A Poker Life -- Jared JaffeeJaffee has Proved Himself during his First Full Year on the Tournament Trail |
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Jared Jaffee has racked up 3,529 Card Player Player of the Year points in 2010, and he currently sits in ninth place in the standings. It is quite an impressive performance when you consider that this in Jaffee’s first year traveling the tournament trail full time.
He has made half a dozen final tables this year and the bulk of his POY points were won at World Poker Tour main event final tables. He took fourth place at the Southern Poker Championship (630 points) in January, and he followed that up with a fifth-place cash at the Legends of Poker (800 points). He has won over half a million dollars in POY events in 2010 and he is in the top 10 in final-table appearances as well.
The previous years of Jaffee’s life have been dedicated to his education as a lawyer, but he quickly discovered that the life of a practicing attorney was not for him once he began working, and he quickly turned to poker. Read on below to learn about the interesting path that Jaffee took to poker, and how that path has affected his approach to the game.
Passing the Bar and Quickly Moving On
Jaffee passed the bar exam in New York after completing law school and he then promptly started a job in the legal industry. He even more promptly left that job to pursue a career in poker. “I got swarmed the morning of my third day at work, and when I came back from lunch that afternoon that was it. It was when the economy was bad and it definitely wasn’t the job I was looking for at the time. I could tell right away it wasn’t a place I wanted to be long term,” said Jaffee.
“It was definitely one of the bigger accomplishments in my life [passing the bar] and I was really happy to do that. It’s not something that I will rule out for the future, but for now I’m pretty happy with what I’m doing," said Jaffee.
“A lot of people might have waited a little longer, but I had poker. I was doing pretty well online at that point so I put law on the back burner,” said Jaffee. He went with his gut instinct and the decision has proved to be a good one for the 29-year-old poker player from Brooklyn Heights, New York. “I’m having a great time, it’s a fickle industry and things can swing on you quickly, but for now I have no complaints.”
The law degree has been a big help in his poker career thus far. “The analytical thinking helps, it lets you look at situations a different way. You see a lot more angles when you’re playing hands. Listen, any education you have across the board is going to make you sharper, it fine-tunes your skills in ways where you can’t even notice a direct correlation,” said Jaffee. “Those long sessions studying for the bar also prepared me for long poker sessions.”
“The way they teach you things in law school is much different than in college and high school. It really teaches you to think in a different way. It’s kind of hard to describe it exactly but it teaches your brain to work in a different way,” said Jaffee. He continued, “If you’re playing a hand you see a lot more of the angles quicker than you may have before. I was never a huge studier, but with the bar I had to study 14 hours a day for months straight. That helped me to be more patient. Those long sessions where you play poker for 15 hours go down a lot easier.”
Jaffee also admitted that while he was studying for the bar he would play sit-n-go’s the whole time. “I would have the book in front of my computer and look up when it was my turn. If I had to play a hand I would play it and otherwise I would fold it,” said Jaffee.
Learning Poker through Stud and Getting Backed
Jaffee has played poker for a number of years, learning the game first through seven-card stud, which is a rarity these days. “I played cards forever when I was little. Not necessarily hold’em but I was always playing cards with my friends. The first game that I played a lot of was stud. When I graduated from college I played in some stud tournaments at the Tropicana in Atlantic City and I had a lot of fun with that,” said Jaffee.
After graduating from college he started playing online a lot and he started to mix in games other than stud and live play as well. “I played straight through law school and played cash games in New York. I won a few trips in law school, like the PCA, and EPT Deauville. I would satellite into big tournaments so I have experience playing in live tournaments for the last couple of years. Last summer was the first year where I went out for the World Series and stayed there for the whole summer. It was kind of a lost summer, I didn’t do too well,” said Jaffee.
After that summer was when Jaffee entered into a backing partnership with Benjamin Zamani. “I have to give a lot of credit to Ben. He told me that I could play whenever I wanted, wherever I wanted and he would back me. Then I started winning and he has been real good to me. We have a partnership with my action. As much as anyone that I’ve spoken to he has helped me with my game. I think that is without question what helped me this year. If it wasn’t for him I don’t think I would be in this position right now. He helped me a lot with my understanding of the game,” said Jaffee.
Finding his Stride and Setting a Goal
Jaffee played a few live tournaments in 2009, but he has truly found his stride on the tournament trail in 2010. He has cashed a total of 10 times this year and he now holds $1,035,461 in career earnings. According to Jaffee, everything clicked once he found a backer and could commit to the financial investment of playing full time
All of the time he has spent at final tables this year has proved to be an invaluable learning tool and confidence booster. “It’s super valuable every time you make a final table. You’re getting experience short handed when the stakes are higher with everything being televised. I made a final table at the World Series earlier this year, and one at the Wynn. I feel like WPT has the toughest final tables to make and they are the most intense because everybody wants to make the final six, and once you do the cameras are rolling. I feel like every time you play it gives you an edge going into the next one. You’re a lot more comfortable,” said Jaffee.
He also stands by the strength of his short-stack game as the reason he has done so well in 2010. “I feel like the most important thing in these tournaments is being able to manage a short stack. You have to be patient with a short stack. That’s the biggest weakness in a lot of successful players games that I have seen at this point. When they get short they hope to just get it in and get lucky and win a race. They get down to 15 blinds and its time to shove. I might take a flop more often than somebody else with fewer blinds, or there is even a possibility that I might put in a small raise and toss away my cards if I get three bet. Once you’re down to a certain level most people will shove all in and hope to get lucky or go home. I don’t really subscribe to that. You’re never really more than a few hands away from getting yourself back into it,” said Jaffee.
“I’m definitely very aware of the player of the year standings,” said Jaffee. “When I started off in the beginning of the year I had a couple of good finishes early. I set a personal goal that I would really like to try to get into the top 10 by the end of the year. Since this is my first year playing live consistently I thought that was a good goal for me.”
Jaffee acknowledged that he has changed his schedule around to stay competitive in the POY race down the final stretch of the year. “I’m definitely playing in more tournaments than I would have. I haven’t been playing quite as many as some of the other players at the top, but I have been playing a lot. It also solidifies the fact that I’m doing something right. Poker is a game where you can feel like you’re the smartest and the best one day, and then feel like you have no idea what you’re doing the next. I feel good, with all of the great players out there, that I’m having a year that is comparable to most of them. This reinforces that this was the correct career path for me. Especially since a lot of people gave me a hard time about doing this when I gave up practicing law, a lot of people shrugged it off as something that was silly or they thought I was being lazy. They thought that I didn’t want to work, but at this point all of those same people are excited about what I’m doing. That has been a nice reinforcement and it makes me feel a little bit better about my decision for sure.”
Setting up a Future Endeavor?
For now Jaffee is happy to see where poker takes him and he says he will keep playing as long as it remains fun and profitable. And, if it doesn’t work out he always has a law degree to fall back on. “I have no idea where I will be 20 years from now. If I make a lot of money in the next couple of years it would put me in a good position to set up my own practice. Instead of starting at the bottom I can skip the first couple of levels. It’s not traditionally the way it happens but it’s certainly not impossible. Hopefully I can put away some money and do the right things with it from poker and potentially have that opportunity down the road,” said Jaffee.
“I don’t know if I will still want to do this three or four years from now, or I might still be doing this 20 years from now, but for now I’m happy so that’s what I’m going with,” said Jaffee.
In the immediate future he is focusing on broadening his poker repertoire in order to play in as many tournaments as possible. “I’ve been trying to play a lot of eight-game lately. My first live eight-game mixed tournament was at the World Series this year and I got seventh…I definitely have a lot to learn, there is a lot of value in those games so I want to play in as many live eight-game tournaments as possible because I feel that the skill level is so much better there,” said Jaffee. If he can maximize his opportunities to score cashes down the stretch this year Jaffee will be a threat to win the POY race.
“The more you play all of the games, the better game selection you will have when you want to play online. When it comes to tournaments and cash games the people that play them are better at some games than they are others, so if you’re at a high skill level in all of the games that will definitely give you a serious edge when you’re playing on a consistent basis. I don’t think I’m at that level. I have some improvement to make in all of the games, but I feel like I’m getting close enough now that I should be putting myself in a spot real soon where I will have a chance to win consistently in all of those mixed games,” said Jaffee.
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