blonde poker forum

I just wanted to share my experience just in case it can be useful to somebody.

The title was pretty selfexplainatory but...again: It has been one whole year since I stopped playing poker for good and I am a lot happier now.

Brief introduction:
I started playing online poker when I was 17 in 2006 after i finished school. Perhaps the fact that I moved to another country for Uni did not help the cause of me getting super addicted to the game. I didnt have a clue of how to play properly but i guess that everyone was so bad in those days that I inevitably started to make money two tabling NL50 with a 200 euro BR. Back then I thought that by buying in short it was "safer" to play. After loosing my first 100 euros... lucky for me I met this guy in my class in Germany that had been playing poker for a year or so. He gave me an Excel table for shortstacking. It was the most primitive thing ever... no HUD no anything... just PFR to 2,5....3bet All In for 20bb and Raise over limpers to 4x = 1x for every limper followed by bet bet bet. I guess I was very lucky to start in those days and be able to build up a roll. The fact is that maybe I wasnt so lucky after all! I spent 2006-2008 SUPERHOOKED. I NEVER went to class and just played online all day and went out from wednesday to saturday every night. Obviously ze Dschermens failed me quite often and I felt a little bit sad because of that. everyone in my family has at least a PhD and i was failing 40% of my modules on my first year... I was really embarrassed but I didnt have the guts to tell my parents about poker... So as time went by... by the end of 2008 i had manage to finish my 3rd semester and decided to go on ERASMUS to get easy credits... that was obviously the worst thing for my addiction... less uni and more alcohol meant... 3x poker and 0x Uni. Around that time I was playing every single NL100/NL200 on Unibet, FTP and all of the iPoker sites. I would literally play iPoker all day and FTP all night. Because I knew some frieds that were getting massive value out of MTTs... i had the brilliant idea of talking my superintelligent brother into playing for me/with me... I was sure he was gonna make money....as he is extremely intelligent and likes all kinds of brainteasers... But to stay focused: Living alone... on ERASMUS year... drinking partying and playing poker all day...was definitely not a good strategy for success somehow... By that time... I must have been making around...4k euros a moth = another 2...3k rakeback... which was insane money at that time...considering my parents were still sending me the 700 euro allowance for uni while I was losing/winning 1k on a daily basis. I sarted to feel guilty for some reason... but all of those feeling went out the window every night i went out and feeling like the king of the world because i was "so rich"... I started to have these massive mood swings... as I said...i would destroy something because i was losing 1k... the next day i was buying drinks for everyone because i had won 1k...etc etc etc... meanwhile my brother was doing great with MTTs and he was still in school... looked promissing! after 6 months playing he binked a 4k 2nd place on stars...and... as everyone had expected... he got hooked too. He was playing under with my accounts (unfair...i know) and one day he decided to create his own account on FTP...not thinking about the possibility of my father finding out. OBVIOUSLY he found out when checking out the credit card statements...and as soon as he read "POKER"... that was it... the madness began! they were so worried about him... and he didnt even say anything about me and stayed really cool... I felt as sad as i have ever felt... he was the best student in his class and he relaxed a little bit... just enough not to get the scholarship he wanted for uni... I had to come forward and tell my parents what was going on. Imagine their faces of disappointment and surprise when I explained what was going on... Before saying anything about the money we had made... i tried to explain how poker worked and my father (he is an economist like me) understood it... and seemed to respect the game... but my mother went nuts (she is a psychiatrist). We had this huuuuuuge argument and I was way to cocky... I still regret that conversation and everything I said. I started to brag about how I was playing with a 500 BI liquid rule on every site and how I had made around 70k in 2 years playing the game... they didnt believe it. I showed them my balance. they did believe it. (Yes... i Kepts 70k euros on various sites and paypal etc... I never spent a dime). 2 days after our conversation with our parents... my brother took down the one of the took down one of the FT series event  for 110k dollars. The next day we were so high on poker and ego that we went out and bought a brand new Golf GTI for 21k euros. We were feeling so confident and we thought that we knew EVERYTHING better than enyone... that we went for the cheapest insurance coverage possible because we KNEW that Insurance was EV-... we drove home and my parent were like "are you kidding!?" they didnt say much and we lectured them for maybe...2 hours about how smart we were and how everyone on the net was stupid. They didnt seem to be very impressed.

 I think it was 4 or 5 days later we were driving home from the cinema when a Fox or a very strange dog crossed the road  in front of us... making me lose control and crash the back of our car into a tree. We were not injured or anything... since we were driving on a small road to access the motorway...doing maybe 65-70 kmh... but the car was WRECKED... the back  wheels and the "axis"? (I dont know how its called... it was destroyed...total wreck. We had to take a taxi home and 2 days later they called us from the VW house...saying there was no point in repairing the car... that we could sell the parts for 2k and that was it....  Tht was our first 30k bad beat/stupid move. We were so embarrassed we went to the dealership the next day and bought the same car again. this time, we had to pay 2k insurance... So... summing up...after 3 years of poker... i was hooked as hell... i had gotten my little brother hooked too.... uni wasnt going well.. my brother didnt get his grant... and we were stuck 62k on cars which was 40% of our bankroll. Obviously enough we went on a terrible downswing that lasted for 2 month but felt like a decade... I was dating a girl and she was a bitch and made my life even more misserable...basically... I had a brand new GTI and 60-70k on my bank account and I felt like crap.
Eventually everything went back to normal... my brother finaled tabled the sunday million for 35k and we were back in business... i started playing 2/4  and 3/6 and  I was being more responsible with uni and life in general.
However my brother was not doing well on his first year of uni... he only passed 1/9 modules of electrical engineering... We were both living in germany but 300km away form each other... and that feeling of guilt was coming back... Instead of dealing with it I started to play even more and higher...hoping that more money would make me feel better but it didnt. At this point I had completely lost any kind of measure for money... I didnt even spend much... i just wanted to have more and more and more and get really annoyed every time i lost a bit. My brother was doing well but one day we were caught by PS sharing accounts... since we logged in simultaneously from 2 different adresses multiple times... played same tourneys...etc... basically they banned us... and somehow they accepted to give us our money back (thumbs up PS) 2010 was shit and people seemed to play better.... an issue that we had NEVER ever  even considered! We had 4 break even months... getting saved by rakeback and stuff... but it was starting to look  very bad... we got coaching and stuff.. and eventually I started to win at NL200 ... bacause i wasnt able to beat 600 anymore... that was really frustrating. after 4 and a half years I finished my degree but my brother wasnt doing so well himself... he started to play all of the EPTs in germany and everything that we won... we lost in EPT buyins...so basically we were spending all of our money surviving. He managed to cash in a couple of sideevents but shortstacking didnt work anymore... e5/6 playesr in every table were solid (more or less)... and tourneys were so massive that the variance was huuuuuuuge... by 2011 we were breakeven players and despite that.... We decided that PLO was supereasy and everyone was a donk.... so we started to play cash there. Both of us. Yes, you guessed it! on the first month we dropped over 10k Playing PLO 200 and 400... which was very nice!
2011 was sucking hard and I decided to quit... I had found a masters that i liked in nottingham and I was really hating poker. I calculated how  much we would get per year if we were to invest all of our money... and I unilaterally decided to do it (every account was to my name). I waited until I got accepted into Nottingham Uni... and I withdrew everything from all of our accounts.... needless to say... my brother was superpissed off... and he didnt speak to me in...3 months i think... It was fucking disgusting.... it felt as if i was quitting heroin or something and my brother was gambling with his last 2-3 k i think...

that was the ebst decision I have ever made. when I was about to leave for nottingham in mid august (12 months ago... thats what I celebrate) I got a call from my brother ... we talked for hours and he told me he was fed up too.... poker had taken so much from us dn he understood that it didnt make any sense for US to go on like that. He had qualified for the EPT barcelona... so he promised to stop after that.  He sent me all of his money too for me to put it into the same account that I was going to invest with a financial advisor friends with my father. He came to nottingham to help me move and we suddenly felt so so so happy... he went back to spain with my parents for his last month of vacation... and played the EPT ME... he cashed that... AND won the 3k HU sideevent.... I had explicitely told him that I didnt want to take 50% of anyone anymore...ever... but he still sent me half of those winnings...

Now its one year later... I am about to finish my masters (apparently i am still lazy but I am back to doing sports... and playing music ...things that I used to love but i had given up because of poker). My brother has passed every single exam this year and he is now finished with his second year of engineering. I met an incredible woman here in nottingham and everything is going great.... I am 10 times happier with my parent allowance and the extra money that we both get from our "investment" that pays us 450 euros a month each... my parents seem happy too... and the other day I played the 200 deepstack forand I actually enjoyed it.... I somehow played better than I used to!... everyone on my table was superfriendly... adn despite being card dead for 5 hours.... I really enjoyed myself... I didnt even care when I got sucked out on 3 times in a row.... and one guy was taking all the chips with 76s vs AKsame suit AIP from another guy.... or when the same guy coolered an asian man AA vs KK AIP... or when that same guy rived a K when I shoved QQ on his AK... I went out of DTD...feeling great and went to bed without thinking about the hands... money...etc...

I think I can enjoy poker from time to time... because its a heck of a game! but I dont think I am the kind of person that can do it professionaly... I have learnt a lot but I think everyone playing poker should take like a week of from time to time... and think about the pros and cons... and about how your personality adapts to the game/lifestyle.

I dont mean to lecture anyone, but I think it is important for the poker community to have people talking about their experiences and so on. there are a couple of diaries here and ther eon this forum... and they all are very good and an example of how to approach the game... but I wanted to share the other side of the story... sometimes it is not about the money or the game anymore... its abour your own personality and how you can cope with certain things.

Oh yes, I got a job in the Czech republic working for the volkswagen group (lol) as a financial risk analyst.... I am a little bit scared because I ahve never worked before... but guess how I got the job!?? On my interview I somehow used the example of poker when making EV=?- decisions... and I think it really impresesed the guy that was interviewing me.. hehe.

Anyway. I wish the story was helpful to someone... if not.. at least entretaining...!

wish you all good luck and safe playing!

One of my favourite ever posts on this forum. A+, thanks for sharing.

thanks

lovely post

agree with the feeling that sometimes poker/gambling for a living seems a little bit pointless in the scheme of things

oh, not that it matters much but the GTI´sussed to be 31k... just in case someone was thinking about going to Germany to get one for 21k! :D

Interesting story, pretty sick life. Love degen stories! So wish i was playig back in 2006 for a living. GL with the job!

Very good post, thanks for your honesty and taking the time to share it. I hope you go on enjoying poker socially and wish you all the best in your new job.

Brilliant post. You still around in Notts? Would be cool to meet.

I really enjoyed that post
Thank you so much for sharing the story with us good luck In the job and the future.

Great post. Best of luck in you new job and of course the rest of your life. Have a happy one.

He's done all his degen stuff now, don't drag him back!

Glad to see you got out whilst you still had money to invest. Good  luck with your new job. Very interesting post.

That's a great story, amazing post and quite inspiring. I'm sat in the car and when I'm at home I'll probably post more; however so many points you've made that will resonate with different people, in different ways. Thanks for sharing.

I call.

I am going to be bluffing a few of you a bit more in future

I enjoyed reading that! very brave to post with such openness and i think many people will take a lot from reading it.

are you out of interest currently going one year without proper use of paragraphs? :-)

If it is a bluff, I admire his consistency...

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=51305.msg1579564#msg1579564 (http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=51305.msg1579564#msg1579564)

rest

Yeh, currently living in Beeston near Uni... very busy with my Masters dissertation, tho. I MIGHT pop by to play the 500... but it depends on how the work is going. And I think we played 2/5 at DTD once... I have only played a couple of times there...mainly PLO, but I am almost certain we played NL because I remember a 300 quid bullet of yours  on the river being called by a big guy with 3rd pair that seemed to be friends with you... because busting your ***** for that seemed to become the topic for the rest of the night... haha.

If I don't make it to the 500 I will definitely come and play some cash after I submit in Sept!

gl

I am glad that everyone is enjoying my post. I just wanted to share my experience with others... because I feel that back when I was playing... all I ever heard was stories of how kids in my age from my city had started playing in 2003 and had opened up a coaching site in spanish and had a milli each.... nobody ever told a bad story about poker... and it seems to me that there are a lot of them... we just don't get to hear them. But again... i might be wrong... I don't know. I just hope everyone is happy playing poker and doing it for the right reasons.... because its a great game if you got it under control and not the other way round!

About the bluffing thing... i don't know if I got the joke or not but, yes, it was a true story. It is my story and my iPoker SNs are open for everyone to see... I might have painted it a little bit more tragic than it actually was at the time... I am by no means saying that everything was crap and horrible don't get me wrong... those were amazing years and i learnt a lot, but NOW I would not go back to it because I am happier this way.

gl all.

Nice story. But if you quit a year ago, FOR GOOD. How did you manage to play the d200, and also play cash at dtd a while ago?

July he is playing on ladbrokes, June 18th he is playing plo, May he is playing on ladbrokes again.  May he is talking of coming down DTD.  May he is playing in clive granger whatever the heck that is and he played DTD in April. 

Don't know how much of the rest is true, but that is a funny way to stop playing poker for a year. 

Apologies for been such a cynical old bastard. 

Clive Granger is the economics building at Notts uni. Guy sounds like he has played more than me recently.. New title "1 year with reduced poker"

I have considered "playing poker" my LIFE for quite some years... when I say "without poker" I mean... without 16+ tabling 1/2 every single day of my life even though I hate it. Of course I enjoy the occasional Sunday Mil or, as I did last week, live tourney... because after all there was a reason why i fell in love with poker in the first place, it is a great entertaining game! I might have played.....15k hands this year online+live and spent less than 1k in initial deposits/buyins. Considering I used to average around 700k a year between 2008-2010... its quite a change! I am 100% sure there have been a couple of months where I did not play a single hand and I did not feel like it either, which is remarkable for me.

This is the volume that I have found to be "reasonable" and enjoyable for me and also that playing live even if it is a small comp or 1 table cash... is quite a lot more fun than online! you even get to do the chip shuffle! hihihi

Question: When somebody says "for good", does it mean FOREVER or "because it feels good/better"? Im starting to think I used the wrong expression... In my head it should be "I quit bla bla BECAUSE ITS GOING TO MAKE ME FEEL A LOT BETTER AND REDIRECT MY LIFE"

isn't that the meaning of "for good"? :S

Morning bud.

The confusion is arising because people are taking the thread title at face value, when in fact, it seems it is not meant literally. On a poker forum, it is important to get the thread title "just so", especially as you are relatively new here.

If it suits you, you can amend the Thread Title yourself. Not saying you should, thats up to you, but you can.

The major flaw in the story seeme to be the second gti. Just very very unlikely you'd go and buy exact same car lol

Enjoyed reading and for part 2 of your new diary/blog I'd suggest using paragraphs.

#fan

That was the whole point! We actually needed to buy the same car because we had been telling our parents how smart we were... how we were 100% independent and how insurance companies are a scam because they charge over 7 times the real risk premium... We were that arrogant, yes.

 The morale of the story is "when you are 21 you know NOTHING about ANYTHING...so if your dad tells you to at least get full coverage insurance... do it".

You are the guy who lives in Spain right? I am from valencia and I am good friends with some of the younger Educapoker guys. Do you know them?

#toomanyparagraphsnow 
[ ] learn english

I actually lolled at that. If I knew one tenth now of what I knew when I was 21, I'd be a very clever chap. As we get older, we realise that as youngsters we knew diddly-squit, & as we get older, we understand even less.

don't tell me that or Im gonna start getting worried very soon! haha

come on...being "old" rules! I can't wait to start sitting down and going like "aaahhhhhrrahhhhhh........"

Your OP is very impressive but this sentence is by far the most sensible thing you've written.

If a few others on here can heed this advice you'll have done your bit to help.

So much truth in that statement. The period from around 18-28 in men is just a complete shambles. If I could go back with the knowledge I have now there is almost nothing I would do the same. But hey, that's living and how you get the wisdom in the first place.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/elderhealth/8720182/Wisdom-comes-with-age-study-shows.html

It does make me laugh all these poker pros making all these soul searching blog posts at the moment about finding happiness (and no I'm not talking about Cambridge Alex!) It's not a unique problem to being a poker pro guys. It's called being in your twenties!!

Absolutely spot on. I made plenty of mistakes when I was younger but I don't regret a single one of them.

What you do during those early manhood years is what develops you in to the man you'll finally be.

Really? I regret an absolute ton of things (from mundane stuff like not working harder at uni, to more personal stuff). I don't dwell on it though and use it to move forward. So I guess we're coming at it the same way from different angles.

The way I see it that everything I've done in my life whether it be good or bad has lead me to where I am today.

Today I'm as happy as I could possibly be so why change anything that got me here?

I didn't think this would be true for anyone?

Surely own family, more money, wife, different wife, better health, more hair are the types of things that would make everyone happier?

Well maybe I could be in the Maldives with a £250M yacht and 30 playboy bunnies but I guess on the flip side I could also be dead.

Maybe I should've said that I'm perfectly content with how my life turned out so I'll settle for what I've got?

Yea perfectly content I very much agree with.

i think this sentence is extremely ignorant as a general statement. a personal one maybe but i dont think it has any real depth.

im the last person to claim that i know anything about the world but that doesnt mean when i was 21 i knew nothing.

age is a number not a category of wisdom.

stereotypes are probably to blame, but for every 21 year old that knows nothing about anything i can show a 28+ that thinks they know everything about anything.

Obviously in real terms you know a great deal about a great number of things at 21. I think it could be more accurately stated as in relative terms to the wisdom you have later in life, at 21 you know nothing about anything.

It certainly rings true for me. And I would hazard a guess it does for most people over 30.

I love the idea that 28 is old btw.

I think you're getting a bit confused.

You're not comparing like for like here. This is all individual.

Obviously some people are arrogant, brainless idiots at 30, 40, 50 etc. But I bet they were worse at 21.

i am comparing like for like :)

that is exactly my point haha

You've lost me.

is now a good time to make a stereotype about older people losing the plot?  ;spam;

Knock yourself out. Us elderly folk rise above it  ::)

For me personally you've just stopped making sense. And I can't be bothered trying to read between the lines of an intentionally obtuse statement.

Well I'm 37 and I know I'm still learning. I still make mistakes and I learn from them every day.

I've been making mistakes for a long time and I like to think I've learned from them all. Some have taken a long time to get hammered home as I've not learnt properly the first time. Some I haven't properly learnt yet and doubt I ever will.

In comparison to what I know now I knew nothing when I was 21.

This doesn't mean that as a 37 year old I know more than every 21 year old. For example I wouldn't go lecturing Alex Goulder on what to do when he's travelling in Colombia. I know nothing about travelling so to lecture him would be very arrogant. I might offer a few words of caution because I appreciate the way things in general can go wrong a little more but other than that I'd stfu.

When Alex gets to my age though I'm sure he'll look back and realise how he could've done things differently. He won't necessarily regret anything but he'll know that what he learnt whilst there has improved him as a person and increased his knowledge so that as an older man he'd do things differently. He might even offer advice to a few 21 year olds who are thinking of doing the same thing. He'll even say things like "Jeez when I was 21 I knew nothing about travelling. It was brilliant but if I knew what I know now I'd do things so differently".

Trust me when you're young you don't think you'll ever say these things. As you get older though you realise that you do. It just happens.

Yeah knowledge and wisdom are two different things. Obv young people can have knowledge but they can't have wisdom because that comes with experience.

Interesting story man, thanks for posting.

Being young and having lots of money is a dangerous combo. Luckily for me im broke

The really neat thing, though, is that just as wisdom arrives, the bloody memory fails, so you forget all that pent-up wisdom-ness....

imo bang on!

lol at tikay

Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.

Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.

I'd sooner be a man who knows nothing and has everything to learn than a man who knows everything and has no-one to teach.

lol do you have a book of these?

Youth is wasted on the young- Chapter 2 Page 6

I'm sure that was Robbie Williams.

When I was in my teens, my parents knew nothing

By the time I got to being in my twenties it was amazing how much they had learned...

Mr Williams must have read the book as well.

Nice one!

I must be the only person going backwards. At 21 I was very sensible and knowledgable, 8 years later I'm a spewing wreck...

AND your maths ability has worsened.

Call!

Youre at least 35 right?

Obv does not count the days that he wakes up and can't remember a god damm thing.