A -$20K epiphany

With the week I've had it only feels natural to follow the beaten path of starting a goal(s) thread.

Like many of you I learned the game as a university student, playing what were effectively $20 SNGs in our dorm rooms, arguing over whether KA234 was a straight and whether a flush OTB was a chop if someone was holding a 6th flush card. Good times.

I quickly became the "crusher" of the group - don't take this as hubris, I barely knew what I was doing - and had enough confidence to download PokerStars and start playing cash there. What followed was equally standard: depositing $20-$100 at a time, busting it in a few weeks, rinse and repeat. After some months I grew bored of the regular losses and moved to a far more respectable form of gambling - sports. (In hindsight I'm not sure I ever truly enjoyed sports betting, but the social aspect combined with semi-regular victories kept me in it for longer than it should have).

Some years go by and I start working a summer internship of the highest calibre - I was tasked with reorganizing 40 years of archived documents for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Truly stimulating stuff. Around this time an old degenerate friend of mine introduced me to GGpoker, and after seeing all the great welcome bonuses they offered I gave it a spin.

My initial $100 deposit coupled with numerous daily bonuses and rake back kept me appeased for a while, and if I recall correctly I only redeposited once or twice over that summer. Again it must've been some serious run good considering that at the time I did not know what a pre-flop chart was.

Cue returning to University and forgetting poker yet again. Two years go by and I start graduate school, resulting in me moving to a new city with lots of free time but little places to spend it. GGpoker finds its way back in my mind, and I start playing (read: losing) semi-regularly.

At this point I'm probably lifetime down a few hundred dollars, certainly less than a grand. I start watching poker youtube and studying preflop until I become comfortable without the charts.

By now my IRL friends are for the most part not interested in poker, and so I have hardly anyone to talk to about my game. As a relatively broke student I can't afford - more accurately, refuse to invest in - any software like GTOwiz or PIO, and so my "study" involves watching youtube, reviewing/reading HH on reddit, and using my one free solution per day on my worst beats (brilliant, I know).

Eventually I decide to "take poker seriously" and deposit $500 to play 100NL - yes, I had it in my head that 5BI was safe BRM. I (un)fortunately run hot and built it up to $1k in a relatively short period, a disaster situation for a naive fish with an addictive personality. To make a long story short, this early run good naturally results in a false confidence that carried over for some 8 months now, costing me nearly $13k. Most of the loss comes from my god awful mental game - exacerbated by my financial position making me extremely sensitive to losses/bad beats. I've a habit of playing until the game breaks or until I go broke, which rarely results in realizing profits. I then quit online and started playing live after reading about how soft live 1/3 can be (which I found to be true).

Onto this week. Coming off a good week of sun running & playing good, I'm up ~$1500 across 15 hours at live 1/3. At this point I have around $4k to my name minus a $3k credit card bill, and I decide it's only reasonable to keep running it up.

Monday morning I join a new private 1/2 game and want to give action, resulting in a spew of $1K in less than 2 hours.

Monday night I play my regular private game and run $500 up to $1400, bleed down to ~$900 thanks to winners tilt, then lose it all in a 70/30 flip after hero calling with A high on the turn vs T-high OESD - we run it twice and he binks both rivers. I end monday -$1640.

Tuesday I decide to reenter the world of online poker after only playing live the for the past 4 months. (Narrator here: what were you thinking?). By Wednesday I lose my $400 deposit playing 100NL (yes, again, no BRM) to two bad beats (running AK into KK and getting 2-outered by a maniac) and one big punt (calling a turn 10x overjam with TP nut flush draw). -$2040 now.

Wednesday I'm on tilt and know that I need to make some back to cover the CC bill at the end of the month. I head to my regular private game with the intention of nitting it up. Instead I spew $500 early - but fortunately double up shortly thereafter with top boat vs trips. I cruise the rest of the night until the game breaks, leaving with a loss of $125. (Side note, I went from up $150 to down $125 on the last 3 hands of the night - all of which were DB PLO BP. On the 2nd last hand I called a river repot after misreading one of the boards and got scooped. It was 3 AM, I was exhausted. Sue me). Now -$2165 in 3 days.

Which brings us to last night. I've got $1200 in cash and looming credit card bill, a nasty combination. Given all the pressure to perform, I unsurprisingly play poorly - I bluffed into the nuts twice, and lost two big ones that were arguably coolers (check my other thread for those hands, you can guess the results). In a mere 2 hour session I lost 2 BI plus session fees for a total of -$1045 on the night, -$3210 on the week, -$20K on poker (online + live) lifetime.

So here I am, in $3k debt with a part time job that earns me half that a month.

I know it's time to give up the game for a while and just put my head down and get out of this hole. Still considering whether to come clean to family about the debt or just pick up a second job and struggle through it for the next couple months. Regardless, I'm saying goodbye to poker for now, focusing on my career/grad school, and won't be back until I can save up a bankroll for micro stakes + a solver subscription.

I read Linus' thread on here from 2013 along with some others last night until like 5AM and they really inspired me to respect the game, the grind, and the money. Part of my problem is mental game, but another part is that I didn't like playing for insignificant amounts of money. I've come to realize that in order for anyone to be profitable at decent stakes, they need to respect the dollar and respect the game. I can't expect to win at 1/3 or 100NL+ if I don't have the discipline to grind out 5NL for 100K+ hands and prove I can beat it. Learning is costly when you're playing for hundreds of dollars - but it doesn't need to be.

To keep us on topic, here are my long-term goals:

1. Get out of debt
2. Prioritize mental game and finish reading Jared Tendler's book
3. Save up $200 to play 2NL for 100K hands
4. Beat 2NL at 3bb/100+
5. Set a schedule for study and for play
6. Earn back my $20K

GL comrades 😀