Downsides of Poker

[PoppinFresh]

Inspired by ggbman's thread about teaching his sister to play poker.

I've been thinking a lot about the effects that poker has had on me, but I'm finding it difficult to really pinpoint what has lead to what in my life or come to any conclusions.

Just looking for general thoughts on what the negative effects of poker are and why they occur, and why poker seems to effect people differently than other games/sports besides the obvious money factor(obviously money is a huge part of it, but an elaboration on why this is true would be nice). Thanks in advance

[headturner1]

loss of money. this would be a negative effect. the cause of this is that i am a donkey.

[Webster]

The number one problem is getting addicted to winning and shoving family aside saying you are not addicted and you are winning so what is the down side.

When I started in 1998 I played for 4 months and was up $5000. All of a sudden I was sneaking away to play poker instead of hanging out with my babe of a wife.

I stopped playing for a year once I realized poker was aking over. I was saying that since I was winning ignoring the family was OK.

Took a year to figure out how to keep both in my life.

[MikeGuz]

I suppose the attraction is the misconception that if you play "correct" poker you will be a winner in the long run.

Only a very small % (3-6) of players actually make eneough live well on. I am concerned about the young people who might be ruining their lives by chasing dreams of TV final tables and fortunes won. Personally I have been playing over 40 years the seriously the last 8. I have seen a lot of players go down in flames, losing their businesses, going bankrupt and several suisides. These were mostly highly educated people who had some success at poker before they hit a bad streak they couldn't handle.

I suggest Barry Greenstein's book "Ace on the River"for anyone thinking of taking poker seriously. In it Barry describes going broke several times and how one losing month can be disasterious. It is eye opening.

That is my feeling on some of the down sides of poker.

[pokergrader]

Long term wrist injuries from repetitive mouse movement.

[Zetack]

Downside? You lost me. The question makes no sense.

--Zetack

[sushijerk]

I can think of a big downside:

For many people poker creates the illusion of a skill "cushion", causing people to neglect things like education.

I think the initial softness of online games, combined with bonuses and RB, allowed many mediocore young players to have an annual income that will be completely unsustainable in the near future.

[Losing all]

For me

20 extra lbs.

Smoke more

eye strain

feeling like I should always work on weekends

Keeping strange hours

[RED_RAIN]

Just reading the title, I know I do not have enough time to write up a multi page document on this.