In a Twitter message posted earlier last month on his personal page, Jason Koon was asking for more serious reactions and punishments for the poker players who are repeatedly caught cheating. He suggested that the important tournaments should share a black list of the infamous name and work together to make sure punishments are followed through.
Other known players reacted to his post and tried to create an online dialogue to clarify the situation and work on defining an action plan. Clearly, the gaming industry is not harmonised yet when it comes to reacting uniformly to unfair players. More intense efforts should be made to make sure that cheating is not becoming a threat for the well-intended players in any of the online or live environments.
Who is Jason Koon?
Jason Koon is a professional American poker player that has won many tournaments in the last more than 15 years. He started playing in college and, since 2006, won a long list of national and international tournaments. In 2008, he started playing live as well.
His story is quite interesting, as Jason started playing poker out of boredom, during a hip injury while still in college. He decided it was an activity that could earn him some money and started to work on improving his playing skills.
Over the years, Jason ranked 10th best all-time poker player in the world, having cashed over 32 million dollars in the live tournaments he attended. He impressed all with his fast rising. In 2021, Koon won his first WSOP bracelet.
Poker Ambassador
In 2021, Jason Koon became the newest ambassador for GGPoker, one of the fastest-growing online poker sites in the world. After the official announcement was made in Rio, he joined the other four ambassadors – Daniel Negreanu, Bertrand Grospellier, Fedor Holz and Dan Bilzerian. For those wanting to learn more about poker, GGPoker is a good place to start. Its main pluses are the stability of player traffic and the high value of the guarantees. By 2020, the site started a collaboration with WSOP to co-host events together. As a result, players from the platform have been able to join some events around the WSOP tournament online in the last couple of years.
On top of the playing aspects, Jason Koon is also known for his healthy lifestyle advocacy. He is very much concerned about fitness and correct nutrition and is trying to encourage persons from the poker world to improve their general life by following a healthy routine.
Ambassador for integrity
Jason’s most valuable asset is his engagement in game integrity, which he also brings to the community and tries to reinforce. In several statements already made public, Koon explained that he has the experience to support the security of the game, and he is determined to see that cheating does not become an issue. Also, he declared that he would like to see more mutual support and collaboration among the players, to see them work together positively and make the community stronger.
Out of many poker players known, Jason has been recognized for his high ethics and good reputation. Therefore, he was on purpose selected to represent the fight against cheating and unethical behaviour. The known names of the gaming industry have spoken back and forth on this topic, trying to find the right way to do it. In order to not turn it into a subjective matter that is not supported by enough evidence, the reaction to cheating has to be unified and regulated. Online platforms and major live tournaments organisers need to work together and agree on a set of rules to be applied before the phenomenon becomes too strong.
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