Yes, Ike originally tried to play chess competitively, but it wasnt for him. Then he switched over to Magic, and the following leap to poker was much more fluid. The two biggest feeder games into poker are MTG and Starcraft.

The small rebuys were a lot of fun back then. I was always a cash game player so I never had the big rushes of going deep in them early in my career, but I had friends who built their bankrolls on tournaments like the ones you final tabled.

Do you ever twitch? It seems like the subscriber system on twitch can be incredibly profitable. Or did you find for your specific content that youtube was more profitable?