Life After Poker - Jason Strasser

Life After Poker is a series of conversational interviews with former poker pros. Many familar -- and less familiar -- poker pros have moved on to the business, academic, and other worlds and I want to talk about their stories.

This time out I chat with Jason Strasser, one of the original young no limit hold'em superstars that burst on the scene in the early 2000s. Jason was making big money playing high-stakes NLHE from his college dorm room at Duke, and traded that career in for a lengthy and successful career as a trader for Morgan Stanley. But playing with the house money wasn't enough for him, so he decided to start his own hedge fund. Jason joined me from his office in New York to talk about the time he spends on the 2+2 poker and investment forums, the fun of being in the financial markets, the pressures of managing the money of his friends and family, his attitudes towards poker today, what he misses about the poker lifestyle, and much more.

Jason's is a true success story of how a player goes from beating the big poker games to making real money beating "the Street".

 

 

Some highlights:

• 11' Who exactly works for banks? How does one get a job in finance?
• 17' Can you be “lazy” and successful in finance?
• 26’ What played a more formative role in Jason getting tremendously good at poker and trading, was it the money, or the thrill of beating the game?
• 33’ Jason talks about his mindset towards risk and how to perceive it.
• 58’ Finance, ethics, and the contributions to society made by the capital markets.
• 63’ What he really enjoyed when he played serious poker.
• 71’ The one moment which could have changed the trajectory of Jason’s life.