Poker Legend ‘Miami’ John Cernuto Dies of Cancer at 81

The casino poker world woke on Tuesday to the news that another legend of the game had left this mortal plain. “Miami” John Cernuto, who was a master tactician of any variant of poker and a three-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner, passed away during the evening while in hospice care after a battle against colon cancer. Cernuto was 81.

Though not yet in the Poker Hall of Fame, his career was inarguably legendary. Cernuto won three World Series of Poker Bracelets, two WSOP Circuit rings, and 85 tournaments overall, grossing more than $6.4 million in prize money. 

Playing in casinos from Atlantic City to Las Vegas to Florida, with stops in cardooms in LA and Texas, Cernuto’s 597 career live tournament cashes are the most by any player in history. 

source: The Hendon Mob

From Air Traffic Controller to Poker Legend

If Texas has its legendary “road gamblers” such as Doyle Brunson and TJ Cloutier, then there are those who ran the East Coast poker scene in much the same manner. John Anthony Cernuto was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, on Jan. 10, 1944, and would matriculate to Florida State University in the 1960s. After graduating from college, Cernuto would move on to serve as an air traffic controller, until a fateful occurrence shifted the course of his life. 

While working as an air traffic controller, Cernuto was a part of the battle between then-President Ronald Reagan and the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Association (PATCO) in 1981. That year, PATCO threatened to strike for higher wages and shorter working hours, while Reagan stated that, as federal employees, they did not have the right to strike. After the members of PATCO (of which Cernuto was one) walked out in August, Reagan summarily fired nearly 12,000 air traffic controllers and declared a lifetime ban on their rehiring. 

Now without a job, Cernuto had to decide his next course of action. That turned out to be poker, and it was an arena in which he would flourish. In his early years, the underground games of the East Coast were where he plied his trade until he found that the tournament poker world in legal casinos offered a bit more opportunity. 

The act by Reagan started Cernuto on a lifetime of adventure as he became one of the most respected members of the poker community. 

A Quiet Winner Among the Greats

Cernuto would earn his first tournament success at the Grand Prix of Poker in Las Vegas in 1987, earning 21^st place in a $500 No Limit Hold’em tournament. If it involved cards, Cernuto would play the game, as he would show a few days after the Grand Prix of Poker tournament in earning his first final table at Amarillo Slim’s Super Bowl of Poker in a Limit Hold’em event. 

Cernuto’s first World Series of Poker final table would come in 1989, finishing fourth in a $5,000 Seven Card Stud event behind Humberto Brenes, David Sklansky, and Don Holt. (Gabe Kaplan was the fifth-place finisher.) 

Miami John would earn his first victory in another Seven Card Stud event, once again at Slim’s Super Bowl of Poker, picking up $58,000 for his first-place finish in the $1,000 tournament. Cernuto would make a steady living from the tables through the Nineties, averaging high six-figure earnings through the turn of the century. But the Poker Boom of the early 2000s would take his talents into the stratosphere. 

The best season of his career came in 2004, when he won over $500,000 and finished in the Top 20 of the first-ever CardPlayer Magazine Player of the Year race. 

Throughout his career, Cernuto would love to come to Las Vegas for the WSOP, and he would make his mark on its history books. His first bracelet victory was in Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo Eights or Better in 1996, defeating Lonnie Heimowitz in heads-up play to take the $147,000 first-place prize. 

In 1997, Cernuto would earn his second WSOP bracelet in a $2,000 No Limit Hold’em tournament, also picking up his biggest tournament payday of $259,150. Cernuto’s final bracelet win would come in 2002 in yet another variant of the game, Limit Omaha Hold’em, when he won the $1,500 Limit Omaha tournament at the WSOP for a $73,200 payday. 

While he never won a World Poker Tour event, Cernuto did reach two WPT final tables – at the 2005 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas and at the 2007 LA Poker Classic. 

He also would win the 2003 World Heads-Up Poker Championship, then held in Europe, over such fellow pros as Ivo Donev, Ram Vaswani, Dave Colclough, Scotty Nguyen and Padraig Parkinson. 

In 2020, Cernuto won the prestigious “Hendon Mob Award” at the Global Poker Awards, a prize honoring lifetime achievement. 

Ranking 294^th on the all-time money list, he was a journeyman pro who touched the lives of many, and left the poker world he lived in a better place.

(Image: Hayley Hochstetler / courtesy of WSOP)