1 year without Poker

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!