This week, “The Showdown with Jon Friedberg” welcomes a bearded Justin Young. The former engineer turned poker player is fresh off a win in a qualifier at Caesars Palace for the National Heads-Up Poker Championship and shared how his background has influenced his game. UB.com sponsors “The Showdown,” so support the show by signing up for UB.com using the promo code UBPND.
Friedberg began by discussing the recent rash of partnerships between online poker sites and companies with ties to land-based casinos. We saw three of them last month involving PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and 888, which seemingly sets each one up for a stake in the U.S. market following regulation.
Friedberg opined, “It seems like it’s a good thing for online poker in general. It looks like getting online poker legalized and regulated in the U.S., as a whole, is going to be a little bit of a slower process, so it appears that various states are trying to push the legislation independently… It also seems to make a lot of sense that Nevada might be, and certainly should be, the first state to offer fully legalized and regulated online poker.”
The discussion then turned to the most entertaining poker players to follow on Twitter. While this author is a fan of Erik Seidel and Doyle Brunson, Friedberg explained that viewers of “The Showdown” overwhelmingly loved former Bodog pro Jean-Robert Bellande.
“The most popular answer – and I certainly agree that this person is fun to follow on Twitter – is Jean-Robert Bellande,” Friedberg told viewers. “He is constantly Tweeting his bankroll updates and baller lifestyle updates. Even though he’s broke, he’s flying around first class, going to South Beach, partying, and whatever, and lays it all out there.” You can follow Bellande’s antics by checking out @BrokeLivingJRB.
Young then joined the set and described how he managed to end up in the field of the National Heads-Up Poker Championship qualifier: “It was extremely exciting. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even know about the tournament until maybe an hour after it started. I got a text from a buddy, Eric Baldwin, and he said I needed to get down there ASAP. I got down there, bought in, and probably still had a good hour to buy in. I ran good as always.”
Young fell to PokerStars pro Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier in the opening round of the National Heads-Up Poker Championship, which will begin airing on Sunday, April 17th on NBC and was filmed in March.
According to the Hendon Mob, Young has live poker cashes in four countries and contrasted that with his tournament schedule today: “My wife and I moved [to Las Vegas] from North Carolina and I told her that I was going to cut back on the traveling, so I don’t travel a whole lot outside of the West Coast, but there are certain events you just can’t miss and she’s very understanding of that.”
Young is an engineer by trade and talked about how his background has influenced his burgeoning poker career: “It’s a lot of logical thinking. Throughout college, every engineering class I took was based on logical thinking. It’s more like taking your time and going through the steps. The way a poker player thinks – I think that’s helped out a lot with the engineering background. Of course, having the math mixed in helps a lot too.”
However, Young cautioned, “You can be the smartest mathematician in the world, but if you can’t read a person or can’t pick up on certain patterns or tells from a person in live poker, you’ll be an adequate, successful player at best.”
Check out Part 1 and Part 2 of this week’s episode of “The Showdown.” Remember to show your love for the series by signing up for UB.com with the promo code UBPND.
