What, in 2006, fascinated me the most about Texas Hold'em was the idea of making money playing kind of a video game. I was still a student when I first heard about online poker and I started getting more and more into it, even though just for fun.

The years between 2006 and 2010 have been really hot for this new market that quickly caught media attention. At that time I would have never thought about being a poker reporter in my life, I rather tried to improve my strategy and win some money. 

A few years later, I've found myself being a regular at Sit&Go tournaments (*1) and then an occasional MTT player (*2), I made a few interesting four figure scores, for a student at least, duly spent in the next weeks traveling around or putting them in play again. 

I've always heard about successful players who became millionaires crushing online tournaments, but that wasn't my case. Too emotional to keep the situation under control and probably too bad to compete at higher levels. 

Poker became a mass phenomenon and kept rising until the so-called 'Black Friday'(*3), when U.S. players weren't allowed to play anymore online with real money. Live poker movement was growing aside, and many people joined the action, largely increasing the number of low buy-in tournaments. 

                                        

In 2013 I was about to give up my music dreams and I start writing advertisings for marketing sites until I thought about making the most of my 'poker knowledge'. In 2014 I started writing for the most popular poker site/magazine in Italy and had my first experiences in live tournaments. 

Everything was fine eventually, the pay wasn't terrific but working from home and traveling around time to time matched perfectly with my purpose: having as much freedom as possible. 

The same 'freedom mirage' that pushed me to keep playing all those years, with an insignificant profit, compared to the hours I spent. To be honest, I never meant to be a professional and I always saw everything as a short term solution to finance my idiocy. No time for regrets, let's keep going...                   

Keep reading PART 2 here!

Notes: 

(*1) For those who aren't aware of what I'm talking about, a Sit&Go is a quick poker format in which you pay a certain buy-in to receive the same amount of chip and play with an established number of players. For example, if you make your registration to a 9-players Sit&Go, the game will not start until nine players have joined the table. Only top 33% players get rewarded with a share of the prize pool depending on which position they end. The winner usually gets from 40 to 50 percent of the prize pool.

(*2) AKA Multi-Table-Tournaments: the tournament starts at a fixed time and players are free to joying the action until the late registration period expires.

(*3) The American Justice Department shut down the three major sites: PokerStars, Full Tilt and Absolute/UB. While PokerStars quickly managed to find an agreement with the Court to restore the site outside U.S borders, Full Tilt and Absolute/UB didn't manage to refund all players.A few years later investigations unearthed a big scam based on the so-called 'Ponzi Scheme'.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme 

Note: All pictures in this post are part of the hundreds I took at the last World Series Of Poker Europe, in Berlin, which is my hometown since almost two years.