My poker career began during my Junior year at Duke in 2004. Seeking a hobby to complement the monotony of Mechanical Engineering studies, I deposited $50 on PartyPoker (and added a second major in Mathematics). That $50 became $0 fairly quickly, so I deposited again. After going busto once more, I vowed to actually learn how to beat this silly game and began to do my homework. I read books like Lee Jones’ Winning Low Limit Holdem and discovered the 2+2 forums, and after one more $100 deposit I began the long winning trend that continues to this day. By the time I graduated in spring of 2006, I was crushing NLHE cash games up to 3/6, and decided that taking a crack at professional poker was a better option than applying to grad school or finding a “real job”. Fortunately, I continued to succeed and quickly moved up to 5/10 and 10/20, and moved out to San Francisco to chase the dream.
In 2007 I began coaching students, and joined up with Krantz’s 3bet.net, one of the predecessors to DeucesCracked. When DC was founded, I was offered a position as an Executive Producer and happily accepted. Over the years my role as a DC producer has often been “hey DJ, go learn this game and then teach it”, as seen in such series as MadPotters, Triple the Gold, Ringmaster, and LARP. I have coached many students over the last few years, mostly in small to mid-stakes NL cash games but also PLO. My coaching, like my play, is grounded in a foundation of solid, forward-thinking decision making with a healthy amount of creativity mixed in. Each of my students has a personalized program based on their personal learning style and the nature of their strengths and weaknesses. Live sweats, video reviews, and HH analysis are the cornerstones, but sometimes a pure theory discussion is most useful. Students also receive a good amount of attention outside of scheduled sessions, and I’m nearly always available for general questions or a quick HH. My coaching rate is $300/hr, or $1200 for a 5 hour package (recommended!).
Currently, I coach PLO from 1/2 to 10/20+ as well as Triple Draw or mixed games. If you’re interested in my coaching, I’d recommend that you first watch my recent video series: Solid State PLO, or Bustacap if you’re interested in shallow/cap PLO. Please email me at [email protected] with any questions, coaching or otherwise!
My biggest weakness as a player is motivation to grind; I’ve never really been able to put in the number of hands that many other online professionals do. I have some justification for this, as I work not only as an Executive Producer at DC but also as the primary creative/content manager, working with the content team and our coaches/producers to plan each season’s video lineup (as well as some contests, promotions, and other fun things). I also am one of the founders of DiscSpace, a new ultimate frisbee social and organizational website, so I spend a fair bit of time working to build and manage that as well. In addition, I’m one of the producers of From Busto to Robusto and Boom, the finest documentaries about online poker. But I manage to find time to play some hands now and again (especially when motivated by a prop bet!); here is my PLO play from the beginning of 2010 onwards (excluding things like smaller-stakes rush PLO which I played for LARP). I also have been quite successful in triple draw games from 15/30 to 200/400, but because there is no decent tracking software for that silly game, you’ll have to take my word for it.
