I guess it's time

i think it's shoo-in although i never understood why as it should make sense that you are in someone's shoe to replace them

yeah women can be stupid don't get blindsided by forgetting that for a second

Damn, going from thinking this is a suicide post to guy actually gets life together and feels somewhat happy


Good stuff

I guess the grass is always greener on the other side...

Are you back in IT like the job before where you made 60k a year and said you would never return to, but this time it's with a better and more 'relaxed and chill' company? I was just reading your other posts and you said you hated being in the rat race doing the same thing everyday sleeping at 1 and waking up at 6 am. Life is the true grind.

I've been doing live 2/5 'professionally' for the last several years and make around 50k a year but my hours are shit. mainly due to lack of motivation and just playing to live paycheck to paycheck, it's quite depressing actually. Even when I try to reduce spending 50k is paycheck to paycheck for me. LA traffic sucks as well so i dread the 1 hour commute each way to go and drive to the casino day in and day out.

The part where people ask what you do for a living is a kinda weird still but manageable. The girl in the Starbucks was just trying to figure out how much money you have and when you practically say what is 'gambler' to the general public, it's going not to be well received. Over time as long as you have money, people dont give a shit what you do as long as you are successful. But I digress.

You've got the best of both worlds now. You have the security of a stable fixed income and then you can do poker on the side as cliche as it might sound. But at least your not a bum anymore.
Don't let this failure ruin your confidence and whatnot. You might even be a big winning player but was bad at managing money.

You now got a backup. You don't need to worry about being homeless anymore. Your game might even improve drastically because this lifted pressure. Take your past experiences with you and use it to excel in both your careers. So pick yourself back up and then find some way to make the most of yourself so you don't end up back where you started.

When you hit the bottom and your lively hood is at risk you start to feel your primal drive and instincts start to kick in again. Its when you get complacent that your drives start to die off and you feel depressed.

Like some of the other posters/other ppl on this site I was eagerly waiting for an update post, and congrats this is huge.

Do you have the next NewbSaibot car picked out in your mind? haha. I bought a car recently myself and while I never was a "car guy" I kind of caught the bug this time around as I did a lot of due diligence and the whole process was very rewarding for me. I went with something that I think is a good fit financially yet fun at the same time. Hope you find it in you to continue to make improvements in your life and get a little better than you were last time around in terms of financial decision making. Also 20-30k is not enough of a bankroll for full time poker(at least imo!).

nice post, grats man

I definitely think you should just leave poker for good. I've never heard anyone regretting getting out of grinding the tables, including myself. As a human being I truly believe you cannot achieve happiness with poker no matter how much you win. It's great and fun and easy money and nice experience, for a short while (considering you dont go busto). But then you need to get out sooner or later, to find your peace and place in this world. Just my 2 cents.

On December 01 2019 03:14 NewbSaibot wrote: I actually had a cutie at a Starbucks once walk away after a 30 minute chat she initiated when I finally revealed I played poker for a living lol. You could just see the disappointment in her eyes.

Ouch!

Edit: those ones are usually the easiest to crack, at least from my experience.

glad to hear things are going better. im going to be a bit of a heavy and put my 2c out there that poker doesn't seem like a great fit for you. if you're at a place where you have disposable income and you can play responsibly with it and the results are what they are, thats awesome. if there is some part of you that is considering your current situation as a staging ground to get back into poker fulltime later on, i would abandon those plans. things don't tend to work out suddenly after having not worked out for a long time (especially when not making behavioral changes [romanticizing poker + lack of studying, etc.])

heaviness aside, i'm glad to hear from you. as someone who quit poker a while back and has transitioned to other stuff, i find myself missing it from time to time but am generally happy with the switch (and the absence of extreme variance). i hope your new job stays interesting. if you're ever feeling bored or down, you should blog here. there aren't a ton of blogs here and i enjoy hearing how things are going over there.

From everything you write it seems like you should abandon any hopes of having poker as a source of income. Not because it's not necessarily attainable, but because for a majority it's a pretty miserable existence, and you seem to be one of these.

Also johnny don't be so cynical lol. A girl can ask what you do for a living for other reasons than trying to find out how much money you make, like wtf.

well I'll have a few thousand saved up so I can take one last shot at poker.

I genuinely burst out laughing so hard the neighbours started banging on the wall lol

You never actively liked studying the game or had the drive to do it, and you need to to keep up these days, it was clear ages ago the game's not for you. Glad you're doing great, I'm sure you can have fun playing it as a hobby here and there.

Thinking about death is awesome btw, definitely recommend it, being near suicide is definitely a great thing - would love to hear what your thought process was.

Actually I often dream that at the end of the tram ride that's it, we're all going to die at the end stop.
Or at my sister's wedding when I was full of food and drunk getting tired did the same thing - you leave this room you're dead imagine the details etc.

Just snaps you to the present moment and brings you to other people that all have this one thing common with you

I guess suicide doesn't have the cool effect of uncertainty of the time of death though
where instead of taking drugs partying hard making amends you just live your values more as you accept death yet don't know if it comes tomorrow or in 50years

First of all, congrats on the job. $50k is comfortable. I had some years at that step of the ladder post poker and I had everything I needed and more at least materially.

Now for the obligatory poker talk. I don't know the whole story but if you ended up borderline homeless and suicidal you may be a problem gambler. The only one who can really diagnose that is yourself but I would wager that if you try and gamble $20k at 2/5 live you will be miserable and hit a bottom equal to or worse than you've already experienced. Tread carefully. I am a problem gambler. Once I crossed the line of busto'ing my account online I was never the same. I was shook. I took a long break and at the urging of all my friends to run up a roll I gave it a go and was the largest winner at 2/4 that month and back in business until I busted it again playing high stakes. I enjoyed the rush. I enjoyed sitting on fat stacks. But it was over for me. I too was borderline homeless and suicidal. I think I had $10k in savings or maybe more and just lived like a bum in complete existential despair. My friends urged me to put some money back online and run up a roll or at least accept staking but I was done. I couldn't give up the gambling though. I put all my effort into beating sports. I put all my effort into beating blackjack. I did but it wasn't really scaleable. Just get away man. The feeling of running up a $5k stack in a 2/5 game isn't worth it. It is true that being your own boss is brilliant but that can be a gift and a curse as you wrote about yourself. I'd have to get serious with some math to decide the optimal bankroll for x 2/5 game but my intuition says it's like $50,000 with 6 months living expenses. Getting optimistic with $5k shots while working is crazy. There was a time that I worked and tried to play poker at a high level and it was impossible. I was mostly unfocused and tilty. I was spinning my wheels. You are free man. You are making a good amount of scratch and doing something you are happy with. Imagine what you can do with $5,000? You can buy a really nice lamp........ or a million other things.

Also, re: women. If a downswing is the price of a Birkin bag and you don't bat an eye and live large poker player is a positive. The problem with being a poker player is this status of temporarily embarrassed millionaire. Like you can have your current job and drive a used Toyota Camry and pick up but if you were a poker player making the same amount and driving a used Toyota Camry it's not a good look. At least with most women. It kind of raises interesting philosophical questions though. Most women get wet at the idea of a Birkin bag or the purrrr of a Ferrari. Do I want to be dating these women? It's so indoctrinated.

Anyways, I digress.

You give me hope and I like the idea of looking at certain jobs as internships and seeing what happens.

On December 02 2019 02:32 PoorUser wrote: glad to hear things are going better. im going to be a bit of a heavy and put my 2c out there that poker doesn't seem like a great fit for you. if you're at a place where you have disposable income and you can play responsibly with it and the results are what they are, thats awesome. if there is some part of you that is considering your current situation as a staging ground to get back into poker fulltime later on, i would abandon those plans. things don't tend to work out suddenly after having not worked out for a long time (especially when not making behavioral changes [romanticizing poker + lack of studying, etc.]) heaviness aside, i'm glad to hear from you. as someone who quit poker a while back and has transitioned to other stuff, i find myself missing it from time to time but am generally happy with the switch (and the absence of extreme variance). i hope your new job stays interesting. if you're ever feeling bored or down, you should blog here. there aren't a ton of blogs here and i enjoy hearing how things are going over there.

Wise words!

Why not play as recreation? Whatever you put towards beer or hobbies, put some of that for online. Have job and other things as priorities but instead of watching Netflix or whatever play low or micro stakes?


P.s on that note, Pooruser do you not even play recreationally?
I remember your hands from 2006-7
You were a soul reader!

Walk to the poker room with a wad of hundos. Get a rack of chips. Get all nice and settled in. Play some hands, win some pots, stack some chips. We're in business. I know it's a good feeling. Either you can handle it or you can't. I know I was able to scrap together some dough and play live from time to time post-online busto but I wasn't playing professionally at that point. I was still looking to jump into the juicy 10/20 with the low rake. Maybe that is just my burden. Just as nice as the opening portion of this post imagine the times where you are staggering to the poker room, don't want to be there, sitting for hours, stuck 5 buyins, back is hurting, can't think clearly, but the games are good. The fucking games are good. Sometimes you get into the green, sometimes you get stuck some mind dizzying amount but the games are good.... You get up from the tables and it's 4:39am. Instead of being stuck 20 buyins you are stuck 10 buyins. You could have gone out to sushi with your friends 8 hours ago and had a nice night but the games were good.... Now, you are just a bit numb with nothing to do, no one to talk to. It's important to remember those moments.

now Rik do the same thing.

Awesome to see. Definitely don't go back to poker.

Not sure what is fun about a misogynistic environment. That is an unfortunate detail in an otherwise great story.

very MadMen'esque lol

Cheers my brothers.

We are free men, and there is no greater thing/feeling in the world. Do whatever your heart wants and makes you happy.

Acquire currency and disregard females. The rest is automatic~

On December 04 2019 12:55 Nazgul wrote: Not sure what is fun about a misogynistic environment.

You have too much free time.

hah Naz :D