Foreword: Hunter Bick

YOU HAD ME AT METALLICA, by Hunter Bick

Metallica is one of my favorite bands; they have been for 15 years. For the unfamiliar, they’ve been around since 1981 and are generally considered to be the most musically talented and technically proficient of all hard rock and metal groups. They inspire tremendous fan loyalty by literally never playing a bad or even repetitive concert. Their music is intense, determined, ambitious, unrelenting, and often foreboding in subject matter, but they also have their softer moments and have never been afraid to experiment by taking it in different directions.

I first heard them when I was 14 in a friend’s car. He had the Black Album playing. When I heard that thunderous voice of James Hetfield’s booming out about nightmares, forsakenness, and tragic irony, combined with Kirk Hammett’s brilliant guitar work, I was hooked. Shortly thereafter, I discovered their earlier albums to be even darker, scarier, and faster, and Metallica became my go-to music for anything that required extra energy, focus or determination.

I admire Metallica’s work ethic as much as the music they create, and it is a part of what makes them so incredible. They have a fanatical attention to detail. Furthermore, their dedication to their music and their fans is nearly unsurpassed.

Consider this example: In 1992, James Hetfield suffered third-degree burns up and down his left side after a pyrotechnics accident during a show. Just two weeks later, he was back on stage singing with a full-arm cast and undoubtedly still in pain, while his guitar tech handled his guitar role.

I recently got to see Metallica play in Charlotte. The set was almost all material off their new album plus a lot of their early work — songs you’d probably never expect to hear live. This was their heaviest and fastest material, and they brought it 100 percent for almost three hours, then played the “Seek and Destroy” encore with all the house lights on. They were relentless, and we left the show exhausted.

How does Metallica relate to Paul Hoppe? I’ll explain.

In January, Paul and I discussed his becoming a coach at DragTheBar.com, the poker-training site I co-founded. The site had only been open for two months, and quite frankly Limit Hold’em was not even on the radar. (Look no further than our name: There’s obviously no bar to drag when you bet and raise in a Limit game; you just click a button.)

But I ended up talking to Paul for a couple hours. He compelled me to look at his previous coaching videos, which were brilliant.

From the outset, Paul’s drive to become a better player and coach at every opportunity was very evident. He took me through his lofty goals as a coach, player and author, and I found it impossible to say no to a person with the kind of determination and drive that Paul has.

One of the first things he told me was, “I’d really like to be able to manage the direction of the Limit content and help with hiring future Limit coaches. Would that be a possibility?” I’d never had a request remotely like this one, and his tone was absolutely serious.

While fist pumping, I quickly replied, “Absolutely.” He had a vision and wanted to be a part of creating something special, and I knew right away he’d be a big asset.  I hired him on the spot.

A couple weeks later we were chatting on Skype. I knew Paul played music seriously, and I’d been looking forward to talking about it with him. I was telling him about some really good concert recordings I’d come across and said I could send them his way. I started listing them and the second was Metallica. “You can stop right there,” he interrupted. “You had me at Metallica.” That line stuck with me, and I figured we were going to get along pretty well.

Fast-forward to three months after I’d hired Paul, by which point he’d already released nearly 50 videos on DragTheBar. Fifty. Five-Zero. For those unfamiliar with online poker coaching, the standard number of videos for that time period would be around six.

In fact, Paul made a video every single day of his famous 2010 Grind-a-thon, a grueling challenge he put himself through where he played 80,000 hands in 28 days, forbade himself from leaving his apartment building in New York, and leveraged the publicity to raise money for charity. (I sent him some good grinding music that hopefully kept him company.) Paul recorded these videos at no monetary benefit to himself, but simply to help the site and give our members some bonus content.

Soon after Paul joined our site, Limit Hold’em was our second most-popular forum, despite it having zero posts before Paul came on board. Now we’ve added a second Limit coach, and I consider Limit to be a real strength of ours.

I was recently watching one of Paul’s videos and thinking of his line, “You had me at Metallica.” It was then that it dawned on me: Paul is Metallica.

A serious intensity underscores everything Paul does. In fact, every trait that distinguishes Metallica also distinguishes Paul: the work ethic, the ambition, the drive to be the best, the confidence to explore new projects outside a comfort zone, the complete and total devotion to a task — they all line up.

When you watch Paul’s videos, you see a never-ending attention to detail in his approach to the game. (Specifically, you should watch the ones where he talks about “combinatoric analysis.”) His intensity in improving his game and his students’ games is unmatched.

No matter how good you are, you can always get better at poker. Paul understands that as well as anyone, and his drive is evident to everyone who knows him.

Hunter “BeachJustice” Bick is co-CEO of the poker instruction site, DragTheBar.com. Once a corporate banker, he’s been a successful coach and No-Limit mid-stakes pro since 2007.