Justin ‘Boosted J’ Smith
Born on 8th January 1988, Justin Smith grew up in Florida and was involved in a life threatening accident at only 17-years of age. He was involved in a motorcycle accident and was left with a very badly broken ankle, and had torn the ACL in both his knees. This left Smith in a wheelchair and unable to continue in his part-time job at a grocery store. This led to a friend introducing him to internet pokerto grind out a living. He had a few lessons from his friend and watched him play several mid-stakes limit hold’em sessions.
Soon afterwards, Smith deposited $50 on PokerStars and began playing $0.01/$0.02 limit hold’em.
Smith took to the game like a duck to water and after only a few months he was playing at the $2/$4 limit hold’em tables earning $1000 a month to pay his bills. This meant he was unable to move up in stakes because if he did and lost then he wouldn’t be able to pay his rent, buy food etc. However, things soon changed when he made the transition from limit hold’em to no-limit hold’em.
As recently as 2006, Smith was earning a lot of money crushing the $5/$10 NLHE cash games and even stepped up to the $25/$50 NLHE tables when they were introduced by Full Tilt Poker. At this stage, because he had a sufficient bankroll, he began playing the mixed games and learning all the different poker variations. Despite learning these games by playing at lower stakes, he continued moving up in stakes at Full Tilt Poker and has even played at $200/$400 NLHE. All while crushing the cash games and learning new variations, Smith began playing tournaments and soon found himself mastering these as well.
In February 2007 he won FTOPS III Player of the Series after making two final tables to earn over $250k in just one week – from just two tournaments!
In August 2007 he married his girlfriend Anita and they set off to Europe for their ‘honeymoon’. Their honeymoon was a split between relaxing and travelling, and Smith taking part in live poker tournaments and cash games. Despite entering several EPT events he failed to cash in any of them, however just one year later he got his big break in live tournaments. In 2008 he travelled to London for the 2008 WSOPE and cashed in two events – 14th in the £5000 Pot-Limit Omaha event for $30,009, and 16th in the Main Event for $65,837.
2009 has been his best year so far however, earning $609,199. The bulk of those winnings have come from his third-place finish at the 2009 Bellagio Cup V in Las Vegas after making 5 WSOP cashes. Smith earned $464,870 for the finish. He continues to play online as well as travel the live tournament scene, all while creating videos for poker training sites like PokerVT which is considered one of the best poker training sites.
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