Busted bankroll - seeking advice

[thrash1294]

take a week off.. try to forget poker.But i think you were palying above your bankroll. You play limit or no limit?

[2Tone]

I’d suggest that at the moment you need to less focused on poker strategy, and more worried about the role that poker is playing in your life.

As you seem aware, gambling – including poker – can very easily escalate into an addiction, which appears to be the case in your situation. If you were addicted to crack, and it had cost you $1000, and was damaging your performance at work and relationship with your wife, you (hopefully) wouldn’t be posting about how to best cook crack rock, or where to score. You’d be posting on advice on how to best get clean.

I’d suggest you need to quit playing poker for a lengthy amount of time. Six months, maybe more. Take the programs off your desktop, and unsubscribe from the mailing lists. The harder this is to do, the more it indicates how necessary it is. If you need help to do so, don’t hesitate to get it.

When and if you decide to return, you need to constantly be evaluating not just how you play the game, but what impact it is having on the rest of your life.

I sincerely wish you the best.

[Talking Poker]

This is much more along the lines of what my response was going to be. When I read the indications of a gambling problem, followed by questions about gambling.... eh.... Tone is right - you need to address the problem first.

I feel that I can speak from experience here, because when I first got into online poker - well, about 6-9 months after I got into it, I was playing a lot and I was starting to wonder if I had a problem. I needed to know, for my own well being, so I decided to quit for one month. And I did. After 3 or 4 days, I hardly missed it and knew I could safely return, but I had promised myself I'd quit for a month, so that's exactly what I did. I honestly think this is good advice for anyone who thinks poker might be becoming too big of a part of their life. Oh, and when I returned, I had my biggest rush ever, just so you know. I came back totally focused and started killing (ironically) the 6 max limit games.

Anyhoo..... I'm not going to answer the specific poker questions you posted, but Boobie's post was great. As for 6 max specifically, we have a LOT of GREAT posts on this site about 6 max hands. If and when you are ready for it (and I'm torn on if reading/studying poker should be allowed during the break), dig through the "How Should I Have Played This?" section of this site. And I mean really take your time and process all the info on each hand and the discussions that follow. You can't NOT become a better player if you read through as many of those threads as possible. If you're looking for 6 max limit specifically, do a search to narrow down the results.

GL to you. I hope to see you around the forum in the future, but if it's not for another month or two, that would probably be for the best.