This week, the Poker News Daily exclusive web-based series “The Showdown with Jon Friedberg” welcomes Jason “NovaSky” Koon. He’s fresh off a $458,000 score for final tabling a Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS) event and has become one of the top dogs in the industry. UB.com sponsors “The Showdown,” so support the show by signing up for the site with the bonus code “UBPND.”
Before getting to the interview, Friedberg shared his thoughts on the ongoing Durrrr Challenge between Tom Dwan and Dan “jungleman12” Cates. The competition last saw action nearly two months ago and has quickly ground to a halt.
Friedberg remarked, “It’s really been taking them a long time. It would be cool if the Durrrr Challenge were a certain number of hands in a week or a certain number of hands in a month or maybe they play every Wednesday at 4:00. There’s so little organization to it and from what I understand, the previous Durrrr Challenge didn’t even conclude before this new one started.” Cates might be an upcoming guest on “The Showdown.”
Koon then joined the set. He was previously a part of the top 50 in the PocketFives.com Online Poker Rankings and now resides at #149 worldwide on the strength of his nearly half-million dollar FTOPS score.
He recalled how he got his start in the game: “Like so many other kids, I started playing in college. I was competitive and wanted to be good, so I started reading books, beating my home game, and wanted to be the best, so I put some money online. I got destroyed, got hungry, and wanted to get better. I joined a training site, booked a couple of small wins, and thought it was the greatest thing.”
Koon’s poker resume includes wins in the Full Tilt $1K Monday, the PokerStars Sunday 500, and a tournament during the PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker, or SCOOP. He admitted, “I don’t think I’ll ever work a 9-5 [job] ever. I’m going to have other ventures and invest in things like real estate, but I don’t think I’ll ever have a 9-5 job.” Koon holds an MBA.
Despite his rash of success, he told Friedberg and viewers of “The Showdown” that he doesn’t plan to drop his backing anytime soon: “In order to play everything, you have to have at least a couple million dollars. I plan on staying backed in some things or at least selling action. Also, my backer, Bryn Kenney, is probably the best tournament player in the world and he’s been an excellent teacher, so it’s been a privilege to be backed by him.”
Koon final tabled last year’s World Poker Tour (WPT) Festa al Lago event and landed in fourth place for $225,000. On his live poker debut, he told Friedberg, “That’s my first rodeo for sure. It’s my first big live final table. I don’t know how many hands of mine were aired. We had a very long final table bubble, so we went into it with short stacks. There really wasn’t much room for fancy play. It was kind of like a Turbo.” The Festa al Lago will begin airing at the end of March on Fox Sports Net.
Check out Part 1 and Part 2 of this week’s installment of “The Showdown with Jon Friedberg.” New episodes are released every Tuesday exclusively on Poker News Daily.
