Player Focus: JohnnyBax

JohnnyBax is a name you must have etched on your memory if you’re sitting down in a big buy-in multi-table tournament (MTT) because if you come up against him you’re potentially in a lot of trouble.

This guy (real name Cliff Josephy, a former stockbroker form New York) is the most famous online poker player in the world right now and has an awesome MTT reputation.

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Playing mainly on PokerStars and PartyPoker he has notched up 70 online cashes since the beginning of August. All in all he has won nearly $600,000 online since the beginning of 2005 and is making a name for himself in the offline game.

WSOP Bracelet

In June 2005 he won a World Series of Poker bracelet (and $192,150), coming first in the $1,500 Seven-Card Stud, a game he said he had never played before.

He said he entered “for the hell of it” after his friend, Scott Fishman, gave him a five-minute coaching session.

“I didn't even look at the stud event,” he said at the time. “I went to Vegas to play holdem. I ran into Scott and told him I wanted to play stud, and could he give me some pointers. The things he told me were not about playing my hand, but playing my opponent's hand - things like that.”

Amazingly enough Bax has only been playing online poker since the end of 2003. While visiting his parents in Florida he saw his dad playing poker on the computer and was immediately interested.

For a while he played with play money and learned the basics because he had never played holdem before. After that his dad transferred a few hundred bucks into his account and he started playing online.

Meeting Sheets

He says he got so good, so fast, with the help of his friend, another player who plays under the name ‘Sheets’ (who has racked up $400,000 in online tournament winnings himself). 1

As he told cardplayer.com in an interview: “I was a stockbroker and ‘Sheets’ [real name Eric Haber] was a client of mine. I knew that he played so I asked him lots of questions. I read a few books, which gave me a broad framework of what to do and not to do. Then I kept refining my play myself with other people’s help; a lot from ‘Sheets’ and other pros like Scotty Fishman. They didn't get anything out of their relationship with me. I had nothing to offer yet they were very free with their time.

Bax says the way he learned to play tournament poker well was through constantly refining his style and skills playing $30 and $50 Sit ‘n’ Gos.

“I learned how to play tournaments from that experience. I went through my first deposit fairly fast then started again with $3,000 and since then I’ve never looked back,” says Bax.

Aggression is all

Bax has a reputation for being extremely aggressive, constantly raising and re-raising his opponents. He says his favourite hand is 9s-7s which gives an indication of how aggressive his game can be since he rarely enters a pot with a smooth call.

Despite this Bax disagrees, saying: “It's funny. I think people describe my style as very, very aggressive. When in fact I'm not. I don't think I'm that aggressive. I know there are plenty of players that are way more aggressive than me.

“I actually think I am kind of tight. People laugh when I say that. But if you see me in the first hour of a rebuy tournament I do whatever I can to get chips. Other than that I don't think I do anything maniacal. I basically play my cards and I play the other players. I mean I won't call with anything. None of us like to call. Naturally, I like to be the aggressor with the pots that I'm in.”


View JohnnyBax's PVi Profile here


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