Like many people who love poker, Josh Kasen wants to escape the 9 to 5 and he always has. Even before getting involved in high school theater and improv, he’s been performing in one way or another throughout his life.
I’ve always been a creative person. I’m a musician as well. It’s something that’s always scratched an itch in my brain: to create.
So it was no surprise to family and friends when Josh’s first attempt to escape the rat race was making music, even if he found the business side of it to be less entertaining than the artistry itself.
After that, he chose to pivot to a more-stable-if-less-exciting position in the construction and renovation industry, where he’s spent the last ten years as a professional. But despite this stability, he still yearns for the sweet release from his day job.
Luckily for Josh, he’s found poker – and luckily for us, the poker world has found him.
Poker is romantic when you first come across it, and I don’t know where that romance came from. But at some point, it became romantic to me. And since then, I’ve stumbled into the poker industry and thankfully I started making videos that were successful.
Like the beginning of so many romances, Josh’s love affair with poker started in a hotel room in Petaluma, California: “a miserable place,” says Josh.
Stuck there for two weeks for his day job and bored out of his mind, he found something magical on YouTube that changed his life forever: The Big Game.
I binged the fuck out of The Big Game. And I was just so in love. I mean, Joe Stapleton made it so much fun. And the thing is, a lot of poker content now is for the players and not for the non-players. But The Big Game felt very much like, oh, this is also for me.
Since then, he’s been making short, funny videos that do just that: speak to non-players about what makes poker fun. And he’s got a foolproof system for determining what will land with his recreational audience.
Any time that I’m writing anything, I’m asking myself, would I have understood this back in the day? But also: I just send new videos to my parents. They know nothing about poker, so if they laugh I go OK, that’s a good start.
Speaking to non-players is an art unto itself. But if the poker world was going to be Josh’s escape from the mundane, he knew he had to improve his skills on the felt, too. He enjoys competition and while playing poker is fun, it’s even more fun when you win.
I’m a recreational poker player, and I think poker should be fun first. But I found a poker book by Alexander Fitzgerald and read it like crazy. And then I even had some lessons with him.
So he’s been working on his game, and now even live streams his play on Clubs Poker and Ignition, two sites that have noticed the attention he’s getting from the recreational poker world. But whether it’s streaming, making videos, or just playing with friends, what drives Josh is the love of the game.
I am 100% in love with it. I mean, you know, there’s still that sparkle in my eye when I walk into a card room. I can’t help it. I just feel excited to be there, to be playing poker.
And he’s keenly aware that we all have only so many poker hands left in us to play. He looks up to American entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuck, and takes many of his musings on life to heart.
He doesn’t want to regret shots he didn’t take, and when he finds people who are just going through the motions of their lives, he wants to ask them:
When do you think you’re gonna die? Because you’ve got so much more life to live. And if you’re not chasing happiness in your one life, then what are you even doing?
For Josh, chasing happiness means doing what he loves. Every video skit he releases takes significant time and effort, from working on the concept and writing, to setting up the cameras and shooting takes, to the time editing in post-production.
A 30- to 60-second video might take 30 to 60 minutes to shoot and hours to edit and release, and he loves them all – although some more than others. Some of his favorites being ignored by the general population really took some getting used to.
With some of these videos, you just know it’s going to be a banger and it gets like two views and you just feel dead inside. But it’s the same way that you start to get over getting slow rolled over time because you’re just a little more dead inside and so you’re a little more used to it.
But I’d say one particular video I was so excited to release: I got in way too deep with this one and I put so much love into it and it got like no views. I still have it pinned at the top of my Instagram because I refuse to believe that it’s not as good as it is. That one’s for me, okay?
Of course personal satisfaction is a big part of finding your own happiness. But it can’t all be sunshine, lollipops and rainbows: the goal for Josh is to escape his day job and make a living purely in the poker industry.
When it comes to making people laugh about poker, he’s not playing around. Being able to quit the office will require real success in the poker world. It’s a tall order, but he’s got his chin up with the knowledge that he has a lot of people in his corner.
I love and appreciate every single person that ever watches my videos or makes a nice comment. It’s not what necessarily drives me, but it definitely makes the ride a lot more fun.
He’s found his voice, his niche and his audience – now all he needs is to break out. Hopefully some new poker fans out there will find Josh’s videos as an escape from their own 9 to 5: even if it’s only for 30 to 60 seconds at a time.
