Good Article

GeoffM · #1 05-25-05, 02:21 PM

Edited to add: 2 pages, so click continue page at the end of the first page.

Talking Poker · #2 05-25-05, 02:47 PM

Page 1:

I'm actually glad poker wasn't as popular as it is today when I was in college. While I'm confident I could have made some nice money playing, I know it would have taken up a LOT of my time and probably really effected how things turned out for me... Who knows where I'd be today?

Talking Poker · #3 05-25-05, 02:58 PM

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Tom, who has lost more than $100,000 (and is currently down $55,000) since his senior year in high school, has a ritual. He plays alone in the bedroom of his off-campus apartment. The lights are off. The door is locked. He does not eat, does not answer the phone, does not even go to the bathroom. He plays one song, Such Great Heights by the Postal Service, over and over. And he loses. "Ridiculous amounts," he says. "I'll gamble $400 a day, play 12 hours a day."
For Tom, hold 'em is a symptom, not the disease. He once lost $600 in one afternoon playing H-O-R-S-E. He lost $1,500 the very first weekend he signed up at Paradisepoker.com, a site from which he is now banned. He even lost $500 one day at OTB (Off Track Betting), "and I don't even know anything about horses. I just need to gamble."

"I'm compulsively addicted to making money," Tom says without a trace of irony. "That's where it all stems from."

But where has it all led? His credit rating shot, Tom cannot even open a checking account. He is maxed out, not only on his own plastic but also on five credit cards belonging to two "investors" in his ticket-scalping business. "I'm not taking their calls," he says, "because I can't pay off their cards.

"The hardest part?" he adds. "I'm always scared, always depressed and sad. I ruined my life. I messed up my life, my academics, my friendships. Just don't gamble. Don't do it."

junYUN · #4 05-25-05, 03:04 PM

WHOA thats scary...how could you possibly go through all that? don't you think you'd change your rituals if you lost that much

badblood44 · #5 05-26-05, 12:55 PM

Soooooooooooooooo true. I'd have failed out of school for sure.

PShabi · #6 05-26-05, 01:08 PM

Wouldn't have failed out, but I'm also glad it boomed after I got a job.

Talking Poker · #7 05-26-05, 01:35 PM

Interesting. That makes at least three of us, who are winning players that enjoy poker (I don't think I am putting words in your mouths), and we are all glad it wasn't as easy to find a game when we were in school as it is today.

Very interesting.

PShabi · #8 05-26-05, 01:45 PM

For me, I would've been successful, but I would've been a hobit. Sooo much inbetween time that I would've had no life. And if you lived in a fraternity...... FORGET ABOUT IT.

I could imagine home games popping off every fucking night, seriously.

Just glad I lived out my college days in the "old days." (That fucking hurt to say that.)

badblood44 · #9 05-26-05, 03:06 PM

I believe that part of the reason I'm currently a winning player is due to my maturity level and life experiences with managing money - none of which I had in college.

Reel Deal · #10 05-26-05, 03:33 PM

Holy cow, what a wack-job.

Kurn · #11 05-26-05, 05:23 PM

LOL. The "old days", when I was in college, there were no computers smaller than a big room. We also had a war going on, but in those days, the Man could force you to choose between the war and prison. In the biggest gambling win of my young life, I got 307/366 in the draft lottery.

Of course, on the good side, there was no such thing as AIDS and a "feminist" was a girl who thought sleeping around was liberated. Liquor store owners looked the other way when you asked someone old enough to buy booze for you, and most bars near the campus never asked for IDs.

I did my share of gambling, being just a short subway ride from a racetrack.