High stakes tournament crusher and partypoker ambassador Jason Koon has told how he was cheated when playing cash games online.
The 34-year-old American recently gave an interview in which he touched on a few important topics and revealed he has been cheated twice in the past.
Jason Koon Hotel Room Break In
The first incident took place during the European Poker Tour series in Deauville, France. During the €5,000 Main Event, Jason Koon returned to his room to discover that his computer had been rebooted.
He didn’t see any reason to worry, just assuming that Windows had updated while he was downstairs playing. Sadly, there was much to worry about.
Seeing himself as a nobody, whose main games were $1,000 and $500 buy-in heads-up sit & go’s, Koon didn’t think for a minute that anybody would seriously consider breaking into his hotel room to try and access his computer.
A while later, a confirmed fish sat to play $1,000 heads-up sit & go’s with Koon and quickly crushed him for 12 buy-ins. Not only that, but he wanted to raise the stakes.
Koon accepted as this used to be typical behavior from fish who liked to ‘martingale’ their bankroll. Now playing $5,000 games, Koon found himself up against an opponent who played perfectly in every spot.
News then broke that many rooms in the venue had been broken into, with Trojan viruses being installed on several computers. The virus gave the hacker the ability to see their opponent’s cards at all times.
Full Tilt Poker returned $3,300 to Jason Koon, following an investigation, but as the total amount lost was $84,000 or $74,000 it didn’t make much difference.
Unsecure Poker App
The second incident will probably receive much less sympathy. Koon had discovered some juicy short deck high stakes cash games on an obscure poker app and was winning a fortune.
He later learned that the random number generator wasn’t fit for purpose, and a hacker was exploiting this. The scammer could play in godmode knowing what the board run outs would be.
Koon’s newly built fortune in his account was all gone.
Keeping it Entertaining
Jason Koon has recently taken to blogging on the official partypoker website. One of his first points to mull over was that of keeping the game entertaining by forcing people to act quicker.
Tanking in live tournaments is becoming a huge nuisance, particularly when it’s a TV table during a live broadcast. Koon thinks that some people are just putting on an act and wasting time. Some players really do use the time efficiently, but they are a rarity.
The key is to come up with a system that encourages players to save time spent on trivial decisions to use later. Koon says that more time is needed to come up with the best play today, but it is also strange that in cash games the etiquette is totally different.
The obvious conclusion is that tournament players want to slow down the pace if they are on a tough table.
The interview ended with Jason Koon telling the audience that we should embrace where we are with poker today. He says there are lots of great opportunities for poker out there.
He also points out that we should keep poker entertaining because it’s a beautiful game.
