Jeff Madsen

Always showing interest for math and logical thinking, Jeff Madsen did not struggle too much with finding a right path to follow in order to achieve poker greatness. He was born on June 7, 1985 in California and made his first ventures into the poker world when he was just eighteen. Unlike many of his generation, he honed his skills playing live rather than online and, naturally, his greatest achievement came from the live circuit. After becoming film student at the University of California – Santa Barbara he started playing in the live cash games, as the minimum age requirement in the nearby casino was 18 and not 21. It did not take him long to become better at the game, and he had also built a small library of poker books and resources so he could study strategy and other aspects of the game as much as possible. While many young players find it hard to explain to their parents what it is that they are doing, Jeff Madsen had the full support coming from home. His mother never perceived him as a gambler, but rather a competitive young man, very committed to studying and working hard on improving his skills. This is why, when he was finally about to turn 21, he came to his parents with his WSOP plans, and they helped him with the part of the buyins he needed to play the six tournaments he envisioned. But even those who fully supported him could probably not expect that he would achieve such a success during his first showing in the desert. He went on to win not one, but two bracelets, becoming the youngest player ever to win a WSOP bracelet up to that point. Although his record was taken down by Steve Billirakis the next year, it is quite an achievement in its own right. The first bracelet came from the $2k event and granted the prize of $660,000, followed by the one in the $5k event good for $643,000. Amongst other notable results there are also 1st place finishes in the Borgata Winter Open in 2010 to the tune of $625k and another bracelet from the 2013 PLO event, which came with the price tag of $384k. With total of over $4 million in cashes, three WSOP bracelets as well as the WSOP Player of the Year title for the year 2006, Jeff Madsen demonstrates all the prerequisites to be counted as a part of the highest echelons of the poker community. He says that he tries to always play aggressively and also puts a lot of emphasis on reading other people on the table, which he thinks his studies in the film art have helped him a lot with. He also ascribes some of his early success to the fact that people often mistakenly underestimated the threat he presented during the tournaments due to his young age.