(OT): My Poker Situation, need advice (super long)

[snakekilla88]

I will start this post off by giving you a brief back ground of my poker history. At the age of 16 I sent $30 bucks in the mail to someone I met on a poker forum hoping he would put $30 bucks on a poker site for me. Luckily, he was a man of his word and I had $30 bucks on Ultimate Bet. I grinded my initial $30 dollar deposit up to $260 playing $1+.10 and $5+50 SNG’s over a 5 month span (I did not play poker very much). I then found someone who was willing to trade 50 bucks from ultimate bet to pokerstars.

With the $50 bucks in my pokerstars account I was immediately attracted to playing in big field tournaments. Everyday I would play out of my bankroll, and do the $10+1 (19: 45) freeze out. I remember placing 18th and scoring 160 bucks, two days later I placed 6th and scored around 400 bucks. Then two weeks later I chopped the tournament with around 1700 entrants for almost 3k. I immediately cashed out around two thousand dollars. I left my poker account with around 1500 bucks and actually realized a lot of money could be made playing poker. From playing ten to fifty dollar tournaments and small stakes SNG's(6.50-15 turbos) I was able to build the $1500 to $3500 over a 6 to 8 month span. At the time I was attending high school and could not invest much time to play although I thought about poker a lot. When spring break rolled around which was about 3 months ago I mutilated my bankroll by failing to drop down and continuing to play 30 to 50 dollar tournaments. When my bankroll reached a depressing 1200 I took a two week cold turkey break from poker to evaluate my thoughts.

Recently, I found 2p2 which re-enforced how little I know about the game of poker. I immediately came to the SNG one table forum since the thought of tournaments just made me sick (the variance is so high and they take so long). After buying the recommended programs (ace hud, pokertracker, SNGPT) I began setting goals to play a lot more poker. So far for the month of June here are my stats…



Stars $6.50 Turbos: 40.64% ROI over 96 games
Stars $15 Turbos: 9.22 % ROI over 361 games

I just graduated from high school and planned on getting a part time summer job and play as much poker as I can on the side. Unfortunately, finding a job in my area is truly difficult. I have already gone to two or three job interviews and felt confident I would get the job, since the interviewers seemed to really liked me but no luck :-/. As for one of the reasons I am posting this….my parents seem to be the problem. My dad has been pressuring me to get a job like crazy and I have honestly been trying. My dad is a cardiologist that just retired from the military and is now working as a civilian. Since I can not find a summer job I do not want to sit and home play poker all summer. I decided that I would go to summer advancement classes to get rid of some of my credits early….I would be taking a nutrition class that is 2.5 hours from Mon-Fri for 26 days in June. Yet, before my dad would pay for my school he wanted to have a talk..

He said its fine since that since I am struggling to find a summer job that I go to summer school under a few conditions….
A. In college he wants me to pass this course with flying colors
- I agreed 100 percent (Always A/B’s student in my high school). (My dad has always pushed absolute perfection in college. He said having a 3.0 in college will not mean anything, you have to get all A’s.)

B. Wanted me to go to the gym and come back looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger
- I agreed I plan to go the local gym, stay healthy run a couple of miles each day and pump some iron.

C. Help advance my major
- Engineering, talk to my counselor about career goals and offer my time/services as a volunteer over summer to serve as a teachers assistant to anyone in the engineering department.

D. Here’s the big one…he wants me to delete my poker software on all my home computers. He said I am just wasting years of my life by playing online poker and that it is an addiction. He said in college he does not want me to be playing poker.
-There will always be a little bit of extra time in my day and I truly enjoy poker. Yet, from a parent stand point I can understand where he is coming from watching me play so much poker for the last 6 months of my life. I realize its time to get serious and college is no joke but he is asking a lot. I do not drink or do any sorts of drugs so poker is sort of the thing I do…

As you read my results are far from anything impressive and I am trying to improve my game. As of now I have uninstalled pokerstars and ultimate bet and now have nothing to do until summer school on July 2nd starts. (Except maybe review HH’s and read hoh3 :-D) I promised my dad I would not play for the next 8 days and I will keep my word. When school comes around on July 2, I will put my studies before poker 100 percent guaranteed. Yet, should I even play at all is the question….Quit poker? Play just a little bit in college?

Feel free to ask questions/give me advice/ call me retarded for posting something this long :-D.