Kagome Kagome is the new screen name for an unidentified German Limit Hold’em expert that many know as IHateJuice. In fact, he would probably still be playing under the alias IHateJuice if Full Tilt Poker hadn’t made him change the name in January of 2011; Full Tilt’s reasoning behind the forced name change was that too many people were complaining about the nickname IHateJuice.
IHateJuice did counter back with a request to have his profile country changed from Germany to Japan because he is a, “huge fan of this country and loves to spend time there.” This is most likely why he changed his screen name to Kagome Kagome, which is both a Japanese children’s game and a Japanese manga.
Moving away from his controversial back story, Kagome Kagome claims to have started playing poker when he was 16. He was mostly an unsuccessful grinder in the beginning, and chose to stick to $3/$6 and $5/$10 Limit Hold’em. But towards the end of 2009, he had worked his way up to $200/$400 Fixed Limit games, and had amassed a $100k bankroll.
By the spring of 2010, he was grinding with the world’s best Limit Hold’em players at the $1,500/$3,000 and $2,000/$4,000 stakes, and his bankroll had spiked into the $800k range. In the fall of 2010, Kagome Kagome had made his first million through online poker, and he quickly increased that amount to $2 million before the New Year.
Kagome Kagome has also had some good battles with Phil Ivey. After winning over $112k off of Ivey in a December, 2010 session, he asked Ivey to convince Full Tilt to add some $3k/$6k Limit Hold’em tables; interestingly enough, Full Tilt now offers these stakes. In any case, Ivey came back to beat Kagome Kagome for over $500k in a single session during February.
Here is a great video Interview with Kagome Kagome formerly known as IHateJuice that PokerStatic released in April 2011