On February 6th, longtime industry icon Lee Jones left his post as Chief Operating Officer (COO) of poker training site CardRunners after nearly a year with the company. Now, Poker News Daily can confirm that Jones has signed with Cake Poker.
StoxPoker co-founder Jim Varnon became the new COO of CardRunners, leaving supporters of Jones in the United States and around the world to wonder what the next chapter in his tale would be. On his reason for leaving CardRunners, Jones commented in a post on the site’s forums, “The issue is that we’ve got too many managers for the work that needs to be done, and that’s too many mouths to feed. Everybody else is tied to CardRunners by a substantial equity position, so I’m the natural candidate to step aside.” StoxPoker and CardRunners merged in September. Four months later, the two sites teamed up to introduce Truly Free Poker Training through Full Tilt, where CardRunners instructors are sponsored pros.
In the same post, Jones speculated on his future, claiming, “I don’t expect to be taking a regular job in (or out of) the poker industry in the foreseeable future. I have a couple of poker-related projects I’m looking at, but nothing even approaching full-time.” He’ll now join Cake Poker, the flagship site of the Cake Poker Network. The USA-friendly family of sites currently sits as the 10th largest worldwide according to traffic ranking site PokerScout.com, boasting a seven day running average of 1,660 real money ring game players; its 24 hour peak is a healthy 2,624. Other sites on the Cake Poker Network include Doyle’s Room, which is fronted by 10-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner and industry legend Doyle Brunson. Also making its home on the Network are Lock Poker, which played host to March’s Bluff Online Poker Challenge, and Players Only.
Poker World moved to the Cake Poker Network in April, while Poker Host joined in February after leaving Microgaming. Cake Poker happily accepts players from the United States and is part of the fourth largest USA-friendly network behind PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and CEREUS. Jones gained fame in the industry by serving as the Poker Room Manager of PokerStars until 2007. He epitomized top-notch customer service, earning PokerStars a reputation as a highly consumer-oriented site. He spent one year working with the European Poker Tour (EPT), which is sponsored by PokerStars, before heading back to the United States to work with CardRunners.
Many in the poker industry proudly own a copy of Jones’ best-selling book, “Winning Low-Limit Hold’em.” It was released in 2000 and can even be purchased on Amazon.com for the affordable price of $16.47. The book has received acclaim from Amazon.com customers, as out of 140 reviews submitted at the time of writing, 95 were for five stars, or 68%. Jones’ publication includes a series of quizzes to ensure learning along the way and weighs in at over 200 pages.
The Cake Poker Network now stands to gain a considerable amount of publicity and credibility as a result of adding Jones. Chris Wallace, an instructor for PokerXFactor.com who is known in the online poker world as “Fox,” told Poker News Daily, “Lee Jones signing with Cake Poker is going to mean that the site gets more exposure and people will know the name. Hopefully, Lee brings more professionalism to Cake Poker in terms of upgrading the online poker site’s software and getting people to show up.” The room is in the midst of qualifying its players for the 2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas through an ongoing Gold Chip Lottery. To date, a total of 53 Cake Poker members are headed to the “Big Dance” at the Rio to play in preliminary tournaments.
We’ll have more for you on Lee Jones joining Cake Poker as information is released right here on Poker News Daily.