Pretty cool story. Your avatar is sexy.

It wasn't a thing that I made a decision about all at once, and it was fairly random in some ways. I never really made a clear decision to directly switch from one to the other.

I really enjoyed law at university. The legal questions that I had to look at, and the arguments that I had to construct were pretty interesting to me. It's a subject with a lot of detail, and logic and analysis are required to establish the arguments that you are trying to make, and I like that kind of thing.

When I started to actually work as a lawyer, it turned out not to be the same thing at all. At university it was all about constructing a legal argument, to say what the law actually was in a particular situation. In practice it turned out that legal questions hardly ever come up. Everyone knows what the law is nearly all the time, and it becomes an argument about the facts - "you were driving too fast", "no I wasn't", "I saw you pick up x in a shop and put it in your pocket", "no I didn't", etc etc

It really became kinda routine and uninteresting.

At around that time a friend of mine finished a postgrad degree and was looking for a job, so we decided to start a business. Long story short I ended up owning a company that sold telecoms equipment and was an IBM dealership. We were only small, and margins on that kind of stuff, though high to start with, were constantly being squeezed. We got asked about software stuff a lot though, and that wasn't something that a customer could buy for £50 less through a computer magazine.

So, I taught myself to write Windows programs in C/C++, and then Visual Basic came along. It was a new product and I used it to write some commercial software. Since it was new I hung around the Microsoft support forum - this was quite some time ago, so the support was online on CompuServe at that time.

My business selling computer kit went busto, but shortly afterwards Microsoft out of the blue made 20 awards ('MVP') worldwide to people that they felt were experts on various systems, who had contributed to the community. They gave one to me, together with just 2 other people in Europe.

I started to get emails from people offering me money to do stuff for them. So I started to do their stuff and take their money. I'm still doing it

I enjoy software development a lot more than the law. It is intellectually challenging, and it is creative (for me).

HEM. I still use HEM1, I tried HEM2 in beta and didn't like it, and I don't really feel inclined to change up. I may move to PT4, not sure.

I use FPDB for tracking draw/mixed games. It's a pretty good piece of software tbh (it does NL / PLO as well), and since it doesn't cost anything it has to be good value for money

I think the most useful book I read was Sklansky's Theory of Poker. I didn't really think so first time round, but I think that was because I missed a lot of the stuff in there ... This reminds me that I ought to re-read it again.

I do watch a fair few videos, but they have never been my primary way of learning stuff. I like videos that explain what and why people are thinking, rather than more prescriptive 'do this in this spot, do that in that spot' type of thing. So I guess that my favourites so far are the videos that magicninja did for DC.

That's pretty darned impressive.

VNH, Sir.

Salmon or steak?

Have you read the Petzold book on windows programming?

Who from 2+2 has had the most beneficial impact on your game?

Who from 2+2 has had the most negative impact on your game?

Who from 2+2 would you most like to meet up with (WDWF is a given ofc )?

As a poker playing computer expert, do you feel there are any opportunities for a new bit of poker software? ie a new niche that hasn't been exploited?

yw

I don't really play NLHE cash online, pretty much the only time I do is the NL round in 8game. I play NL cash live a lot more than PLO, as the NL games are always spread in nthe casinos near me, PLO much less often.

Steak. I'm not particularly fond of salmon, although I do eat a lot of seafood.

Hah, yes ! Back in the day it was really THE bible on windows programming, when it was all done with C and the Windows SDK.

I always thought it was a strange book in some ways. It was very comprehensive, he pretty much gave an example of every single thing you could do in a windows app. It wasn't always easy to find which example you needed though. Also, the examples were all very well written, but they were unbelievably terse for the most part.

Lots of people helped me in lots of ways. If I had to pick just two, I suppose it would be mikes007 and UHNM (whatever his 2+2 name is, idk lol).

I can't think of anyone having an overall negative effect on my game. I can think of one or two that put me on tilt though ...

I would like to meet most 2+2ers irl given the chance I guess, but straight off the top of my head though - UHNM, Spliff, Bona, TBob and ofc the Hippy

If I knew what that niche might be, I might have a go at writing it !

Still the best book on low level win32 programming imo. I love ``from the ground up'' feel of the book, you really get to understand how things work.

The first one was just a misapprehension on my part. By starting reading the FTP forums etc, I had an unspoken assumption that people playing online poker tended to start at the lowest limits and work up. As a result this meant that each stake was going to be harder and full of better players than the last.

I found out that this is not necessarily so, and that most online players play at the level that they can afford to play at, not the level that they are competent at.

I guess I thought there would be no fish at higher stakes, and I found out that this isn't so.

Another example I suppose was the general concepts of observing my table closely, categorising players, assigning them different ranges, and changing my play to suit. It wasn't an 'aha' discovery as such. I recall understanding all these things in abstract. With more experience I remember being at the tables, and instead of playing mostly level 1 poker, all of a sudden I sometimes felt - 'I know exactly what you have here, and I know exactly what you think I have, and I know exactly what you're going to do'.

For me it went sort of like this:

Play a bit socially / at university.

Watch poker on TV, kinda awed by how good at handreading some of those guys seemed to be. I recall Devilfish being the guy who made the biggest impression on me from TV, so it was kinda weird when we were sat next to each other at the FT last year

Become interested in playing after a charity NL tournament.

Create an account on FTP.

Play money games. Crush them with the cunning strategy of limp/calling 80% of hands and being able to find a fold when I brick.

Since I was a poker genius as demonstrated by my play maney triumphs I fully expected to crush 10NL.

Busto at 10NL in a world record time it seemed.

Move to 5NL, actually try to find out how to play this game.

Play 100K hands of 5NL, read a lot of books, get some coaching.

Start to play the BQ forum games.

Watch what better players than me were doing, then talk to them about hands after the game was over.

Get bored with NL.

Start to play badugi (thanks bee & UHNM here).

Move up at badugi, beating each stake.

Start to play PLO.

Lose a lot at PLO.

Begin to understand that PLO isn't NLHE but you get two hands.

Start to win at PLO & start moving up.

Start to play some triple draw & mixed games.

Lose a lot at triple draw and mixed games.

Get better at triple draw and some of the mixed game rounds.

Move up to where they sometimes respect my raises.