I started playing poker in 2004 during my last semester of college after a buddy showed me that you could play for real money on the internet. I had a slow start and lost multiple $50 and $100 deposits in Sit n’ Goes and small stakes cash games on PokerRoom. Then, the summer after I graduated and shortly before starting my new job in corporate banking, I decided to get serious and bought a few poker books. I was tired of being a fish so I began spending all of my spare time at night studying and playing poker. After a couple months of beating $.5/$1 Limit Hold’em, I moved up to $2/$4 and $3/$6 where I stayed for a while before starting to learn No-Limit.
Sixteen months in banking was enough for me. Between the boring work and long commutes, online poker was starting to look like a much better option in terms income and lifestyle. During this time I even re-arranged my office and turned my back on the 15th floor view of downtown Fort Lauderdale and the ocean, just so that no one could walk by my office and see the poker tables on my computer. I hit a breaking point with work at the end of October 2005, and with my fiancés encouragement I quit despite only having a $4,500 bankroll. I didn’t have much money because I was turning pro sooner than I’d expected, but I was also confident that I could definitely make more than money than at my job.
I worked like crazy to build my bankroll so that I could play higher limits and have some security, and within a couple months I had about $20k and started playing $2/$4 NL. I also taught my fiancé (now my wife) some basic strategies so she could clear the multitude of bonuses to pick up extra money for expenses. In my first 2 years of playing professionally, I played a solid mix of tournaments, limit, and no-limit cash games with successful results in all of them. By late 2006 I devoted myself to no-limit, both 6max and heads up and have been focused on those since. Poker is great job, there’s always a new challenge and it’s fun to be continually improving.
In late 2007 I started coaching, and discovered a passion for teaching the game through training videos and private lessons. My approach to coaching is based on helping my students build a winning thought process that relies on strong fundamentals, accurate assumptions, and creativity. This leads to flexible decision making and confidence in making unconventional plays, both of which of will help give you an edge every time you sit down.
Basically, if you're on the river and you have zero equity, against his range (you'll always lose if he calls) and you bet pot, you need him to fold exactly 50% of the time for the bluff to breakeven.
