Faraz Jaka

With his parents originating from Pakistan, Faraz Jaka was born on September 9, 1985 in San Jose, California. Very competitive from his earliest age, this especially came to prominence during his high school years when he used to run track and play for the school’s basketball team. Always putting a lot of emphasis on education, he went to the University of Illinois, where he received the degree in business and economics. It was during the college that he got introduced the poker and started playing in the small dorm games. He quickly got to be known as “The Toilet” because of his propensity to enter the pots with garbage suited hands in hopes of making a flush. After a while, he started dabbling in online games as well, putting up $50 at the time and trying to build his bankroll up. Although he did not adhere to the bankroll management, he eventually managed to grow the roll and was able to start playing more seriously. At one point he managed to get up to $170k before losing it all, but he did learn an important lesson about managing his poker money in the process. His online tournament results are impressive. Playing under the alias “The-Toilet-0” and “The-Toilet”, Faraz Jaka has accumulated nearly $3 million in winnings. His largest cash came from the 2012 SCOOP event, where he won the title, beating the field of 175 other players and taking home the prize money of $173k. His live scores started coming during the 2007 WSOP, with first notable cash of over $14k during the series. But it was 2009 WSOP that saw him making his first 6 figure cash, after coming third in the $5k six-max event to the tune of $400,000. About two weeks later came the biggest score of his career in the form of 2nd place finish in the Bellagio Cup V, banking him $775k, wrapping the year up with the 3rd place finish in the WPT Five Diamond Poker Classic Event worth $570,000. On the heels of his success, he managed to grab the title of the WPT Player of the Year for Season 8. Overall, his live tournament cashes are right around $4 million. Despite being very successful on both live and virtual felts, the Faraz Jaka’s opinion on the poker lifestyle is quite an interesting one. He believes that media in general put way too much emphasis on the glamorous living styles of players, with piles of money and models that are being paid to take photos with them, while the reality is often very different. He would also love to see all the players follow the proper poker etiquette, so that the few bad seeds stop giving a bad name to the whole industry.