As most of you know, I turned 18 years old yesterday. I've been playing poker online since I was 11. I started off at the PokerRoom play chip tables, then gradually moved up to freerolls. I got my first taste of real money play around 12 and loved it. I was pretty much instantly hooked.

At age 13, my mother passed away and it was the hardest moment of my entire life. I was an emotion wreck and didn't really know how to cope with it. I started playing poker pretty much constantly. I still played school sports, but started caring less and less about them as I started to become more successful at poker. I totally consumed myself with learning the game.

I met a ton of great people during my younger years. They helped my game to mature, and some staked me for real money tournaments and cash games. I was starting to become a solid player around age 14.

I played tournaments as my main game for about 2 years and didn't really have too much success. I was backed during my entire poker career, as I was too young to deposit and thought of it as basically the best thing ever. I could play on money that was not mine and profit. I started off doing pretty well and had quite a bit of success in tournaments in my early days.

I then moved up to the highest stakes MTTs, where I had little to no success. I believed I was +EV in all of the games I was playing, but due to not grinding hard, poor game selection, and tilt, I did not profit. I have breakeven stats over a decent sample size.

I actually made money due to being in and out of makeup at the right times. I also staked people, coached, etc. I was "ballin" at a pretty young age and couldn't see myself doing much else with my life.

I'm certainly not an MTT legend, but thought a well could be very interesting. I've been very involved in the community for a long time and have contributed a lot IMO. I hope to give back more and maybe entertain you guys.

Currently, my main game is midstakes-highstakes HU cash. I've had a ton of success and have made close to $150K playing these games over the last 6 months. I continue to play a full schedule of MTTs between 1-3 days a week depending on my schedule.

I try to keep as normal of a life schedule as possible. I went through a period of time where I basically isolated myself from everything but poker, but I've always had a lot of friends through this game to support me with everything I've done. After I realized that poker wasn't all life is about, I started to slowly work my way back in to real life. I started hanging out with friends again, keeping in touch with family, and chasing HS girls :P

Right now I probably play poker 4 days a week on average, and make sure I get out of my house as much as possible. I think it's pretty damn important to leave your computer as much as you can. I have also been traveling a lot and absolutely love it. I've been to the Bahamas, parts of Canada, CA, FL, OH, WI, CT, NV, SC, and a handfull of other states I'm missing.

I plan to start playing as much live poker as I can. I already sold action to WPT Hardrock in April and couldn't be more excited for it. I also really want to travel to different parts of the world. I find it fascinating, and that's the main reason I love poker as a job. It gives me absolute freedom and I can pretty much go wherever I want. I'm looking in to going to some LAPTs, EPTs, etc.

I'll answer pretty much any question unless it clearly crosses the line. I'm driving up to the indian casino about 2 hours away here shortly, so I'm not sure how many questions I'll be able to answer tonight.

I have to thank the community for helping me get so much better at poker. I really doubt I would be as good as I am today without you guys.

All names you have ever played on

wow

For the record: I do not have new screen names. I have the same ones, they simply changed the account information accordingly. I only played HSMTTs (backed) on Stars and they blocked my transfer function, so I probably won't be playing there until the 3 month transfer block is done. I understand their position, and the punishment. I have no beef with them at all.

FTP completely cleared me and I'll be playing all of my volume there for the next three months. I put in all of my cash game volume on FTP anyway.

@Zima I played under a second account on FTP for cash games only. I was backed for MTTs, so my backer wanted me to use a second account for cash games to make accounting easier. I'm not saying this is OK in any way, but I know at least 20 people who have done the same thing. The majority of sheets/bax horses have a second account they use for cash games.

I don't think it's unethical, but it's certainly against TOS. The second account I played on was closed months ago and I will never use a second account again. I didn't really feel too comfortable with having an open second account, so I kindly asked my backer to let me play cash games on my own on my normal accounts. He obliged, and for the last few months I've been playing cash on CompleteDonk.

Everyone that I played in the past on my old account was aware of the account change when I made it. I made sure I informed the reg that if we battled in the past, I was that old account. I've only used CompleteDonk, TheMatadorCC, and that one cash game account. I don't think it matters much, but I don't really want to out my old account publicly.

so sick people say im lucky that im only 20 lol... wish i started when i was 12

How much would you say the official FTP forum helped your development as a player?

What allowed you to transition from MTT's and crush HU cash? What advice would you give people looking to do similar?

What type of bumhunting rules/strategies do you have in place?

I met quite a few interesting people through FTP Forum. It was the first forum I ever posted on. I posted there mostly when I was a casual player, and didn't really use it for the strategy portion though.

Well you've already done the poker story thing so:

1. Who's taught you the most in your poker career?
2. How has playing underage affected you growth in the poker community? Any storys of beef/threats you may or may not have had?
3. Top 5 biggest influences in your game? (kinda coincides with 1 imo)
4. Whats your new sn?
5. Where the people you met early in your career underage as well and if not how did they react to you being underage? - infact was it a secret?

I realise my questions may be common knowledge to a few of you but not necessarily to everyone.

Happy birthday for yesterday, I wish you luck in the future.

why did you drop out of high school?
would you ever consider going to college?
do you have aspirations outside of poker?
who is smarter, munk or ricky?

How confident are you that you'll be playing poker professionally, successfully, and be happy doing it in 5 years? 10 years? 20?

Tell some stories like the time you flew to LV to meet up with someone to get $. I'm sure you have at least one you can tell on here that i have not heard yet.

Sorry i didn't tell you happy birthday yday, but you never answer me anyway

I started playing cash games with no success at all (as seen by my tableratings) before I went to MTTs. A ton of my friends are extremely successful high stakes HU cash game players, so they helped me quite a bit. Not coaching, but just watching them play and talking strategy with them on occasion.
Bumhunting completely depends on my mood, and what stakes a regular sits at. I normally will play absolutely anybody at 5-10 and below. I battle regs a ton and contribute that to most of my success. I don't believe bumhunting is a sound strategy, as you almost will never improve playing complete droolers 24/7.

I mostly bumhunt at 10-20 and 25-50, but will play a weak reg on occasion.

There are times when I am only waiting for total droolers. I'll either be busy doing something else, or don't feel like using any brain power at all. This mostly is when I'm doing stuff around the house, watching TV, or am not sober. If I'm in another part of my house I'll just turn my volume all the way up and walk to my computer when I hear the loud beep.

have you been to an 18 movie or whtever the you call them over there? (r18?)

in the UK, it's easy to get alcohol from a shop at 13, but I never once was able to get into an 18 movie underage

grats on the bday, if your not going to college go backpacking, you'll love it

Pretty sure ive known you since you first started playing haha. Congrats on everything, your a sicko. Will prob have a few questions later!

Do you feel relieved now that you can talk about your age? IIRC you used to be very touchy about it on the FTP boards.

Happy Bday and congratz on your success.

for #1 and #3: I cannot really say who has helped me the most. There have been SO many people over the years who have contributed to my skill level that I simply cannot name them all. I'll list some for both MTTs and cash.

For MTTs: aaaaaaaa, TT_Fold, Bily Bibbit, Geoffras22, JP OSU, theczar19, HU4ROLLZ,w33ktight, and many others.

Cash: TakeItBack was probably the person who has helped me the most. He's most likely my favorite person I've met through poker. I met him when I was 14 playing 100NL HU before school at like 6AM (lol) and we've been talking almost every day since then. I've hung out with him a ton in real life now, making a few trips to California and a couple other places.

#2. Well, I certainly don't think playing underage gave me any edge at all against the field. What it did do was let me have an awesome hobby throughout my teenage years that netted me a lot of money. It had has some negative effects, but the positive has greatly outweighed the negative in every way. It helped me get my mind off of a lot of things and made me a lot more intelligent in a lot of ways.

There are so many ways real life situations relate to poker, such as EV etc. There's no way I would know all of these things if I hadn't started playing poker at a young age.

#4. I have the same screen names as always. They simply changed the account information on them.

#5. When I first started to meet people through poker, I always lied to them and told them I was much much older than I was. I tried to put on a different persona and fooled a lot of them for a long time. Not until I trusted someone did I tell them my real age. I started to become more lax with it the closer I got to 18. This wasn't the smartest thing in the world, and I should've just kept it a secret to 99% of people and only told those who I trusted a lot.

A lot of the people were absolutely shocked when I told them how old I was. How would they not be? A 13-16 year old playing poker at this level isn't too common.

Thanks for the well wishes.

There are so many ways real life situations relate to poker, such as EV etc. There's no way I would know all of these things if I hadn't started playing poker at a young age.

There are so many ways real life situations relate to poker, such as EV etc. There's no way I would know all of these things if I hadn't started playing poker at a young age.

There are so many ways real life situations relate to poker, such as EV etc. There's no way I would know all of these things if I hadn't started playing poker at a young
age.

There are so many ways real life situations relate to poker, such as EV etc. There's no way I would know all of these things if I hadn't started playing poker at a young age.

There are so many ways real life situations relate to poker, such as EV etc. There's no way I would know all of these things if I hadn't started playing poker at a young age.

What are your thoughts on underage gambling? If you got to do things over again what age would you have started playing for real money? Do you think being young and immature was a factor in you failing at HSMTTs a couple of years ago, and conversely that being more mature now is a factor in why you're winning, or is it just more poker experience that's responsible?

Travel plans after WPT Hard Rock?

Did getting demolished by me in live hunl help open your eyes to aspects of the game at the time over your head?

You seem to be better at bumhunting than mtts (global alias: LosingBacker'sMoney)

You should prob stick to bumhunting. If you could channel your A game always and not send me tilt/pitts/hood/barnes gonna barnes hands....then you can make good enough money I think.

Also, you are 100% going to pitts off every live tourney you play 4betting light/doing hood **** because you are a silly young tellbox! Stick to online, son!

GL though! Happy you are finally legal!

wheres the like button on this fricke site

LOL like and unlike so i can like it again




DoubtUrReal

so how excited r u to play your first live tourney and get to play with all the live fishies?

congats, always like your posts. look forward to meeting u at a liveament sometime