Our Verdict:
One of the best online tournament players in the world right now is James Campbell aka "POKERPRO" on FullTilt and "jcamby33" on PokerStars. Consistently rated in the top four of online MTT players for the last couple of years, his list of results reads like an A-Z of the world's toughest and highest stakes tournaments.
James Campbell has taken down the PokerStars Sunday million, arranging a deal for a significant portion of the money ($30,000 must always be left for the winner regardless), before swiftly beating “chick x” with Kings after she re-shoved his pre-flop raise with Q-J. This win was good for $180,000, by far the largest of his career.
You would have thought that taking down $180,000 would maybe have softened his killer instincts and thirst to win. Yet James has been taking down tournament after tournament for five figure scores. He has twice won the 1k Monday on FullTilt for a combined win of over $130,000; twice taken down the UltimateBet $750,000 guaranteed for around $20,000 a time; and claimed first in both the PokerStars$100 and $200 rebuy (widely regarded as the tournaments with the highest standard of play on the net) for about $60,000 combined.
In total James has had 22 five-figure cashes in the last two years – a massive achievement for a player that by his own admission had little formal poker training. Starting out depositing $50 on PokerStars and playing $5 single table tournaments like a "typical fish" he has taken just three years to become one of the greatest online players.
James seems to have many traits shared by the great players - he's a retired financial adviser (only in poker do people seem to retire from conventional jobs in their early twenties) so he is obviously astute with money and can control his bankroll well. Success in sport (a feature shared by many of the greats such as Jack Strauss and Doyle Brunson, for example) is also a feature of Campbell’s past – playing varsity basketball for Umass-Dartmouth during his time at university after being one of the top point scorers in his senior year at high school.
Not only has he become one of the top online players, James seems to be making inroads into live poker, with respectable performances in this year's World Series of Poker; cashing for over $40,000 in total including a 480th in the main event for $25,000. James is obviously a phenomenal talent in poker right now. At only 24 it is difficult to see how he will not be winning big tournaments for a long time to come. Watch this space.