After the highly publicized August TLB race on Stars, pretty much everyone who follows online poker has heard the name JJProdigy. But where did he come from? Out of the blue one day, he won the Triple Crown. Then he was ranked on PocketFives.com. And then he went on a heater in August and beat out the best players on the net to win the heralded TLB crown and an extra $5k courtesy of nip/tuck.

The truth is if you hadn’t heard of him before August, it’s because he was fairly new on the scene. Josh, a senior at the University of Southern California, only started playing online about a year ago. Before that, the only poker he really played was in home games with buy ins ranging from $5 to $50. “Seeing everything on ESPN inspired me to play,” he said, echoing the sentiments of so many of today’s players.

Someone gave Josh $100 to start playing on PartyPoker in Fall 2004, and he began playing the $25 max NL games, and he built his bankroll up to about $2k. “I have no idea how,” he said in retrospect, “I was the biggest fish. He moved on to the $200 max game, and his bankroll fluctuated for a while between $2k and $5k. Then he won an entrant into a 2 table Step 5, which he won for $9k. A few days later, in January 2005, he got 6th in the $200k guaranteed for just over $10k.

Following these big wins, he worked his bankroll up to $30k, playing sit-n-go’s and, as he put it, “donating in bit MTT’s.” “But then,” he told me, “I got fascinated with limit, even though I never played it in my life. So I compiled a ‘fish list’ and decided to follow those players wherever they went. Basically, I donated about $30k in the 30/60 game.”

So after about five months of playing 30/60, Josh was more or less back where he started before his big wins, and on June 16th, his bankroll was all the way down to $3866.79. That was its low point.

In the three months since, he has refocused on MTT’s, completely changing his strategy on a regular basis in search of the perfect style. “I really can’t explain it,” he said, “but things just started to click, and I felt comfortable for the first time ever.” Now, only a few months later, his bankroll is well into the six digits.

Josh now plays at least a couple tournaments every day, although during that August TLB race, he was playing as many as 250 a week! He’s slowed down since, and he prefers not to force himself to play if he’s not feeling into it. He does pretty much always play the Stars 150’s and the daily “Super” tournaments on Party. Also on Sunday, “all of them are musts,” he told me.

When he’s not playing multis, he spends his online poker time playing $200 and $500 turbo sit-n-go’s on Stars and the Step 5’s and mini-step 5’s on Party. He plays a fair amount of $10-20 NL and some $50-100 and $100-200 limit. Recently, he’s been trying to play some $30/60 Omaha 8/b. Out of all of this, sit-n-go’s are the only thing he plays every day.

When I asked him about what it meant to him to win the August TLB, he said, “it was obviously huge for me to win that….and I proved to myself that I could match my goals with results. It definitely came to be a huge boost.” Clearly, in addition, it has vaulted his name up to being one of the most respected and feared in the world of online poker.

His goal now is simple (but not easy by any means): he wants to be the best MTT player on the net. And how does he plan to get there? “You have to be fearless and make bold, unexpected plays,” he explained. “You might look foolish at times, but it’s a risk worth taking.”

He highly respects the play of colson10, Riverloser, and sirio11, finding them to be the toughest MTT players on the net. “They are just pure beasts,” he proclaimed. But he also has unending respect and appreciation for a certain few other players, who have stood by his side during the long and difficult process of becoming a winning player. A player named bads33d has taught him more than anyone else about the game, and he also has learned a great deal from and been helped by Ian J, apathy, and iMsoLucky0. He feels Ian J, in particular, has played a huge role in shaping his current MTT style. Josh talks to many people now, but those are the people who have stayed with him through the bad times, never losing faith in his ability.

Now Josh spends most of his time playing on Stars and Party. He feels they’re the best sites by far, due to their large tournament selections and user-friendly interfaces. While he plays on other sites, he doesn’t feel that any of them come close to the quality of his top two.

Josh’s parting words of advice to the up-and-comers were, “no matter how frustrated you get, stick with it. Once you’ve got the mental part down, you are halfway there.” Coming from a player who has, in 3 months, made the transformation from being more or less a break-even player to one of the top tournament specialists on the net, it makes sense. With passion, focus, perseverance, and mental toughness, JJProdigy is achieving his goals.