Editor's Note: This is part II of III in my introduction story. Check out part I here.

What other sites offer bonuses? All of them? Oh wow! Over the next few months, I would sign up for accounts at sites such as Empire Poker, PokerRoom, Ultimate Bet, Absolute Poker, PokerStars, Interpoker, Poker Plex and Pacific Poker – basically any site that was on BonusWhores or that I saw advertised on Twoplustwo or Cardplayer. By the middle of 2004, my quickly expanding poker room portfolio was now at 20 or 25 rooms and I was clearing as many sign-up and reload bonuses as I could. On the forums, a large group of us were now quickly informing each other about the latest and greatest sites and bonuses we were discovering. Jek was even calling me a “bonus whoring machine,“ surpassing what he even accomplished as a “bonuswhore” (granted he was still and always has been a better player than me). I was doing all this while working a full time office job and going to school for 6-10 hours a week.

By the fall of 2004, I was still heavily whoring and even went back to do some casino bonuses that I missed the first time along. I was a heavy contributor to the BonusWhores forums and religiously lurked at 2+2, mostly at the appropriately named “Zoo.” I also bought and read other highly acclaimed poker books -- Hold’em Poker for Advanced Players, Winning Low Limit Hold’em and Theory of Poker, to name a few. BonusWhores.com had also become a borderline online poker phenomenon. Virtually any good online poker player, especially those that played at the smaller stakes, seemed as though they had either heard of the site or used it.

In the fall of 2004, Jek posted about a part time job opening at BonusWhores, which essentially included everything he didn’t want to do anymore, most of which was content related. I inquired about the job because my wife was dragging me back home to South Dakota (yes, South in the middle of f**king nowhere Dakota) and that I needed to have a backup plan once we moved (the original naïve plan of mine was to concentrate on playing poker and bonus whoring full time). After being surprised that I was interested in the job, Jek realized the potential of adding somebody who he knew and trusted very well and one that knew a thing or two about bonus whoring and online poker.

So I started working for BonusWhores full time as the #3 man at the company (others had come and went). I started working full time, all while playing as much poker as I could and holding down my original full time job. I don’t know how the hell I did it, quite honestly. I basically didn’t sleep, I guess. I did this for about 2 or 3 months, quit school after the fall semester and finally quit my first full time job in February of 2005. That spring, I moved back home and joined the BW offices.

Once I arrived, my job was heavily expanded due, I was told, to the quality and quantity of work that I had been doing. Specifically, I had created a guide to Bonus Whoring and made other significant contributions to the content of the site in my first few months on the job. The site was also expanding quickly by offering even more reviews of online poker rooms. Times were good.

By the fall of 2006, BonusWhores will still going strong despite a gradual deterioration of the quality of bonuses in the industry. We still provided a product that was not only a great bonus guide but a great guide for online poker in general. There just weren’t many places doing objective, thoughtful, in-depth analysis like we were.

The next six months was a difficult time for the industry and myself. In October, the United States Congress passed the UIGEA, an attempt to make online gambling illegal in the USA. Even though I and others in the industry -- and for that matter, many independent lawyers -- believe that online poker is still not illegal, many poker sites, especially the publicly traded companies, reacted harshly to the new law. Within a couple months, many poker sites such as Paradise Poker, Party Poker, Pacific Poker, and Everest Poker along with poker networks such as iPoker, Ongame, Cryptologic and Boss Media had decided to leave the USA market. Maybe only 1/3 of the poker sites that existed at the time decided to stay open to USA players. Many of those sites thrived — Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker jumped up ahead of everybody and eventually claimed the #1 and #2 spots. Ultimate Bet, Absolute and Cake Poker also saw great growth.

A couple months after UIGEA, Jek got a good deal to sell the site to another affiliate. I think UIGEA played a part in Jek wanting to sell, but he also had grown very tired of some of the more negative parts of the industry that when a fair deal came along, he felt he had to take it. Plus he wanted to pursue other interests. Personally, I was devastated. Not only because I thoroughly enjoyed my job and the benefits it provided (trips to Vegas, good salary, flexible hours, working with good friends) but I thought we had tons more to accomplish and do. Plus, for over two years, I lived and breathed the site and poker.

In January 2007, we turned over the reins of the site. After the initial shock wore off, I became more and more at peace with my world post-BW. My wife and I had our first child, a girl, in the middle of the turmoil, which was a few weeks before Christmas. I was using my free time to spend time with my family and my young baby. I was afforded this luxury due to the success of my poker playing and the site, not to mention that I have always been really good with money, although some of my friends affectionately call me a “nit.”

Another curveball was thrown my way in late January of that year when the new owners realized that maybe there was more complexity to the content-heavy BW than originally thought. To make a long story short (yeah, that isn’t consistent with the rest of this post) I was back at BW less than a month after leaving. I would be back for an unknown, indefinite period of time.

Stay tuned for Part III next week.