#27 - 10 Million Reasons Why He Plays Poker

**Faraz Jaka** (0:00)
We just kind of started this regular poker game.
For me, it was just like a way to like make college money on the side. I was hungry, I was looking for more games, and I like thought I was good at this thing. While I was 19, I built up from basically a few hundred dollars to a hundred and eighty thousand dollars. I'm doing the math of how I'm going to make millions of dollars a year.
Do I go to class or do I play this guy heads up, he's sitting there at $20,000? We ended up renting a nine bedroom house, calling it the Poker House. We started throwing these parties where we'd have like 300 people show up and you know, we're these kids running into all this money.
Over the course of the next six to nine months, I basically lost it all and even got myself in $50,000 debt. I got super depressed. I'm in this hole, like I don't know how I'm going to get out. I ended up finally having my first big tournament win. I think I won like 30 grand. That's basically when my career kind of shot off and I never really looked back.
$100,000, $300,000, $500,000, $770,000. The next one, like three months later, I made $1.7 million.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:18)
$5 million is not enough.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:24)
$20 million.

**Faraz Jaka** (1:25)
$100 million.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:26)
$850 million.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:28)
One or two people in a bedroom actually are the threats to these giant multi-million dollar companies because you have creativity and you have nothing to lose.

**Faraz Jaka** (1:36)
Add another zero to that price, buddy.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:39)
Add two more zeros.
Every week, we sit down with self-made millionaires and ask them, how did you do it? I didn't start a podcast. I started my own personal business school, and the teachers are the successful entrepreneurs behind the biggest brands and businesses that we find today.
I wanted to know the real stories with all the details, like how did you get your first hundred customers? What did it feel like when shit hit the fan? I ask them, how did you spend your money now that you're rich? And what would you do if you were starting over from scratch again today? If you're like me and you want to own your own business instead of living a nine to five job, this is the podcast for you. The Hustle presents My First Million.

**Faraz Jaka** (2:25)
I'm here.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:26)
We did it.

**Faraz Jaka** (2:26)
I'm excited.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:28)
I'm going to frame this for people because I don't know how much of my audience knows about you, so I got to do like a proper intro here. So we have Faraz Jaka here.
I'm going to just read these accomplishments. You just sit there and just bask in it. Okay, ready? You're a professional poker player.

**Faraz Jaka** (2:41)
Yes.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:41)
Six World Series Poker Final Tables.

**Faraz Jaka** (2:43)
I didn't know that.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:45)
You were named World Poker Tour Player of the Year.
That's pretty damn good. And most importantly of all, I think this number is right. This is what Wikipedia tells me. 10 million in career lifetime earnings playing poker.

**Faraz Jaka** (2:57)
Yes.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:58)
How does that feel? And your nickname is The Toilet. Why is your nickname The Toilet?

**Faraz Jaka** (3:01)
That's the most popular interview question at poker tournaments. Of course.
Because when I first started playing in college, I had no idea what I was doing. I kind of was self-taught at the beginning. So I was just like, oh, suited cards must be good. So I'd play like every suited hand, and I'd get all these flushes, and my roommates would get super annoyed and they'd be like, damn it, the toilet flushes again.
So when I had to make an online screen name to play online, I wasn't really taking it too seriously. I was like, oh, everyone calls me The Toilet. Boom, toilet. And next thing you know, the toilet's playing like high stakes.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:31)
Right, 15 years later.

**Faraz Jaka** (3:32)
And there's, you know, the media loves it because it's like the toilet flushes away the competition. The toilet gets flushed.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:38)
You're a marketing genius and you didn't realize it at the time.
OK, so how does a nice brown kid like you become a professional poker player? That's not a career path for most kids.

**Faraz Jaka** (3:47)
It wasn't what I expected either. You know, I started playing freshman year in college. Just, you know, some guys were playing in the dorm room. One guy was trying to get everyone together to teach them how to play. So, you know, we put together a little tournament. I actually won the first tournament I played. It was 12 of us and only one of the guys had played before. So, we just kind of started this regular poker game.