After a few days of keeping poker fans guessing last week, PokerStars finally announced Thursday that Isaac Haxton has been added to the roster of Team PokerStars Online. The world’s largest online poker room ran a promotion allowing customers to guess the new member’s identity for the opportunity to win $50.
On Tuesday, the day the promotion was launched, PokerStars offered up one clue to those wishing to take a guess: a 44 second video from Randy “nanonoko” Lew. Lew didn’t provide much info, purposely remaining very vague and stating that the new member of Team PokerStars Online was a male high stakes player and he had once made a deep run at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA).
The next day it got ugly as Daniel Negreanu provided more clues via a video in which he serenaded views with a cringe-worthy rendition of Toni Braxton’s “Unbreak My Heart.” Someone who had no idea what he was singing would find the clue of no use, but those who could identify the song might have realized that “Braxton” was the key to figuring out the new player was “Haxton.”
Haxton burst upon the scene at the beginning of 2007, achieving his first live tournament in cash in style when he finished second at the windy outdoor final table of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Championship Event. That accomplishment is still important to him today, saying in his introduction video that the $861,789 cash “…was a crazy, once in a lifetime experience that’s always going to stay with me and that I always get a little nostalgic for every time I go back to the Bahamas to play.”
In 2007 and 2008, Haxton cashed in the World Series of Poker eight times before really hitting it big in 2009, when he finished second in the WSOP’s $40,000 40th Anniversary Event, scoring $1,168,565. Other significant cashes include a third place finish in the 2011 Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic $100,000 High Roller Event ($581,806) and a third place in the 2012 PCA $25,000 8-Max High Roller Event ($380,730).
All told Isaac Haxton has just over $4 million live poker tournament winnings.
In his intro video, Haxton also gave a hint as to a future promotion in which he would be involved at poker stars, saying, “I can’t give you any firm details just yet, but I will tell you that it’s going to involve heads-up No-Limit. There’s going to be some very high stakes stuff and there’s also going to be some stuff that everybody can participate in and it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
