Once he was 18, he created an account online and started playing freerolls. The Hubble Freeroll on PokerStars was where he got things started, playing it regularly.

It was still just a hobby. After finishing high school, Aldemir moved to Cottbus, a small city next to Berlin, to study business administration. One of the guys he met at university was a professional poker player.

The concept of playing poker for your income was new to Aldemir, but it sparked some interest. He started playing more regularly and started dipping his toes in games with a bit higher buy-in.

His first recorded cash in a tournament is from There he came in contact with another player in a similar situation. His name? Rainer Kempe.

Koray also met Julian Thomas and Fedor Holz, all of them high rollers these days but playing mid stakes selling shares at the time. Koray got into poker more and more, allocating more and more time to the game he was getting really fond of.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened, till Koray found himself banned the next day. Only a couple of hours later I thought of the guy from the day before.

Koray emailed with PokerStars and they asked him about his relationship with the gentleman who had used his computer. They told him at one point they would reopen him, but in the end, the ban wasn't lifted.

Eventually, some months ago, Koray got more known in the world of poker and got his account back. Still, he looks back on it in full of indignation.

After I was banned I took a break for a while. Eventually, I started playing on other sites. Soon after, Koray moved to Vienna, Austria.

Today, Austria is the gathering place for German poker professionals, but Aldemir moved there for a different reason: to study psychology. With the move to Vienna, Aldemir got more invested in poker.

Soon enough, it consumed most of his time and his studies slowly ended up on the back burner. At first, I was playing everything, but from my time in Cottbus on when I got serious with the game, I solely played tournaments.

And I was beating them so I slowly increased buy-ins. All still low stakes players, he and his friends formed a Skype group to discuss poker and other things.

In time, the other members of the group would grow out to be pretty successful in their own right. The fact that they were sharing tactics and strategy greatly improved their odds of becoming successful, but for all of the friends to grow out to be the elite of the poker world was still an unlikely scenario according to Aldemir.

The fact that Holz got successful a bit earlier might have improved the group as a whole. They could ask him for advice on hands, which got them all more insights.

Holz, though, abruptly announced his retirement in the middle of Meanwhile, Aldemir moved up in stakes. It wasn't however, until last summer that he made a huge jump in buy-in level.

I had some deep runs, but never anything serious. But last year, that all changed. Chris Ferguson. Daniel Negreanu. Dominik Nitsche. Doyle Brunson.

Eric Seidel. Fedor Holz. Freddy Deeb. George Danzer. Gus Hansen. Jamie Gold. Jan-Peter Jachtmann. Joe Hachem.

John Juanda. Johnny Chan. Kara Scott. Katja Thater. Liv Boeree. Michael Mizrachi. Mike Matusow. Mike Sexton. Natalie Hof.

Ole Schemion. Patrik Antonius. Phil Galfond. Phil Hellmuth. Phil Ivey. Sandra Naujoks. Scotty Nyugen. Tom Dwan. Tony G.

Vanessa Rousso. Viktor Blom. Antonio Estefandiari. Christoph Vogelsang. Daniel Coleman. Fabian Quoss.

Hossein Ensan. Jan Heitmann.