[adanthar]

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I would also be interested in your "poker-life" story.

I have always enjoyed reading your posts and I think it is interesting learning about the past and development process of good players (and teachers). Maybe it's just the fact I'm a history major, but I would like to hear how you got started, etc.

Thanks!

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I've posted this a couple of times, I think, but it's gotten mistier with age so let me see if I can remember this properly...

Up until 1L, I'd probably played 30 minutes of poker in my life. When I started law school, though, I'd happened to be accepted in the only law frat house in America and wound up with 25 very cool roommates, a couple of whom played poker. I therefore signed up and immediately blew around a hundred and fifty bucks in multiple $25 deposits on UB. At that point, I got pissed and decided to read my roommate's books instead of just losing money. After a month of that, I officially broke even in my poker career, left UB (which sucked back then about as much as it does now) and took an affiliate's 50 dollars to go play at Party.

Being an affiliate seemed like a good idea, so I also signed up for that, got about a dozen people to claim *their* free 50 bucks and got a free entry into a 5K freeroll. As it turned out, only half of the 200 people showed up, my game was slightly less crappy than their game, and I wound up taking second place for $800 (after giving up and check/calling a turn all in with a straight draw) with my girlfriend and roommate watching. We were high fiving and yelling so loud that I was hoarse the morning after. It was a completely ridiculous finish that made me move up from .50/1 to 2/4 limit! Yay!

Then I ran hot there, ran hot at 3/6, broke even at 5/10 limit but had a few grand to go play (limit!) SNG's with, eventually switched to unlimited hold'em SNG's a few months later, yadda yadda. Incidentally, limit SNG's are still the softest game on the planet, not least because, all these years later, everyone still only plays them by accident.