“Ultimate Hustler” Jeff Gross on the Table 1 Podcast

American poker pro Jeff Gross has recently appeared on Justin Young and Art Parmann’s The Table 1 Podcast. In the title of their podcast episode, they refer to Gross as “the Ultimate Hustler”. And, as they got into the beginnings of Gross’ poker journey, we get to understand why they chose that description for their guest.

Gross was attending college in South Carolina on a soccer scholarship. One of his teammates introduced him to poker by bringing a chipset to soccer camp back in high school. Given that this was the early 2000s, Gross happened to catch the first wave of the Moneymaker boom, and spent late nights running up massive stacks at partypoker’s $0.25/$0.50 tables on the family computers.

Jeff Gross’ Referral Bonus Hustle Earned Him $10K a Month as a College Student

Once he left for college, he continued his grind at the table — so much so that soccer actually took a back seat. 

And here’s where Gross’ hustling instinct kicked in: he took full advantage of the big social network of a college campus, and turned partypoker’s referral bonus program into a little side business. He got $50 per player if they cleared the required number of hands, so he not only provided his classmates with the sign-up link, but also lent them some money for bankroll and personally “supervised” them as they cleared his bonus.

With poker and his referral hustle, Gross claims to have made a$6,000 to $10,000 as a college student.

Gross’ “hustling gene” showed itself at his appearance on the Table 1 podcast as well. He brought along his business partner Josh Luber, who stayed for the first segment of the show. He used his airtime to plug his new trading card business. 

Gross himself revealed that he came to Las Vegas. Nevada in part for the ongoing World Series of Poker, and in part to attend the Phil Hellmuth Founders’ Summit, an exclusive business networking event. Gross also told the hosts that he believes poker is just as great of an activity for business networking as golf. As he put it, you can learn a lot about a person based on how they handle stressful decisions and unlucky bad beats at the felt.

The entrepreneur duo shared that they will be launching a new poker project as well, titled “Alligator Blood,” although they were reluctant to reveal much relevant information about it yet.

The Early Stages of the Poker Career of Jeff Gross

Going back to the start of his poker journey, the American poker pro revealed that after graduating from college, a $27K score he got for coming in second in a $1,000 buy-in tournament at the Bellagio in the summer of 2009 really helped him in his decision to pursue poker as a living. 

After the infamous Black Friday events in 2011, when the US Department of Justice shut down all major poker sites in the country, he had to pivot to putting more volume into live poker.

As for Twitch streaming, he revealed that he found out about popular poker streams in 2015. He credited people like Jason Summerville, Kevin Martin, and Jamie Staples as inspiration to start streaming himself.

Gross also shared that in his late teenage years, he would frequently travel to Canada to play poker, as the legal gambling age was 19 there. At one of those trips, he got friendly with 23-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer Michael Phelps. The sporting legend and the cardplayer have remained good friends since.

Gross made headlines on poker sites back in 2013, when millionaire commodities trader and recreational poker player Bill Perkins wanted to see how much money it would take for him to get an embarrassing tattoo. News at the time reported the figure at $550,000, which Gross described at his recent podcast appearance reminiscing about the prop bet as “around that ballpark”. As he told the hosts, he originally planned on using some of that money to remove it, but ultimately never did. 

An oval shape filled with rainbow colors is still on the back of his neck. He is actually a married, straight man, despite what that tattoo might suggest — but Gross does not care and kept the piece.

Watch Jeff Gross on The Table 1 Podcast Below