Brad Meador’s in luck. The virtual dealer at Eurobetpoker.com has just dealt him a jack and an ace of hearts. A few seconds and clicks of the mouse later, he wins the $62 pot.
Poker — Texas Hold’em, to be precise — is his game, and he nets an average of $100 to $120 an hour at it.
“As a consultant — a job that required frequent travel to Austin — I made about that much,” Meador says.
Sitting at his desk in a small, stuffy office in a gritty corner of San Francisco’s South of Market district, Meador is nonchalant about the win. It’s just another Wednesday morning at ClearContext, a software start-up that’s keeping the lights on and the servers running with the aid of its founders’ online poker winnings.
Meador, who is head of operations at ClearContext, and Deva Hazarika, the chief executive officer, have been playing poker in lieu of collecting paychecks for the past year while working to get their three-person company off the ground. After logging 50 or more hours a week at the office, each one spends another 10 to 15 hours, usually on weekends and evenings, at their favorite poker sites — mainly Partypoker.com, Ultimatebet.com and Pokerstars.
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