I was 21 years old when I decided to go all-in with poker as a career. I was almost finishing my computer engineering degree at the most prestigious university in my country, one of the top 100 in the world.

I was a 10nl fishreg when I did that. I can vividly remember how I felt when I realized that in that month, October 2015, I had won 30 buy-ins at 10nl zoom on pokerstars, while having a full time job from 9 to 5. "If this is what I can accomplish in these circumstances, imagine what I could achieve in the future" was kind of what I was thinking to myself. Somehow in my bones I felt like poker was an unavoidable opportunity.

Since then, life kinda entered 1.5x speed mode. Shit, even 2x speed wouldn't be an overstatement:

At 21 years old, I was a student at uni;
At 22 years old, I was a microstakes grinder;
At 23 years old, I was married to the love of my life and living from the game;
At 24 years old, I was a midstakes winner, starting to coach other players;
At 25 years old, I was a husband, grinder, poker coach and entrepreneur;
At 26 years old, I was a husband, father, grinder, poker coach and entrepreneur;
At 27 years old, I was a husband, father of 2 children, owner of a multi million dollar poker business, and high stakes regular.

Looking back at this very recent history, it's pretty crazy how the events just kept piling up. And they were not just minor events, everytime it was something that changed my life in some significant way.

And that was amazing for me. I love challenges. I live for the next challenge, almost literally. All these events forced me to grow; to mature; to become a better person. I'm glad and happy that all these wonderful things have happened in my life.

Now, at 28 years old, seems like I'm living a unique chapter of my life. After these very busy years, which sort of 'simply happened', I feel like I can deliberately pick something to keep me busy, rather than attending to a demand from all my life changing events.

One thing I'm very interested at in this new phase of my life is on other people.

Ever since I can remember, I've always been someone extremely independent, activity oriented and individualist. Most of my time was spent pursuing things I found interesting and relevant - or necessary - by myself, in my room or my office. I've always had friends and a normal social life, so it wasn't about having people around. My genetics and my circumstances just seemed to always push me in a direction of mostly self-centered activities.

Poker was the pinnacle of that phenomena. For years, my most frequent company was the solver :D second place would probably be spreadsheets. What tipped the balance a bit to the other side was my business. I had no choice other than to interact with multiple people; I was forced to learn how to manage a team; had to learn how to deal with the desires, opinions and visions of a completely different person than me, that happens to be my business partner (shoutout to @zinhao) ; amongst many other things.

At this point in my life, I'm a bit tired of the solver and spreadsheet grind. I still do it because I must stay sharp to teach my students, but I'm pretty good at that already. Modesty aside, If I'm not the best NLHE coach in the world, I must be there at the top. Obviously I can't know that objectively, but I'm proud of how much I know and how much value I'm able to generate to my students. My company success - even though achieved through a multitude of skills of many different people other than myself - atests to that claim.

It's time for a new challenge.

And It turns out that the stars have aligned in a way to produce a very pertinent timing for me to pursue this new challenge. What I want at the moment is to interact with people; learn about human behaviour; understand what motivates people to do what they do; improve my capacity to transmit my ideas and knowledge; become a better communicator.

Such activites are perfectly aligned with one of my most important roles in my company right now - to be the head of Marketing. The timing was made even more perfect given how we are rebranding at the moment. BrPC leaves the scene and opens up space for "METAGAME".

Then I was thinking (and studying): what makes up good marketing? So many strategies out there in this digital world nowadays. Eventually, I decided to go with a very simple one, containing only 2 elements:

1) Generate value to your community;

2) Show your work;

My goal with this thread is to make it the most informative cash game thread of all time. The amount of information and insights I will post here will be unprecedent.

I will also use it for what a Poker Journal is about: to log a goal or one's progress. Except that this time, I won't focus solely on myself. I will show students progress, my company progress as a whole, what we have to offer to the poker industry, and why not some of my own in the mean time.

I also want it to be a public space where you can ask any question whatsoever. And I will answer every single one of them.

I could have done this elsewhere, but Run it Once feels like my home. This is where my journey began. I want to keep writing it here!

Let's get started!