bellagio and the occasional tournament. Ausmus has also notched a few wins at the Venetian, and even has a WSOP bracelet, taking down a pot-limit Omaha event in Europe back in 2013. In total, the 38-year-old has amassed more than $5.2 million in live tournament earnings.

Highlights from this interview include residual hair product, the flat part of Colorado, being an outdoor-indoor kid, paying bills by building cabinets, an affinity for spreadsheets, putting down roots in Vegas, having six-figures locked up online, getting annihilated in fantasy football bets, learning ICM in the NICU, being a slow deep thinker, a generous Greg Merson freeroll, why list manipulation is bad for poker, Phil Ivey’s Punchout, and the greatness of a BJ burger.

The Highlights

On making the move to Las Vegas to play poker full time…

“This was in 2005. I hadn’t really found a ton of success online at this point. I was just kind of… maybe break even. I don’t know if I was winning much at the time. So my plan was just to move out and play $2-$5 no-limit. As you can imagine, the games were a lot tougher than back home, even though looking back, the games had to be so soft. So I struggled, and it seemed like I ran bad too. Probably a combination of both. So I struggled for maybe three months or something. My bankroll was about the same, but I wasn’t doing as well as I’d had liked. I was still pretty determined. I needed to do well, because I moved out here and I had an old Toyota truck with no AC. I moved out in August too, so It was ridiculously [hot]. I had heard of people getting mugged, so I didn’t want to park in the parking garage. So I would park valet. I’m sure they [loved me at the valet]. I would tell them, ‘The emergency brake doesn’t work, you have to put it in reverse so it doesn’t pop out. Sorry if my seat is sweaty, but it’s 115 degrees.’ So I needed to make some money.”

On making the WSOP main event final table in 2012 as the short stack…

“Freeroll is a good word [for it], because I was already paid out [ninth-place money, about $750k]. I did look at my ICM (Independent Chip Model), however, and if you look at that, it puts a little more pressure on you. My ICM was actually like $2 million. I mean, I had 33 big blinds, so it’s not like I had 10. So that was my equity, which most people are surprised to learn. I didn’t feel a lot of pressure. I didn’t play a lot [leading up to the final table] because my son was born. His due date was five days off the final table, but he ended up coming almost six weeks early. He was in the baby ICU for three, three and a half weeks. So no prep time [for the final table]. Looking back, I see mistakes I made… but I felt really strong. I played a ton of cap games, like 30-big blind cap games on Full Tilt, and that’s all I really played the last two to three years before Black Friday, so I felt like my 30-big blind strategy was superior to everyone else’s. I didn’t do all of the final table simulations, and I probably did less prep than anybody, but I felt okay with it. I needed to be a father, and be there for my family.”

On a nice rebate from WSOP main event winner Greg Merson…

“I became pretty good friends with Greg Merson after we final tabled the main event together. Great dude, I love Greg. And I probably love him more because of this story. This was the PCA, back in 2014. We played a pot together, and he busted me. I don’t remember the [details], but it was a decent sized pot. Keep in mind, we are not in the money [at this point in the tournament]. This was the $25,000 event, and there was probably half the field left, over 100 players. He looks at me and says, ‘one percent freeroll.’ I was like, ‘what?’ and he said, ‘yeah, I’m going to give you a one percent freeroll since I busted you.’ The next day, I waltz over and him and [Jake] Schindler are playing heads-up for the title. Greg ended up winning a million. It felt kind of weird. I knew he would honor it, but it was kind of strange. He just came over and threw me $10k. Awesome dude.”

You can check out the entirety of the interview in the audio player at the top of the page or download it directly to your device to play on the go from iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

Catch up on past episodes featuring notables such as Daniel Negreanu, Nick Schulman, Barry Greenstein, Chris Moorman, Bryn Kenney, Mike Sexton, Brian Rast, Scott Seiver, Freddy Deeb, Greg Raymer, Maria Ho and many more. If you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe to get the latest episodes automatically when they are released.