Name: Andrew R Location: Portland, OR, USA Bio: Ironically I never saw a poker event on TV until AFTER I learned how to play Texas Hold'em. Some friends and I started playing poker with dealer's choice for nickels, dimes, and quarters in 2003 at my old apartment and various other friend's houses. Usually we would play 5-card draw, acey-duecey, guts, stud, and the like, until our good friend Hans taught us Texas Hold'em one night. It quickly became a part of the mix of poker games we played. Then we started seeing it on TV with Chris Moneymaker's rise from average Joe to superstar millionaire in the 2003 World Series of poker main event. Instantly it started becoming the main poker game chosen and eventually we started having $5 and $10 dollar tournaments a couple times a month. After I moved up to Portland at the beginning of 2005 I started playing in the NWPL and quickly became hooked. I started playing every night like some of the other regulars and tried to catch up to Ryan Jacobson and his 3 week head start for the spring quarter of 2005. We ended up 1 and 2 that quarter and a friendly rivalry was formed. He took the next quarter off and I proceded to have one of the best quarters of anyone in the history of the NWPL breaking all of Ryan's records and finishing 1st or 2nd in every one of the 6 major categories despite only playing 11 of the 13 weeks. I missed one week due to work and another due to a humorous and infamous one week suspsension. After that season, my full-time free poker was pretty much over. I played a few games here and there in the free league during the winter quarter and watched as Ryan came back and broke most of the records that I had set. Between the two of us we still hold most of the major single season records from the GAPT. I switched to mostly playing cash games and tournaments and used the skills I had learned in the free leagues to start making a little extra money playing poker. Since the beginning of 2006 I have been a winning poker player.