In a recent conversation with my sponsor, 888.com, they asked how I got my start in poker. While telling my story, I realized it might be interesting for my loyal blog readers too.

It all started with my cousin Steve "Lucky" Liu, who lives in the U.K.

Our fathers came here from Hong Kong in the early '60s. My father choose Holland as his new home and Lucky's dad stayed in the U.K. (Lucky's mother is my father's younger sister; that's how we're related.) When I was a kid I sometimes spent my holidays with Lucky in the U.K.

We were in contact, but not on a daily basis, until one day in 1998 when he suddenly called me: "Hey Steve! I'm in the Netherlands tomorrow." Which was obviously a big surprise for me.

Of course I picked him up from the airport. He came over with a whole bunch of friends. While we were having dinner I asked him the reason for his visit, and he told me he was here to play poker at the Master Classics of Poker.

I had never heard of Hold'em poker before and wasn't really interested at the time. After a couple of days he won the main event: a tournament with a 5,000 Dutch guilder buy-in (roughly equivalent to $3,500), one of the biggest in Europe at the time.

I was shocked he could have won so much money playing a GAME.

Steve and his poker mentor, Steven "Lucky" Liu, at the 2004 WSOP in Vegas.

In 2000 Lucky returned and again won the same event for a neat $134,000. Two years later he returned again and finished second in the €500 buy-in Pot-Limit Omaha event. (The guilder was replaced by the euro in 2002.)

I occasionally played table games in those days. When Lucky saw me playing table games he said to me, "Why are you throwing away all that money? If you quit playing table games, I will teach you how to play poker."

So in 2003 I downloaded one of the first online rooms and started playing for play money. I played whenever I had some spare time.

One of my funny hands from those days: I held a pair of fours and the board showed 7788K and I went berserk, because I didn't understand the concept of a counterfeited pair.

In desperation I made an international phone call to Lucky to tell him the software was rigged. He laughed for about 10 minutes and explained to me what the actual problem was.

The problem with me being "play-money broke" was in the early days of online poker you had to send an e-mail for some more play money; there was no auto-refill button or anything like that.

From play money online to Daniel Negreanu's left at the WSOP: Truly living the dream.

In the summer of 2003 I opened an account at PokerStars, which was one of the first sites to spread multi-table tournaments. In that same year I went to visit Lucky in the U.K. for a few months and to attend a poker bootcamp.

I had some basic card sense from Five-Card Draw and Seven-Card Stud, but in these months Lucky really showed me the ins and outs of all the popular poker variants.

After two months I went back home to the Netherlands. I played the Master Classics myself and I immediately finished 13th in the Limit Hold'em event. That was the moment I knew this was more than just a game.

In 2004 I started playing more seriously online, for real money: 25¢/50¢ Limit Hold'em and small-buy-in tournaments. Bit by bit I transformed into a tournament player.

That year I won my first WSOP entry. That was the first time I ever set foot in Vegas. I knew it wouldn't be my last time there. Weeks after I returned I won a big "Sunday event" on a very popular room and I won the TLB as well.

In October of that same year I won the TLB of that site three times in a row without winning the big Sunday event. Only two players in the history of online poker have won the TLB three consecutive times: Teecoy and "S18" (yours truly).

First taste of real WPT success: a second-place finish at the Festa Del Lago in 2006.

Late in 2004 and throughout 2005 I played a lot of tournaments, with great results. I once won a $10 re-buy tournament three times in one day on the same site; every tournament had at least 500 players and the largest even over 1,000.

There were weeks when I won $100 re-buys and $150 freezeouts plus 15 or 20 smaller tournaments. So I must have been doing something right. I enjoyed the game immensely. I just loved it - even when I lost.

But not until 2006 did I start to go pro. That year I got close in a WPT tournament and won a side event at the Bellagio.

I could never have imagined I was going to "play" to make ends meet. I do realize I'm living a dream, but I hope the dream doesn't end for a while at least.

There are a lot of tournaments on my wish list. I hope I'm fortunate enough to win a bracelet this year.

-- Steve (SteveWong@888.com)

More blogs from Steve Wong:

• Traveling Around the Globe Part 3
• Traveling Around the Globe Part 2
  
• Traveling Around the Globe Part 1