One of poker’s most successful players recently offered insight into his entry into the game via a passion for other strategy games. Justin Bonomo, who has $64 million in live tournament winnings, grew up playing Magic: The Gathering and the immersive EverQuest online game.
Bonomo earned thousands of dollars at Magic as a teenager. He also became so good at EverQuest that his skill at building a character eventually meant the opportunity at a poker bankroll.
“I don't even remember how I met the guy, but it was over AOL Instant Messenger and he offered me $500 to sell my character,” he told PC Gamer magazine. “He paid me on Paypal and a few months later I got into poker and deposited that money … and was grinding $0.50/$1 limit hold 'em games with it.”
Video Games to Poker Success
Bonomo, who now lives in Las Vegas, went on to massive success at the tables. That included being the youngest player at a televised final table at the EPT French Open in 2005 at just 19.
At the World Series of Poker, Bonomo has 71 cashes for more than $16.5 million, with three bracelets. The biggest of those came in 2018, when he took down the $1 million buy-in Big One for One Drop for a $10 million score. He remains a regular in high-stakes events.
Looking back, those years playing Magic and other video games seem to have helped when it came to playing poker on such big stages.
“Sometimes in poker people will ask me if I get nervous under pressure and I tell them the first time I ever played a match for a thousand dollars heads up I was 13 or 14 years old in a match at the end of a Magic tournament,” he told the magazine. “I've just been competing at the highest levels my whole life, so I'm super experienced and comfortable with it.”
