Things you might not know:
Matt "Hoss_TBF" Hawrilenko is a long time online limit games specialist.- Hawrilenko attended Princeton studying public policy.
- Hawrilenko discovered poker in 2003 as a 21 year-old interning in Washington, D.C.
- Hawrilenko deposited $100 and never looked back.
- Hawrilenko worked for a couple of years as an options trader with Susquehanna International.
- Hawrilenko met Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman on his first trip to Vegas, who taught him everything he knows giving him a very math based foundation for his game.
- Hawrilenko became a full time player within two years.
- Hawrilenko cashed four times in in his first WSOP year of 2005.
- Hawrilenko cashed six times in 2009, the year he won his WSOP bracelet.
- Hawrilenko holds a black belt in Kung Fu.
- Hawrilenko trained for a marathon with his wife, a former all-American runner in college.
- Hawrilenko also took jiujitsu lessons with Terrance Chan in Vegas.
- Hawrilenko helps as a wrestling trainer for his old high school team.
“A classroom at Princeton can be pretty humbling, and no matter how well I thought I argued a paper, I was constantly being shown strong counter-arguments, always having to challenge my preconceptions and reformulate better arguments,” Hawrilenko says. “This is an invaluable skill in poker. … When you give your opponents the benefit of the doubt and try to understand what they were trying to accomplish — regardless of whether their play actually worked — you start to learn from every hand you play, just like you learn from the guy across the room in precept.”
Hawrilenko two part interview:
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