Like several of his fellow professionals, including Bryn Kenney, Justin Bonomo graduated to poker from ‘Magic: The Gathering’ at any early age. He frequently played poker online in his teenage years, but first came to worldwide attention when, in 2005, age the age of 19 – that is, still not of legal age to play live poker tournaments in the United States – he finished fourth in the European Poker Tour (EPT) French Open in Deauville, making him the youngest player to make the final table in a televised poker tournament.
Bonomo won his first of his three World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelets in 2014, but his second and third in 2018, a year in which he won nine tournaments and over $25 million in prize money. Highlights of his ‘annus mirabilis’ included a Super High Roller Bowl China event at the Babylon Casino in Macau, worth HK$37.8 million, or $4.8 million, to the winner and, of course, the WSOP Big One for One Drop event at the Rio Casino in Las Vegas, worth a staggering $10 million. Bonomo has definitely benefited from the rapid increase in the number of ‘high roller’ poker tournaments in the last decade but, even so, his unprecedented winning streak in 2018 took him to the top of the all-time money list, ahead of Daniel Negreanu, with just over $45 million in live earnings alone.
Formerly a frequent and successful online poker player, under the moniker ‘ZeeJustin’, Bonomo has courted his fair share of controversy over the years and was, in fact, banned by PartyPoker for operating multiple accounts at the same time. However, in recent years Virginia-born Bonomo, 33, has focussed solely on live poker tournaments and, if 2018 and the early part of 2019 are anything to go by, appears to have made a wise decision.
Introduction
Still only in his late twenties, Saarbrücken-born Fedor Holz has already enjoyed an extraordinary poker career. So far, he has won just one World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet, in the High Roller for One Drop event in 2016, but collected $5 million for his trouble and enjoyed his biggest payout yet, $6 million, when finishing runner-up to Justin Bonomo in the WSOP Big One for One Drop event in 2018. In his short, but highly lucrative, career, Holz, who specialises in high roller tournaments, has pocketed seven-figure earnings on five other occasions. Currently ranked sixth on the all-time money list, with $32.6 million in live earnings alone, he is, unquestionably, one of the most talented and, arguably, luckiest tournament poker players of his generation.
Poker and Blackjack can perhaps be considered the kings of casino, iconic in their own way with casino and non casino players alike. Blackjack can certainly be seen to be a less involved game, less complex than poker and well suited to ‘newbies’, but when it comes to the potential for making money if you dedicate yourself to it, there’s nothing quite like poker. Just looking to the titans of the profession alone will tell you that. But again, it takes more time, dedication, and hard work to learn to become a confident and skilled Poker player.
