Justin Bonomo Surviving Post Black Friday

Poker pro Justin Bonomo is just one of many US players to have had the rug pulled out from underneath their feet after the DoJ shut down PokerStars and Full Tilt stateside, last year.
However, Justin Bonomo does have the benefit of being a top live tournament player and has $2,902,638 in cashes, $415,509 of which has been won post Black-Friday. Nevertheless, online is where Bonomo prefers to ply his trade, having earned millions over the past few years including victories at Party Poker’s $600 buy-in event for $110,000 and PokerStars Sunday Millions for $137,000 in 2005 within 2 months of each other. In addition, Bonomo also earns good money playing in high-stakes cash games.
Consequently, Black-Friday came as quite a surprise for Bonomo, compounded by the fact he still had a six-figure sum tied-up on Full Tilt Poker when the site had its licence revoked. However, it is the US government which Bonomo holds largely responsible for the drastic situation, believing that they missed out on a golden opportunity to regulate it from the start to provide a safer environment for poker players.
Expressing his views on the possibility of online poker becoming legalised in the US, Justin Bonomo said to pokernews.com:
“It looks like online poker will be regulated in a few states relatively soon. I’m not convinced that will lead to a great environment for me to make a living in. With all of the segregated poker markets, it makes it much harder to find good high stakes games. PokerStars.NV could potentially have the toughest games of any poker site ever. I hope the states come together and find a solution to avoid segregated markets, but I’m not optimistic about the chances of that happening on a large scale. I fear the days of players around the world all being able to play on one site might never return.”
In the meantime, Justin Bonomo says he is contented to continue playing online poker from his new location in Toronto, Canada, although he has noticed changes in profit potential since US players found themselves shut out from the action. Commenting on the situation, Bonomo said:
“The games would be great without the U.S. players. Unfortunately you have an environment where you still have most of the best American players, but none of the fish. The games have been pretty tough lately as a result in my opinion.”