Player Focus: "strassa2"

If ever a player epitomised the poker craze that swept through American universities during the first half of the decade, it is Jason Strasser aka "strassa2".

Strasser has accumulated $624,122 playing on PokerStars since the start of 2005. He owes a large part of that amazing haul to his historic performance in the WCOOP PokerStars event in September, when he claimed a first prize of $442,440. The whole time he’s been studying biomedical and electrical engineering at Duke University in North Carolina.

At the online table he’s cool, calculating and analytical – like nearly all top players he understands odds and is able to process information quickly. Yet he remains remarkably unfazed by his own success or that of the game. He’s claimed in the past that the discussion of how to play certain hands isn’t as interesting as many so-called experts would have you believe, and has also declared the online poker boom simply cannot last.

Strasser worked his way up from an initial deposit of $25 on PartyPoker to become one of the most prolific winners in the online game today – all the while claming luck played a big part in his progress. “One time I got my account up to $2,000,” he recalls. “I really wanted to play the Party Super - it was a $150 buy-in or something like that.

"I signed up, played it, got second for $17,000. Pure luck – I was not very good at all. I had way more money than my skill level dictated I should have.”

Such honesty about his limitations is endearing – yet the sheer size and regularity of his poker prize winnings makes "strassa2" one of the pre-eminent online players of his generation. He’s cashed in 34 PokerStars events since the beginning of 2005, and has also enjoyed stunning success in offline tournaments.

He collected $182,067 in total by making the money in four WSOP events this year and finished in the top 200 in the main event. Tournament stats push his overall winnings nearer the $1 million mark.

Despite his apparent wealth, however, Strasser claims not be to motivated by money. “It’s just a huge barrier; it gets in the way. Poker is kind of like a video game for me, I really enjoy it. I win a lot, then I lose a lot.”

He once lost $30,000 in a single day but says: “I don’t get excited when I have a big win or a big loss because it usually evens out in the long run. There are two things that really distract a lot of players: money and on a hand-by-hand basis they are too distracted by what they are holding in their hand.”

If you think his phlegmatic approach is bluff, you're wrong - next July Strasser intends giving up the game to become a trader on Wall Street. After graduation, he'll swap online poker tables for 70-80 hour weeks trading the stock market. It might be time to invest.

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