Meet Tyler Bonkowski of Team 888VIP
My first real introduction to poker was when my roommate (at university) downloaded an online poker software onto my computer and I told him to delete it immediately because I hated the chip noises coming from it while he was playing.
Eventually my friends and I played a few small home-games and i bought a poker book so that i could learn some basic strategy to beat them more often. Since then I delved into the online poker world and have become very successful. I started out playing small sit n go's, and then jumped to $1/$2 fixed limit. I quit university and my job to play full time after three pretty good months at $5/$10 and higher.
My favorite quote that helps me through the life of poker is from musician Bon Jovi: "Success is falling nine times, and getting up ten". A few years ago I suffered a huge setback when I lost all of my money that I had in my online 888 account. I had played about 3 years professionally at the time, and had no money in my bank account either. I had enough money to get me through one more month before having to get a job, so I started playing freerolls at 888. Within 10 days of playing freerolls I had finally managed to cash 25 cents into my poker account. Six days after that i had turned that 25 cents into 6000 USD just from playing poker, playing stakes higher than my bankroll and running on a lot of luck.
Currently I'm an online high-stakes limit player. I plan on attending a lot more live poker tournaments around the world. I traveled to Atlantic City and cashed in the WPT event there in September. I can't wait to attend the upcoming tournaments with TEAM888. Outside of poker I play a lot of video games, go to the gym, and play as many sports as I can.
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