This is my story (long, boring)

[OneOfYou]

I’m posting this under a new name – most of you on this board know me, I’ve been a member here for a couple years, have many thousands of posts, but I guess I’m being a coward by hiding and posting this. A lot of you have met me in person, and I’ve spoken to a number of you on instant messaging – a lot of you know I’ve spoken with should not be shocked that my story is as follows, because you’ve heard some of these tales up close and in person…. So here’s my story:

I guess it all started about 10 or 11 years ago – in high school, my buddy and I knew this Iranian kid, he was 19 and he bet sports all the time with a bookie. He told us he’d put bets in for us if we were interested. My buddy and I did fairly well until our bookie hookup started cooking the numbers on our games….losses that should have been wins, ‘misquoted’ point totals, etc. – basically he was losing his ass to the bookie and covering himself with our wins. So that was the end of that….

…once college hit I didn’t really think too much about gambling, until my 2nd year. I discovered online sports betting (keep in mind we’re about 1998-1999 here), and signed up with a credit card that I got from one of those “we’ll give you a free t-shirt” applications in the student center. Nothing too serious, in fact I remember always betting at least 1 8-10 team parlay for 10 bucks just to see if I could hit jackpot – the card limit was $500 and that was gone in a few months time.

I came home from school, dropped out because I got an awesome job with a fat signing bonus, and was able to job hop and bonus my way to a pretty good income. Obviously this was just before the bubble burst, but luckily I’ve been able to avoid layoffs and downsizing pretty well. I’ve always had a little bit of credit card debt, a few thousand here a few thousand there, nothing that couldn’t be taken care of with one or two large payments. My girlfriend (now wife) had similar debt on credit cards, and decided to apply for a card with a 0% balance transfer so that she could pay her card off without the interest rate. So she got the card, with plenty of room for her other cards to be put on… and about 8,000 more on top of that in available credit.

It started with one game for a few hundred… then another couple games for another few hundred… soon it was $1000 a game, and soon that card was dead.

Then I got a card from the same bank….and there went another $8,000, same style… I had a few wins here and there for a few thousand, sometimes running up almost enough in my account to withdrawl and payoff the card….but I’d be about $1,000 short or $2,000 short, so I kept it in there and eventually went busto trying to climb back.

Around this time I discovered poker (3-ish years ago), and spent all of my available money learning the game, and learning to get my ass kicked at the game. I’d play games way over my head (5/10 with $100, etc.) and either make a quick score or lose and re-deposit the next day and try it again. I eventually took my act to the local casino (large major east coast casino), and played in the low limit games there, more for fun and drinking than to make any serious cash.

My wife and I got married last year, and we scored a ton of money from the wedding – had about 170 guests and cashed in for close to 8k. Since we had been paying down the debt on our cards, this was about 2k short of what we needed to pay off everything. Well I had a great idea about how we could easily get that 2k in no time…..and in no time we were back to being 12k in the hole. Fast forward to January of this year…..

I spoke to my father and told him that with this big fat bunch of debt at 22% interest on the credit card I could see no way out, so he told me he’d give me the 12k, and I could just pay him back each month at 0% interest instead of the high credit card rates. This was perfect, a way out – my parents are not wealthy by any means but my father saw this as an opportunity to help his son, and he knows my wife and I both have great jobs, are true to our words and good for the money.

I paid off the credit cards on January 2, 2006. On January 3, I was down 6k to sports betting again. I then went on a sick heater, and won about 12k gambling sports and playing table games at the casino. Enough to pay off what I blew in January and make a good chunk in paying my father back. But I blew that too.

In February and March, I hovered back and forth between betting sports and table games, playing occasional poker but using the winnings from that to finance my other gambling habits. By the end of March, I was 13k in the hole on credit cards (half of it cash advances) in addition to the 12k my father loaned me.

I played poker for a little while, playing the bankroll building game, but every time I’d reach $1000-$1500, I’d withdraw it and throw it on a game, to try and double it so I could make more money playing poker – I only won once, I lost every other time. I never took the one win out to play poker, I tried to double down and hit for an even bigger score.

The months of April and May were pretty much dominated by table games at the casino – big wins, bigger losses – playing higher and higher, taking out cash advances on the credit cards. Eventually I ended up where everyone ends up… BUSTO.

In June we went on vacation for 10 days, took some time off of work to relax, play golf, enjoy life (as much as we could you know) – at the same time, we got credit card increases from the banks…. The $8,000 in increases was blown throughout the course of the vacation, usually in $1,000 increments on World Cup or day baseball games… a few wins, but as always, bigger losses. I finally broke down and did what I never though I’d have to do - I called my mother one night in tears telling her what I had done, what I had done with my father’s money, and what I had done with my credit cards. I thought that would be the turning point.

I came home from vacation, and due to temporarily good credit (the credit reporting agencies hadn’t caught up with the huge balances on the cards just yet), was able to secure a few 0% for 12-month on balance transfer and one large 3.9% lifetime balance transfer cards to get all of the debt onto. Perfect, now I’ve got a year to really dig into these balances free of interest (the 3.9% one would just be minimum payments as the rate would never go up, so I’d take care of that after the 0% were out of the way)

I think you know where this story goes – before I could finally, finally get the high interest cards cancelled (or in this case re-issued with new numbers I hadn’t memorized and instantly shredded), I ran them back up on sports and table games.

So here I sit today, close to $46,000 in debt to credit cards and $10,000 in debt to my father. I can’t sleep, I can’t focus at work, I can’t think of anything besides how utterly disappointed I am in myself and what I’ve done to my life and to my family. My father has no clue that I’ve racked up this amazing amount of debt, but as I had another conversation with my mother this morning, sooner or later we’re going to have to clue him in – not because I’m looking for more money, just because part of the reason this burns me up so bad and makes it hurt so bad is because I am close with my father and have to lie to him all the time when he asks how it’s going, and how I’m doing money-wise.

I’m confident I can make money playing poker – PokerTracker tells me this over many many many thousands of hands – my problem with poker has been that I’m always chasing a number that I can reach to pay off my debt, I’m never just playing poker to win money and dominate games. For example, 3 times in the last month I’ve deposited between $700-$1000 on separate occasions, and proceeded to sit in the games I know I can crush and ran the money up to $4k-$5k. Hindsight would dictate that I should have pulled that out and cut into my huge debt with it, but I always just looked at the $4k-$5k as the only vehicle I have to $10k-$15k, so I try to take shots at big games and get crushed. It’s a terrible feeling afterwards because I’d obviously much rather have that money back and either stay in the good games I played to get there or use it to cut into my debt. I see stories about these kids that run $1k into five figures or higher and I suppose that clouds my judgement – I’ve been told time and time again to just stick to the games I know I can beat, but the weight of all of this debt forces me (in my mind) to continue to press it up and play higher.

Why am I posting this? Well, because I know there are people who will read this, lurkers, current posters, etc. who are victims of the same cycle. I want people who are in the middle of something like this to read my story and realize that if you stop now, it’s not going to get any worse. If you never bet another game or never play craps or blackjack again, you can’t get any deeper. I realize most of the replies to this are going to be “YSSCKY”, and trust me, I have (in addition to declaring bankruptcy, etc.) – but I’m okay with that. Anyone with anything helpful to say, feel free to reach out (via reply or PM). Thanks for providing me the forum to air this out.