Poker News

Cake Poker Returning WSOP Bracelet to T.J. Cloutier

This afternoon, rumors spread around the poker industry that Cake Poker, which had purchased T.J. Cloutier’s 2005 World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet, was planning to return the piece to its rightful owners. Poker News Daily can now confirm those rumblings.

In a post found on Cake Poker that was created on Wednesday night, it was confirmed that the USA-friendly online poker site was indeed the new owner of the bracelet that Cloutier won in a $5,000 No Limit Hold’em event five years ago. The tournament saw the poker veteran defeat Steven Zoine heads-up in a final table that also included John “World” Hennigan, Dustin “Neverwin” Woolf, and DoylesRoom pro Todd Brunson. Text found on Cake Poker’s blog explains, “Our initial impulse upon seeing the auction was to say, ‘Hey this is a cool piece of poker history. We love poker. We should buy a WSOP bracelet!’ So we did.”

The final selling price for the WSOP keepsake was just over $4,000; Cloutier’s prize money for winning it was 165 times that amount. However, the online poker site and flagship room on the Cake Poker Network plans to return it to Cloutier: “We can’t, in good conscience, keep it from the man who rightfully won it; which is why we’ve decided to return it to T.J. Cloutier… just as soon as we’re done having some fun with it.” No specific plans for the bracelet were given, although Cake Poker officials tossed out “photo shoots” and “wearing it to a buddy’s home game” as several possibilities. The auction closed on Sunday on eBay and the hardware is currently on its way to Cake Poker’s headquarters.

An article that appeared on Wicked Chops Poker explained what might have led to Cloutier unloading his memorabilia: "We called T.J. He didn’t want to come on the air… but told our producer the following: 'I don’t want to talk about it… yeah it's mine… I was short… I pawned it… I tried to get it back with my ticket but I was too late.'" On Monday, Cake Poker officials teased that they may have purchased Cloutier’s bracelet.

The topic has spread around the online poker community like wildfire. On the TwoPlusTwo forums, posters speculated as to why Cloutier, who has nearly $10 million in career earnings, would contemplate selling one of his six bracelets. One member chimed in, “With the recent interest in poker and his name becoming more recognized, any memorabilia he has accumulated becomes more valuable. Bracelets don't exactly do much but collect dust so why not get some value out of them.” Others have hypothesized that Cloutier’s love of craps may have caught up with him.

The other bracelet for sale, which Cloutier procured after taking down the 2007 Scotty Nguyen Poker Challenge IV, sold for $2,500. The Plano Pawn Shop saw a flurry of activity surrounding the two charms and Poker News Daily’s Earl Burton estimated that the WSOP jewelry was probably worth somewhere around $2,350. The bracelet contains 96 grams of 14 karat gold and 0.25 karats of diamonds. The high bid was submitted at 1:34pm PT on Sunday of $3,956 and stood for nearly six hours until the winning entry of $4,006 was introduced at 7:30pm PT.

Cake Poker is the flagship site of a network that also includes DoylesRoom, Lock Poker, PlayersOnly, PokerHost, Red Star Poker, and Stryyke. It happily accepts players from the United States and features former PokerStars icon Lee Jones as its Card Room Manager. The site is busy following its players in the 2010 Aussie Millions, taking place down under in Melbourne.

Stay tuned to Poker News Daily for the latest twists and turns in Cloutier’s bracelet sale.

Online Poker Community Donates $1.5 Million to Haiti Earthquake Survivors

The online poker community has raised $1.5 million for victims of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that rocked Haiti earlier this month, according to a press release distributed by the Poker Players Alliance (PPA).

Full Tilt Poker saw 22,785 donations come in from concerned members of the industry for total donations of $293,211. In a gracious showing, the world’s second largest online poker site doubled contributions from its patrons for a total donation of $586,423, or over one-third of the figure cited by the PPA. Aid for Haiti play and no-play tournaments were held on Full Tilt Poker and a special user account was created to accept incoming transfers benefiting the relief efforts.

As expected, PPA Chairman Alfonse D’Amato, a former three-term Republican Senator from New York, was elated to see the giving mood of the online poker community. In a press release distributed by the lobbying organization this week, D’Amato commented, “Like the rest of the world, the poker community is eager to do anything it can to aid Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake. I applaud PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Cake Poker for providing poker players across the globe an easy way to make a contribution. The generosity online poker players are showing makes me even more proud to be part of this community.”

PPA Executive Director John Pappas echoed D’Amato’s sentiments in an interview with the online poker forum PocketFives.com, calling the massive effort “a tribute to the generosity of the poker community.” Pappas added that the seven-digit donation mark does not include private contributions made by poker pros and other members of the industry to organizations like the Red Cross and UNICEF, which hit the ground in Haiti shortly after the epic January 12th tremor.

The PPA revealed that 50,000 online poker players have donated a total of $760,000, an average of about $15 each. With online poker sites matching the funds dollar-for-dollar, the total amount generated surpasses $1.5 million. On PokerStars, donations are being accepted until January 31st at Noon ET. No-play Haiti Earthquake Relief tournaments have buy-ins ranging from $1 to $1,000. Text found on PokerStars’ website succinctly explains, “You will not need to play an actual tournament; instead, all of the 'entry fees' go straight to the fund.”

PokerStars, the world’s largest online poker site, also created a special player account called “Haiti Fund.” Users can transfer funds to the account and PokerStars will match all money raised for the relief effort. The website, which has campaigned for a variety of charitable causes like Ante Up for Africa over the years, reminded its clientele, “PokerStars has been quick to facilitate this after previous disasters, and once again it is giving you an easy way to donate cash.”

Meanwhile, Cake Poker, a USA-friendly site that features Lee Jones as its Poker Room Manager, is taking donations until Midnight ET on January 31st. Five “holding tanks” were created for players to donate to the cause in $5, $25, $100, $200, and $500 increments. Past charity efforts by Cake Poker include involvement in the Aces and Angels Celebrity Poker Tournament and Oregon’s West Side Poker Club.

Other sites, including RedKings, UB.com, Absolute Poker, and DoylesRoom held poker tournaments last week to raise money for the cause. On the CEREUS Network, 717 players turned out for a $5 rebuy benefiting earthquake victims. In addition, customers on the Network’s two sites, UB.com and Absolute Poker, can donate their player points in each room’s store. On DoylesRoom, a special Haiti Bounty saw Academy Award nominee Mickey Rourke hit the felts.

A magnitude 5.9 aftershock hit Haiti shortly after and the Red Cross noted that three million people may have been affected. We’d like to salute members of the poker community who donated.

Well, How Did I Get Here by Lee Jones

I made a pretty big laydown recently and was probably as proud of it as I was of any big pot I’ve won recently. Long ago, David Sklansky reminded us that a bet you don’t lose spends just as well as a bet you win.

This happened in a regular home game of mine; my knowledge of the players certainly helped my decision and emphasized the importance of paying attention to your opponents and learning their habits.

We were playing $1-$1 No Limit Hold’em, but that doesn’t really tell the story. As will happen in games without a buy-in cap, we had all ended up with stacks much bigger than the $100-ish that’s typical in online games with those blinds. I had over $400 and the stacks around me were of similar size or bigger.

Rory limped in for $1. Rory likes to play pots and could have just about anything. In middle position, Ben raised to $6, a fairly standard raise in this game. I looked down at J-T suited. Ben doesn’t usually open very light and big pairs made up a meaningful percentage of his pre-flop raising range. Those were exactly the hands that I was hoping to beat if I could hit a flop; I didn’t want a 4bet from Ben shutting me out of the pot early. I flat called.

Now, Steve called behind me. That made me upset. I should have looked left and thought about him. Steve likes to gamble, but he’s nobody’s fish and tends to do his gambling with position. I was stuck between Ben’s raise and Steve’s call behind me. I wished I had 3bet Ben and gotten the button; Steve would have folded anything but a premium hand to my re-raise. Now I’d made my bed and would have to lie in it.

My bed started to look like a feather mattress with silk sheets when the flop came down T-T-2 with two spades. My cards were red, but what did I care? I had just out-flopped all three of them (Rory had called the raise, saying something about pot odds). In particular, I thought I could stack Ben and his pocket queens or whatever big hand he had. Rory checked (as expected), but then Ben checked. Ruh-roh. If he had something like A-K, he wasn’t going to plow forward on a flop like that against three opponents. On the other hand, it would be very much in Steve’s idiom to pick up the $25 in the pot with a button bet and at least I could trap Steve for the probe bet he tossed out. I checked.

As he was supposed to, Steve bet $20. Then things really looked up. Rory called the $20.  Rory probably suspected Steve of the same thing I did and was hoping he could get Steve to slow down. Rory would make that play with as little as A-2 for bottom pair. I mentally locked and loaded a check-raise to about $75. That would blow them off whatever they had and I’d… “I’m all in.”

What?

Ben had paused briefly and then announced he was all-in for about $250. Suddenly, my world made far less sense. Ben is a thinking, competent player. He knows that Steve, Rory, and I are thinking competent players.

“Sorry, guys. This is going to take me a minute.” For years, when you needed an extra thought to make my playing decision, you simply said, “Time.” That would freeze the action for the extra handful of seconds and then you could act. However, in this world of televised poker tournaments, people confuse that announcement with somebody “calling the clock” on another player. “Are you calling the clock on yourself?” I’ve been asked. So, I’ve become more specific in my requests.

Ben would not play a big pair that way. If he had queens, he’d fire right into that pot and plan (hope) to take it down on the flop. Check-raising like that would only play right into the hands of somebody holding a ten. Either Steve or I could hold a ten and all of us knew it.

As I was pondering the situation, I experienced one of those exquisite moments of synchronicity that make you wonder about life. The Talking Heads were on the stereo and I found myself singing out loud along with David Byrne, “And you may say to yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?’” Everybody chuckled and I relaxed. I couldn’t put Ben on a big pair no matter how hard I tried. He wasn’t making some Nth level sophisticated play against the entire field. He had the case ten and it was bigger than mine; he didn’t raise with T-9.

“I fold.”

Now it was Steve’s turn to tank. He didn’t take as long as I did, but he was obviously struggling. Odd – I thought that he was on a stone-cold steal. He folded relatively soon and it was on Rory. Even Rory had to have a think. Finally, he showed Ben a flush draw, threw it in, and said, “I don’t want to gamble.” “You’ve got a big ten,” I told Ben. “Close,” he replied, turning up pocket deuces; he’d flopped the full house. “Wow, I had jack-ten. I had four outs.” “No,” said Steve, “One out – just like me. I had pocket jacks.” Ben stared at us. “You folded jacks and you folded jack-ten?” We nodded.

You could see the wheels turning in Ben’s head. “What if I’d flatted Steve’s bet?” I laughed – “Oh, I check-raise to $75. Steve calls because he thinks I think he’s stealing. Rory calls for pot odds. You shove and who knows what happens at that point, but if we call, you have to fade two whole outs. You probably win a $500 or $600 pot.” Ben shook his head saying, “I guess I pulled the trigger too soon.”

I honestly don’t know if I could have made that laydown in the heat of a 15-second online decision. Fortunately for me, it happened where I had the time and the graciousness of my fellow players to let me work through the possibilities and make the right decision… instead of burning down the house.

Lee Jones is the Card Room Manager of Cake Poker and has been in the online poker business for over six years. He is also the author of “Winning Low Limit Hold’em,” which is in its 15th year of publication.

I Raise You a Cart Full of Groceries by Lee Jones

It was a typical evening of cards at Gil’s house. Gil is the regular host of my local poker game and he does it spectacularly well. The game starts on time and ends on time (for those folks saddled with real j*bs).  He’s got a great sound system and the tunes range from Massive Attack to George Jones; you don’t know what you’re going to hear, but you know it’s going to be good.

It’s $1-$1 No Limit Hold’em with two inviolate rules: (1) no discussing religion and (2) no discussing politics. We all know that such discussions can destroy a perfectly convivial poker game and any time the conversation strays in that direction, people are quick to put a stop to it. The game – the camaraderie – is far too important to threaten when a political debate turns personal.

Anyway, Gil’s game has been running for a few years and it’s not hard to see why. The people are wonderful, generous, and kind to each other. In my short tenure in the game, I’ve become close friends with a number of them; I count myself incredibly fortunate to settle into a chair in Gil’s basement once a week.

I had been up and down throughout the game. I got ahead a couple hundred fairly early, but then gave it back in a poorly played semi-bluff. Then, I managed to win back a couple of pots that got me back up about $100; that’s when the grocery hand broke out.

Tom, on my left, was dealing. A couple of people called the $1 blind. I raised to $4 with pocket eights – I thought it would get me the button and if I hit something, there would be a nice pot to win. Tom folded, as he should have, but I still ended up with three or four opponents. I slid my cards over to Tom so he could sweat along with me. I mean, the flop was coming K-Q-2 and I would be done with the hand anyway.

Tom is one of those dealers who puts the flop out one card at a time. The first card he put on the felt was an eight. So much for the “fold to the first bet” plan.

The bad news was that the next two cards were a nine and a jack. I might already be in trouble and with $300 to $400 stacks in front of many of us, this had the makings of the biggest pot of the night.

Chris, who had defended his blind, fired $26 into the pot. Odd bet – maybe 20% bigger than the pot. Parker, in middle position, called pretty quickly. Wow – things were getting interesting. I had no intention of letting a cheap straight card peel off the turn and I thought that either of them would have checked a flopped straight to me hoping that I’d continuation-bet it. On the other hand, I was not giving any cheap straight-making cards: “Buck and a quarter,” I said.

Chris immediately folded, which fascinated me. I meant to ask him later what he’d made that play with, but now Parker went into the tank. That’s when I noticed that he had only about $140 left in front of him. If he called here, the rest of the money was going in on the turn. It was clear he had a difficult decision; I was 100% sure that I was in front.

“I call,” he sighed. To avoid giving away anything, I looked directly at Parker as Tom put out the turn card. He looked at the card and shrugged. “I’m all-in.” Almost afraid to see what the card was, I glanced at the board. A queen. If Parker had made the call with an open-end straight draw, I now had ten outs. But his all-in was $40 and there was nearly $300 in the pot; behind or not, folding was not in my list of options. “Sure Parker, I call.” I turned up my eights and he winced. He had Q-J and had turned two pair.

The river did not bring Parker’s four-outer or a pot-splitting ten and I scooped an almost $400 pot. The game ended not too long after that and I left with a healthy profit.

I had to stop by the grocery store to get some staples – the weather was warning of a potent snowstorm moving in. As I walked into the nearly deserted store, I saw, near the registers, the barrel for the local food bank. Like so many food banks in our country, their donations are down and requests for assistance are up. People who used to contribute to the food bank are now going to it for groceries.

The donation barrel was empty.

I thought about that and Parker’s $100 call of my raise. My shopping plans changed. The front “kid carrier” part of the cart was all I needed for my items; I decided to fill the rest of the cart with non-perishables: Beans, rice, mac and cheese, powdered milk, healthy cereal, oatmeal, grits, peanut butter, and canned vegetables. This was fun.

I got to the cashier and asked him to ring up the front half of the cart separately for my tax receipt. As the total climbed on the register display and the front half of the cart was emptied, I started to chuckle; when he hit the “Total” key, I laughed out loud – it was $101.64. I had a put a soul-read on a grocery cart full of food.

The cashier and I rolled the cart over to the donation barrel. The last two bags we put in perched above its rim. Parker will be tickled when he reads this – he’ll be proud of where his money went.

I will certainly have the opportunity to make some bad semi-bluffs in Gil’s game in the future and there will be times when those six-outers come in against me. But last night, I turned a flopped set into a cart full of groceries for the Manna Food Bank. That’s +EV right there.

Lee Jones is the Card Room manager of Cake Poker and has been in the online poker business for over six years. He is also the author of “Winning Low Limit Hold’em,” which is still in publication over 15 years since its initial release.

Cake Poker Announces Gold Stacks Rewards Program

You’ve heard of Gold Chips and Gold Cards on the popular USA-facing site Cake Poker, but now the room has shaken up its rewards program by introducing Gold Stacks. Instant bonuses will be automatically placed in players’ accounts.

While accumulating Gold Chips on Cake Poker, customers will also be building Gold Stacks. Every time a stack is completed, a player will take home a prize. A total of 50 levels of Gold Stacks are available and each requires a certain number of stacks and a specific number of chips in each stack. For example, in a graphic posted on Cake Poker’s website, Level 20 requires 11 Gold Stacks to advance to Level 21 and 40 Gold Chips are required for each stack.

A guaranteed instant reward is available regardless of how long it takes a player to fulfill the requirements for one level. However, if players advance quickly, they’ll earn additional bonuses. Cake Poker explains, “The faster you fill each stack, the more rewards you’ll reap. If you want to play against the clock, visit My Account while logged into Cake Poker to the view time remaining to earn Turbo and Super Turbo rewards.” Once players reach a Gold Stack level, they can only fall back if they fail to rack up three Gold Chips in back-to-back months.

In a press release distributed by Cake Poker on Friday night, the site’s Card Room Manager, Lee Jones, commented, “This is a great new program for Cake players. It rewards them simply for playing in our ring games, tournaments, and sit and gos. Furthermore, it does it automatically. The player doesn’t have to do anything; they’ll just see extra gold chips or cash drop into their account.” In an interview with Poker News Daily, Jones stressed the automatic filling of bonuses as being one-of-a-kind compared to other sites, where players must take action to reap rewards.

Additional Gold Chips, pending bonuses, and cold hard cash are available for Gold Stack fulfillment. Jones explained, “We’re also proud to have a program that doesn’t keep the player on a treadmill to maintain a level. With just a negligible amount of play, a player maintains the level that they’re at. We understand that our players have lives outside of poker and if they need to be away for a month, we respect that. When they come back at the end of the month, they’ll be at exactly the same level as when they left and can pick right back up from there.” Players cannot fall back a level below #11 and, according to Jones, just “showing up for a little bit” should be enough to earn the three Gold Chips required to maintain a player’s current level.

Last weekend, the Cake Poker Network, of which Cake Poker is the flagship site, ran its monthly $250,000 Guaranteed. The $268 buy-in tournament attracted 1,286 runners, boasting a $321,000 prize pool. In the end, “PIIIGEEEOOON” earned the $63,000 first place prize, while “thepokerkinq” earned a sum of $44,000 for second. The top 180 players finished in the money, while the top six earned at least $10,000.

According to the traffic ranking site PokerScout.com, the Cake Poker Network is the 10th largest worldwide with a seven-day running average of 1,900 real money ring game players. Other sites that join Cake Poker on its namesake network include DoylesRoom, Lock Poker, Players Only, and Poker Host. Its traffic is on par with that found on Boss Media’s International Poker Network and the Microgaming Network. The Cake Poker Network is the fourth largest to accept players from the United States.

The Gold Stacks rewards program kicks off on December 9th on Cake Poker.

RIP Binion’s Horseshoe Hotel by Lee Jones

The news has just come out that, as of December 14th, there will no longer be a hotel at the Horseshoe Hotel-Casino in Downtown Las Vegas. Of course, it used to be Binion’s Horseshoe, the site of the World Series of Poker for 35 years and the center of the poker world for that long.

They’re also closing down the coffee shop. Sic transit gloria mundi.

For those of us of a certain age who remember the old days, this is a sobering moment. We’re told that they will keep the poker room, but it’s like saying, “Don’t worry, we’re keeping the statue of Lincoln; we’re just tearing down that big building around him.”

I first stepped into Binion’s back in the early 90’s, almost 20 years ago. It was during the WSOP, which used to be in May. I remember because it fell right over Mother’s Day; the fathers among our poker degen crowd could no more get away to Las Vegas that weekend than they could flap their arms and fly over the Grand Canyon.

It was just two to three years later when I first stayed at the hotel there. It was with the BARGE group, which has produced some of the luminaries of the poker world (Andy Bloch, Greg Raymer, Phil Gordon, and Bill Chen are all proud BARGErs). Our group took over Binion’s annually and they treated us like royalty. They comped us to breakfast in that glorious coffee shop; we’d leave tips amounting to half of what the meal would have cost.

Many of us stayed in the hotel rooms that are about to be boarded up and forgotten. They were not, let’s be honest, luxurious. At least one BARGEr was known to bring his own sheets and blankets to ensure their cleanliness. But by God, we were staying and playing poker in Mecca. No walking through a labyrinth of expensive shops and spas to get from your room to the casino and then a further schlep to find the poker. No, you came down one of two elevators and stepped out into a tiny hall. From there, it was literally half a dozen steps into the poker room. During the WSOP, you could hear the poker crowds while you were still in the elevator.

These were the same elevators that Stu Ungar, Doyle Brunson, and Jack Strauss had ridden to their suites to celebrate their WSOP victories. Heck, Johnny Moss lived in one of those rooms for the last few years of his life, an honored guest of the Binion family. He’d come down every day and play $20-$40 Limit Hold’em, riding around the casino floor on his little scooter.

Me, I never won a WSOP bracelet at Binion’s Horseshoe, but in 1998, I was fortunate enough to win the Main Event tournament at BARGE, which was held there. BARGE basically took over the entire property. I recall the thrill of walking into the coffee shop and getting a standing ovation from probably two-thirds of the tables in the place. That was one of the highlights of my poker career. Going back to my room, with its view to the wall of the casino next door, to call my wife and tell her that I’d just won.

Both during the WSOP and BARGE, Binion’s became poker heaven; the poker players greatly outnumbered the “civilians” and the air was electric. Part of that was because it was self-contained – we ate breakfast in the basement coffee shop, came up to the main floor to play poker, went up to the second floor for the buffet or Benny’s steak house, back for more poker, and then (maybe) make it up that elevator in the pre-dawn to get a few hours of sleep. If you were a veteran, you knew the Clue-like secret passage from the front lobby area that took you through a delivery alley and popped you out right next to the registration desk and at the poker room. You ate, slept, and played poker at the Horseshoe and for a period of time, that’s really all you wanted to do.

Sometime I’ll tell you about the time that Nick Behnen, Becky Binion’s husband, had a series of wee-hour heads-up No-Limit Hold’em matches against members of the BARGE crowd. When everybody got hungry, he ordered dozens of hamburgers sent out from the kitchen, but that’s a story for a different time. For now, let’s all take off our online poker logo baseball caps for a moment and say goodbye to a piece of poker history.

Lee Jones is the Cardroom Manager of Cake Poker. He has worked in the poker industry for over six years and been associated with professional poker for almost 20 years. He is the author of “Winning Low Limit Hold’em,” which has been in print for almost 15 years.

Taking the Underground by Lee Jones

The poker media industry is an interesting beast. It spends a lot of time covering tournaments because, well, tournaments are fairly straightforward to cover and people like to know who’s winning what. You have a starting day and an ending day and the tournament promoters have an interest in providing information to the media. You can show chip counts, the big winners and losers for each day, and more.

However, there’s a lot more to poker than tournaments and one of the reasons that I’m writing for Poker News Daily is that they understand that. While these other aspects of the poker world are not as easy to cover, they’re still interesting and important.

Recently, I was traveling and heard about an underground poker game. I suggested to my editor that it would make an interesting piece – including ideas about strategy changes one makes for such games. Let me pause here to say that I define an “underground” poker game as one that (1) runs fairly regularly, (2) is a for-profit enterprise, and (3) is illegal or quasi-legal in its jurisdiction.

Underground poker games are, of course, a long-standing tradition throughout the United States – simply the commercial version of home games that have made up the backbone of poker playing today. Most of the poker luminaries of the last generation – Doyle Brunson, Amarillo Slim, T.J. Cloutier, and Bobby Baldwin – built their bankrolls playing underground games. In fact, well-known blogger, geek, writer, and actor Wil Wheaton got his start in the poker world by writing a delightful piece about an underground game in Hollywood.

The venue of my underground game experience was not in Hollywood, but I won’t be more specific than that. One simply doesn’t give out the GPS coordinates of underground poker games. The host told me a general area of the city to go to and then asked me to call him; he gave me directions from there. I found myself at a nondescript, unmarked warehouse in a nondescript light industrial area. The description fit the instructions I had gotten on the phone and there were eight to ten cars parked where he told me to park. I immediately noticed one thing: the cars were all parked facing outward, as if people here had succumbed to the British passion for backing into parking places… or thought they might be leaving quickly.

I got to the unmarked door and pushed the doorbell. A few seconds later, an electric latch buzzed open and a young man in jeans and a sport shirt welcomed me in. “Lee? Hi – I’m Rich [names changed here]. Come on in.”

The warehouse had been minimally decorated, but as a functional poker room, it had everything you needed. There was a bar (everything is complimentary), a couple of big screen televisions showing sports, and Mexican food. There were a couple of couches in the middle of the room, but even with all the accoutrements, including the two casino-size poker tables, there was still plenty of room for a three-on-three soccer game.

The owner/host, Jerry, came over and greeted me warmly. He may have been running an illegal poker game, but Jerry was a consummate businessman and host. He worked tirelessly to ensure that his customers were taken care of.

There was a tournament that evening with a very reasonable fee and extraordinarily generous blind structure. Everybody was able to play a lot of poker and nobody busted out for at least an hour. Once eight or nine people were out, they started the cash game, which was really the centerpiece of the operation. On his busiest nights, Jerry had two tables going, but with the tournament, just one cash table went the night I was there.

The cash game is where Jerry made his money and this is where we’ll switch to discussing strategy changes for such games. First, the rake in Jerry’s games (and virtually all underground clubs) is high. Jerry’s price is 5% of the pot with a cap at $20. Basically, you’re paying Jerry’s insurance premiums. I note that while this would be considered usurious in any U.S. casino poker room or California card club, it’s actually less than people routinely pay elsewhere in the world to play poker.

Two important lessons come from this high rake:

Rule #1: Play Fewer Pots.  When the pot is being raked that heavily, splashing around and picking up small pots on the flop costs you a lot of money. You’re never getting quite the price you think you are and you’re basically just “churning” your money like a stock day-trader paying commissions on dozens of trades every day. It means you have to be that much more profitable just to break even. For instance, with Jerry’s structure, the rake isn’t capped until the pot reaches $400, which is an all-in coup between two players with $200 buy-ins (a typical amount).  Your goal should be to play fewer pots, but try to make those pots larger. In a perfect world, you want the pot to be over $400, reducing the actual percentage of rake that you’re paying.

Rule #2: Watch Out for Winning Regulars. As I played in the cash game ($1-3 No Limit Hold’em), it became clear that most of the players were regulars. I also quickly figured out who the tougher players were. Now, these guys are not only beating the game, but they’re also beating the crippling rake. So, they have a pretty good idea of what they’re doing, not only in general, but also in the specific context of Jerry’s game. They know who the fish are and the mistakes the fish are making. In fact, somebody who may be a fish with respect to the sharks in that game might have an edge on you simply because he knows these people and plays with them all of the time. Many of the players in these games battle against each other in home or underground games three to four times per week or more. That kind of intimate knowledge can make the difference between being a shark and being the target; it’s unlikely that you’ll be a favorite the first time you sit in Jerry’s game.

With that said, underground games certainly have their appeal. I will admit that it would have been fun if Jerry had a John Malkovich-inspired Russian accent, but poker is pretty much the same around the world. Once we settled down to play, both in the tournament and the cash game that followed, it could have been the Bellagio or my home game. There were cards and chips, blinds, raises, and bad beats. Some of the players were good and many were bad. There was certainly plenty of EV for a solid No Limit Hold’em player.

I’ll leave with just one very important disclaimer: when you play in an underground game, you have stepped out of the realm in which most of us live our lives. There is a reason why there’s a heavy door with an electronic lock and video cameras watching every outside corner of the building. The place could be busted by the police at any time or, much worse, held up. You are also almost certainly breaking the law. Think about all that before deciding to try out the underground poker scene.

Lee Jones is the Card Room Manager of Cake Poker and has worked in the poker industry for six years. He has been associated with professional poker for almost 20 years. He is also the author of “Winning Low Limit Hold’em,” which has been in print for over 14 years.

Third Bullet Merges with Cake Poker

This week, Third Bullet Poker, a site on the popular Cake Poker Network, announced that it was merging its player base with the network’s flagship site.

In an official e-mail sent to its players earlier this week, Third Bullet Poker stated that the move had been in the works for some time and that, from today on, the company would be a part of Cake Poker: “Cake Poker has been operating and hosting our games for quite some time now. I’m sure you will agree that they have done a fantastic job. We are happy to announce that we are merging our players with Cake Poker.”

When players log into Third Bullet Poker, they will be directed to download the update that will move them to Cake Poker. A player’s login information will remain the same as what they had at Third Bullet and any funds that a player has on the site will also transfer over. If a player has an account already on Cake Poker, their Third Bullet Poker funds will be merged with their previous funds and the customer can play on Cake without any setbacks.

The reasons given for the switch to the new network are many. According to the e-mail message from Third Base Poker management, “You will have access to an increased technical and marketing support team that will make your play experience even better.” It adds, “We have full confidence that you will find continued play on Cake Poker to meet or exceed the level of professionalism and customer service you have come to know at Third Bullet.” The e-mail finishes with a statement that Cake Poker personnel will be contacting players within days and that any future inquiries should be directed to Cake Poker’s support team.

Cake Poker is currently in the middle of a revamping of its tournament offerings. Led by legendary Poker Room Manager Lee Jones and assisted by poker professionals Serge “adanthar” Ravitch and Eric “Rizen” Lynch, Cake Poker has instituted longer late registration periods, de-emphasized rebuy tournaments, and added new tournament schedules to their product. The poker tournament lineup is undergoing many other changes that should be completed by April of 2010.

Cake Poker currently has some excellent choices for players in the tournament arena and in their cash games. Besides offering satellite events for stops on the European Poker Tour and a chance to play at the Aussie Millions in January 2010, Cake Poker also has cash games that give players a chance to take on some of the biggest names in poker. These “Pro Tables” draw players such as Doyle Brunson and his son Todd, Phil “The Unabomber” Laak, and Ilari ‘Zigmund’ Sahamies to take on all comers at the 5$/$10 and $10/$20 limit cash games starting at 7:00pm Eastern Time Monday through Friday.

The Cake Poker Network encompasses 43 different poker rooms. The most prominent jewels in the network are arguably DoylesRoom, the site sponsored by the legendary Doyle Brunson, and PokerHost, both of which joined the Cake Poker Network earlier this year.

Industry Reacts to Poker Hall of Fame Nomination of Mike Sexton

This week, the industry learned that World Poker Tour (WPT) Host Mike Sexton would become the 38th member of the Poker Hall of Fame and the lone representative in the Class of 2009. Poker News Daily sought the reaction of some of poker’s greats.

Sexton bested eight other nominees for the Poker Hall of Fame this year, a group that included Barry Greenstein, Daniel Negreanu, Men “The Master” Nguyen, Scotty Nguyen, Phil Ivey, Erik Seidel, Tom McEvoy, and Dan Harrington. GreasieWheels LLC President Lisa Wheeler, who has worked with Sexton on several charity endeavors, told Poker News Daily, “I’ve worked with Mike Sexton for many years and can honestly say that he lives up to his nickname, ‘The Ambassador of Poker.’ After learning he’d been elected into the Poker Hall of Fame, I was surprised at first. I just assumed he had already been inducted. He’s a staple in the industry and has done so much for its image and evolution. Mike was a shoe-in from the start.”

Sexton serves as the Host, Consultant, and Ambassador for the popular online poker room PartyPoker. In his role, he’s influential on the direction of the site, which has served as his main cheerleader for election to the Hall of Fame. Also central in the industry is Cake Poker Card Room Manager Lee Jones, who explained to Poker News Daily, “Mike Sexton is one of the great gentlemen of poker and he always has a friendly word for everybody. He’s been a powerful influence to help bring poker out of the Dark Ages and into the future. I’m delighted that Mike was chosen for the Poker Hall of Fame; they couldn’t have picked a more deserving person.”

Sexton earned 75% of the vote of a 30-member panel, each of whom was allowed to select up to three players for enshrinement. This author was privileged to be on the voting panel and selected Sexton, McEvoy, and Harrington. On the world’s largest online poker forums, the reaction has been largely positive to Sexton’s nomination. TwoPlusTwo member “venice10” explained, “Well deserved. Mike Sexton has done a great deal to try to lift the game up and is a class act.” TwoPlusTwo member “RadcliffePoker” added, “He has probably done more for poker [than] the whole of 2plus2 put together. He was a driving force behind getting Party Poker off the ground. He has done brilliantly with the WPT in getting a hell of a lot more fish into the game.”

ESPN “Inside Deal” Host Bernard Lee told Poker News Daily, “It’s very well-deserved. Mike has had a tremendous impact on the world of poker. Most people know him from the WPT, but even before then, he was a tremendously accomplished player with a WSOP bracelet. No one deserves it more than Mike.” “Inside Deal” is released every Tuesday on ESPN.com.

Poker pro Kathy Liebert, who rooted on McEvoy throughout the final table of the WSOP Champions Invitational, wrote on Twitter that she expected more than one candidate to be enshrined in 2009: “Seems to me there should be more than one poker player put into [the] hall of fame each year… With so many qualified candidates 75% of vote is too high. Especially with media being 50% of vote.” 2009 marks the first year since 2004 that only one person will become a new member of the Poker Hall of Fame. Dewey Tomko and hole card camera inventor Henry Orenstein were elected last year.

Full Tilt Poker pro Andy Bloch countered why Sexton was worthy of the only nod in 2009: “Arguably, any of the nine players nominated fit the qualifications and most will probably make it to the Hall of Fame in due time. Why was Mike elected before all the rest? Quite simply, he fit the qualifications for the Hall of Fame as both a player and a non-player much more so than any of the rest. I hope more of the others take a cue from Mike Sexton’s induction and do even more to promote the game of poker.” Tournament Director Matt Savage added, “Mike is and always has been the greatest ambassador for the game of poker and the Tournament of Champions was and idea clearly ahead of its time. I am very happy to see someone that has worked so hard to promote our great game receive this prestigious award!”

Finally, what would be an industry reaction article without a comment from the man of the hour? Sexton told Poker News Daily, “I’m truly honored to be inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame. It’s really special because for the first time, there is now a process of being selected that includes the fans, the media, and the living members of the Poker Hall of Fame. The most satisfying part to me is to be accepted and welcomed into this exclusive club by the current members of the Hall of Fame.”

Congratulations to all of us to Sexton for his Poker Hall of Fame election.

End the WSOP Arms Race

Well, we’ve winnowed the WSOP Big Dance field down to nine survivors who will compete for The Bracelet in November. But one race that started earlier in the event is still going on, and presumably will continue right up until November.

I’m talking, of course, about the arms race among the various online poker sites to get their brand on the shirt and/or hat of as many of the final table participants as they can.

As you may be aware, as the field narrows in the WSOP main event, some online poker sites approach the remaining players with offers of money (cash, tournament buy-ins, etc) in exchange for advertising on the player’s shirt. Depending on the site involved and the point in the tournament, the deal may be for a single day, the remainder of the tournament, or as much as a year.

It is a bizarre bazaar, with the sites proffering their offers, the players shopping those offers to competitors, and so on. It is expensive and time-consuming for the online sites, and I’m sure they’d rather not be doing it, but they’re all but forced into the situation.

This is just craziness; no other sporting event does this. Can you imagine Nike and Calloway running around toward the end of a PGA event trying to get the board leaders to wear their hats and shirts? A giant pause in a NASCAR race while the guys winning by a bunch of laps change the patches on their firesuits?

I worked on the European Poker Tour for a year and we never had that problem. If a player came into the tournament with a sponsor, then he “danced with the girl what brung ‘im.” If he entered the tournament without a sponsor, then he didn’t have a sponsor at the final table.

Instead, at the WSOP, we have online sites competing for the attention of players who are already guaranteed six-figure paydays, and harboring legitimate dreams of much more. That means that it costs big bucks to get any traction in this marketplace. And the way in which it’s done means that the players can play the bidders against each other to get the best deal.

The current system favors exactly one tiny population: the talented and lucky few who have made it down to the final handful of tables. It certainly doesn’t favor the online sites, which are in a very costly financial arms race to sponsor these players. Nor does it favor the thousands of players who didn’t get that far in the event.

Finally, it breeds a mercenary and cynical relationship between the online sites who have sent their satellite qualifiers to the event and the players. Players blithely ignore the online sites’ terms and conditions regarding wearing the sites’ logo-wear, hoping to get a better deal in the Day 5 scrum. The online site responds by virtually ignoring its qualifiers, knowing that it will have to offer a great deal more later on if it hopes to keep deep-going qualifiers in its stable.

What’s particularly sad is that this is all completely avoidable. The WSOP could simply institute (and enforce) an EPT-like rule: every player must declare his or her allegiance (if any) at the beginning of the tournament. No changing horses in mid-stream. In fact, such a rule existed some years ago, if my memory serves. It’s high time that rule came back.

This would force the sites to compete for the players before the event began. Perhaps they’d choose to offer deals to any player who decides to play in the event, effectively providing a small rebate on the buy-in. It might well lead to more attractive WSOP packages offered by the online sites, since they’d be assured of carrying any of their qualifiers to the final table, should those qualifiers be so lucky.

Furthermore, the status quo is certainly a mess for the ESPN people. What does the TV audience think when they see Bob Smith sporting a SuperPoker shirt on Day 3, but then TopNotchPoker gear on Day 5? It makes it harder for a casual poker fan to know who’s who, and if he’s paying attention to these things, probably confuses him some. “Wasn’t that guy wearing a SuperPoker shirt in the last show?”

Here’s the thing: I know every person who sits down with his 30,000 in chips at the WSOP is thinking about reaching that final table and everything that goes with it. But the truth is that from an EV standpoint (and that’s what we poker players should think about), virtually every one of us would be better off getting a little something up front, rather than what we might get should we survive to the last three tables.

Now, having said all that, I must issue a couple of important disclaimers:

1. I am the cardroom manager at Cake Poker. We had qualifiers in the WSOP main event, though regrettably, none of them made the final nine (or anywhere near it, truth be told).

2.  The suggestions I’ve made would probably create a more opportunity for smaller sites (such as Cake Poker) compared to the 900-pound and 800-pound gorillas in the room, to wit, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. But I claim that my proposal is good for both a large majority of the players and the poker sites. I hope that argument resonates.

One final note: I’m tickled that we knew, from the start, what logo one of the final nine would be wearing. Call me old-fashioned, but there was Phil Ivey, wearing his company’s logo on Day 1. And on Day 5. And he’ll be wearing it at the final table. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could say that about all nine?

Lee Jones is the Card Room Manager of Cake Poker. He has worked in the poker industry for over six years and been associated with professional poker for almost 20 years. He is the author of “Winning Low Limit Hold’em,” which has been in print for almost 15 years.

PlayersOnly Opens its Doors to the World

At a time in the online gaming industry when internet casinos and online poker rooms are shutting their doors to American players, one site has gone the opposite route and started to accept players from around the world.

It was announced recently that PlayersOnly, which in the past had only offered its wares to online poker players in the United States and Canada, would start to accept customers from the remainder of the world. PlayersOnly, part of the Cake Poker Network, apparently found that limiting itself to just the action from North America kept the site from achieving its full potential. With the change to accepting players from the rest of the world, PlayersOnly should be able to improve its market share.

PlayersOnly has been in existence since 2006, or just about the time that the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act (UIGEA) was passed in the United States. Its move at the time to accept only USA players probably enabled it to garner a great deal of traffic, as players, unable to access sites such as PartyPoker or 888, looked for new places to deposit. It was also a pleasant surprise for many that PlayersOnly accepted credit card transfers, which were virtually shut down after the UIGEA’s signing.

As part of the Cake Poker Network, PlayersOnly offers several of the standard games that you will find online. For No Limit cash games, Texas Hold’em and Omaha High-Low are the two disciplines that can be played. For those who have a penchant for taking to Limit tables, a full slate is featured with Texas Hold’em, Omaha (both High and High-Low), and Seven Card (both Stud and High-Low). When it comes to Pot Limit games, Texas Hold’em and Omaha (both High and High-Low) once again step to the forefront.

Tournaments are plentiful on PlayersOnly.com as, with its association with the Cake Poker Network, there are sizeable paydays at stake. In a previous article on Poker News Daily, changes that multi-table tournaments on the Network will undergo over the next six months were laid out. These changes, according to Poker News Daily Guest Columnist and Cake Poker Room Manager Lee Jones, will encompass more freezeout tournaments and fewer rebuys and also feature better scheduling. Check out the recap of Cake Poker Network tournament changes.

Of the top ten online poker sites or networks in the industry, there are only four that accept action from the United States. The two at the top, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, have long been among the leaders in the industry and those that are arranged behind them will have sizeable problems trying to knock them from that perch. The third place slot belongs to the iPoker Network, which features Titan Poker, Chili Poker, and Mansion Poker, among others. The fourth place site or network worldwide is the former industry leader, PartyPoker.  Both do not accept American players.

The CEREUS Network, the third network that accepts all players, encompasses Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker and has been battling to regain its past momentum after the Russ Hamilton-led scandal and ownership change. The CEREUS Network, according to PokerScout.com, is the ranked sixth in the industry in terms of the number of real money ring game players. The Cake Poker Network, with over 40 rooms, currently sits in tenth place with a 24-hour peak of around 2,700 cash players (versus the 45,173 players in the same 24-hour period for PokerStars).

Cake Poker Announces New Tournament Schedule, Mobile Option Improvements

One of the top online poker sites in the industry, Cake Poker, has announced that it is making changes in two critical areas of its product.

On Monday, Cake Poker announced the start of a new multi-table tournament schedule. These changes, which will be implemented incrementally, were a direct result of analysis of some of Cake’s competitors’ tournament lineups as well as consultation by Lee Jones (the Card Room Manager of Cake Poker) and noted online players Serge “adanthar” Ravitch and Eric “rizen” Lynch.

“We found the most popular $50 tournament on the Internet and parked our $50 tournament right behind it,” noted Jones, who also is a Guest Columnist for Poker News Daily and detailed some of the changes in a recent article. “Now, our players can play at Cake along with our competitor’s event.” The changes to the multi-table tournaments will be rolled out through the early parts of 2010 and will eventually include a longer late registration period and reduction in the number of rebuy and add-on tournaments. “We are putting much more emphasis on freezeout tournaments rather than on rebuys and add-ons. We believe this is better for most players and they seem to prefer it,” said Jones.

In addition to the ongoing changes in the Cake multi-table tournament lineup, the site is also looking to make changes to its mobile offering. As one of the few online poker rooms that offer the ability to play on your cell phone, Cake Poker is constantly trying to improve the performance of its mobile offering. The changes that have been made make the Cake Poker Mobile a viable option for online poker players who don’t have the ability to get to their computers.

Some of the new features that the Cake Poker Mobile option offers are in the lobby, where the percentage of players seeing the flop has been added. As to the play at the tables, users now have the ability to play with a four-color deck and take advantage of an in-game rebuy option. Future changes to the Cake Poker Mobile option will include Blackberry and Symbian compatibility, a top-down view of the table, and tournament options.

The recent changes have also cured some of the problems that the Cake Poker Mobile option had. Disconnections from the site have been reduced and are handled better than in the past and, if a player is sitting out, the ability to observe the play at the table has been enabled. With these improvements on not only the mobile option, but also on the web site, Cake Poker is looking to offer something for everyone.

Behind the New Cake Poker Tournament Schedule with Lee Jones

Very shortly, you’ll be seeing the first phase of a new tournament schedule at Cake Poker. We’re very excited about it and we think that once you see it, you will be too.

Online poker sites are coming out with new tournament schedules on a regular basis and it’s reasonable for you to ask, “So, what’s the big deal?” Furthermore, this Guest Column I’m writing is supposed to be editorial space, not marketing information. So, I need to go a bit beyond “Hey, our new tournament schedule is coming out.”

I thought it would be interesting to give you some of our rationale behind the new schedule. This is the first major overhaul of Cake’s tournament offering since the site was formed and we wanted to make major improvements. One of the best things we did was bring in two ultra-bright tournament players to add their input to the process. Specifically, Serge “adanthar” Ravitch and Eric “rizen” Lynch sat with us and gave their perspectives as multi-table tournament (MTT) professionals. Here are some of the cornerstones of the plan that came out of those meetings:

1. Longer late-registration is good. There are lots of reasons for this, but the bottom line is that more people entering a tournament is almost always a good thing. As long as you don’t interfere with the integrity of the tournament, then just about everybody benefits. Moreover, we are careful to make sure that nobody can register for the tournament at a point where they’d have a noticeable edge by coming in late. There’s another reason for late registration: a lot of mid-limit tournament grinders are famously forgetful (at this point, adanthar sheepishly raised his hand). This helps those of you who occasionally forget to register for a tournament that you’d been for waiting all day.

2. Freezeouts are generally better than rebuys. Up until now, much of the Cake Poker tournament schedule has been built around rebuy and add-on (R&A) tournaments. This was based on informal input from many of our network partners. But, when all of us sat down and looked critically at the subject, we were quickly persuaded that freezeouts should represent a majority of our tournaments.

a. Players generally prefer rebuys. When you sit down in a freezeout tournament, you know exactly what your investment is going to be – you’re not trying to out-buy deep-pocketed opponents.

b. R&A tournaments are actually worse for weaker players. This isn’t necessarily intuitive, because many players say, “I’m just going to buy in once and not rebuy. That way, I’m benefitting from all of the rebuys and getting an overlay.” Well, the math simply doesn’t support this argument. Let’s take two players: BassyBob and TiburonTwo. Bob chooses to buy in once and won’t rebuy. Tiburon is prepared to rebuy whenever necessary.

There’s a catch: Bob is not as strong a player as Tiburon. On average, when they get all of the money in against each other, Tiburon is a 55:45 favorite. So, they get all-in once, and 55% of the time, BassyBob is gone from the tournament. Suppose his 45% bet comes in and he doubles up. Well, Tiburon rebuys and waits for another shot at Bob. When they mix it up again, Bob is still a 45:55 underdog. In short, BassyBob must continually parlay his come-from-behind wins to stay in, while Tiburon has the advantage of playing better and the ability to come back, phoenix-like, after BassyBob “busts” him.

The results speak for themselves. When we analyzed R&A tournaments on Cake, the players who didn’t rebuy had virtually no chance to cash. Their original buy-ins are pretty much a gift to the prize pool. This is obviously bad for weaker players and the site in general.

In short, we felt that freezeouts were clearly preferable to R&A MTTs. Our new schedule will reflect this as we roll it out over the coming months.

3. Drafting is good for everybody. The term “drafting” comes from bicycle racing (and now NASCAR). It’s the practice of one racer tucking himself in directly behind an opponent and letting the opponent use extra energy (muscles, gas, etc.) to push the wind aside for both. Suppose you like playing $50 MTTs and Cake Poker has a 7:00pm $50 tournament, but two of our competitors have theirs at 8:30pm and 10:00pm, respectively. That’s kind of a hassle if you want to play all three. After all, you might want to eat dinner, hang out with your girlfriend, or go to the gym somewhere in there. So we said, “Let’s find the most popular $50 tournament on the internet and park our $50 event right behind it.” Now, you can play our tournament along with our competitor’s event and still have time to do your reps on the elliptical machine.

Rather than just vague promises, here are a couple of specifics:
· A nightly $50+5 turbo freezeout at 8:00pm ET with a $6,000 guarantee
· A nightly $150+12 freezeout at 9:00pm ET with a $20,000 guarantee

There’s much more, but you’ll have to wait a few days to see it. And we definitely have more ideas up our sleeves; you’ll be seeing the fruits of those over the coming months. But here’s the bottom line: we now have a bunch of poker geeks planning the tournaments – we want the same things in MTTs that you do. Keep your eyes open – the next weeks and months are going to be very exciting for tournament players at Cake Poker.

Lee Jones is the Card Room Manager of Cake Poker. He has worked in the poker industry for over six years and been associated with professional poker for almost 20 years. He is the author of “Winning Low Limit Hold’em,” which has been in print for almost 15 years.

Terrence Chan (Unassigned) Discusses WCOOP Victory

Recently, Terrence “Unassigned” Chan took down a $1,050 buy-in Limit Hold’em Six-Max event during the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP). In April, he emerged victorious from the fields of the high- and mid-stakes versions of the 20th Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) event, also Limit Hold’em Six-Max. He is the undisputed king of short-handed Limit Hold’em until further notice and sat down with Poker News Daily to discuss his feat.

Poker News Daily: Tell us about your success in Limit Hold’em tournaments.

Chan: I feel comfortable playing high-stakes. I’ve been playing big-limit games for a while and it was the first game I learned to play. I bring a lot of experience to the table. In tournament fields in the WCOOP and SCOOP, you have a lot of people who are tournament players, but not necessarily Limit Hold’em players. They make a lot of typical mistakes that players who aren’t familiar with Limit Hold’em would make, which gives me an edge.

PND: Is it surreal to have won three major Limit Hold’em tournaments in a span of six months?

Chan: It has been surreal. The night after I won the WCOOP event, it didn’t really hit me and I wasn’t enjoying it. I was in shock and was all smiles. Everything felt awesome. I didn’t think at any point that I was going to win until the very end. You always hope you can win, but you always think you’re a few hands away from something bad happening.

PND: On online poker forums, you’ve received a tremendous amount of praise for your accomplishments. Does it feel good to see that you’ve earned the respect of the poker community?

Chan: It feels good. It’s flattering that people say nice things about me. I try to take it all in perspective and not think that I’m the greatest thing in the world. A lot of people are playing $1,000/$2,000 and crushing that, so it’s nice to have my moment in the sun, but I try to stay grounded.

PND: We know a lot of people admire your game, but whose game do you respect the most?

Chan: I’ve always been a fan of all of the people who have done a lot of the mathematical groundwork of the game. I’m friends with guys like Bill Chen and admire guys like Chris Ferguson and Andy Bloch. I’ve ridden the coattails off that and taken lessons from smart game theory guys. Those are the people who deserve a lot of credit. I’m the guy who is able to digest it.

PND: Are the mathematical and game theory aspects of poker concepts that anyone can learn?

Chan: Yes, anyone can learn it. It’s actually an easier framework from which to learn poker. If you’re trying to learn poker from a guy who thinks everything is feel, then how are you supposed to copy that? It’d be like learning golf from watching Tiger Woods swing. You need to have someone tell you how the hold the club and swing. It’s easier to have a logical framework. Unless you have that great ability, you’re not going to perform at as high of a level.

PND: How did you get started in poker?

Chan: When I was about 18, my cousin took me to a local casino. He just wanted to show me how to play blackjack. I got bored, started wandering around, and saw four poker tables. When you see a poker table for the first time, people are just flinging chips everywhere and things are happening fast. I had just gotten the internet, so I found online message forums and started reading books. Lee Jones’ was the first book I ever bought.

PND: What’s helped you grow in poker since then?

Chan: Having a support system. To be able to bounce hands off friends is the most valuable thing for people just getting started. You can draw a lot from others.

PND: Did you make any purchases with your online poker winnings?

Chan: I took my friends for lunch and things like that. I’m a typical poker player. It’s probably going to be sent back into the system somewhere. I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve been playing big cash games for a while, so things I want or need, I can already buy.

PND: You’re from British Columbia, Canada. Talk about representing your country well.

Chan: For a country with only 30 million people, we have quite a few strong poker players. The West Coast doesn’t have as many, though. Guys like Daniel Negreanu and Scott Montgomery are all from Ontario, so it’s good to represent the West Coast.

The Best and Worst of WSOP 2009

I just got back from two weeks at the World Series of Poker. It had the usual mix of high drama, low humor, insanity, and all the things you count on at the WSOP. More importantly, it had the wonderful opportunities to reconnect with friends from all over the poker world that I don’t get to see often enough. It is certainly the grand gathering of the community. If you’ve been to it, you know what I’m talking about; if you haven’t, you need to go in 2010. Here’s my highlight from this year:

Late one night after the work day was done, I got a text message from some North Carolina poker buddies that they were in a rocking $1-2 No Limit Hold’em game at O’Shea’s – a tiny casino opposite the Mirage. I high-tailed it over there and sure enough, they were in a wild and crazy game that was taking place right at the edge of O’Shea’s carpet, letting out onto the Strip. Much drinking and merriment was taking place. So imagine my surprise and delight to see that two of my Cake Poker coworkers were in the game too. I immediately sat down and bought into the madness. Pretty soon, two European poker pros (and friends of mine) Henning and Benjamin wandered by, saw me in there, and knew that they’d found a good game. Within seconds, their bankrolls were out, their drink orders were with the cocktail waitress, and they were in the thick of the action. I look around and announced that I was very definitely in the toughest $1-2 No Limit Hold’em game in all of Las Vegas.

Sitting at essentially Ground Zero of the Las Vegas Strip, literally a one-dollar chip toss to the street, we were having the time of our lives. There were no massive pots that we’d remember the next day. But we were enjoying great company, alerting each other as pretty girls walked by just a few feet away, and having a dynamite poker game.

When you come to the WSOP, don’t forget to get out and play some poker for fun. Get together with your friends and play for stakes that won’t matter to anybody. Remember that this game can be fun just as it can be profitable. And if you find yourself in a really good game with players in high spirits, send me a text – I’ll be right over.

That’s the good news. Now let me tell you a sad story about the WSOP. It is especially sad because it didn’t have to happen. I will paste in here an excerpt from the official WSOP update web page. In one paragraph, you see a small poker tragedy – a needless one at that:

J.C. Tran opened the pot with a raise from middle position, and the action passed to Estelle Denis. She moved all in, and the table folded back around to Tran. Somewhere in the folding frenzy though, Denis’ cards were pulled into the muck, leaving her all-in with no cards. “Floor!” [Tournament Director Steve Frezer] listened carefully to the dealer and to Denis before making his decision. The rule is that the player is 100% responsible for protecting [his] own cards, and Denis failed to do that. […] By rights, Frezer probably could have taken her whole stack, but he showed a little mercy and only took enough chips out of her stack to cover the initial call. The remaining 110,000 of her chips were returned to a very upset Denis.

It’s no longer an apocryphal story told by us old-timers to scare youngsters into protecting their cards. We have the venue (the 2009 WSOP, Day 5), the actors (J.C. Tran and Estelle Denis), and the referee (Steve Frezer). I don’t know any more details of what happened than what was on the WSOP report, but the reporter’s comment that “[Frezer] probably could have taken her whole stack” suggests that things could have been even worse for Estelle Denis.

I’ve been going on about this topic for years now. Ever since the Internet kids have been playing live, the practice of “capping” your cards (as it’s called) seems to have lost favor. I don’t know if it’s because they don’t think about it (nobody can accidentally muck your cards online) or if it doesn’t look cool. I just know that if I’m sitting there with uncapped cards, it makes me feel like I’m driving I-15 between Barstow and Las Vegas. Not wearing a seatbelt. Please, don’t get into the WSOP updates next year the way poor Estelle Denis did this year. Spend the half-second it takes to cap your cards.

And while I have your attention with this tale of woe, I’ll finish up with the other half of the card protection sermon.

Quite often these days, I see a player bet, his opponent fold, and then the winner immediately fire his cards toward the muck. Again, this may come from playing online, where the pot is pushed to the winner a handful of milliseconds after the last opponent folds. But you shouldn’t do this.

In live play, don’t release your cards until the dealer has pushed you the pot.

There are three reasons for this:

1. If the dealer is not paying attention, gets confused, etc., then he will suddenly find himself with a pot, but nobody to push it to. Dealers like to see one card-holding player to whom they can push a pot. Look, if there’s any confusion about it, there’s a 99% chance that it’ll get straightened out in your favor. But poker has enough uncertainty in it already.
2. Occasionally you will honestly think you’re the last player with cards, but some unaware person will still be holding a hand. Now you throw your cards in, the dealer mucks them, and the guy that was talking with his friend says, “Oh – I’ve got cards.” He’s also got the pot, and your chance of getting the pot pushed to you is very close to zero.
3. Occasionally there will be a thieving rat bastard at the table who will purposely conceal his cards. And believe me, such “people” watch for players who release their hands too early. He will wait until a sufficiently big pot has been built, and for you to do your patented bet/detect-fold/muck sequence. Then he’ll say, “Oh wait – I still have cards.” The floor will get called over, and you’ll have about a 1% chance of recovering the pot.

One happy story, one sad one. Let’s concentrate on more happy ones for next year.

Lee Jones is the cardroom manager of Cake Poker and has been in the online poker business for over six years. He is also the author of Winning Low Limit Hold’em, which is in its 15th year of publication.

Poker Petition Nearly at 200,000 Signatures

The petition organized by the Poker Players Alliance (PPA) calling for the legalization of the great American pastime is at nearly 200,000 signatures. Overnight on Sunday, an additional 6,000 players lent their names.

The poker petition has been the talk of the town in Las Vegas, where players from the United States and around the world have turned out in droves for the 2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP), which is emanating from the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino. At Sunday night’s Cake Poker gathering at the Palms, Poker Room Manager Lee Jones told Poker News Daily that his site was one of several urging players to sign the PPA’s petition: “We’re very happy to be a part of this. We’re offering weekly $3,500 freerolls and are excited to see that the petition is doing so well.”

On PokerStars, the world’s largest online poker site, weekly freerolls began on June 27th and run through July 25th. The petition is scheduled to be delivered to U.S. President Barack Obama on July 22nd, the conclusion of the PPA’s National Poker Week. Signing the petition qualifies a person to take part in a $3,500 freeroll on one of several major online poker sites, including Cake Poker and PokerStars. On the latter site, freerolls are capped at 20,000 players each and run at 2:30pm ET every Saturday. The four-figure prize pool events have helped fuel the growth of the petition.

The petition asks for the following: “Please: 1) exempt poker from the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) and 2) license and regulate internet poker in the US. 3) Respect the rights of law-abiding Americans who love to play this great game of skill.” It also cites the Citizens’ Briefing Book, which was hosted by Change.gov and asked American citizens to identify their top national concerns. When the smoke cleared, the legalization of online poker emerged as the top technology issue after a coordinated effort by the PPA.

As of midday on Monday, 194,795 poker players and other concerned citizens have virtually signed the petition. A person’s first name, last name, e-mail address, mailing address, city, state, and zip code are required. In addition, petitioners are asked to input a special authentication code that consists of a five-digit number. Jones told Poker News Daily that Cake Poker receives a list of new petitioners each week and cross-checks them against account information in order to determine who is eligible to participate in the special $3,500 freerolls.

Last week, 2004 WSOP Main Event Champion Greg Raymer, who made the final table of the $40,000 buy-in No Limit Hold’em tournament commemorating the 40th running of the WSOP this year, authored an e-mail to PokerStars members urging their involvement. It begins, “President Obama – Poker is Not a Crime. I am a voter and a fellow poker player asking for your support of my right to play games of skill like poker on the Internet.”

The first ever National Poker Week runs from July 19th to 25th and includes a fly-in of the PPA’s 30 State Directors to meet with lawmakers. In addition to its own regional heads, the PPA is also bringing in professional poker players Howard Lederer, Andy Bloch, Annie Duke, Jan Fisher, Linda Johnson, and 2008 WSOP November Nine member Dennis Phillips. For more information, visit the PPA’s official website of National Poker Week.

Dan Martin (Wretchy) Banned by PokerStars for Multi-Accounting

On August 6th, Dan “Wretchy” Martin will once again be able to take to the felts of PokerStars. The world’s largest online poker site banned the rising poker star for three months due to multi-accounting under the user names Wretchy and WhatsLogic.

In a post on the online poker forum PocketFives.com, Martin added that his girlfriend can no longer play on the same cash game tables or tournaments as him. Martin’s girlfriend was not banned from Full Tilt Poker. However, the online poker pro did not escape punishment on that site and was banned for 30 days. He noted that each online poker room found the following: “I played under WhatsLogic for an ample time period (6-9 months), but that I did not ever play both accounts that were in a tournament. The hand histories proved this because the style of play was completely different.” The WhatsLogic name was primarily used in cash games, whereas Wretchy was one of the world’s top tournament players.

Martin revealed that the couple played 45 tournaments together, with one-fifth of those taking place using the same IP address. The incidents occurred over an 18 month time period. Martin noted that he did not have two IP addresses and only recently purchased a wireless data card. He noted, “I do feel that I’ve learned a lot about myself and other people because of this issue. To those of you that turned your back to me, stay turned away. To those that supported me, thank you.”

The controversy began after a post in February by Martin on PocketFives.com that read, “I played under WhatsLogic for a few months… unknown this bish!” The comments came in response to a posted hand history involving an all-in pot that was called by Martin using the name Wretchy. PocketFives.com moderator Murderer then posted a thread on May 9th questioning whether the Wretchy and WhatsLogic accounts were somehow related. After sorting out the situation with Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, Martin posted the aforementioned summary of the situation. However, he noted that he was anything but clandestine about his actions: “Everyone and their brother knew it was me under WhatsLogic as I clearly posted here that it was me. If you read things perhaps you’d know I was never trying to hide that fact.”

Martin will now head to the 2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas and noted that he may play on Full Tilt Poker (after his 30 day ban expires) and Ultimate Bet while there. The up and coming poker player was able to remove his money from PokerStars. However, his bankroll remains tied up on Full Tilt until the end of 30 days. Martin is 13th on the PocketFives.com Online Poker Rankings and took down the challenging PokerStars $100 rebuy in March. On May 3rd, six days before the post by Murderer, he grabbed second in that tournament’s $300,000 Guaranteed version for $52,000. The Oregon native has victories in both the Full Tilt Sunday Brawl and PokerStars Nightly Hundred Grand.

Murderer posted tournaments that Wretchy and WhatsLogic had played in simultaneously. On PokerStars, they included three tournaments in September of 2008 with buy-ins ranging from $109 to $215. On Full Tilt, murderer pointed out several instances in October of 2007 where the two accounts played in the same multi-table tournaments. Murderer then referenced two threads that appeared on PocketFives.com from the same time period, one by Martin posting about a hand involving WhatsLogic and another by SluggerWV displaying a separate hand involving WhatsLogic that ended in “gg wretchy.”

Using multiple accounts is against the Terms of Service of major online poker sites. One of the only examples of a room that allows members to change their screen names is Cake Poker. On the USA-friendly site that just hired Lee Jones to be its Poker Room Manager, players can change user names once every seven days.

Lee Jones Discusses the Future of Cake Poker

Recently, we reported that Lee Jones, the former Poker Room Manager on PokerStars, signed with Cake Poker. The agreement marks a coup of sorts for the USA-friendly site, the flagship member of a network that also includes Doyle’s Room, Poker Host, and Sportsbook.com, just to name a few. Poker News Daily sat down with Jones for an exclusive look at his role and the future of the site.

Poker News Daily: Congratulations on your new role with Cake Poker. Tell our readers what responsibilities you’ll be assuming.

Jones: My official title is Card Room Manager. One of my most important roles will be acting as a player advocate. You’re going to see me at live events, I’ll be playing on the site, and I’ll be hosting tournaments. I’ll also have an internal role where I’ll be consulting on tournaments and the client software. I’ve spent the last few days working with them. They’re great folks and we’re having a good time together. I’m benefiting from their perspective and they’re benefiting from mine. It’s a great opportunity for me and I hope I’ll be able to contribute a lot to Cake.

PND: You left CardRunners in February after serving as the poker training site’s Chief Operating Officer. How did you find your way to Cake Poker?

Jones: It’s a small business that we’re all in. I was talking to Nat Arem about something completely unrelated and he suggested that Cake Poker might be a good fit. One thing led to another and we got started from there.

PND: What made Cake Poker an appealing online poker site to sign with?

Jones: They were already on my radar because I was really impressed with an enterprise that could develop critical mass under the shade of PokerStars and Full Tilt. I thought they had something because it’s a tough business to break into.

PND: From what we’ve heard from players, Cake Poker could use a new software client. Do you agree?

Jones: We are working on it right now. We consider the client to be our weakest link. That came up in the initial conversation I had with Cake Poker’s senior management. My professional background is in software, so I’m really sensitive to that. We talked early on and agreed that the client is behind the times. I’ve seen what’s under development. There are people actively working very hard on a new client and I think it’s going to be state of the art when it comes out. It’s crucial to get the client up to standing with what PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker offer.

PND: After leaving PokerStars, you worked with the European Poker Tour for one year and then with CardRunners for one year. Are you looking forward to settling down with Cake Poker?

Jones: I am enthusiastic about this. It’s interesting coming from PokerStars, which we grew from a small into a big company. It’s fun being back in a small company and seeing if we can do this again. I spent 25 years in Silicon Valley and you’d see that with guys over and over. The fun part is growing the small company and seeing what you can do differently. You can look back on things that you did right and can do better. The staff here is great and a lot of them have strong industry experience.

PND: What will it take for Cake Poker to be on the same level as PokerStars in the eyes of players?

Jones: We’re coming up with a unique rewards program. We’ve got things like the Gold Cards and Gold Chips programs, but over the next year, you’ll see it expand into something that’s completely different than anything else in the business. Once we roll that out, it will blow people’s minds in how it affects the whole industry.

We are also departing from PokerStars’ path in some ways, but ones we think are good for the players. For example, we permit players to change their screen name every week. I advocated something similar to that in a blog post a couple of years ago. We allow tracking software only for monitoring your own results, not “fish finding,” if you will.

In short, we’re emphasizing poker as entertainment. That’s a very different model than Full Tilt, for example. They have a really strong brand message of playing against the pros. Our message is a different one and we think that’s good for us. Let’s not forget that poker is a game. In some respects, the only reason you play with money is because it’s a component that makes the game interesting. To many of us, it’s not about the money; it’s about the competition, the math, and the psychological battles. Money can quite literally be a way of keeping score.

PND: Talk about the importance of providing top-notch customer service, which you helped instill at PokerStars.

Jones: If you don’t respect what PokerStars did before, during, and after my tenure, you’re not paying attention, but there’s nothing in the world that says they’re the only ones that can do that. I worked at IBM for years and people said no one could surpass them; nothing is guaranteed. PokerStars is number one and Full Tilt is number two, but good ideas, good people, hard work, and executing plans – no one has a corner on that market. The beauty of the honest business world is that if we provide good customer service and a great player experience, we can advance. We are going to do that.

The Daily Grind

Grinding: making a living playing a lot of online poker, often at low to moderate stakes. You have to admire the irony inherent in its use in the poker world. The “daily grind” has always been used to describe a job. In fact, usually one that you go to five days a week, where you are expected to show up at a certain time and not leave until the work day is done. Exactly the thing that so many professional poker players are avoiding (claim to be avoiding, hope to be avoiding).

And yet there are many of poker players who, without apparent embarrassment, describe themselves as “grinders”. I wonder who, on what online poker forum, first dared to associate the term “grinding” with playing poker. I mean, according to the TV shows, being a poker professional is supposed to be about the most glamorous career in the world, if you’re not an A-list actor or a pop music legend.

But I imagine that there are thousands of serious poker players who have suddenly thought during the middle of a (presumably losing) session, “ZOMG – this is like doing work. It’s… it’s… it’s like having a job.” And this feeling is only reinforced by multi-table online sessions in which one is zipping around among virtual felts like an assembly line robot. It’s almost as if your decisions are being made by finger muscle memory, like a pianist playing a long-memorized concerto.

Now, I don’t think I’ll ever be a grinder. It is too much like a real job, and to make any kind of reasonable money at the lower stakes, you have to play far more tables simultaneously than I’m capable of doing. But I thought it would be interesting to put in a few 6-8 hour days of low stakes online cash games, just to get a feel for what it’s like.

After doing it, the first thing I have to say: if you’re a successful online poker grinder, I doff my hat to you; it’s hard. And it’s definitely not glamorous either; I can certainly see why they call it “grinding”. Here are a few random observations taken from my three-day grinding experiment:

1. It’s difficult, but crucial, to stay focused on the task at hand. I had to put my instant message clients on “away” status, shut down my Firefox browser, turn off the mobile phone, etc. I know that some people play eight tables, carry on three IM conversations, and read their friends’ blogs, all at once. Not me, and I suspect the very most successful grinders are totally mono-focused on their games. At the very least, if you’re capable of paying attention to something beyond the tables you’re playing, you might as well be at more tables and making more EV. And an aside to the FAA: please be sure that your air traffic controllers don’t have access to Facebook.
2. I found the exercise astonishingly good for my playing discipline. Specifically, I found it much easier not to get involved in marginal situations when I knew I had another 1000 hands coming to me that day. Also, I didn’t want to take away my concentration too much from tables #1 and #3 while I was trying to navigate particularly choppy waters on table #2. I note, by the way, that one very successful grinder I know says the following about marginal situations like that: “Get all-in or at least pot-committed. Usually you just win the pot, but if you don’t, at least you don’t have a tough decision any more.”
3. It’s astonishingly important to put bad beats (and big wins) behind you quickly. A beat costing or gaining you a couple of buy-ins is as ephemeral as the splash of a rock into a stream; your attention is needed elsewhere, right now. I first learned this lesson a couple of years ago watching Annette Obrestad play an indeterminate (to me) number of tournaments on her laptop while sitting in the lobby of the Atlantis Resort. If she was involved in an all-in coup, she immediately focused on another table, not even waiting to see the outcome of the all-in. Of course, this is 100% correct – the software will figure out who won, and either deal you another hand, or not. Her response to busting out of a tournament was to simply pop up a client lobby and find another tournament to enter. I never reached the Annette_15 level of instant context switching, but that was my goal, and I even managed to look away from a few all-in situations. It felt good and disciplined, and sure enough, when I looked back, either I had a bunch more chips or the software had rebought for me.

Those were the lessons of my brief foray into the world of grinding. As I said, it’s not something I’d make a regular habit, much less a career. But I actually enjoyed it, and I might make it an occasional break from my normal reality. Of course, it’s not everybody’s cup of tea: at one point, my wife walked in my office and asked what I was doing. “Grinding.” “Looks like you’re playing poker.” “Pretend this was your job – that you did it for eight hours a day to make your living.” There was a brief pause. “I’d rather dig ditches eight hours a day.”

If you prefer your jobs indoors, then maybe grinding is for you. If so, then I wish you great success.

Lee Jones is has worked in the poker industry for six years, and been associated with professional poker for almost 20 years. He is the author of Winning Low Limit Hold’em, which has been in print for over 14 years.

Lee Jones Signs with Cake Poker

On February 6th, longtime industry icon Lee Jones left his post as Chief Operating Officer (COO) of poker training site CardRunners after nearly a year with the company. Now, Poker News Daily can confirm that Jones has signed with Cake Poker.

StoxPoker co-founder Jim Varnon became the new COO of CardRunners, leaving supporters of Jones in the United States and around the world to wonder what the next chapter in his tale would be. On his reason for leaving CardRunners, Jones commented in a post on the site’s forums, “The issue is that we’ve got too many managers for the work that needs to be done, and that’s too many mouths to feed. Everybody else is tied to CardRunners by a substantial equity position, so I’m the natural candidate to step aside.” StoxPoker and CardRunners merged in September. Four months later, the two sites teamed up to introduce Truly Free Poker Training through Full Tilt, where CardRunners instructors are sponsored pros.

In the same post, Jones speculated on his future, claiming, “I don’t expect to be taking a regular job in (or out of) the poker industry in the foreseeable future. I have a couple of poker-related projects I’m looking at, but nothing even approaching full-time.” He’ll now join Cake Poker, the flagship site of the Cake Poker Network. The USA-friendly family of sites currently sits as the 10th largest worldwide according to traffic ranking site PokerScout.com, boasting a seven day running average of 1,660 real money ring game players; its 24 hour peak is a healthy 2,624. Other sites on the Cake Poker Network include Doyle’s Room, which is fronted by 10-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner and industry legend Doyle Brunson. Also making its home on the Network are Lock Poker, which played host to March’s Bluff Online Poker Challenge, and Players Only.

Poker World moved to the Cake Poker Network in April, while Poker Host joined in February after leaving Microgaming. Cake Poker happily accepts players from the United States and is part of the fourth largest USA-friendly network behind PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and CEREUS. Jones gained fame in the industry by serving as the Poker Room Manager of PokerStars until 2007. He epitomized top-notch customer service, earning PokerStars a reputation as a highly consumer-oriented site. He spent one year working with the European Poker Tour (EPT), which is sponsored by PokerStars, before heading back to the United States to work with CardRunners.

Many in the poker industry proudly own a copy of Jones’ best-selling book, “Winning Low-Limit Hold’em.” It was released in 2000 and can even be purchased on Amazon.com for the affordable price of $16.47. The book has received acclaim from Amazon.com customers, as out of 140 reviews submitted at the time of writing, 95 were for five stars, or 68%. Jones’ publication includes a series of quizzes to ensure learning along the way and weighs in at over 200 pages.

The Cake Poker Network now stands to gain a considerable amount of publicity and credibility as a result of adding Jones. Chris Wallace, an instructor for PokerXFactor.com who is known in the online poker world as “Fox,” told Poker News Daily, “Lee Jones signing with Cake Poker is going to mean that the site gets more exposure and people will know the name. Hopefully, Lee brings more professionalism to Cake Poker in terms of upgrading the online poker site’s software and getting people to show up.” The room is in the midst of qualifying its players for the 2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas through an ongoing Gold Chip Lottery. To date, a total of 53 Cake Poker members are headed to the “Big Dance” at the Rio to play in preliminary tournaments.

We’ll have more for you on Lee Jones joining Cake Poker as information is released right here on Poker News Daily.

ZeeJustin Unbanned on PokerStars

Just in time for its very first Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP), the world's most popular online poker room, PokerStars, reinstated the account of Justin "ZeeJustin" Bonomo, a sponsored pro of Bodog. The 23 year-old first ran into trouble in 2006 on PartyPoker, which was, at the time, open to U.S. players. Bonomo logged into multiple accounts at one time, sparking a flood of other sites to follow suit and ban the young player from their virtual felts.

Bonomo's multi-accounting came into light soon after the revelation that Josh "JJProdigy" Field had used several screen names, including “ABlackCar.” The mischief by Field also occurred on PartyPoker, leading the site to tighten up its security. Field was also informed by the Cake Poker Network that he could not compete in the Bluff Online Poker Challenge last month due to a ban for allowing a staked player to use his account.

Bonomo used a total of six accounts to log into PartyPoker; at times, these accounts appeared in the same online poker tournament. Winnings from a $640 buy-in PartyPoker Sunday tournament were revoked and Bonomo shied away from the media frenzy. On February 26th, 2006, Lee Jones, then the PokerStars Poker Room Manager, announced on TwoPlusTwo that Bonomo had been "playing multiple accounts in several tournaments at PokerStars." Money was taken from his account and used to pay back "players who were harmed by his actions in those same tournaments."

In 2008, Bonomo signed on as a member of Team Bodog, joining "Survivor: China" castaway Jean-Robert Bellande, Evelyn Ng, and David Williams. Bonomo burst onto the live poker scene in 2007, taking second in a $3,000 buy-in HORSE tournament held as part of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Circuit festivities at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for $40,000. During the 2007 WSOP, Bonomo made the final table and finished fourth in a $2,000 buy-in No Limit Hold'em tournament, winning $156,000. The next year, he finished as the runner up in a $5,000 Mixed Hold'em event for $230,000. That tournament marked the first bracelet win for Full Tilt Poker pro Erick Lindgren.

During the 2006 Bellagio Five Diamond World Poker Classic, a stop on the World Poker Tour (WPT), Bonomo bubbled the six-handed televised final table and finished in seventh for $152,000. He took 11th in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event and 35th in the WPT Championship, both in 2007, for a combined $154,000. Together with Parvis and Eric Morris, Bonomo took down the inaugural Dream Team Poker tournament held at the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas as part of “Team Bluff.” Now, he will battle it out in the PokerStars SCOOP, which begins on Friday.

On the naming of Bonomo to Bodog's elite stable of poker pros in May of 2008, Mohawk Gaming Group CEO Alwyn Morris commented in a press release, "Justin is one of the most feared and skilled players in poker today and we're thrilled to officially have him join our team of world-class poker pros. Justin lives and breathes the Bodog lifestyle and is a perfect fit for us. We expect him to make a lot of noise this year for Team Bodog, beginning with the WSOP this summer."