[WillMagic]

Can't believe I missed this thread for so long.

My name is Will (shocker), I'm 21 and I live in Cupertino, California.

Poker:

As far as I know I've been around the forums as long as any pogger. I discoverd poker and the boards in the summer of 2003, just after graduating from high school. I then went to the George Washington University, but hated it and did little except play and think about poker. I ended up getting really [censored] grades (not technically flunking out as I could have gone back) and ended up coming home in January. The parents were pissed, and prohibited me from playing for six months or so. This actually was a very productive six months - i did a ton of thinking and posting about poker, and when finally I was able to play again I absolutely crushed, moving up to 15/30 within two months of restarting and doing very very well. (seriously summer 2004 party 15/30 OMFG it seriously makes me cry how soft those games were.) In November of 2004 I took 1st in a 440-person $100 MTT for about $11,000, and then ten days later I took 5th in the Stars Sunday $215 for another $20,000. At this point I had made about $55,000 in six months starting from a bankroll of maybe $3,000, and thought I was basically god's gift to poker, and dropped the few community college classes I was taking.

The next few months were pretty slow, mostly break-even, and I was getting pretty bored with sitting in front of my computer playing poker. So in May 2005 I moved to Paris. Lived there, travelled some, played at the Aviation Club, tried and failed to qualify for the WPT event, and ended up losing like $15,000 or so at poker and another $10,000 or so in expenses. So that was fun.

I had a good run at the end of 2005 but the boredom with poker was returning and I started posting less and less in the strat forums and more and more in Politics.

I had discovered Rand while in Paris and that really sparked my interest in libertarianism and political philosophy. By January 2006 I had become an anarcho-capitalist, a libertarian with a capital L, i.e. you can ask me any question beginning with "should government do x" and my answer will be no. I was influence in no small way by various members of the 2+2 politics board and of course the writings of people like Murray Rothbard and David Friedman.

This also coincided with a rekindling of my interest in parliamentary debate, which I had done a little bit at community college. Nowadays I play almost no poker, except for once a week with my buddies, and I'm transferring to the University of the Pacific in January to (hopefully) compete in the top flight of collegiate parliamentary debate.