Jeff Madsen Still Getting Better After Two Decades In The Game

Jeff Madsen launched his poker career in a way that players can only dream about. The then 21-year-old rolled into his first summer of action at the World Series of Poker and rattled off four top-three finishes, including two bracelets for nearly $1.5 million along with the coveted Player of the Year award.
Almost 400 live tournament cashes later, the 39-year-old is still on the grind. He’s since added two more bracelets and titles at the Borgata Winter Open, California State Poker Championship, and L.A. Poker Classic, and most recently took third in November’s NAPT Las Vegas main event for $341,750, bringing his career earnings to $7.1 million.
Card Player caught up with Madsen to talk about a career that has seen plenty of ups, and a few downs, and why he finds himself in a good place heading into 2025.
Craig Tapscott: Fans and players haven’t seen you competing for a while. What have you been up to over the last year or so?
Jeff Madsen: I didn’t go into retirement, but I took some decent time off. Over the last year, I have just not played as much as usual. I’ve been working on getting life distractions out of the way and focused again.
CT: It certainly seemed like you were laser-focused at the final table of the NAPT main event.
JM: I was. I think everything kind of came together for this tournament. It helps that I was 100% in a good head space. It was the perfect time to manifest the deep run. I definitely ran pretty well, too. But honestly, I played solidly and was super locked in.
CT: What was your biggest takeaway from the experience?
JM: I worked on my mindset. You have to be patient with your career and game. I’ve put in so much work in the last four or five years, so it’s not surprising that it’s begun to pay off. I’m getting some deep runs now and want to use it as a springboard to keep the momentum going.
I have nothing left to prove in my career. Do you know what I mean? Big scores are sometimes hard to come by for most players unless they are playing consistently in the high-roller events.
CT: How old were you when you first discovered poker?
JM: I started playing when I was 18 with my friends after we watched Chris Moneymaker win the main event. It was the typical standard start to a poker career for kids around my age at the time.
I was always a gamer. We always played strategy video games, which translated well over to poker. I dedicated a lot of time during my first three years to reading a lot of books. I couldn’t wait to turn 21, play the 2006 WSOP in Vegas, and take a shot.
CT: I recall that it was a fairytale start to your career.
JM: It truly was. My parents let me take some money from my college fund. (There was plenty of money in it. It wasn’t like I couldn’t go to college or anything if I lost it all.)
I brought $10,000 to the series and planned to play six events. If I didn’t cash in any of the six events, that was basically it. I think it was the second event where I got third for about $100,000. I had never seen that amount of money in my entire life. I used those funds as a springboard. I was freerolling in my mind and playing everything in the series. I was playing super aggressively and doing my best to win a bracelet.
I had a sick run in the $2,000 event with about 1,600 people. It was a huge tournament at the time. I was able to win that. Less than a week later I was deep in the $5,000 six-max and ended up heads-up with Erick Lindgren for the win. I was lucky to take it down. My grandfather had passed away years earlier, but my grandma passed away the same day I won my second bracelet.
My parents were going through a lot, and I’d just won all this money. My grandparents helped me get to this point by allowing me to borrow this money. There was definitely a convergence there. It felt like a spiritual thing. I felt my grandmother’s presence was there.
I told people the year before that I would win a WSOP bracelet. I was so confident about it. That was a big part of it for me in that heads-up battle. I wasn’t nervous or anything. I’d already been crushing at the series and won a bracelet. That played a huge role in my momentum.
CT: Do you recall much from the experience?
JM: I remember that I didn’t take my foot off the gas. I stayed aggressive. Erick told me after the match that I had played really well. He had a tough time with me because I was playing way more aggressively than most people were at the time.
It was a very different poker game back then. There were many more three-bets and four-bets, and barreling would work more often. I just got away with a lot more back then.
CT: You were pretty much an enigma to many of the established pros.
JM: Erick was a superstar in the game. But I had the advantage of watching so much poker those first few years. I knew a little about their games, but they knew nothing about mine. It’s not like I had them solved or anything, but that was my advantage against pros at the time.
CT: What happened after that first year? You had a solid bankroll and a ton of confidence in your game.
JM: I was able to hop into all different types of events right away. But I also felt like dealing with so much early success sometimes created a huge hurdle for me. I was so young, learning how to live my life and deal with the ups and downs of the game. Of course, the ego aspect was present. Also, I was trying to know myself and establish myself in my career.
I was basically flat broke by 2009. I probably had less than $50,000 to my name for a bankroll. I was having fun and partying a lot, spending money at clubs. Vegas can be an easy city to spend a lot of money in. A lot of young people in my position end up in jail or with a drug habit or something. I never really had any terrible vices, I just wanted to have fun.
I was gambling too much in the beginning, which was probably my first downfall. I played blackjack and big Chinese poker games with the Full Tilt guys. That wasn’t the best thing to do at the time.
CT: Maybe some overconfidence, aka positive tilt?
JM: I’m sure. I was on a freeroll in my mind. I was crushing. So yeah, I’m sure I did a little less studying and more just playing. I was probably playing overly aggressive and trying a little too hard.
Beyond the positive tilt, I established this very high expectation of myself. I learned that if positive tilt goes unchecked, it leads to negative tilt. You’ve lost a lot of your bankroll. You’re no longer feeling very confident.
It leads to more of a straightforward tilt where you’re just like, ‘Fuck, why haven’t I been winning lately?’ Then that kind of steamrolls. But honestly, lots of poker players deal with this. I dealt with it on a crazier scale because of my very successful first month in poker at the WSOP.
I have been a lot more grounded and very consistent since I won the Borgata Winter Open in 2010. I was always studying and working on my game. At the same time, I was creating a coaching business and loving the process. I learned so much from simply having to teach the game.
CT: Did you ever think about quitting poker and doing something else?
JM: Not really, because I always felt myself getting better. It was more along the lines of how I am going to manage my money and get back to dominance again.
CT: How do you approach strategy study when working with your students?
JM: I’m very well-versed in the solvers and GTO. You have to be in the modern age if you’re teaching poker, but I’m not just teaching GTO. You need a GTO foundation to understand how to adjust your strategy and how to exploit opponents and understand where the exploits come from.
You don’t know if they’re exploitable if you don’t understand what GTO is because GTO is unexploitable. Everyone’s exploitable, right? No one’s a robot.
CT: What is the next step after that for students?
JM: They must combine the study of GTO theory with the development of their natural instincts and exploitative strategies. You are also trying not to be exploitable simultaneously. It takes time for all of that to come together for any student of the game.
CT: It sounds like you are pleased with where you are at with your game and your life. That’s a powerful place to be.
JM: I agree. It’s been quite a journey over the past few years, but I feel I am the best player I’ve ever been right now.
Find Madsen on Twitter/X JeffMadsenobv and reach him at JeffMadsenCoachinggmail.com. ♠