By Ken Jackson
Sports Writer

Justin Smith makes eye contact with an intense focus than can tickle your soul and make it twitch before taking a step back to cower.

And that's just during idle chat over lunch.

Wait until that plate of food is replaced by stacks of casino chips and the cards go on the table to replace the napkins.

Smith, known in the online poker circles as “BoostedJ,” recorded his second money finish on the World Poker Tour in late January, finishing 13th in a field of 208 at the Southern Poker Championship at the Beau Rivage in Biloxi, Miss., and won just short of $20,000.

This followed his biggest score. At the WPT Bellagio Cup V in Las Vegas in July, he banked more than $400,000 for a third-place finish, and his final-table exploits were aired recently on Fox Sports Net.

The tournament circuit became his playground after he turned 21 in January of 2009, the age of legality in U.S. card rooms. Previous to that, he had to play on foreign soil (where he could play at 18) or stick to making bets on his computer.

Not that that's a bad thing – it's where he got his start. Following a motorcycle crash during his senior year at Poinciana, a friend turned him on to poker and gave him a few tips. He sank $50 into an online poker site and started playing 2-cent games during his recovery.

In two years, he had climbed the table-limit ladder, up to the biggest games available online at the time, no-limit games with $50 minimum bets.

“At one point (fellow high stakes player) Tom Dwan and I would play 16 to 18 tables of $10/20 at once, because it was every game the site ran,” Smith said.

His ultra-aggressive play earned “BoostedJ” a feared reputation on the online felt. His 21st birthday marked an all-out assault on the biggest cash games within reach. Armed with a stare that likely reads minds, he spent two months playing in games at Los Angeles' famed Commerce Casino before Nevada came a-calling.

Viva. Las. Vegas.

He made a three-week, all-out assault on the World Series of Poker in Sin City last summer, and while he played well, finishing in-the-money in five tournaments (less than 10 percent of tournament entries win cash), he didn't take down one of the WSOP's famous victory bracelets.

“I was like a kid in a candy store, but it was pretty disappointing. I didn't consider it a success because I didn't win a bracelet,” he said. “I would really like to win a WSOP, WPT or EPT (European Tour) event.”

The Bellagio Cup event followed right after the WSOP. Smith has run his bankroll up to the point that, when he's in Vegas, he regularly plays in the renowned “Big Game” ($4,000/8,000 limit, anyone?), regarded as the most prestigious cash game on American soil, in “Bobby's Room” (Bellagio's high-limit cash game room named for 1979 WSOP Champion and casino executive Bobby Baldwin).

The game's heavyweights are regulars: Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, Ted Forrest, Scotty Nguyen and Barry Greenstein, among others.

While Smith's parents are still in Kissimmee — and he maintains his Florida residency for tax purposes — the L.A. area is home base right now for Smith and his wife, high-school sweetheart Anita, a 2005 Gateway High School grad.

“California has the star power. There's always something to do in L.A. (He and Anita attended the American Music Awards this year, on a whim.) Plus, there's no humidity.”

Does this mean that he gets the rock-star treatment on the streets?

“Far from it,” he said. “I'm like an L-list celebrity.”

That may change in the coming months, when he will be featured in the poker-industry magazine “Ante Up.”

The only drawback to Left Coast living is the amount of travel. For instance, he began 2010 at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in Nassau, then after a stop to see friends he headed to L.A. for some promotional work, only to head to Biloxi for the WPT event a week later.

Then it was back in the Sunshine State for the kickoff event of a poker education series called Deepstacks University. The first one was in Tampa Feb. 13-14, and he taught the game in a boot-camp style format alongside other poker professionals.

The L.A. Poker Classic and events in Las Vegas and San Jose are the next stops on the poker circuit. Smith said the travel, the least favorite part of the lifestyle, isn't enough to make him think about doing something else.

“I see myself doing this, being involved in poker in some form, for a long time,” he said.
Which also means defending poker to people who might chastise him for making his living as a perceived gambler.

“Gambling is taking a mathematically negative chance, and those aren't the situations I put myself into,” he said. “Every bet I make is an investment, and I put my money in with positive expectations of value. A lot of hard work and abstract skills go into what I do, like money management and particular social skills.

“What would you ask someone like LeBron James, or the top people in any industry, about what makes them good at what they do?”

You wouldn't ask much, if they too had Smith's stare of study.