I was a newbie to Texas Hold'em about two years ago. I learned to play draw poker a long time ago. I have a friend who brought me to his homegame a few times. I was gently scolded for playing Q5o multiple times. My first night I won well over $100 and was hooked. I gave it all back on subsequent nights though. This homegame was a great blessing for me. It was full of guys who loved poker and would talk about hands afterward. I learned to analyze hands before I really knew how to play the game!

A few months later (In October 2003, I believe) I began playing limit SnGs on PokerRoom for play money. I ran my $1K in play money up to 42K and made my first deposit in January 2004. I played a lot of $50 limit SnGs on PokerRoom. I learned my starting hands by referring constantly to their

I have not had a down month yet and I hope it continues. My pro career is young and I am not yet losing interest in the game. I feel that is of the utmost importance if one is to be successful as a pro.

In short, I credit a passion for poker and a thirst to become better with getting me where I am now, wherever that is. ITH fueled this immensely as did some friends I had. I still do not know how good I am, but I know I can always improve, and I will continue to seek to do so.

Expected Value Sets. I only played hands with +EV of at least .01 and at least .1 to a raise. This actually worked well preflop but my postflop play was bad. My bankroll was fluctuating a fair bit but I won about $600 in the first two months. I moved to NL SnGs because they filled up faster and my variance went way up. In total I deposited almost $2000 (I was making VERY good money at the time).

I met an ITHer (legaleagle97 in the forum) at Foxwoods and the two of us hit it off talking poker. He pointed me to this website on December 22, 2003. You can see my first post here. I bought Matthew's book through the site and read it thoroughly. It may have been my first poker book, if not it was my second. The chronology escapes me. I started reading everything I could and I now own about 25 poker books, all of which I have read at least once.

I am not sure at what point I moved from break even to above average where I consider myself now. Perhaps the turning point was winning into the Party Poker Million Cruise in March 2004. I won my way on with a great deal of luck and a few tricks I picked up in limit SnGs. I was scared dumb to play pros on the cruise , though, so I began reading in earnest. I was reading and rereading Sklansky's TPFAP and other books prior to the tournament and took about 8 books on the cruise with me. In the weeks leading up to that tournament I think I learned more about poker than any one month period before or since.

After the cruise I continued studying and reading my book and posting on ITH. Books are not a substitute for interactive advice and discussion so the ITH forum was a boon for me. Seadood and Scapegote helped me immensely along the way as did BernardDogs.

At this point I was hooked. I had my friend in New York taking me to poker clubs in the city and he was a great friend to talk poker with (we 'worked' together). I was hooked to the point that I was making almost as much money at poker as I was at my job. My situation changed substantially when my wife was accepted to law school 5 hours away from the city. This was tipping point for my decision to go pro. Being 5 hours away from her, making plenty of money at poker, and hating my new job all led to the decision. Six months after she went to school I left my job at a pre-IPO Google and entered the "pro poker draft."