Don't cheat, it will cost you..

 

Justin Bonomo, known to the online poker world as Zee Justin – his screen name – is a controversial professional poker player hailing from Los Angeles. The controversy stems from Bonomo being caught after cheating in major online tournaments – and his name became better known after making several attempts at public apology following the whole incident.

Bonomo’s life among the card games began when he played a game called Magic, where he traveled around the world and played against players years his senior. He began playing poker when he was 16, playing mostly .5/1 games, daring to go bigger but usually losing. At 18 his game turned serious – he would read books and visit poker strategy forums to learn more.

His online poker pursuit began at Party Poker, speedily building a bankroll of $10,000 from roughly $200. He played multiple tables at Party Poker’s $200 Sit n Go’s to build his bankroll even more. At 21, Bonomo became the youngest player to make it to a final table on the World Poker Tour ever – which was also aired on television.

Justine Bonomo plays a lot of multitable tournaments at Party Poker and Poker Stars – around those times, Josh Field, also known as JJProdigy and ABlackcar was caught cheating for multitable tournaments at Party Poker. He had found a bug in the Party Poker’s software and exploited it – clicking the Party Poker icon rapidly allows players to open multiple accounts at once.

This incident brought to light a bunch of other cheaters who had been exploiting the glitch in the Party Poker software, and Zee Justin was one of them. Bonomo was found to have multiple accounts at both Party Poker and Poker Stars – he had 6 different accounts in Party Poker, and in big tournaments, he would often use these accounts to enter a single tournament using 4 entries. He used all accounts once or twice, but his usual 4. On Poke Stars, he had a single extra account mostly used by other people, though he admitted to occasionally using it to double enter big Poker Stars tournament.

He was proven to have cheated and $100,000 was confiscated from his account. It was the amount that he had won from the Big Sunday $600+40 Party Poker tournament the week before. His account in Poker Stars was investigated as well, but his winnings of $137, 000 in the Big Sunday tournament were found to be legitimate.

Bonomo made a public apology for what he did, stating on his site how wrong was what he did and saying that he felt Party Poker overreacted over the whole thing. He alleged to have no idea that what he did at that time was unethical, citing that many of the poker players he have learned from were using the same practice. His followers believe him and also agree that the whole scenario had simply been blown out of proportion by Party Poker, though there is also a lot of outrage over what he had done.