Playing on the Internet..Questions..(LONG)

by John Vorhaus. sorry.

Orange:

Lots of folks have offered good advice here, but I wanted to weigh in with a somewhat different perspective.

My recent experience with college is as a professor, not as a student. I have many students who do well in school while also holding down full time jobs. The key is disciplined time management. They don't get to live a free and easy college life (if such a thing exists anymore); they have to schedule everything. But, when they schedule everything, they have plenty of time to get everything done.

My first college experience (20 years ago) was as a free-wheeler; I spent most of my time on my two hobbies, hardly ever went to class, stayed up late and woke up in the afternoon. After three semesters of this, not even the hefty private school tuition I was paying was enough to convince the school to let me stay, and, bam, just like that I had flunked out of college.

There is plenty of time in college for school, girls and poker, and, frankly, that is the correct order of priority. You just need to be disciplined about it: Been to class? Good; then do the homework. Homework done? Good; time to get laid. Checked that box recently? Good, now maybe it's poker time.

The key really is just making and keeping to a schedule. I am a busy trial attorney, I teach two classes at the local university, I tutor my students in LSAT preparation on the side, I get to the gym, I work in the yard, I have a wife, a daughter who is a senior in high school, and I still manage to squeeze in 15-25 hours of poker per week. It is all a matter of sticking to a routine, like many of my students have learned.

I hate routines, and if you are like me and don't want to run your young life with one, then you are going to need to scale back your activities (which in your case means poker).

Good luck in school. Have fun, learn stuff, think big thoughts and relax.

[jbrock]

Follow the advice about getting your own bank account and funding it that way (however you can manage).

Absolutely DO NOT use a friends/roommates card. You need to make sure that everything associated with the account is in your name. Down the road if something goes very well, if the account is not in your name you could lose substantial amounts of money. It seems that every year several people win trips to the WSOP but were playing under their wife's or older brother's account (set up that way for reasons similar to what you are talking about).

Get the neteller account after opening a local checking acct. Scrap the money together yourself. My wife freaked when I started playing poker thinking that I was one step away from being a degenerate gambler and would eventually gamble our house savings away. Ha! I scrapped up my own cash to finance poker ($350 over time) and started at $25NL without knowing about bonus whoring.

Look at the classified here for rakeback deals and email them.

know your time limits, but have fun. If you play to try to make money, you will lose that money. Play to learn the game and how to control your emotions. The money comes later after that. Read the articles by Tommy Angelo. Seriously. Poker is all about controlling emotion and that is what makes it hard. You will have great upswings. Control that emotion -- it is the positive side of variance. You will have downwings. that is the negative side of variance. You have to learn to deal with that emotionally and learn how to play. Nuff. good luck.

[cracker9521]

I think you should listen closely to the advice in this thread but in the end only you can really answer your question. Do you have an addictive personality? If not and you can limit yourself to 5 or so hours a week then go for it. If you really want to play then just dont watch tv or something. One thing I can tell you is be vary wary of joining a fraternity your freshman year if you want any free time at all.

[DoomSlice]

He's right, you need to save time for getting drunk and smoking weed.

[Bazuul]

just a heads up regarding one item

you will most probably find online play to be significantly tougher than your home games you are familiar with

while it is easy to blame early poor results on bad beats or variance the bottom line is online you are going to run into stiff competition

admittedly there are a lot of terrible players but be prepared to put in some serious time online to gain the necessary experience if you plan on making a net profit

[orange]

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you will most probably find online play to be significantly tougher than your home games you are familiar with



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I don't know about that. The group I played with at home, we played almost every day and learned the game pretty well. Most of them had reasonable PF standards, (usually) arggo post-flop skills, and could (usually) lay down hands.

From what I've seen on the internet, I think there are simply too many calling stations to make this assesment.

Before I respond to 'orange,' I'd like to ask a question of 'mpethybridge.' I am merely curious as to your academic history after flunking out of college. How did you manage to fail from it and end up teaching it two decades later?

My advice to 'orange:' since you're of legal age, set up a student credit card or apply for credit at your bank. If the money is yours, your father really should not have a say, though I'm sure that he holds some leverage since he is paying for 2/3 of your tuition. If your account is not cosigned, he will never know. If it is, you're screwed. Talk to him about it or forget about it. If you want to use a friend's account, set specific guidelines and rules from the start to avoid complications later.