Comrades, Close Friends and Rivals

“How excited are you for this year’s Super High Roller Bowl?”

We’ve asked this question time and time again but during the most recent ARIA $25K High Roller break, we posed Jason Koon a different question. How bummed would he have been if he didn’t get a chance to play in this year’s event? 

“It would have been a major bummer,” Koon said, while explaining, “It’s the best tournament for me of the year, even better than the WSOP Main Event. A lot of my comrades, my closest friends and my biggest rivals will be playing the tournament so it’s going to be competitive.” 

Koon isn’t one to shy away from competition and over the last few years, has turned himself into one of the most competitive poker players on the High Roller circuit. Since 2015, Koon has four High Roller victories, including more or less back-to-back victories at the most recent turn of the calendar.

The West Virginia native ended 2016 with a $25,000 High Roller win at the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic, for a $412,000 score, and then he followed that up with a $100,000 Super High Roller win at the PokerStars Championship Bahamas. That victory earned Koon a career best $1,650,000 score but he won’t be resting on his laurels throughout the rest of the year.

“Successes and failures, if you get too obsessed with one or the other, you are just staying in the past and you won’t be focused in the moment,” Koon said, adding, “What motivates me is to succeed on the goals I’ve set for myself in terms of improving as a player and working with the support that I have to try to execute the work I’ve studied and learned.”

Koon went on to explain that he’s currently at the height of his motivation and feels the best life balance that he’s felt throughout his career.

“That, combined with all the right things to succeed, I feel very motivated to play and I hope that that remains a constant in my life throughout the next few years.”

The safe bet is that Koon’s motivation will remain a constant over the next few years and that means that he’ll remain a constant threat at the top of the High Roller world, including a return to the Super High Roller Bowl this summer.