An electrical engineer and musician turned poker pro, Jason Senti (also known as “PBJaxx” in online poker circles) may be the low man on the totem pole at the final table of the 2010 World Series of Poker, but that still makes him better than at least 7,300 other players that entered the event. Senti stands to make a bare minimum of $811,000 and even with the gap between him and chip leader Jonathan Duhamel of Canada, he’s going to play to win.

The 28-year-old American claims to play the game for the intellectual challenge and freedom it offers. His rapid rise in the game and that the payout he’s already received for making it as far as he has really hasn’t changed anything at all for himself and his wife. He told MinnPost.com, “My wife bought an iPad. That’s about it.”

He followed up by going a bit further into his motivations for playing the game, telling the website: “Having extra money allows me to protect the freedom I have now, to set my own schedule and be my own boss,” he said. “Now I don’t have to worry about the money as much, at least for a while. From a day-to-day standpoint, I don’t see it changing my life all that much.”

Senti began playing poker after watching a tournament on television. “I decided to give it a shot and deposited a few books online,” he told one website. Surprisingly, he found immediate success and while he attributes a lot of his early winnings to variance, it’s obvious to many that he’s one of the most dangerous players to make it to the final table because of the depth of his game. An instructor at a popular poker education website, Senti’s become most famous for his online cash games, ranging from $5/$10 to $50/$100 stakes, but tournaments have proved to be very rewarding for him.

His opponents know more about his playing style and personality than he will about them because of his appearances in educational videos, but Senti is confident in his game for good reason, despite one prominent poker site describing him as neither good nor bad for the game, just “meh.” He’s a proven performer who’s willing to learn about the game whenever possible, spending the interim period before the final table studying both his opponents’ game and his own, working on new strategies to get the most out of his short stack.

Even with his reputation as an intellectual player, however, Senti’s biggest gain in the WSOP was against a relative unknown, the aggressive David Assouline. He entered day 7 of the Main Event with a relatively paltry stack, running 69 out of 78 players. Knowing nothing about Assouline worked out to Senti’s advantage and he doubled his chip stack playing A5 against a pocket pair and making a full house on the river.

In addition to this year’s final table appearance, Senti finished 21^st in the World Championship of Heads-Up No Limit Hold ‘Em at the 2009 WSOP. The tough field and high stress of that tournament certainly prepared Jason Senti for his place in poker history.