Lee Jones Joins Cardrunners

press release
Submitted by: snoopy on Tue, 22/04/2008 - 5:41pm

 
CardRunners.com, the leading poker instructional website, is proud to announce that Lee Jones, a veteran of the poker industry, will be joining CardRunners as its Chief Operating Officer. Jones will oversee quality control and direct a staff of poker professionals that includes Brian Townsend, Taylor Caby, Brian Hastings, Cole South, Ryan Daut, Eric Liu, David 'Raptor' Benefield, and Isaac 'Menlo' Baron in producing the innovative downloadable strategy videos that have made the site the class of the industry.

From October 2003 until April 2007, Jones served as the Poker Room Manager for Pokerstars.com, growing it from a young startup to the largest online poker room in the world. There he served both as an arbitrator, fairly and decisively settling controversial situations, and as a host, dependably adding positive energy to the final table of the Sunday Million. Hundreds of thousands of poker players have seen Jones congratulate final-table bust-outs with memorable wit and wordplay.

Following his tenure with PokerStars, Jones moved from the virtual world to television by joining up with the European Poker Tour as its Executive Host. In his year with the EPT, the tour enjoyed incredible success, including a finale in Monte Carlo with the largest prize pool in the history of European poker. Jones organized and hosted each tournament, and he served as lead broadcaster for EPT's television productions and live online videocasts.

Jones has the perfect skill set both for online poker and for poker education. After receiving his undergraduate degree at Duke and his graduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, Jones spent 25 years in the computer business, beginning with IBM. It was during these 25 years that Jones began playing poker in California casinos, producing the famed poker book Winning Low-Limit Hold'em.

"I am delighted to be joining CardRunners as its Chief Operating Officer," Jones said. "Everything about CardRunners is a great fit for me. Taylor, Andrew, and Brian (right) are all scary smart young men, they've got a great business model, and they are having fun building a business. Joining them enables me to get back to my real love in poker, which is the game itself - teaching and discussing it."

"My first and most important job will be to oversee the entire video production operation and ensure that we always have the best selection and quality–in short, to make sure that we are the clear choice if you want to learn poker online."

"I will also be looking after our customer support, which is a subject near and dear to my heart. If I learned one thing at PokerStars, it was that if you take good care of your customers and make them wildly happy, everything else will fall into place."

Taylor Caby, co-founder of CardRunners noted: "We're ecstatic about bringing Lee Jones on to the CardRunners team.  Lee's name is synonymous with integrity and reliability, which are vital to a young business in a rapidly growing industry. In 1994, Lee's book changed the way the poker world thought about the game; I'm looking forward to combining his talents with those of CardRunners' pros to do much more of the same."