Hi everyone,
My name is Joe. In the summer of 2018 I started playing poker online. This started innocently and seemed to just be a hobby. Then slowly but surely I have became obsessed with the game. All of my time was spent studying and playing. Eventually I started losing money as all addicts do, despite a few big tournament wins. I then self excluded from all of the main sites.
BUT about 4 months ago I started playing again, on a site that I hadn't played on before. I've been lucky and actually managed to win some money this time, but I feel....awful. I spend every night playing the stupid game. I get angry and tense when I play. I barely sleep because I stay up so late playing. My eyes and skin look grey. I barely exercise and eat well. Everything is just poker poker poker. I'm like in a trance or something. How the hell do people play this game professionally.
I also know the longer I play the more likely I am to have a blow up and lose all my money.
I have a stable career but have noticed that I've been performing worse at work since all this started.
I just wanted to share my story because this is so difficult to beat. It's exacerbated some anxiety and depression I've had before
Thanks
Welcome.
What do you want to do? I read what you are doing but not what you want to do. Yes you are most likely playing too much and it may hurt your wallet at some point but it is killing valuable time you could be spending elsewhere. You either have a broad direction which means that you have no plans and you drift around carefree or you make a proper plan and go for it.
I would start by deciding what you want to do. I won't preach for you to abstain or anything like that. That is a choice we all have to make individually. You sound like you would like to do something else with your life. That means taking personal action. You need to close that pc and tell yourself that any opportunity you think you are missing will be there other days too. At the end of the day, you are stuck because of the chemicals in your brain dopamine is keeping you interested and focused on one thing. If you realise that it is so, gets easier to let go of it. You may want to get some counselling. Most of us have or are fighting some depression and we may not even be realising that we feel down but you should be aware of it.
If you want any other advice I would say try sport. I run. That helps me.
All the best.
C
Hi mate
i spent the best part of 10 years hooked on poker, somehow I’ve managed to quit for 2 years and it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.
Online poker was beatable back in 2008 , now everyone is pretty good at it and the games are much harder and full of bots / colluding . This actually is a good thing for me as I no longer want to play it anymore.
The money can be replaced, it’s time you cannot get back. Sign up to gamstop is a must , do it for 5 years.
finding new hobbies is key, exercise is massive for me, join a boxing club or something.
all the best.
Hi,
I can sympathise with you. I’ve played online poker in the past and found myself chasing losses.
With regards to your question about “professional” players and how do they do it; the truth is that only a very small percentage of people that play poker can make it profitable in the long run. The vast majority will lose. A lot of these so called professionals you see on television or social media are bankrolled by online poker sites. For example, some of the so called high stakes games you see are a sham because they’re not really playing with their own money. That’s why they can be so loose at the table and make some crazy plays with marginal hands.
My advice to you would be to come to the realisation that you are not one of the very few players who can make a profit at poker. There’s no shame in that. You’re the same as 99.99% of other people that play.
In terms of stopping, my recommendation would be to put the necessary blocks in place online, self exclude from any casino and then stop watching, listening or reading anything to do with poker for the foreseeable future.
I wish you all the best.
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