No Limit Texas Holdem(NLH)! I have been a serious learning player for 14 years. I had played with family and friends a couple times by the time I was living next to a card room and then started playing a lot. Quickly I realized two things: this is a game of skill, and I was a losing player. At year one I found and hired my first coach and I still to this day pay for coaching and mentorship just less frequently. During the next year I had paid for over 50 1-hour coaching sessions and was able to produce a 600 hour sample (for all of 2012) beating the game for $9 an hour.

Fast forward to today and poker is a major dictator for my future plans. In some ways it's liberating, in others it's a bit shackling. I can not would not consider moving somewhere without access to good poker games. I have been dependent on poker income for the last 10 years. NLH is such a beautiful, infinitely complex game and I am so excited as its popularity grows worldwide thanks to social media.

Playing poker for-profit and bitcoin mix so so so well together. I was so excited to learn that I could actually bank myself once I got a better understanding of what bitcoin was capable of. I'm sure you can imagine why. Like bitcoin and the banking systems, poker and banks do not mix well. Bitcoin provides some actual financial security to the struggling poker-pro where it wasn't available before. With the two combined, I get an immense sense of self-empowerment.