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Obviously, Negreanu, Ivey, Juanda, & Cunningham are far out on the right side of the bell curve, as far as starting out primarily as tourney pros. And they all also play live; in fact DN & PI now mostly play live, and JJ & AC are 'semi-retired' from poker, supposedly.
Ted Forrest played mid-limit before winning the three bracelets in '93, then used the money to move up(UP!). Howard Lederer has written extensively about focusing more on tourneys now, which has worked out nicely for him. Of course, he's a pretty good player to begin with.
As for TJ, Hellmuth, Men, Scotty, Miami John, the few, the proud, I guess. Look what happened to Huck. Daniel recently wrote (my paraphrase)that Chris Ferguson was the only self-financed, successful, full-time tourney pro over the last ten years.
Good thing, as he doesn't exactly have anything else to fall back on!
Ni pos, Bryan. Obviously, you got VERY lucky right at the beginning, but three years ain't luck.
"If I hadn't played in card games, I'd prolly be a CFO in accounting..."