Jeff Garza (ActionJeff) Bio

Who is Jeff Garza (ActionJeff, jrgarza)

Before Jeff Garza even started playing poker, he was traveling and making money as a competitive Magic the Gathering player. Poker first caught his attention when David Williams, a known MtG player, won $3.5 Million in the 2005 WSOP, getting Magic players everywhere began getting excited about poker. He was a sophomore in highschool at the time.

ActionJeff’s first claim to online poker fame was from poker tournaments. He was very consistent at the low to mid limit online tournaments and was always showing up at final tables. He had his first big win at the age of 17 for a $50,000 score in the 2005 Limit Holdem WCOOP event. Since then his online poker tournament winnings have totaled over $1Million Dollars (excluding the entry fee’s).

In 2006 Jeff Garza began playing cash games seriously, moving all the way up to $40,000NL by mid 2006. He was playing heads up with players like Durrrr with $50,000+ stacks. However, after seeing the negative side of variance, he decided to settle a bit lower, between $2,000 and $10,000 NLH, which he considers mid limit stakes.

Still not ignoring tournaments, Jeff Garza continues to play all the biggest online tournaments, ranging from $100 rebuy events to the weekly $10,000 HU tournament on pokerstars. He looks forward to turning 21 so he can hit the tournament trail and play all the big WPT and WSOP events.

Controversy with PokerStars

On December 31st, 2006, Jeff Garza caused a big stir in the online poker world that had many players questioning the ethics of certain online poker practices. With 32 players left in the pokerstars Sunday $1,000 buy-in event, ActionJeff made a private deal to buy out dim–tix’s spot in the tournament for $30,000, and played on his account unknowingly to the other players.

ActionJeff went on to place 1st with dim–Tix’s account for a cash prize worth over $230,000. When the players in the tournament found out they were actually playing ActionJeff during the final 32, they were furious. But since pokerstars had nothing in their rules against practices like this and it was such a borderline situation, ActionJeff was allowed to keep his winnings.

As a result of this situation, pokerstars has changed their Terms and Conditions to limit one account per person so players can’t do this in the future.