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What type of hosting plan was thepokerdb on?

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All sorts of plans. We started on a $10/month 1and1 plan (LOL). Then we switched to a server owned by Paul's friend. We blew that thing up almost immediately. Then we got a VPS (virtual private server) w/o too much power. It slowed to a crawl pretty fast. So then we finally got a dedicated server with a decent processor and 2 gb of RAM and that sustained us until we moved everything to BLUFF. They have some kickass servers, although their webpage can suck because some ad buyers force them to serve ads from the buyer's server.

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What were your expectations for the site?

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Everything happened too fast to even have any. I never sat there thinking, hrmm, I think we can get to x. The day we opened user registration I think we got like 5-10K people and just blew up from there. I was always more amazed at how popular it was than sitting there thinking/wishing/hoping/wondering/setting goals.

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What sources of revenue were most significant and how long did it take for you to turn a profit?

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We turned a profit basically immediately. thorladen (the db's first subscriber) sent me $500 back in August of 2005 when I helped him analyze the Gigabet TLB bet. If you recall, thor made a large bet against Ozzy and he wanted to know who had what sorts of scores that were counting in their "top 20" spots for the month. That was more than enough to cover our costs at the time and we never went below the zero line.

When I ran the site, subscriptions were the most significant. Now that BLUFF actually works on selling ads, I'd say that subscriptions and ads bring in similar amounts.

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Do you think poker will become "legalized" and regulated in the US? If so, how did you think it will affect the poker economy?

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I kinda doubt it. One of my majors in college was poli sci and one thing I learned there was that effecting new public policy is like trying to push around an elephant. It's astoundingly hard to get politicians and others to move on an issue unless it benefits them in some way. I don't see that happening here. However, I see the Stars/FTP dominated market as being pretty strong and I don't see them going anywhere. I think online poker will continue to be healthy because people love the game, people love to gamble and playing online is a great way to enjoy those activities without too much cost or hassle.

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Did you finish law school?

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Not even close. I did one semester in the fall of 2006. I did okay -- I was pretty much dead in the middle of the class rankings-wise, which is actually pretty good for a law school like Emory. Then I stopped for the spring of 2007, which means I couldn't go in the fall of 2007 (because I still need to take the spring 1L classes, which are offered in the spring only). I can restart in January if I want to, but I haven't made up my mind. I'm leaning towards just doing an MBA program and not doing the rest of law school, but that's far from set in stone. Right now I could:

a) Never go back to any kind of school
b) Do a JD/MBA at Emory
c) Just finish my JD at Emory
d) Stay at Emory, but just get an MBA
e) Get an MBA elsewhere

Any and all are still a possibility, but I'd say e, d and a are the most likely, ranked in order of likelihood.