Images courtesy of World Poker Tour
Over the past two decades, one man who has grown up with poker is Jeff Gross. These days, he is to be found commentating on the weekly $10,000-entry online event, the GGMillion$.
Taking place on Tuesday nights, the final table is streamed live, with betting on the action beforehand and a pre-match show and in-game commentary hosted by Jeff and featuring a special guest co-commentator.
As well as playing at the WSOP and in huge events himself recently, Jeff is a savvy businessman and, according to Phil Hellmuth, will make “a billion dollars” from his shrewd investments in the future. We caught up with Jeff to find out how he has adapted to the changing face of poker and what he thinks is to come.
All Change in Poker
While many players who made it big at the turn of the century could point to the ‘good old days’ as their formative years, in some ways, Jeff’s were interrupted by a major distraction from the action. At 39 years old, Jeff has been in the game of poker coming up for a quarter of a century and has seen many changes.
There’s been a ton of changes. One that stands out was Black Friday. I was living in Baltimore with Michael Phelps at the time. It was cool. I was able to play in the United States, just to be around friends and play.
I would never have imagined we’d be 15 years coming up on and not able to just play everywhere in the U. S., which is unfortunate. That was probably the biggest change.
As for the action, Jeff believes that two small tweaks to in-game action have had a big positive effect on the growth of the game and its entertainment value to poker fans.
The big blind ante was a big deal. That re-shifted the game and saved time. It made a lot of sense and was a very, very good change. And then, off the top of my head, I’d say shot clocks have been kind of cool.
To see them implemented deep in tournaments and to limit the amount of time that people can take in spots and make people think a little more makes poker a little more interesting and insightful.
Other than the impact of Black Friday and those changes at the felt, Jeff also credits a key change in poker being the ability to stake players in-game and pre-game through official sites, such as PokerStake and Stake Kings.
There are multiple places where people can buy action and stake players; I think it brought a lot of money outside of the game into poker and allowed players to take shots or play a little bigger than they wanted. I think that has revolutionized the game. I’d probably put that ahead of the big blind ante, but they all stand out immediately as big changes.
Poker and Personal Growth
As a poker professional, Jeff has survived some of the biggest changes ever to impact the game. Jeff Gross, the man, has enjoyed the biggest influence on his life due to poker – the day he met his wife.
I met my wife at Burning Man. Antonio Esfandiari, one of my best friends, was asking me to go for a few years.
These attempts were unsuccessful for some time until Jeff finally went. As it turned out, he met another first-timer under the melting hot sun.
I said to my friends that I would marry her the day I met her, Jeff says with a grin. I was staying there. It’s definitely faithful. Poker is a good way to put variance into perspective. You can run not so well in certain things, and others you can take for granted or don’t realize what a blessing they are.
My wife’s from Brazil, and we’ve got two baby boys, and it’s amazing, it’s the coolest thing in the world. I hope everyone gets a chance to experience being a father or a mother, whether they have a child or adopt, so they get to have that experience. It has been a big change in my life.
As Jeff says, the writer Ray Dalio references the period he is currently in as the busiest time of your life, the midlife ‘squeeze’, if not a crisis.
Your parents get older. My mom has some health issues, and I’ve been working through that. And then my kids, they need me. You want to be with them, and you have your marriage, so poker has taken a bit of a backseat. That’s why I’ve enjoyed doing the GGMillion$ and The Flow Show podcast. I understand that I’m going to be traveling less and not just playing tournaments anytime, anywhere.
Jeff is loving life, but he also acknowledges that for many others, the advice is the same – to enjoy playing poker when you get the chance.
Bill Perkins talks a lot about this in his book, Die With Zero, about the seasons of life, and maximizing them. I was living with Michael Phelps. We were playing poker a lot. We’d travel some, have a good time.
Next thing you know, he’s got a kid and got married, and I met my wife. When you are in that stage of your life where you don’t have any commitments or responsibilities, enjoy that. Travel the world. Go to tournaments. Take chances. Do your thing. Because stuff changes fast.”
A Power Shift
Just as priorities have shifted in Jeff’s life, so too have they in poker. Go back two decades, and Full Tilt Poker was the big dog. Spin back just 10, and PokerStars were the market leaders. Last year, however, GGPoker bought out the World Series of Poker.
It was pretty incredible,” says Jeff. That’s also bullish for U.S. poker in the future. You know, there’s Club GG, and there’s a lot of focus on that. Michael Kim has done an incredible job, and I’m really honored to be working with him. It’s good to have competition, but GG have separated themselves – they had 600,000 players online at one moment during WSOP in September.
The emergence of GGPoker as perhaps poker’s driving force is something Jeff sees as ‘a huge positive,’ and he considers both WSOP and GG as the strongest two brands in poker worldwide.
A good example is [Isai] Scheinberg with PokerStars. If someone just takes everything and suffocates it, it can be a problem if there’s no competition, but there are still big brands out there, and I think that GG is a clear leader. Software, guarantees, tournaments, live and online, it’s really cool to be a part of GG at this time.
The Chase for a Bracelet
Jeff’s own poker ambitions are nowhere near as humble as you might expect from a man who admits his priorities have to include a lot in his middle-aged era. He enjoys his place in private games, and while he’s ‘realistic’ in how he appraises his capabilities at the felt, he’s in discussions with a brand immersed in using GTO and solvers to improve people’s poker skills.
That’s some of the projects that I’m looking to get involved with, and I think that I could. I don’t want to say specific goals, but I would like to play a little bit more and bigger buy-ins. To have a bit more of a focus on developing my game. In terms of a goal, I’d like to win a World Series of Poker bracelet, that’s definitely on my list!
Jeff has come second in a WSOP event before, but still has that burning ambition to win gold in poker’s most prestigious arena.
I’ve had, I believe, seven final tables, and I’ve played a lot less in the last six years. So that’s a little harder now, but at the same time, that would be something I would love to have on my mantle and cross off.
Going With The Flow
Jeff’s podcast, The Flow Show, continues to thrive, with thousands of listeners on all the major outlets. His insightful and entertaining interviews capture the imagination of listeners, and he has a happy knack for asking the questions people want to be answered.
I’ve had over 220 guests, and I’ve slowed down a little bit!” Jeff laughs. “I am trying to do them live; I built a studio in Miami, and that’s something that I am focused on doing.
One of the things that works well for me with my guests is that I know a lot of the people pretty well, so I have a relationship already. It’s a lot easier to talk to someone that you know personally than just having a cold conversation.
From stories to anecdotes, biting questions to intimate admissions, Jeff has a way of coaxing the juice from every conversation. Even in speaking to him about his life and career reveals an innate ability of his to crystallize his thoughts, to find the optimal focus of any question of ours. To know what people want to know and then deliver on it is a rare gift in life, and Jeff has it.
Something that I struggled with for a while is talking too much. It’s about the guests, so I make sure to direct the questions to them and just kind of listen. It’s the Twitch streamer in me.
I streamed for five years, talking at the screen or answering people, and just chatting for 10-12 hours a day. It’s my natural default setting, but for a podcast, you try to shy away from it and ask better questions, to be a better listener.
An Exciting Future
It has been over half a century since Doyle Brunson went back-to-back with Texas Dolly, and over 20 years since Chris Moneymaker. For Jeff, however, poker is in its most interesting place in history. He sees the next years in poker as hugely formative of its future.
It’s in the strongest place it’s ever been, but also the most vulnerable. With game integrity, there are online solvers and phones at the table, so discussions about whether that’s OK or not. I think it’s more likely to be popular live, but at the same time, with five-card stud, PLO, and other mixed games, along with different NLHE variants such as PKOs, and mystery bounties, people ultimately love tournaments.
In Jeff’s opinion, cash games have ‘dried up a bit’ online, but he sees tournaments as being in a great place. He believes that the live game will outstrip online poker in terms of immediate growth.
The game is just constantly evolving – what people play and how they gamble, if you will. Poker has always been like this since the dawn of time. There is always going to be some way that people are going to find to mix that social aspect as well as a skill… and a sprinkle of luck. I’m excited to be here and can’t wait to see what the future holds for poker.
The future of poker is very bright, and just as he has been for some time now, Jeff Gross is likely to be on the right side of poker history. Whether it is WSOP gold, business development, or his place in the GG team, somehow, he always ends up at the hot end of the action.
