I clearly remember one day about three years ago flipping through the ESPN channels and coming upon Phil Hellmuth going postal in a tourney after taking a beating. Got a big laugh out of that and quickly learned to hate Hellmuth. Watched a little bit more and saw some cool guys I liked-- Negreanu, Juanda, Lindgren-- and thought, hey I should find some online site where I can play this for fun. "Sign up and play for free," all the commercials said. I always enjoyed playing dealer's choice with my friends (maybe 3-4 times per year), so went to FullTilt and got some play money.

I think I played the play money games for about a month, got around a million chips, and felt I was ready to buy in. Put $50 in my account, grinded for a while at .05/.10, made the bonus, and soon after that, busted and cashed in my points for the FullTilt hat.

About a month later, went to Stars and put in $50. Busted at .05/.10. Still wanted to get that bonus, so put in another $50. Busted again. Another $50, and I finally managed to make the $50 bonus. Continued grinding and eventually made it to $500. Moved up to .10/.25 and still play there or .25/.50. Ridiculously overrolled for those levels now, but haven't moved to the next level yet. Since coming to Stars around 2 years ago, I'd guess I've played about 95% of the days for at least an hour a day and made what I consider to be quite a bit of money. Guess I have Hellmuth to thank.