History / My Backstory

For most of my life, I've lived somewhere in between obsession and curiosity.

I've always been drawn to games with edge: poker, sports betting, probability, psychology, pattern recognition, risk. Not just the action itself, but the deeper question underneath all of it: why do some people consistently make better decisions than others?

I've played poker full time. I've played daily fantasy sports full time. I've spent way too much time inside casinos sitting at slot machines, poker tables, sportsbooks, and anywhere else people gather chasing action, adrenaline, and the illusion of certainty.

I grew up in the same neighborhood as the Poker Brat himself, Phil Hellmuth. We attended the same grade school, the same high school, and the same college. Somewhere along the way, poker and gambling culture always seemed to exist in the background of my life.

Over the years, I've accumulated more bizarre gambling stories, swings, mistakes, close calls, emotional meltdowns, miracle runouts, and "how is this even real?" moments than I could ever properly organize.

I've sat at the same tournament table as Phil Ivey during a knockout event and managed to win the table in a WSOP event. I've also managed to fire into the WSOP Main Event and get knocked out within the first hour like a complete psychopath.

That pretty much summarizes my gambling career in one sentence: equal parts confidence, chaos, curiosity, variance, and surviving long enough to laugh about it later.

At the same time, I've always had a brain that refuses to sit still. I jump deep into ideas. Too deep sometimes.

One week it's poker theory. The next it's AI workflows, OCR engines, simulations, content systems, automation pipelines, capture cards, strategy modeling, or trying to figure out how technology can transform niche communities most people completely overlook.

My mind is constantly drifting into rabbit holes about simulation theory, free will, probability, human behavior, conspiracy theories, artificial intelligence, and whether life itself is just one giant pattern-recognition exercise disguised as reality.

I've also become deeply obsessed with crypto, blockchain technology, trustless ecosystems, decentralization, and the idea that people should have more ownership over their money, communities, and digital lives, with less institutional gatekeeping, less unnecessary bureaucracy, and less red-tape nonsense standing in the way of innovation and freedom.

Sometimes that mindset feels chaotic. Sometimes it feels exhausting. But occasionally, it helps connect dots other people miss.

I've probably started and overcomplicated more projects than I can count.

Academically, I took a completely different path. I earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmacology and Toxicology from University of Wisconsin-Madison and spent six years after graduation working in the chemical and pharmaceutical world in a sales capacity.

On paper, it made sense. Stable career. Professional environment. Good opportunities. But if I'm being honest, it never really felt like home.

So naturally, like any rational and stable person trying to "figure life out," I pivoted into selling luxury vehicles for more than three years.

Oddly enough, that chapter ended up creating some of the best friendships, opportunities, memories, and experiences of my life.

It taught me how to communicate with people, build relationships, understand personalities, sell ideas, read emotions, and navigate high-pressure environments where confidence matters. Even if at the time I still had absolutely no clue what direction my life was actually heading.

I always felt pulled toward strategy, competition, psychology, systems, storytelling, and building things that felt intellectually alive.

Over time, that curiosity expanded beyond gambling and strategy into content creation itself. I became fascinated with studio setups, green screens, cameras, microphones, streaming workflows, editing software, production systems, AI-assisted media, and building content pipelines from scratch.

Not because I wanted to become some polished influencer pretending to have life figured out, but because I genuinely love building things.

Thankfully, my wife has somehow managed to survive years of me bouncing between "the next big idea" without completely losing faith in me along the way. She's watched me disappear into endless rabbit holes with a mix of patience, skepticism, confusion, and just enough support to keep me dangerous.

And somewhere in the middle of all this chaos, another strange piece fit perfectly into the puzzle: one of my best friends, and someone who stood beside me in my wedding, happens to be an addiction psychiatrist, high-stakes poker coach, and professional poker player himself.

Which honestly feels like the most absurdly perfect combination imaginable for the kind of conversations, strategy debates, psychology discussions, and gambling theory rabbit holes that helped shape this entire idea.

But more than anything else, the personality trait that probably gave me an edge throughout all of this wasn't intelligence. It was persistence. Or stubbornness. Depending who you ask.

I've always had this irrational refusal to stay down. Get knocked down 99 times. Get up 100.

Whether it was gambling swings, failed ideas, bad runs, wrong turns, overthinking, burnout, or projects that never became what I hoped they would be, I kept coming back to the same thing: the belief that eventually all these scattered pieces had to connect into something meaningful.

And somewhere along the way, something interesting happened. All those scattered interests slowly started converging into one thing: Open Face Chinese Poker.

A game that feels completely underbuilt compared to how exciting, strategic, addictive, chaotic, and entertaining it actually is.

And the more I looked around, the more I realized there wasn't really a modern home for OFC. No real ecosystem. No serious strategy infrastructure. No replay analysis culture. No modern educational content. No AI-assisted tools. No central hub for players trying to actually improve.

So naturally, instead of moving on like a normal person, I decided to build one.

Not as a poker pro pretending to know everything. Not as a solver robot. Not as some polished corporate brand. But as someone genuinely fascinated by the game and excited to explore it publicly with other people who love it too.

I want to study it. Break it. Simulate it. Argue about it. Teach it. Learn from it. Build tools around it. Create content around it. And hopefully help grow the entire OFC community along the way.

Because at the end of the day, that's really what this is all about.

I want to build an ecosystem where people can have a beer, hang out with friends, talk strategy, sweat ridiculous runouts, watch sports, play cards, laugh at bad beats, debate placements, and be part of something that feels competitive, entertaining, intelligent, and fun all at the same time.

And honestly? For the first time in a long time, this actually feels like home.

So whether you're here for strategy breakdowns, insane punts, first-5 placement theory, Fantasyland sweats, replay analysis, AI experiments, solver discussions, viewer hand reviews, or just because you love this beautifully chaotic game, welcome.