...after I got into poker I would always play at work which didn't help me out at all since I was working for commission only, but it was the whole idea of becoming better that everyone else at the table that kept me always playing.

I didn't really care about the money, all I wanted to do was to figure out how to be the best, how to out play someone, how to mentally mess around with their thinking process by using physiology. Playing at work did help me in developing my game further more, no not because I was gathering and learning more information as I played more, but because I met a person that really boosted my encouragement for continuing to get better at this game.

One day I was playing and I got caught by my manager playing poker instead of doing my work.

I though I was gonna be in trouble but he just peeked inside my cubicle and he saw that I was playing and just asked me if I was done working on pricing a mortgage loan for a customer. I said yeah I was working on it, I just got sidetracked a little bit but I would get back to it ASAP. He then walked away back to his office not saying anything about me playing poker online.

Later on the day before we closed down, he called me into his office and I though he was going to bring to my attention what he saw me doing earlier on... well he did... but the reason why he brought it was different of what I thought. He asked me "so you play poker?" I said "yeah sometimes, I'm just learning how to play, sorry about earlier I just got a little disctracted". I thought that my answer was going to be followed by a request to ask me to leave the company, but it was the opposite.

He liked the idea that I played poker, so he went on to tell me that he also played and that he would go play at casinos and he would go to Vegas a lot. Vegas is only a 4 to 5 hour drive so its very easy to go and come back over the weekend. After talking about poker and gambling for about 30 minutes, we closed down the office and we both went our ways.

I drove home that day thinking that it was pretty cool that I my boss liked to play poker as well.

One day after a couple of days had gone by he called me into his office. I walk in and he asks me to close the door behind me. He pulled out a deck of cards, the "Bicycle" brand, the kind that they sell at any store.

As he pulled out the deck of cards out of his drawer, he threw it on the table and said "lets play a couple of hands". He gave a hand full of paperclips to use for betting. That was my first live hand poker session... heads up, in an office desk, with paperclips. I can't remember if he beat me or not even though I am sure that he did.

From that day on, I would almost everyday during lunch, or after work play heads up with him with paperclips or other office supplies. Then one day we played for $5 bucks, I was broke looking to close a deal so I can get paid but of coarse it was difficult since I was spending most of my time playing poker on the computer instead of contacting clients. So five bucks was a lot to me but I decided to play it anyways to try to out play him.

I do remember losing that since it was a big moment for me, and it wasn't a good feeling, but the feeling of getting challenged and being put to the test of being better than someone else outweighed the bad feeling of losing.

And I just wanted more and I knew that I was not going to stop until I got this down and got good at it...