Justin Bonomo Poker Strategy

Justin the Player and Person

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Justin won hundreds of thousands of dollars before the age of 21. All the wins are well documented as well. While he may not be the best online poker player he is famous in the online community. Unfortunately Justin is famous for things other than his great poker play. There are some events people wish they could take back and Justin has a few he isn’t proud of.

Bonomo responds by putting in a pretty big raise to 175,000 holding. What do you think his range is here after making a sizable raise like that? I think the raise size will be the. Justin Bonomo got into poker with the money he got after selling an MMO character in a game called 'EverQuest'. He got $500 and deposited it to Paradise Poker where he started playing $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em, but all of his successes came from tournaments and Sit & Go's at that time. One of the people who took part in his success were his parents. Master every aspect of tournament poker. You need to play a solid winning strategy for poker tournaments. Heads-up matches featuring Justin Bonomo, Randy Lew. At the age of 18 he began to take the game much more seriously by reading books and visiting poker strategy forums. He began his online poker quest at Party Poker where he quickly built a bankroll of $10,000 from about $200. He then built his bankroll even more by playing multiple tables at Party Poker’s $200 Sit n Go’s. By the age of 21 Justin was the youngest player to ever make it to a final table on the World Poker Tour which just so happened to be aired on Television.

Justin has since gone down the right path and even recently joined Team Bodog. (he quit the team in the beginning of 2010)

Just Who is Justin Bonomo?

Justin Bonomo started in the card games scenario by playing a game called Magic where he traveled around the world playing against players much older than him. Justin was born in 1985 and began playing poker when he was 16. He mostly played .5/1 games and dared to go bigger but usually lost. At the age of 18 he began to take the game much more seriously by reading books and visiting poker strategy forums.

He began his online poker quest at Party Poker where he quickly built a bankroll of $10,000 from about $200. He then built his bankroll even more by playing multiple tables at Party Poker’s $200 Sit n Go’s. By the age of 21 Justin was the youngest player to ever make it to a final table on the World Poker Tour which just so happened to be aired on Television. Besides poker Justins passions in life are music. He frequents alternative rock concerts and has been to over 100 of them.

BetOnline.com is still accepting real money USA players.

How He Makes Money

Justin is known for his canning ability to dominate Sit N Go poker at Party Poker where he used to have an account. We’ll get into the “used to” part in a minute. He is known at many forums as the 12 tabler. His normal game is playing eight $200+15 Sit n Go tables at a time. During his peak he visits the $1,000 Sit n Go’s and plays 8 at a time. He regularly tracks his stats and averages $40 profit per table he plays when at the $200 tables. He’s stated that he can make about $400 an hour playing these smaller tournaments.

The Cheating Scandal

It is best to explain the scenario in full to get a complete understanding of what happened to Justin before drawing any conclusions. Justin plays a lot of multitable tournaments at Party Poker and Poker Stars. During this period of time a guy named Josh Field aka JJProdigy and ABlackcar was caught for multi-table cheating at Party Poker. He was doing so by exploiting a bug in Party Poker’s software. By clicking the Party Poker icon rapidly it allowed players to open multiple accounts at once.

This brought to light a bunch of other cheaters and Justin Bonomo was one of them. It turns out Justin had multiple accounts and was entering multi-table tournaments at both Party Poker and Poker Stars. During this raid by Party Poker they proved that Justin was a cheater and confiscated $100,000 from his account. The amount was just about all the money he had won from the Big Sunday $600+40 Party Poker tournament the week before. Poker Stars investigated his account as well but found his winnings were legit in the Big Sunday tournament where he won $137,000.

The Apology

Justin has publicly apologized for what he did. He has stated on his website how wrong it was but he still does feel Party Poker over reacted to the whole situation. Many of his followers believe the entire situation was blown out of proportion while some are outraged about what he did.

Event Placings

Last Updated: January 24, 2012

If any information in this biography is incorrect please email us at info@compatiblepoker.com and we will correct it immediately. Information is collected through web research and sometimes interviews. We try to keep the info as accurate as possible but sometimes rumors take the place of facts by accident.

Though he has only been a part of the live tournament scene for a few years now, Christoph Vogelsang has quickly established himself as one of the very top players in the world.

After initially making a name for himself online as a cash game crusher under the moniker 'Tight-Man1,' the German transitioned to live tournaments and has racked up more than $14 million in cashes in just five years. His biggest win, for $6 million, came this summer when he took down the $300,000 ARIA Super High Roller Bowl.

Vogelsang played a number of memorable hands in that epic event. Among them was a huge pot against Justin Bonomo that eliminated the American and secured Vogelsang's position as one of the top stacks remaining and a favorite to win the event. Another came in the very last hand of the tournament, one in which the German clashed with Jake Schindler in a spot that saw Vogelsang put to a tough river decision.

On break from playing in a high roller event at PokerStars Championship Barcelona, Vogelsang agreed to go over those two hands and talk a little about his thought process in each one — a rare glimpse into the strategic mind of one of poker's true superstars.

PokerNews: Let's start with the hand against Justin Bonomo. You come in limping with from the small blind. Is that standard for you with a solid hand like this against a tough opponent who has position? Do you have a dynamic with Bonomo that affects it?

Vogelsang: I think we were 30 big blinds deep, is that right?

Yeah, that looks like the case. He started with about 1.6 million at 50,000 big blinds.

Nowadays, there's a lot of software out there that tells you what to do with which stack sizes and frequencies. Most of the time, you just have to limp because you get such a good price. You want to be limping most of your hands and you have to have a balanced range which will have somewhat strong hands and weak hands.

Bonomo responds by putting in a pretty big raise to 175,000 holding . What do you think his range is here after making a sizable raise like that?

I think the raise size will be the same regardless of the strength of his hand. He'll have all of his strong hands and he'll have some of medium weak-ish stuff with a low-to-medium frequency. I know that he can have complete garbage as he did in this hand. With king-ten, I have a pretty easy decision — always call.

On the flop, you check-call a pretty small bet of 100,000 into 400,000. Was the sizing a factor at all there, or are you usually calling in most cases knowing he can be wide?

I have king-high and two overcards. King-ten seems like a hand I would want to check-call there every single time.

Nothing happens on the turn, as you pick up a gutshot and check, and Bonomo checks behind. You get there when the hits, bringing in the backdoor straight. You checked again. Are you not tempted to bet here when he checks the turn, indicating he might be trying to get to showdown?

On the river, I think he's probably going to bet if he hits the queen or if he ever slow plays a big hand, as he did there. I can bet or I can check-raise, I don't mind too much [either way]. I think in terms of bluffs, if I have a bluff there, it's something like maybe, where I can block his king-ten suited.

He overbets the river for 700,000 into a pot of 600,000, leaving about 600,000 more behind. I see a lot of players these days just call with some very strong hands when faced with big bets in these river spots. I guess they figure not many worse hands will continue if they jam. Is that something that entered your mind here, or were you pretty confident in shoving for value?

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I think it's kind of clear that I have to shove there with a straight. It was 40 or 50 percent pot more, and a straight is probably in the top five percent of hands I get to the river with. Maybe even better. There's no question at all you have to shove the river with king-ten. I think the hand actually plays itself in my spot. I always have to shove the river — it's not close.

Bonomo struggled with the river decision, but with his trip deuces ultimately called the rest of his stack off after using a couple of time extensions, resulting in a seventh-place elimination.

Vogelsang continued on with his newly acquired chips and made it to heads up against chip leader Jake Schindler. That's where we'll pick up next week, as Vogelsang shares with us his thought process during the hand that won him the tournament.

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  tournament strategyno-limit hold’emsmall blindpositionbet sizingstack sizesvalue bettingChristoph VogelsangJustin BonomoSuper High Roller Bowl

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