Poker Stories Promo – Justin Bonomo

Poker Stories is a new, long-form audio series that features casual interviews with some of the game’s best players and personalities. Each episode highlights a well-known member of the poker world and dives deep into their favorite tales both on and off the felt.

Click here to download or subscribe to the Poker Stories podcast on iTunes.

Age: 31
Turned Pro: 2006
Hometown: Fairfax, Virginia
Live Tournament Earnings: $15.1 million
Best Score: 1st Place – 2012 EPT Grand Final Super High Roller ($2,167,588)

The Highlights

On the easy days of online poker…

“I realized online poker is so easy, nobody has any idea what they are doing. For sit-n-go’s, I figured out push/fold ranges when other people still had no idea that was a thing. People were just starting to figure out ICM (Independent Chip Model). Poker was so easy I could have trained a monkey to make $100,000 a year. I calculated that I was making a little over $300 an hour. But I’m really proud of myself for having the foresight to know that good money doesn’t stay that easy forever, so I needed to play as much I could [back then].”

On how poker affected his life…

“From an inward perspective, it does wear down on me. Every day, I’m literally forced to hide my emotions. What I didn’t realize is that it was affecting my everyday life. I would be less excitable about fun things, I would smile less often. I had been dating a girl for two years before she told that I was hard to read and never expressed my emotions. Once she told me that, it was kind of a turning point in my life. I [had to] literally practice smiling…”

On how Black Friday changed everything…

“I had my best month in poker in March of 2011, right before it happened. Then boom. All of a sudden, all of my money is locked up, I don’t have a job anymore, and my girlfriend says she’s going to break up with me if I quit poker for her. It was a rough time. We had a core group of eight people. At the World Series of Poker in 2012, we were having dinner at a sushi restaurant in Vegas. The eight of us had all lived at Panorama [Towers] together, and a year later, we were now in seven different cities and six different countries across the world.”

On one of his proudest poker accomplishments…

“When I was 19, I was playing in my second EPT, which was Deauville season 1. I made the televised final table, which meant that I was the first teenager to ever be on TV for poker. That’s something that no one will ever take away from me, it will always be true.”

Click here to download or subscribe to the Poker Stories podcast on iTunes. Catch up on previous episodes and subscribe to have new episodes automatically appear in your podcast app so you can listen on the go.