JohnnyBax (Cliff Josephy)
Cliff Josephy (known in the online poker world as "JohnnyBax") has been the #1 ranked online tournament player in the world multiple times, and is widely regarded as one of the best teachers in the game. He is the founder of PokerXFactor.com, a poker training site with some of the best online professionals as teachers. Also, JohnnyBax's run of seventeen months as the #1 ranked tournament player in the world is a record that will almost certainly last forever.
This article is going to take a look at how Josephy got involved in online poker, his seventeen-month streak at the top of the leader boards, and his modern-day involvement in the online poker world.
Josephy's Early Days
Cliff Josephy got his first taste of poker while playing with friends on Wall Street, where he worked as a stockbroker for fourteen years. Josephy picked up the game immediately, and was quickly taking stacks of money off his friends and co-workers in friendly home games. At the time, he began to dabble in online games at PokerStars.com, but never really considered poker as a profession.
JohnnyBax Hits the Tables
That is, until the company that Josephy worked for for fourteen years suddenly shut down, and he no longer had a reliable source of income. Then, Cliff took "JohnnyBax" a lot more seriously, and studied the game while practicing online tournaments every night. Online success came easy to Josephy, as he was quickly the #1 ranked tournament player in the world, and was making more money than he ever did on Wall Street.
Josephy was a bit of a mystery as he was known only as "JohnnyBax", and fans began to wonder if that was his real name. The secret behind the man's identity remained an unsolved mystery until Josephy played the 2005 WSOP and finally revealed his identity as Cliff Josephy. The 2005 WSOP was kind to JohnnyBax, as he won a $1,500 Seven Card Stud event, and later admitted that the tournament was his first time playing Seven Stud.
He continued to remain king of online poker and scored his biggest cash yet in 2006 when he placed second at the 2006 Ultimate Bet Aruba Poker Classic, winning almost a half a million dollars.
Josephy and PokerXFactor.com
Josephy and his friend, Eric "Sheets" Haber, also operate a successful poker training website, PokerXFactor.com. The original plan behind the site was to have Josephy commentate videos of notable hands he had played in order to reveal the thought process that went on during his play. As the business of poker coaching has grown, Josephy admits that the site has damaged his online poker career significantly by revealing his playing style to his opponents.
As a result, he's had to adapt and change his style to one-up the students who have now become his competition.
JohnnyBax at UltimateBet.com
The next career move for Josephy was his partnership with UltimateBet. He signed on with the "Star Players" of UltimateBet as a sponsored pro alongside Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth, who were both happy to have him on the team. However, the UB partnership did not last long, as Ultimate Bet stopped paying Cliff so he left the site.
Josephy is a family man, who values spending time with his wife and children. He lives in Syosset, New York and likens being a professional poker player to early retirement.