There are many players who have succeeded in triumphing in the world of poker and making their mark among the most prestigious elites in the game. Poker is so popular and it is the source of so many championships and annual tournaments that the number of big winners is quite substantial. Winners who only think of repeating their feat after winning a spectacular victory that will have changed their lives. And they often succeed, because a great winner is rarely by chance. Daniel Negreanu, Jennifer Harman, Amarillo Slim or the unforgettable Mike Sexton, all are part of the Hall of Fame poker in which all the true champions of the discipline meet.
And among these is undoubtedly Justin Bonomo, without having to wait for his professional career to end. The USA player is already a poker legend and to this day he is the player with the most winnings in the history of this game. With such a stat, how can you not be considered a special player. At 36 years old, he occupies the place of number 1 in the list of the biggest winners of the site Poker DB, that is to say the player having quite simply picked up the most poker throws in his career. In total, he earned over $57.5 million. An impressive figure, and therefore a record.
Bonomo managed to overtake his compatriot Bryn Kenney at the end of 2021, following a splendid victory on a High Roller at the Five Diamond World Poker Classic in Las Vegas. THE purchase to be able to participate in this tournament requested at the Bellagio was 100,000 dollars, and the American came out of the casino with nearly 928,000 dollars in his pocket. The two men had been fighting for this number 1 spot for several years, passing each other as the various tournaments awarded to their participant progressed. Other stars like Negreanu (+46 million), Stephen Chidwick (+43 million) or David Peters (+40 million) follow in the rankings, but by quite a distance.
But the most striking thing about the history of the current world number 1 is that everything was far from easy in his early days. He has been interested in card games since a very young age and very quickly became familiar with the various essential concepts of poker. He therefore did not hesitate long before throwing himself into various online poker tournaments. And everything was going pretty well for him, developing his game until being able to play brilliantly on a dozen tables at the same time. It was therefore clear that he had above-average cognitive abilities, and the man from Fairfax tried to make the most of it.
So much so that he ended up making the very bad decision to open different accounts in the poker rooms where he played. This created various problems for him, and he even ended up being banned from certain platforms when they discovered Bonomo’s sleight of hand. But rather than withdrawing from the world of poker to focus on another discipline, he prefers instead to focus on tournaments in live. And that’s where it all really started for him. Indeed, he then managed to qualify for the first edition of the European Poker Tour, in France, when he was only 19 years old, which made him the youngest player in history to participate. at a televised Main Event final table.
It ends in the end in 4th position of this tournament, which clearly indicated that we were dealing with a future crack of Texas Hold’em and its various variants of poker. But he will have waited 2018 to see him rise to the top by setting an incredible record. A series of victories which is, still today, the longest of all time. He began this formidable streak in March, when he won a Super High Roller in the Chinese city of Macau, with $4.8 million in prize money. He quickly followed that up with another $5 million in a similar event, but this time in Las Vegas, in a wild week that saw Bonomo win two more High Roller tournaments.
The player from Virginia then arrived at the World Series Of Poker with high spirits, and there he won the Heads Up No Limit Hold’em as well as the tournament called “The Big One for One Drop” for more than 10 million of dollars. Two WSOP bracelets which added to the one he had already won in 2014 on a No Limit Hold’em Six Handed. All this, in addition to a few other intermediate tournaments that he also won, enabled him to raise nearly $25 million in a single year. A feat that no one had ever managed to do before.
And under the pseudonym of ZeeJustin with which he played on the Internet, he also achieved success with no less than 55 championships won, 19 final tables and a circuit of the Worlds of Poker to his credit. Other figures that are not about to be exceeded in the future. In the end, he does not miss for the moment a victory on the World Poker Tour, although he has already participated in 3 final tables on this tournament. However, he still has plenty of time to achieve this goal, while continuing to panic his opponents in the games with the highest limits or without limits.
Bonomo currently lives in the Panorama Towers in Las Vegas, a residential complex where dozens of professional players recognized in the world of poker are housed. It is there that he continues to develop his activity as a poker coach, but also that he can easily access the biggest tournaments in the capital of sin.
