In the July issue hitting newsstands this week, Maxim Magazine profiles four of the top young guns in the world of poker: Isaac Haxton, Justin “ZeeJustin” Bonomo, Scott Seiver, and Steve “MrTimCaum” O’Dwyer.
Davy Rothbart takes readers on a journey through the lives of four of the game’s best in an article entitled “From Geeks to Gangsters.” Bonomo is just 24 years of age and used to be “the kid with severe acne who ached to fit in.” Now, he’s banked $2.4 million from poker tournaments and “dated several of the hottest girls in the poker universe. His current girlfriend, Heather, is a sweet, young, blonde model who loves electronic music and rocks the kind of floppy, stuffed-animal backpack you see on teenage ravers.”
Haxton, who burst onto the live poker scene after finishing as the runner-up to Ryan Daut in the 2007 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure for $861,000, received several Harry Potter comparisons from Rothbart. The Maxim Magazine article details a typical day in the life of the poker-made millionaire: “Haxton sleeps in till 11, sips tea with his girlfriend, Zoe, whom he met at Brown, reads 50 pages of a Michael Pollan book, and zips to the gym downstairs for a workout with his personal trainer. Finally, mid-afternoon, he settles into his desk chair, powers up his computer and its two massive flat-screen monitors, logs on, and gets to work.”
Seiver, 24, is fresh off a fourth place in the PokerStars North American Poker Tour (NAPT) Main Event for $190,000. He won a bracelet last year in a $5,000 No Limit Hold’em tournament and has two in the money finishes in the WSOP so far in 2010. O’Dwyer made the final table of the World Poker Tour (WPT) Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic in December for $202,000 and has been a staple of the internet poker community for the past five years.
Admittedly, the quartet thrives off one another on and away from the felts. Haxton told Maxim reporters, “The game will keep changing, but with Justin [Bonomo] and Scott [Seiver] and the rest of our guys, we’ll always be ready for battle, whether online or at tournaments. Figuring it out is the fun part.”
Financially, each of these poker aficionados has plenty of motivation to support one another: “Haxton, Bonomo, and Seiver all have a piece of each other’s action and work as a syndicate to hedge their wins and losses. Bonomo might lose 50 grand one day, but if Seiver’s up 70, they all come out ahead. The strategy is working. The three collectively have racked up more than $7.1 million.” On a day that Rothbart shadowed the group, Seiver had dropped $80,000, while Bonomo was up $30,000.
If you’re in search of a new party game to play with your friends, Maxim introduced the world to “LoddenThinks,” referred to multiple times in the magazine’s piece. Rothbart explains its premise: “The game is called LoddenThinks, in honor of a Norwegian, somewhat perpetually drunken acquaintance of theirs named Johnny Lodden. When everyone’s together at a meal or out drinking, they’ll pepper someone with questions.” In addition, readers can look forward to a round of credit card roulette for a $2,000 dinner bill.
The only part of the article that this author took issue with was Rothbart’s assertion that poker was a game of chance: “Still, poker is a game of chance, and on any given day a great player can lose to a good player.” While the latter half of that statement is true, Bonomo somewhat corrected Rothbart in a comment comparing poker to chess: “Chess has been around for centuries. Its strategies are complicated, but have largely been solved. Poker, though, is a brand-new game. It’s billions of times more complex. We’re just starting to figure out how it works.”
Finally, former FBI agent Joe Navarro illustrates four poker tells: “The Red Neck,” “The Diaper,” “The No Thumbs,” and “The Conqueror.” Check out “From Geeks to Gangsters” in the July issue of Maxim Magazine.
