This month, DoylesRoomannounced a brand new rewards system for its players, allowing high-stakes grinders to receive up to $3,000 in cash per month. Longtime PocketFives.com member David Doc SandsSands (pictured) is a sponsored pro of DoylesRoom as a member of its Brunson 10. The one-time #1 player in the PocketFives.com Poker Rankings, Sands is also a former Monthly PLBtitleholder. This week, he joins us on the PocketFives.com Podcast.

If you haven’t heard Sands’ poker story, it’s time to sit back and listen. Sands got his start at Turning Stone when he was in college. He recalled, “I went to school in upstate in New York and was coincidentally near a place where you could play at an Indian casino when you were 18. I got a lot of live experience playing Limit cash games and just started playing quite a bit online while I was in college. By the time I graduated, I had won one major, the Bodog $100K.”

From there, Sands headed to California to work in Silicon Valley. However, he made more money playing poker on Sundays than during his 50-hour work week and so wound up as a full-time pro.

Sands now makes his home in Las Vegas, the Mecca of the live poker world. As such, he has easy access to many of the game’s top minds and told the PocketFives.com Podcast, “The thing I like about [living in Las Vegas] the most is the fact that I have a lot of online and live playing poker friends living here… I have a good group of friends who work the same hours as I do and have similar interests. The other thing I like is the access to golf courses because I’ve been trying to play a lot of golf.” Sands added that the mental aspects of golf and poker are very similar.

All poker players have to find a balance between the game and other interests in life. In fact, not striking a happy medium can lead to ill effects both on and off the felts. Sands cautioned, “Poker is definitely something that, unless you handle it right, it can adversely affect other parts of your life. I see a lot of threads about people debating whether or not to go pro, quit their jobs, or drop out of school and it’s hard because there’s not one answer.” Sands recommended not sticking all of your eggs in one basket.

He’s the newest member of the DoylesRoom Brunson 10, a group of eight players who are established members of the online poker community. Sands took down a leaderboard competition during the 2010 World Series of Poker (WSOP) and explained how he became involved with the USA-friendly room: “It was fun to be approached and asked if I wanted to do a competition with those guys. I knew I was going to have to bring my A-game and I expected someone to do something incredible like [Dan djk123 Kelly (pictured)] did… Now that I’m on the team, I have a tremendous amount of respect for all of the other guys.”

Kelly, who also participated in the leaderboard competition, took down the $25,000 Six-Handed No Limit Hold’em event during the 2010 WSOP to earn an automatic spot in the Brunson 10.

Now, DoylesRoom has unveiled its Doyles Rewards program. If you haven’t heard of the newest loyalty program in the industry, Sands broke its perks down for Podcast listeners: “The real value in the system is converting Brunson Bucks to cash. It works similar to the PokerStars rewards system in that there are different tiers you can qualify for. If you play enough volume to work yourself into the highest tier, you can convert $3,000 in Brunson Bucks into cash per month, which is three times higher than any other site in the industry.”

Brunson Bucks are given out according to the number of Frequent Player Points, or FPPs, you earn and your place within the Doyles Rewards program. Click here for more details.

Check out the rest of this week’s PocketFives.com Poker Podcastfeaturing David Doc Sands Sands.