Alex Jacob

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Alex Jacob
Nickname(s)Fro-Poker
BornOctober 27, 1984 (age 36)
Houston, Texas, U.S.
World Series of Poker
Bracelet(s)None
Money finish(es)25
Highest ITM
Main Event finish		390th, 2010
World Poker Tour
Title(s)None
Final table(s)1
Money finish(es)3
Information accurate as of January 31, 2010.

Alex Jacob (born October 27, 1984) is a former professional poker player and game show contestant.

Jacob is perhaps best known in poker for winning the 2006 main event at the United States Poker Championship, a no-limit Texas hold 'em event televised by ESPN. He has also appeared at televised final tables at the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour. In 2015, after leaving professional poker, Jacob became a contestant on Jeopardy!, where he won six games and the show's Tournament of Champions.

  • They're both gamblers (Alex is a semi-pro poker player, James is a sports better), very risky about betting (tending to bet all or nearly all of their money), both quicker then heck on the buzzer, and both have very broad knowledge, both have had mostly runaway victories. And James is most likely winning the Tournament of Champions this year.
  • Who is Alex Jacob? 2019 All-Star Games member of wildcard-match 3rd-place Team Buzzy: a share of $75,000 split three ways with Buzzy Cohen and Jennifer Giles.

Education[edit]

In 2002, Jacob was the valedictorian of Deerfield Beach High School, where he was in the International Baccalaureate (IB) program.

In May 2006, he graduated from Yale University with a degree in economics and mathematics.[1]

Poker career[edit]

Among Jacob's biggest poker accomplishments are winning the Peter A. Fabrizio Memorial Poker Classic in 2003 and finishing runner-up at the 2006 World Poker Tour (WPT) tournament in Foxwoods Resort Casino on April 9, 2006, winning $655,507. Jacob secured his biggest paycheck to date by winning the 2006 U.S. Poker Championship with a first-place prize of $878,500. Jacob has 4 WSOP Final Tables, including a 3rd in Event 3 in No-Limit hold'em at the 2007 World Series of Poker.

At Yale, Jacob's poker talent was spotted by James McManus as early as 2004, when McManus sat down one night to play with Jacob. Months later, McManus mentioned Jacob in an article about the experience.[2]

As of 2012, Jacob's total live tournament winnings exceed $2,600,000.[3] His 25 cashes at the WSOP account for $832,559 of those winnings.[4] He is known for his graciousness and sportsmanship in tournament play.[5]

Jeopardy![edit]

Jacob

Jacob has also appeared on the game show Jeopardy![6] He won in his first appearance on the show on April 10, 2015, and went on to win five more games before losing on April 20, 2015. Jacob won a grand total of $151,802 in seven appearances.[7] His victories qualified him for the 2015 Tournament of Champions, which he won, collecting the grand prize of $250,000.[8] In addition to using the 'Forrest Bounce' originated by Chuck Forrest, Jacob also pioneered the strategy of aggressive Daily Double wagers that was used with even greater success by James Holzhauer in 2019.[9]

Alex Jacobsen

Jacob later appeared in the All-Star Games with team captain Buzzy Cohen and 2015 Teachers' Tournament champion Jennifer Giles. His team went home with $75,000 after losing the wild card match.

Endorsements[edit]

Jacob is a frequent player on the trivia app FleetWit, especially in the high-stakes races where top prizes are in the hundreds of dollars. He has won over $24,000 to date.[10] He was also noted for winning a $20,000 prize on the HQ Trivia app in June 2019,[11] which HQ Trivia had failed to pay a month after his win.[12] (Jacob received his payout in August.)[13]

References[edit]

  1. ^'WPT – Players'. worldpokertour.com. Retrieved April 10, 2015.
  2. ^Lane Moore. 'Lifestyle'. Esquire. Archived from the original on March 19, 2012. Retrieved April 10, 2015.
  3. ^'Alex Jacob'. The Hendon Mob Poker Database. Retrieved April 10, 2015.
  4. ^World Series of Poker EarningsArchived July 12, 2009, at the Wayback Machine, worldseriesofpoker.com
  5. ^'World Series of Poker'. worldseriesofpoker.com. Retrieved April 10, 2015.
  6. ^'Show #7045 – Friday, April 10, 2015'. J!Archive. Retrieved April 11, 2015.
  7. ^'Show #7050 – Friday, April 17, 2015'. J! Archive. Retrieved April 19, 2015.
  8. ^Swartz, Tracy (November 18, 2015). 'Chicago trader wins 'Jeopardy' tournament round despite joke answer'. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved November 18, 2015.
  9. ^Jackson, Gita (July 9, 2019). 'Provocative Jeopardy Champ Says HQ Trivia Owes Him $20,000 In Winnings'. Kotaku.com. Retrieved July 9, 2019. During his run on Jeopardy, where Jacob both thrilled and frustrated fans by jumping around categories looking for Daily Doubles and then betting so much money that no one could overtake him(...)
  10. ^FleetWit. 'FleetWit - Brain Games for Cash'. www.fleetwit.com. Retrieved March 13, 2018.
  11. ^Burton, Earl (June 16, 2019). 'Semi-Pro Poker Player Alex Jacob Demonstrates Prowess on Quiz Show HQ'. Retrieved June 21, 2019.
  12. ^'HQ Trivia player wins $20,000, doesn't receive payout'. Comicbook.com. July 8, 2019. Retrieved July 8, 2019.
  13. ^Jacob, Alex [@whoisalexjacob] (August 8, 2019). 'To follow up on my post about @hqtrivia, the team at HQ has resolved my issues. They took some time to ensure everyone is following the rules, which is always good. I look forward to continuing to play for the big jackpots and am sure you'll join me' (Tweet). Retrieved September 26, 2019 – via Twitter.

Alex Jacob Jeopardy

External links[edit]

Preceded by
Ben Ingram		Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner
2015		Succeeded by
Buzzy Cohen
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alex_Jacob&oldid=994950092'

Alex Jacob burst on to the poker scene in 2006, racking up more than $1.6 million in cashes in his first calendar year.

First, he came second to Victor Ramdin in the Foxwoods Poker Classic, a $10,000 World Poker Tour event, for $655,507. He made a couple of deep runs in the 2006 World Series of Poker for another $130,000. Finally, he won the United Stated Poker Championship, a $10,000 buy-in event at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, for $878,500.

The latter came after a memorable three-handed match with fellow 21-year-old Michael DeMichele and 22-year-old Jordan Morgan. At that point, Andrew Feldman of ESPNwrote that they would be “the new faces of poker for years to come.”

It seemed like an easy conclusion to draw at the time, but the world's an unpredictable place and poker's an unpredictable game. What actually happened was that Jacob's results tailed off in the ensuing years, as after a $400,000 year in 2007 that included a third-place finish at the WSOP, Jacob barely managed to match that number the next two years combined as his volume dwindled.

“I kind of lost my enjoyment for the game,” Jacob said. “I was burned out. I felt like I wasn't playing well and wasn't enjoying it really.”

It was a slow process – “it doesn't just happen overnight” – but by 2011 and 2012, his results were nothing but a couple of sporadic small cashes at the WSOP. Jacob played the WSOP Main Event in 2013 and then left tournament poker behind. He got a job as a currency trader at a proprietary trading firm, and the man instantly recognizable for his trademark afro-style hair became a forgotten figure on the tournament scene.

Alex Jacob Colores

Alex Jacob

About two years into the job, Jacob made his mark on another game in 2015. He appeared on TV trivia game show Jeopardy! and laid waste to the competition in a six-day winning streak worth nearly $150,000. He then competed in the Tournament of Champions and crushed once again, taking the grand prize of $250,000 home.

Jacobowitz

“It's always been a hobby, something I'm interested in and good at,” Jacob said of his mastery of trivia. “I'm really good at recalling facts and I love to learn new things.”

Clearly, Jacob has the type of mind that can grasp on to a game, work through its nuances, and figure out optimal strategies.

Still, natural ability can only take you so far, and the competition at the top level of anything is going to be tough. At that point, it takes serious work to succeed, Jacob pointed out.

Alex Jacob Jeopardy

“I guess putting in work really,” he responded when asked to what he'd attribute his success in two wildly different games. “I put in work toward poker and I put in work to prepare for Jeopardy!. It's not just something where I fell out of bed and knew every fact. I really had to work.”

Another factor in both games is pressure, particular with competition in both of them filmed for a national TV audience. However, the stakes in Jeopardy! are ramped up even compared to those in a poker tournament.

While it might be frustrating – and maybe even embarrassing, depending on the scenario – to bust out of a big poker tournament, there's always another one around the corner. A player who goes bust can refocus, study, and come back stronger and more determined than ever before.

That's not the case on Jeopardy!, where losing players have seen their one shot come and go. Good thing for Jacob he made his count, but he found himself getting the itch to return to his old game of choice in 2016.

Alex Jacob

Alex Jacobs Conagra

“I missed it a little bit,” he admitted. “I kind of hated not playing the Main those two years, but I was kind of new at this job and didn't want to take a lot of time off.”

Alex Jacobson

So, he made a return to the felt at the 2016 WSOP, making a deep run in the Millionaire Maker to 52nd-place in a field of 7,190 for a score of $21,635. He also fired in the Main Event, bagging Day 1a and then nursing a short stack for awhile on Day 2, though that run appears to be over as he's now absent from the tournament area with Level 10 soon drawing to a close.

Jacob is enjoying the game again, saying it feels like less of a grind. He expects to be a participant in the WSOP Main Event in the near future but wouldn't commit to a return beyond that.

“You never know,” he said. “I might be back, I may not.”

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