If you follow tournament poker, or play the game with any regularity, there’s a strong chance you’ve seen quite a few players wearing patches promoting ‘Jaka Coaching.’
Launched in 2020, in the midst of the poker world shutting down, Faraz Jaka kicked off his coaching program with a small, core group. The platform has grown over the last five years from a small group coaching platform into a community of players who consistently post results across buy-in levels, both live and online.
Those prizes include World Series of Poker bracelets, trophies on every major live tour, seven-figure results, and more. And for Jaka, who largely stepped away from poker for several years, his own game has clearly benefited in the process.
Poker fans of a certain age likely remember Jaka from his breakout in 2009. That year, in his mid-20s, Jaka made two televised World Poker Tour final tables at The Bellagio, as well as a deep run at a WSOP bracelet in a $5,000 six-handed no-limit hold’em event.
That 2009 campaign stands as Jaka’s best year of live tournament results to this day. After working on a startup for a few years that took the bulk of his attention, Jaka stepped back into the game. In 2023, Jaka won his long-awaited first WSOP bracelet in the $1,500 shootout, surrounded by his growing community.
Jaka has already cracked the $1 million mark in live results in 2025, making for the second-best year of his career thus far. He took down an MSPT main event at Bally’s Blackhawk to kick off his campaign with a six-figure win, and recently finished second in the PokerStars North American Poker Tour Las Vegas $20,000 high roller for $202,600. That score grew his lifetime haul past the $9.1 million mark.
During a break in the action at the ongoing NAPT festival at Resorts World Las Vegas, Jaka sat down with Card Player to talk about his banner year, his coaching platform, and featuring as a primary subject in the recently released WSOP documentary ‘NO LIMIT’.
Getting Back To The Table
Tim Fiorvanti: Would it be safe to say that 2025 has been one of the most active years of your poker career?
Faraz Jaka: I’ve been able to play more this last year than the last few years. But it’s funny, I’m actually planning on playing a lot less again next year. I think the last like four years, I was averaging 60 live tournaments a year. This year, I’m closer to 90. Next year is probably going to be low volume again, like I’m thinking I won’t play most of the year, except for the World Series. There are just a lot of opportunities with the business, and I want to lean into growing the business.
A lot of people are surprised to hear this, but I actually haven’t played poker full-time for eight years now. In my 20s, I played for a good decade or so full-time. Then I did a startup for three years, working 60 hours a week, and I played very little. When that shut down, I came back into poker, but I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do, between playing, being a content creator, or being a coach and having a business.
Then Covid happened. Everything shut down. I always had people asking me for coaching, so I said, ‘Okay, sure, I’ll do some coaching. There’s nothing else to do.’ I’m very competitive, and I like to optimize things, so I ended up coaching about 120 people over an 18-month period. At the end of that stretch, I had more people interested, and I didn’t have enough time to coach the same way. Some people wanted a lower price, so I decided to turn that into group coaching. Started recording training videos, and before you know it, Jaka Coaching is born.
Success In Coaching
Faraz Jaka at the 2023 WSOP
Tim Fiorvanti: The work that you’re doing with your students has produced significant results across the board. Have you been surprised at all by the scale of their successes?
Faraz Jaka: I’m definitely not surprised we’re having students who are having awesome successes. When I first started coaching in 2020, some of the people I was working with would come back by lesson three, and I could see how much they were improving. It was very obvious in the way they were able to talk strategy and repeat the logic that they were gonna have some awesome results.
The part that’s been the most surprising is how cool a community we’ve built. I started this project by trying to help people get better at poker. And what ended up happening is we just filtered in some of the most awesome people in poker that you’ve never heard of, who have the coolest stories. There are people who are curing cancer. Collectively, they’re the least pretentious people ever. There’s one woman, she’s a partner in a bank, and when we have student meetups, she’s like, ‘Oh, do you want me to go home and make you guys sandwiches?’ So many sweethearts.
A lot of them are non-professionals. Lone wolves, who don’t have friends who play poker. They don’t have people to talk with or get feedback. So we’re kind of putting everyone together, and a lot happens beyond the poker talk. We go on hikes. We do meet-up games, meet up for drinks, and meet up for dinners. All of that’s been awesome, and something I want to lean into a lot harder, the community aspect.
The Documentary Experience
Tim Fiorvanti: We see a fair bit of that in the recently released documentary shot at WSOP Paradise, including your interactions with people who are a part of the Jaka Coaching community.
Faraz Jaka: Yeah, we shot a lot. They were following me for the whole week. I’d say a very small percentage of what we shot is in the documentary. I haven’t seen episode three yet. That whole experience was super fun. It was super rewarding. Honestly, the production team shooting the documentary was super inspired by the stories of some of the students. One of the producers, Justin, signed up for Jaka Coaching, and he just came to me this week and said that his game’s completely turned around since he joined up.
Learning From Teaching
Tim Fiorvanti: As you enjoy the success you’ve had this year in your own poker career, I’m curious about how much you feel like you’ve picked up from your students, or from teaching and going over concepts in your own head.
Finished 2nd place for $202,600 last night at #NAPTLasVegas
Started heads up with 2m chips to Petrangelo’s 10m.
Here was the last hand 📺 https://t.co/5qagDVN0eo pic.twitter.com/V4ck2eAjdT
— Faraz Jaka (@FarazJaka) November 6, 2025
Faraz Jaka: I’ve definitely picked up a lot of things from coaching players that both helped me in my game and also helped me coach people better. To understand the needs of a training site from a player’s perspective. Hearing the reasons why people are betting, why people are checking, or why they’re not betting. Why they’re scared to three-bet. It’s definitely helped me understand what I’m up against when I’m playing against people with similar player profiles to the players I’m working with.
There are only so many ways to reason through a hand. I’ve heard them all at this point. It’s also helped me to reinforce that people learn in very different ways. So often in my seminars, I’m saying things a few different ways, because I know the way it might connect with one person might be different than another.
The Strength Of The Community
Tim Fiorvanti: From your social media, from your videos, it’s clear how excited you get for your students when they make runs and have success. But I’m curious if the reverse is true, like when you made a run earlier on at this NAPT Las Vegas festival.
Faraz Jaka: We have a student Discord and a student WhatsApp group. Definitely, the WhatsApp group gets popping off whenever anyone has a big run. Not just me, though, so I’m just another community member in that aspect. But yeah, it’s so cool. Every time I have a deep run, we can go and do a lesson afterwards and review it. It’s a chance to take these technical things we learned in certain lessons, and apply them out in the jungle, in the real world. When someone throws a curveball at you, here’s how you can adjust.
Thank you so much for the rail and support everyone, much love ❤️
$1500 shootout @WSOP event #85 shipped it for💰237,367 along with my first bracelet…LFG!!! 🚀 pic.twitter.com/jKjwAj1OkE
— Faraz Jaka (@FarazJaka) July 16, 2023
When I won my first bracelet a few years ago, and all the students were there, that was amazing. To have them in the crowd cheering, and in the winners’ photos with everyone riled up, it was so special.
The Fruits Of Your Labor
Tim Fiorvanti: Every time there’s a final table photo out there on social media, it feels like more often than not, you see at least one player wearing that Jaka Coaching patch. How much pride do you feel for it to stand as this symbol of the work that you put in?
Faraz Jaka: I’m super proud any time I see the patch out there, at these final tables, in winner’s photos. Even when I have people come up to me and they’re like, ‘I see your damn patches everywhere.’ I just love hearing that. It’s been super rewarding. I think there’s still a lot more room to grow, and a lot more we can do with it.
The majority of our members are playing as a competitive hobby, to better themselves, and to better their minds. And there’s a lot more than poker that comes with that. It includes managing your lifestyle, your health, everything. So however we can help members, and whatever they’re looking for, I want to learn more about that, and help people there.
Lead image credit: Rational Intellectual Holdings Ltd. / Rachel Kay Winter.
