[toots]

Me, losing?

Perhaps.

I never deposited a cent at Paradise. When I decided to scale back, I withdrew about four hundred.

They'd given me $2 as a teaser. Over a year and a half, I ground it up to a few hundred playing microlimit Limit HE, Limit 7CS and limit O8.

If that's being a losing player, I'll take it. Granted, I never got to the stakes where I'd win money of any consequence, but I did get a nice iPod out of the deal.

From my first two years of playing online, I was a net winner at every site I played except one, where I lost $25. This determined by comparing deposit with withdrawal, and none of it was bonus whoring, 'cause I wasn't playing high enough limits to make that happen in any reasonable time And, my $25 loss was easily made up for by what I won from a $0 deposit at Paradise.

So, no, I wasn't losing.

I left $12 at Paradise. When I came back, I ground that up to $60 over the course of a year, again at binky stakes. Deposited $50 at Pokerstars. It's down to $49 now.

Yes, now, after a year-or-so break, I feel I am a losing player (even though I haven't shown a net loss overall). My game just isn't where it was when I first decided to take some time off.

So, yeah, I was a winning player within the limits I was playing, but overall, the ups weren't as fun as the downs were bad, which as I said, was a net bummer.

Am I a "winning player" who could make a living off poker? Nope, and never have been. Was I a winning player within my limits? Yep.

There are just better ways to spend my time. And, if I want to make money in my spare time, I have much more reliable ways of picking up significant note without playing poker. The fact that I don't always avail myself of those other ways of making money simply reflects that I'd rather do things other than spending all my waking hours trying to make more money. Doesn't matter if it's poker or "regular work." There's just more to life.