Should You Quit Your Day Job? — Part I

I'm cross-posting this from the Psychology section at Alan's suggestion.

I have been corrupted and destroyed by my addiction to poker. I have no job, nowhere to live after next week, and not the money even to buy my dinner. I am 27 years old.

I am ruined for work, for honest labour, corrupted by the quick reward of the big win, but I know I can’t make money out of poker. However much I might win one day, I will lose the next.

I never touched a pack of cards until about ten months ago. I'd had problems with alcohol, drinking to blackout, until I got myself to AA. I went to meetings for six months, and stayed sober for nearly two years. I'd lost a lot of friends through my drinking. It was wonderful to discover I didn’t need to be a drunk, and that people liked me.

I did nothing to address all the problems I had with my self-image and my background that led me into trouble with alcohol. My life got better in so many material ways, but I didn’t tackle my self-loathing. In addition, I’d always had an immature attitude to money, feeling it terribly unfair that I wasn’t born wealthy and would never be rich. Then these new friends introduced me to poker, and I learnt what it means to be poor.

We’d play home games once or twice a month, for a £20 buy-in or a couple of times £100, the most I won being £50 and the most I lost £250. These games however weren’t to be my downfall. It was the Internet sites. Since the start of the year every penny I earned in my job I lost at online poker. Often I’d lose the entire month’s pay packet on the day I got it.

I went a couple of times to Gambler’s Anonymous meetings, both after going bust and thinking it a good place to bum cigarettes. I listened to their stories and felt vaguely superior – after all, wasn’t my game, no-limit Texas hold’em, “the cadillac of poker”? I didn’t take in anything that I heard.

My every waking thought was and is about poker. I read Brunson, Krieger, Alvarez, Holden, Yardley, Sklansky, Helmuth, Caro, Harrington and so many others. I read on game theory and probability. I thought about mathematics for the first time since school. I got much better as a player, but the problem was with my psychology, with the gambling fever that controls me. I’d always want to play for the maximum amount of money I have available. I’d use my entire bankroll in a game. If I had £3000 I’d want to gamble it all at once, not play at £100 tables. It’s been my ruin but, being who I am, I couldn’t have done anything else. I’m not the cold, clinical player calculating hourly win rates. I want the cocaine-like rush of the big win.

A month ago I quit my job before I was fired. It was a clerical job working for a lady’s home-run company. It paid well, more money than I needed, but the hours were long and I got very bored. I worked in my own room so could easily just play poker when meant to be working. I am also an English literature PhD student, though a combination of trying to work full-time through lack of funding and my addiction to poker has meant I’ve neglected my studies. I’ll lose this soon too. An irony is that many of the people I was studying, my literary heroes, were all successful and slightly obsessive poker players.

Just before I left my job I’d had a good half-week, winning £1100 overnight playing £1/2 and £2/5, then £400 playing head to head against one of these new friends who finally realised however much he re-bought, he couldn’t beat me. My game really was getting better. Then the day after I quit my job, I put all £1500 into a £10/£20 games and won a £3572 pot after someone made a very bad all-in on top pair against my low trips. I cashed it out and thought I was made. But it didn’t matter how much money I had, as I could do nothing but gamble with it.

I lost all that money later that week as soon as it went back into my account. The next morning, slumped against a tree in the park, I realised that my entire self-esteem was now bound up with my daily wins or losses. A few days later I extended my credit card limit so that I could buy in again. I put in £900 and got it up to £3500 and cashed it out. So I was able to pay off my credit card and had £1400 in the bank. I put £1000 of that in, turned it into £3000, and thought I was invincible, although I saw I could never maximise my winnings because I’d always want to keep playing until I lost my original buy-in. I didn’t play every day and didn’t play for more than 20 hours a week, because the stakes were so high. I just had to win or lose as much as I could as quickly as I could.

I won a thousand more one night, then the next morning feeling very tired I went to play again. I didn’t have any cash so took half a dozen CDs to a famously tight second hand music shop and pleaded with them to give me 10p more than they’d offered so I’d have enough for the Internet café. Then I lost the thousand. When I play well, I switch tables after I win any big pot and cash out the profit. When I’m losing, I never think to cash out even when I’m briefly ahead.

On Monday night just gone I lost everything. I had £3000 in the bank and a blank credit card. I could have gone travelling, or put down rent and deposit on an apartment. I could have replaced my shoes since they have holes in them, or bought a pair of trousers that weren’t ripped, or had my hair cut for the first time in months. I could have done anything. Instead I lost all that money, and £2000 on my credit card too. What makes me so sad now isn’t thinking of the money I’ve lost, or what it might have bought me, but a hand I misplayed where I’d have won a £5000 pot, regardless of the river, if I’d not folded to my opponent’s huge bet on the turn. At the very worst time, in that instance I became scared of the money.

The players I put myself up against on the £5/£10 and £10/£20 tables have so much money, the poorest with bankrolls of £10,000 and some over £100,000. I have seen people win £15,000 in a day’s play, all of it tax free. They can take risks, going all-in on flush draws or top pair, which with my bankroll I just couldn’t do. I should never have been playing with them.

Like every other compulsive gambler I read and grandiosely identified with the narrator of Dostoevsky’s The Gambler, of whom it’s said:

"You have not only given up life, all your interests, private and public, the duties of a man and a citizen, your friends (and you really had friends) - you have not only given up your objects, such as they were, all but gambling - you have even given up your memories. I remember you at an intense and ardent moment of your life; but I am sure you have forgotten all the best feelings you had then; your dreams, your most genuine desires now do not rise above pair, impair, rouge, noir, the twelve middle numbers, and so on, I am sure!"

Even in this, I’m deluding myself. This character was a Russian aristocrat playing high stakes roulette in c19th casinos. I’ve been nowhere more exotic than an Internet café.