For Sale: Martin Jacobson
Just a few short weeks ago Jake Cody signed a sponsorship deal with PKR. The deal was struck nearly two-years after he won his first European Poker Tour (EPT) Main Event in Deauville, 15-months after he won his first World Poker Tour (WPT) Main Event in London and 6-months after he completed the Triple Crown when he defeated Yevgeniy Timoshenko in the World Series of Poker (WSOP) $25,000 NLHE Heads Up Championship. In a little over two years of messing about with pieces of plastic, Mr. Cody’s live tournament earnings cash in at a respectable $3 million. Just to prove that the youngster doesn’t just use his laptop for having the odd ham-shank he has also recorded a second place finish in an FTOPs event and won a SCOOP event for $400,000. So when PKR signed him up I doubt I was the only one thinking, “about f****** time?”
Maybe the sponsors were not quite sure about him and wanted to see if his talent would mature? Imagine if Everton had taken the same approach when Wayne Rooney started smashing the ball into the back of the net? I am not quite sure what boxes you have to tick in order to be headhunted, but I am pretty sure there must be a box labeled:
Pretty Good At Playing Poker
If so, then you would think that Jake Cody’s achievements on the felt; both in the dirty card rooms and the virtual felt, would create a red flag for the potential sponsors indicating that he knew a thing or to about checking, calling, raising and folding. If you talk to a lot of Jake Cody’s mates and Jake Cody himself he will be the first to admit that he has had one hell of a good run, and when he has needed the Poker Gods to look after him they have.
Maybe The Would Be Sponsors Just Thought Jake Cody Was A Lucky Bastard?
Let’s look at some other aspects of this imaginary tick box I have conjured up in my mind. I wonder if there is a tick box for a pretty cool sounding name? Something marketable that the public will think is cool and the potential sponsors don’t find to boring or even offensive. In that case I think Jake Cody is a pretty cracking choice, especially for a Brit, I mean how easy could it have been for him to be called John Smith? Martin Finger may have just won EPT Prague but there is no way he is ever getting sponsored with a name like that. Christian Harder and Stefan Fuchs are also out of the equation when it comes to marketability, I mean imagine the three of them in a hand with Jake Cody?
These four are all-in and Cody has not seen his cards − Cody, Finger, Fuchs, Harder and he is now blind!
Judging by the amount of good looking female talent on show you would imagine that being aesthetically pleasing to the eye is another tick box on the sponsors headhunting sheet. For every one hundred male poker fans there is a woman fan and so the game needs some male eye candy as much as we need a great pair of breasts and short skirts seated at our table. Let’s face it, this game is boring as fuck, so we need something to look at while sitting at our tables wasting our life. I look at Cody, and although I wouldn’t want to experiment sexually with him (like I may do with Brad Pitt or Thomas BichonJake Cody’s look is Emu but try as I can I cannot imagine him with Rod Hulls arm up his arse.
Controversy is something sponsors like to avoid and since replacing Lisa Stansfield as Rochdale’s biggest celebrity Cody has behaved impeccably. He does tend to get pissed up in Manchester nightclubs and then wake up in bed next to Minnie mouse in Disneyland Paris, but isn’t that normal behaviour for kids in their twenties? During interviews Cody is very quiet but who else is rocking the mic these days? So I would have said Jake Cody and anyone else in his ilk would be a perfect choice to represent a poker company.
So Where Were The Headhunters From The Big Poker Sites?
What were these headhunters doing when Jake Cody was traveling around the world knocking ten tons of shit out of every poker player who sat opposite him? When he was in Disneyland Paris giving Minnie mouse a cuddle, the headhunter should have been hiding under the mattress? Inconspicuous by their absence? I would have to assume they were just fucking Goofy!
Players like Jake Cody are a rarity, so why aren’t they being snapped up quicker than Meat and Potato pies in a Lancashire outpost in the Arctic Circle? Maybe the headhunters need some help. Maybe they get confused if the player is not from some obscure country or has an innie instead of an outie? If so I feel it is my duty to help these poor people out.
For Sale: Martin Jacobson!
When it comes to poker players who tick all of the boxes: except [must be female and has won one tournament] and [from an obscure country] you cannot look further than Martin Jacobson. Jacobson has two-second place and one-fourth place finishes in the EPT Main Events (all during last season) and he has a 2nd and 6th place finish in the WPT Main Events.
But He Cannot Finish The Tournaments Off!
Martin Jacobson is just a gnat’s cock away from winning one of these events. Also take a moment to consider variance. He lost heads up in EPT Deauville against a man waving a big plastic rat in his face while screaming and shouting after every hand he played. Proof, if ever we needed it, that variance is a bitch and every now and then anyone can win a poker tournament including a crazy man with a plastic rat as a pet. In total Jacobson has amassed over $ 2.6 million in tournament earnings in just under four years!
So this lad is a player but is he a playa? I class myself as strictly heterosexual but if I was in an episode of The Twilight Zone and I needed to sleep with a male poker player in order to save the world, as long as Patrik Antonius had already been killed off, I would have sex with Jacobson. Watching the guy prancing around the beach in Cannes (this is starting to sound stalkish) the guy obviously works out and so he would look damn good advertising a piece of shit. He is also one of the most approachable young men in poker. Women would love to ride him and men would love to ride with him. He is polite, deeply knowledgeable about poker and to quote my live reporting mate Matthew “Yorkshire Pudding” Pitt.
“You just know he has a cock like a black man under there.”
So with talented young winning players like J.P.Kelly getting dropped by his sponsor and people of the talents of Jake Cody taking so long to be put under contract I hope you will take me up on my offer and go and get the man who has everything (except my bird because I wont introduce her to him).