Can't Make Myself Play Anymore...

[siriusradio]

I'm barred.

[Reef]

get a new day job

[peachy]

Just b/c someone is MIDLY autistic doesnt mean they r RETARDED...it makes me ALMOST think u r from sayin such a thing! Go look it up before u speak and look like a fool AND hurt someones feelings. And as i started in my post before dont believe what a doctor sometimes says when they say MILD...usually u dont have it, they r just givin u some reason b/c as a doctor they arent good enough to figure it out or they r just raking in money. If u dont feel u really r go look up autism and the characterists, Ive done a thesis on it so if u want that ill send it to u, but i doubt u r hendered by this disorder, if u r, im sorry but IF it is mild then ur fine.

Bottom line, like i said before u shouldnt be playin poker if u cant deal with it mentally, either try and find a way or dont play, it will only hurt u more.

[Ozzzz]

[ QUOTE ]
MILDLY AUTISTIC?!?! LMAO
If he/she ain't callin you an idiot savant then quit the game. There's no room for retards in poker, unless your in my game, I'd take your money so quick you'd be back to your shrink trying to get some sort of retard health benefits.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks for the laugh. I would suggest that you take your own advice and quit poker (I'll let you figure that one out).

[timmer]

[ QUOTE ]
The catch is, if I quit poker, I resign myself to working at a crappy, go nowhere job where my superiors have absolutely no idea what they are doing. I do not like that option

[/ QUOTE ]

this is pure unadulterated defeatest BULLISHSHIT.

you are the captain of your life you can do whatever you choose. if you choose wrong you can change and do somthing else.

release your fear and clear your scuttled by being STILL.

S- Sit up straight
T- Take in breath deeply
I- Introspect on your purpose for being.
L- Let in all sensations,
L- Let go of all thoughts and awaremess,

Do this daily and your path will become clear.

timmer

[jokerthief]

[ QUOTE ]
MILDLY AUTISTIC?!?! LMAO
If he/she ain't callin you an idiot savant then quit the game. There's no room for retards in poker, unless your in my game, I'd take your money so quick you'd be back to your shrink trying to get some sort of retard health benefits.

[/ QUOTE ]

This means he is probably a borderline genius if not a full blown genius. I've meet some mildly and totally autistic people who's mental capabilities and potential seem limitless.

[Reef]

[ QUOTE ]
Just b/c someone is MIDLY autistic doesnt mean they r RETARDED...it makes me ALMOST think u r from sayin such a thing! Go look it up before u speak and look like a fool AND hurt someones feelings. And as i started in my post before dont believe what a doctor sometimes says when they say MILD...usually u dont have it, they r just givin u some reason b/c as a doctor they arent good enough to figure it out or they r just raking in money. If u dont feel u really r go look up autism and the characterists, Ive done a thesis on it so if u want that ill send it to u, but i doubt u r hendered by this disorder, if u r, im sorry but IF it is mild then ur fine.

Bottom line, like i said before u shouldnt be playin poker if u cant deal with it mentally, either try and find a way or dont play, it will only hurt u more.

[/ QUOTE ]

maybe I was slightly insensitive and didn't clearly express my thoughts.

1) keep a working day job and do not go pro
2) the current day job is unsatisfying so a new one is needed
3) I am slightly ADD (no diagnosis). I guess I can relate?

that is all
~Reef

[Piemaster]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
am mildly autistic according to my pyschiatrist

[/ QUOTE ]

In all seriousness, mild autism is overdiagnosed (along with adult ADD).

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't forget to add Dyslexia to that list (or is that what you call ADD in the States?)

[jokerthief]

I have a very similar personal history as you do and I have had the same problem multiple times. I’m 25 and am living with my parents as well. I'm going to tell you my personal story because I think if you hear from someone who is going through similar life difficulties and is pulling out of it, you can get what you really need right now—hope.

I went to college with great expectations and completely failed. I developed a drinking problem that made my chance of success virtually nil. But I didn’t fail because of my drinking but drank to give myself an excuse to fail. I was in college 3 ½ years before I faced reality and quit. I blamed my drinking for my failure and isolated myself from my friends, moved back home, and quit drinking.

My father was a financial planner and had his own firm and offered me an opportunity to join him in business. I went to the technical college and got my insurance license by taking a 48 hour course and passed the state exam. I was going to start by selling long term care insurance and transition into annuities and maybe securities. My dad also was going to pay me a salary to help him with prospecting (i.e. setting up seminars, setting appointments by lead/cold calling, and doing clerical work). The plan was to slowly transition from an assistant to selling LTC insurance full time. I did this for two years and only made a few sales. I then sunk into depression and couldn’t work. Fortunately the sales I did make gave me residual commissions of a few hundred a month and I was living with my parents with hardly any expenses. My monthly commissions gave me barley enough to cover my monthly expenses for health and car insurance. Rent and food were covered by my parents.

My life seemed hopeless until a year and a half ago when I was watching TV one day and saw my first episode of the world poker tour. I had never played poker before but something caught my attention with this show. I was fascinated by the strategy and amazed that “gambling” could be +EV in the long term given enough skill. I soon desired to play poker but didn’t have the money or the confidence to do so. I had no plans of becoming a pro because the players on the world poker tour seemed mythical to me and I assumed it would be like aspiring to be a professional athlete. I did have a computer game that had various card games in it and it had a freeze out 5 card draw spread limit tournament I could play. It wasn’t hold’em but it was poker. It was fun and satiated my urge to play poker for about a month. I became bored with it because the computer would call with anything and I noticed if I played only good hands I would win ¾ of the time. This didn’t satisfy my longing for the mental warfare I was watching on TV. I needed to play against humans.

Not too long later I found out about internet poker while doing a google search looking a new poker computer game that was hold’em. I downloaded Pacific Poker because it was the first one I saw that advertised that I could play for free. I downloaded it and was in for a shock—the human players were worse than my computer game! The players were worse and I couldn’t win. I had a hard time understanding limit hold’em (at the time that was all Pacific offered). I was used to playing spread limit 5 card draw and watched NL tournament hold’em on TV. I then found that if I played in the sit and go tournaments people would actually fold hands and it wasn’t just a lottery. I was also found that I was moderately beating the game.

One day I was watching CNN and saw an interview with Jim McManus about his experience at the WSOP that led to his writing of Positively Fifth Street. Jim credited his 5th place finish to “…memorizing Sklansky’s book”. That interview inspired me and I jotted down the name Sklansky on a piece of paper. It also spawned the idea of playing for real money in my head. I went to the book store and looked for a poker book by a guy names Sklansky and ran across Hold’em Poker. I bought it and it blew my mind and transformed by game. All of a sudden I was cashing in just about all of the play money tournaments I entered. This also had the side effect of ruining those same games for me and had me desiring to play against better opponents.

At this time in my life I was a complete wreck. I was 24 years old with no job, no friends, no money, and a dormant drinking problem that I knew would rear its ugly head if I ever drank again. I viewed myself as a complete loser with no future. This was being off set on the other hand in my growing pride and confidence in my ability to play poker. An out was developing in my mind. I started to watch the real money games and quickly noticed that even the .05/.10 games would be a lot tougher than the play money games and if poker was going to be my ticket out of loserdom I would have to work hard at developing my poker game. I went back to the bookstore and bought HEPFAP and developed a game plan to go pro. I would begin by depositing $100 and get the $25 deposit bonus and play with that only. I did this and immediately withdrew the $100 (pacific is one of the rare rooms that releases the bonus right away but puts a restriction on cashing it out). I would then give myself a $5 bankroll out of that and start playing .05/.10. The other $15 was backup bankroll in my mind. I did this as a mental trick because I was terrified of losing money even if it wasn’t mine. This was exactly one year ago.

I played .05/.10 while I was working through HEPFAP and quickly made progress. I would play 4 to 8 hours a day and read 2-4 hours. In about four weeks I had worked my way up to a $650 bankroll and was playing 3/6 (I had no idea how bad of an idea this was or anything about bankroll management yet). During this time I bought TOP to supplement my studying. Then variance crawled out from under the bed like the boogie man in a 4 year old’s imagination, only this was real. I started to lose money and fast. I had to drop down to 2/4, then to 1/ 2, still losing at .5/1, now down to .25/.5. I stopped when my bankroll got down to $160, thoroughly disgusted. I withdrew my money and swore to never play poker again. I blamed the stupid fish, I blamed my luck, but deep down I was blaming myself for not being good enough.

I didn’t play poker again for two and a half months. I planned on never playing again and being happy with the money I had made, but the seed had been planted. Playing poker had been extremely therapeutic when it was going well. It gave me an identity. It gave me a reason to be proud of myself. The losing streak was especially hard because it shattered my new found self esteem. I couldn’t get away from the craving of the strategy I loved however. I wanted back in. I hit the books again and identified what had happened. My good luck streak dried up and I reacted by tilting like a pinball machine. My losing streak was a function of my bad play caused by tilt rather that a bad run of cards (I was also vastly under bankrolled but wasn’t sophisticated enough to realize it at the time).

By chance I was surfing around the internet and found someone who was offering to give anyone $25 just to sign up at paradise poker on top of a 25% bonus. I was back. I deposited $200 but this time I couldn’t use the $50 deposit bonus until I played a bunch of raked hands. I also was delighted to see that paradise had no limit ring games. This sparked my interest, now I could make the fish really pay to draw out on me. I bought Super System and Reuben and Ciaffone’s no limit book and started anew. I started in the two dollar buy in and worked my way up. In two or three weeks my bonus was cleared and I had made over a thousand dollars. I was beside myself with how fast I was making money in NL. I was playing in the $200 buy in game and considered myself a pro already. Then I lost $600 in two hours. This made me want to puke and was much worse than before. Now I look back and laugh, this is what happens when one doesn’t understand bankroll needs.

Instead of wanting to quit, like I did the first time, I got determined. I bought Gambling Theory and Other Topics and started to study this little bitch named variance. I briefly skimmed it and began to understand that I needed a much bigger bankroll than I though I did. This was when I started to read these forums as well. I also ran across another site that ranked the various internet sites by how soft the players were. It also listed info about bonuses and freerolls. This is when I thought I made a break through. I found a site (royal vegas) that would give me a 50% bonus and had daily $1,000 freerolls with first place being $250. I withdrew the money I had left at paradise and deposited at RV. I started to play in the $50 buy in ring game and 2 of the freerolls everyday. Everything was going well again. In a few weeks I had made a couple grand and even won the freeroll twice. I hit a losing streak again but this time recovered and the thought of being a pro was a real possibility again. Then all of a sudden, I couldn’t get into the freerolls. At RV you have to play 50 raked hands to be able to enter the freeroll. This didn’t make any sense because I was playing at least 300 raked hands a day and this was a big deal because I was cashing so often that it was becoming a significant % of my win rate. RV’s customer support basically told me they didn’t believe me and wouldn’t help me. At the same time I hit another huge losing streak and became completely disillusioned again.

I quit playing poker again and began to re-access the situation. I decided I needed to get a picture of what it would be like to be a professional so I bought Gambling for a Living and finally got a realistic picture of what a good player can expect to win at the various limits and more importantly the 300 BB rule. I bought Mason’s Poker Essays 3 because of a recommendation from someone who thought it was the best of that series. In this Mason has an essay in which he asserts his opinion that limit is harder than no limit. This confused me because I thought no limit was the more sophisticated game, thus being harder. Mason’s argument was, more or less, that since you have less information in limit, it is harder. This was counter-intuitive for me to understand at first but thinking of his ideas led me to finally realize what I was doing wrong. At pacific I was bouncing around the limits with no discipline. I then ran away from pacific to the greener grass of the NL ring games at paradise. When that didn’t work out as well as I wanted, I ran away again to another easy fix. I was trying to build the roof of my poker house before I had laid the foundation. I needed to go back to the micro limit games and establish some discipline.

This was last June and Small Stakes Hold’em wasn’t out yet so I bought winning low limit hold’em by Lee Jones as my tool to help me lay my foundation. I also started to read these forums more. From reading the forums I decided that I would be well served to start at the Party network playing .5/1. As I was working through my new book I hit a problem however. Lee Jones was suggesting a style that was vastly more passive than what I normally would play. I was having a hard time with it because it was running against my instinct. All the two plus two books I had read and Super System had all came to me quickly because it fit the way I would naturally play. It was like swimming with the current. I was definitely swimming up stream with WLLH. I decided finally to just trust the advice. All the reviews were real positive at Amazon and besides, who was I to disagree with a professional who had been playing much longer than me. The problem began when I started to play. I just wasn’t comfortable with this new style and I just happened to run bad again at the same time losing 75 BB as I worked through it. This was the hardest losing streak I had had up to date. First off, I felt like I was a losing player because I played thousands of hands trying to grind out of it. I was just beginning to understand variance but I still didn’t really understand I was using too small of a sample size. Secondly, I had now been doing this for seven months and the fear that I was going down a dead end street began to grow. Aside from poker I was also battling my inner demons trying to beat my depression and find purpose in my life. Again I took some time off to gather my thoughts.

To access where I was and where I was going I began to read more. I started to read the forums almost exclusively and began to post. I even made one of those infamous “should I go pro” posts that everyone loves to hate. I really started to get a good picture of what I would be in for playing professionally by reading this forum. I learned that my 75 BB losing streak will not be my biggest. I can expect at least a 200 BB losing streak eventually and I need to be able to view a 75 BB losing streak like just a blip on the radar that will happen fairly often. I can expect back pain if I don’t keep vigilant about my posture while I play. I also learned about poker tracker and game time plus and realized that the fact that I didn’t have these programs was a huge hole in my game. I learned that if I got a monitor with 1600 x 1200 resolution, I could play 4 tables at the same time with no overlap. This would have the effect that I could make a living playing much lower stakes than if I play only one or two tables like I had been doing. It will also make hitting the long run happen much quicker, which will help my psyche deal with the all the inevitable 100 BB losing streaks I can expect to happen. I learned about what a rakeback deal was and just how significant that can be to bolster my earnings. Finally I learned that I needed to get Small Stakes Hold’em.

Three months ago I restarted my poker career again. This time I had SSH as my strategy guide and this was as counter-intuitive as WLLH was for me. This time it was much more aggressive than I was used to but I can see the genius in this work and I don’t have to just trust it like I did with WLLH because it has a logical continuity to it. When a tough concept finally hits, it’s bright as day in my mind and then seems obvious that the given concept is correct. I have also set up a rakeback account and got poker tracker and game time plus. Those two programs used in conjunction are incalculably valuable and triple anyone’s ability to make correct decisions immediately in my opinion. I have done thorough research on this site to give myself rock solid estimates of what I can expect to earn at the various limits. I’ve tried to foreshadow potential pitfalls that can occur when I finally do move out of the parent’s house and I am reliant on poker to survive. The big one I can see is the growth in my ability to spend money outstripping the growth of my income. I plan to become a fanatical saver to ward off this danger.

Right now I am playing 1 / 2 6 max tables on the party network and I plan on staying there until I have fixed all of the major holes I can see in my game. Anytime I am unclear as to what to do in a given situation or have even a little bit of doubt, I have found a hole. Unless the right play is obvious then I am not strong enough in that area. I am confident that I will be able to make it professionally and don’t have to ask anyone here for their opinion because I no longer think I can make it, I know I can make it. I know because I have spent many hours observing the 3/6 game (in my mind the minimum limit I would have to master to make a good living) and can quickly see players make mistakes and can explain to myself why it’s a mistake and what I would have done instead. It is completely obvious to me that I can beat 3/6 and I will worry about the higher limits when I get there.

The reason I wrote all of this to you Ozzzz, was because I have had more time than you to devote to poker and thinking about life in general because I have been unemployed. This has given me the opportunity to make mistakes, recover, make some more mistakes, recover, and in the end find answers. I have gone through four periods where I couldn’t get myself to play. I overcame my fear to play by first a brutally honest reality check, then from the knowledge of those who know more than I do. What you need is confidence and confidence will come from knowledge and discipline. There are also two more poker books I have found to be critical: Inside the Poker Mind by John Feeney and The Psychology of Poker by Alan Schoonmaker. Two non poker books that you would be well served to read also: Psychocybernetics by Maxwell Maltz and Permission to Succeed by Noah St. John. I have found that working on my understanding my psyche and developing my spiritual life to be helpful in getting me out of the depths of depression. That has been key to my poker game.

As far as poker is concerned, my advice to you is slow down. There is no hurry and building a solid foundation will save you a lot of time in the long term. Read these forums and post questions. Stay away from cardplayer magazine, it’s too vague to be useful. Realize that as you increase your knowledge, finding motivation to play will become easier. Finally never listen to the haters and nay sayers that occasionally troll around here.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Good luck to you.

jokerthief

[ismisus]

If you would devote the same amount of time to something other than poker, you would move out, and make more money.