Richard Brodie plays online at Full Tilt Poker.

Although Richard played kitchen-table poker with Bill Gates and his other friends from Microsoft back in the day, he never took the game seriously until the summer of 2003 when he saw his friend Andy Bloch make two World Poker Tour final tables on TV. Richard immediately started playing $10-$30 tournaments online, carefully tracking his results, until he was convinced he knew enough to be a winning player and had the stats to prove it.

With five weeks of poker experience and 123 online tournaments under his belt, Richard started playing live. In his third outing, Richard finished second in the $1,000 No-Limit Hold 'em event at the Festa al Lago, knocking out world champion Scotty Nguyen in the process. Richard was hooked!

Richard's site, Lion Tales, chronicles his major tournament career, including five cashes in the World Poker Tour, one at the 2004 World Series of Poker, and most recently, three televised final tables in season two of the Ultimate Poker Challenge. He's the author of two bestselling books, a Harvard dropout, and the original programmer of Microsoft Word.

Richard likes to talk and joke around while he plays, and above all, he likes to have fun. "After all," he says, "It's a game."

If you want to learn more about Richard, join him at the table on FullTiltPoker.com.