Jeff Madsen

When Jeff Madsen jumped into the live tournament poker scene, everyone heard the splash. Two WSOP bracelets in his first year was impressive enough, yet he has continued to persevere and find success since.

Jeff Madsen was born on June 7, 1985, in Santa Monica, California. Raised between the beaches of Los Angeles and Hollywood, he grew up with supportive parents and the dream of playing a role in the film industry. After high school graduation from Palisades Charter, he enrolled in the University of California at Santa Barbara with a film theory major.

Meanwhile, Madsen was becoming a poker fan. He first learned the basics from friends during the summer before he started UCSB, and he bought poker books and enlisted the help of internet forums to learn more about NLHE and other game variations. Once at school in Santa Barbara, he discovered that he could play at the Chumash Casino nearby before he turned 21, and he did just that.

He won some small tournaments there, where the first prize was $2,000, but he built a bankroll and the confidence of his parents that his poker hobby could be more profitable. His parents – father an architect and mother a health insurance agent – were dubious of his choice to go to the World Series of Poker in 2006, just after turning 21, and play the six events he wanted. But Jeff was adamant that he would pay the majority of the entry fees with his college fund, so they added a few thousand dollars to help.

In Las Vegas for the WSOP, Madsen did better than even he anticipated. First, he finished third in a $2,000 Omaha H/L event for $97,552. Little more than a week later, he entered the $2,000 NLHE event and won it for $660,948. And only days later, he played the $5,000 NLHE 6-max and won that for $643,381. He became the youngest winner of a WSOP bracelet at the time, only five weeks into his 21st year, and he earned the honor of WSOP Player of the Year.

With his parents’ confidence and his own success, Madsen chose poker over school. He began to travel for poker tournaments. Later in 2006, he final tabled a $2,500 NLHE event at the Five Diamond World Poker Classic, making $90,770 for third place, and he finished in eighth place at the 2007 World Poker Tour Bay 101 Shooting Stars tournament in San Jose for $100,000.

His return to the WSOP in 207 yielded three cashes, and he cashed in four events the followoing year, one being an eighth place finish in the $10,000 8-Game World Championship. He also went on to final table events at the Festa al Lago series in Las Vegas, and even finished in third place at the 2009 Aussie Millions HORSE event.

Victory found Madsen again at the 2009 L.A. Poker Classic, when he won a $1,500 NLHE event for $107,593, and he also placed third in that series’ $10,000 HORSE Championship for $121,323.

But he longed for a bigger win, which didn’t come until 2010. It was at the Borgata Winter Open in Atlant City that he played the $3,300 NLHE Championship event and won it for $625,006. It was the boost he needed and a reminder that he was still a winning player.

Since then, he made another WSOP final table in 2010, that time at the WSOP Europe in London, finishing fourth in a PLO event for £52,542, and he finished fourth in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure’s $5,000 Bounty Shootout in early 2011.

Through the first half of 2011, Madsen had accumulated more than $3.2 million in live tournament earnings, as well as a sponsorship from Full Tilt Poker. With a new home in Las Vegas, Madsen continues to strive for more poker splashes.