Destructive gambler asks "How do I quit poker?"

[CrazyIvan24]

luckyjimm - go learn to play poker.

[luckyjimm]

Oh, I know how to play poker alright, if by that you mean the game itself. In terms of skill, yes, I definitely have what it takes to be a winning PLO player. Hence doing $3 to $100 the other day, or $300 to $2100 the week before. But I've never displayed the money management or tilt control, and when you combine that with the suckouts, the idiots getting it in with the worst of it and hitting anyway, I have a hard time not losing in the longterm. And I've not been able to stop my emotions from being controlled by my luck at the table. I've got this in common with most compulsive gamblers, I expect.

Yesterday I phoned the debt recovery department at my bank and negotiated a repayment schedule over the next month. I've at least acted maturely by contacting them before my account had even been passed their way. I suppose gamblers, like drunks, have to become good at charming people.

"To me, it's become painfully obvious that the OP has no desire to change any of his/her behavior"

- well, the starting point of this thread wasn't me saying "how do I change?", it was "how do I get to the point where I want to change, when I've done all this damage but I'm still doing it, there must be a part of me that likes it." A masochistic part of me, but it's there in spite of my better judgement, in spite of the ideals I have for myself of how my life ought to be, of what makes for a good life. I always look up to and envy the lives of certain of my friends - the wealthy, creative, sexually active ones - so why, rather than trying to learn from their model of good living, am I doing everything I can to make my life the exact opposite of theirs? Don't I really want the good life I always thought I wanted, do I really want this tramplike squalor, the constant disaster of this life? It seems so.

[luckyjimm]

Had a flawless session last night. Went to the poker club after work and put £80 on Full Tilt, started playing around 7pm. Left just before midnight cashing out £200. I played mostly $0.25/$0.50 but a little $0.50/$1. I got paper and pen from the cage and wrote columns for "I got lucky" and "they got lucky" and thankfully the first column was far longer. I won quite a lot of hands where I was 60 / 40 to win.

I took a few beats - e.g. with 88 on A89r flop, turn 9, opponent has A9 - but didn't let them affect me, and kept the pots small. I was just really in the zone, knowing which pots I could nick, which ones to stay away from, etc. I was hitting some nice hands too, e.g. in a raised pot had a K 3 6 flop, giving me a set of kings, the nut flush draw, and five players in the pot! Only one stuck around but he paid me off all the way.

I was in a good mood, and chatted with a few familiar faces. It felt good to leave at a sensible time, with money in my wallet. I got a taxi back home with the middle-aged middle-Eastern gambling addict who'd told me to stop when he'd seen me upset last week on the eve of my birthday. It felt good to be going back a winner.

So my rent's now paid, and my midweek money crisis is over. And because the bank cancelled my Visa card, when I got home I wasn't able to tiredly tilt off my wages! I think I might try a few weeks without a bank card, so I have to go into a branch to get cash and can't get more than £100 a day since I only have one form of I.D. I'll see if this helps - I think it really will.

[LilGreen]

Idiotex had a great post about bankroll management.

I cannot believe you claim to have the skills and yet know nothing about bankroll management. You simply cannot have it both ways. Playing PLO with like 5 buy-ins is unbelievably stupid. I need at least 40 buy-ins for PLO and 20 buy-ins for low limit NL to know fairly certainly that I am a winning player.

A player who knows bankroll management but thinks 27o is teh nuts understands very likely more than you about the game. Learn bankroll management and then see how things start developing.

[Trier]

G’day mate,
I’ve a lot of sympathy for you. My own story involved having a successful career, a major breakdown and, associated with that, bad addiction to booze and an addiction to what are differently called poker machines/slot machines/fruit machines. So I was addicted to a behaviour where it was statistically inevitable I would lose. So at least you’re starting one-up with poker.
Here’s a few strategies that have worked (very slowly over 10 years) for me:
1. Find a counsellor you get on with and can converse with. Avoid anyone who has a label such as CBT, Psychodynamic, etc.. You sound like you need socialising above all else. Someone who is paid to be on your side is a good place to start. Just talk about what’s happening to you.
2. Essential: Get a family member with whom you have a good relationship of trust and share the problem with him/her completely. Do not pick someone you can bluff or intimidate. Then get this person to open a cheque account in his/her name. Then arrange to have a base amount credited automatically to that account as soon as you are paid (if you are paid electronically) or hand that base amount in cash over to that person (run, do not walk, to them). Make the amount sufficient to cover ongoing costs such as phone, power, etc. Then when you need to pay those bills get a crossed cheque made out to the provider. You can arrange cheque facilities with your local supermarket and get a blank cheque, crossed and made out to the supermarket, to pay for food. Have your rent automatically deducted from your own account before you can get access. Your bank will help with all this.
3. A major benefit for me was to move. Having been an inner-city leftie all my life, I moved out of Sydney to the scrub. Now I live in a granny flat on a farm in a hippy-trippy sort of area. It’s up in the rainforest, is idyllic and most of all quiet. It belts you over the head with peacefulness.
4. You sound, like me, to be a very left-brain person (you write well and can’t learn languages). No point forcing creativity that isn’t there. Find something you can get interested in and use your intelligence. I’m very interested in political philosophy and use spare time to read about it. It’s important because my previous behaviour with the pokies was dissociative – there to block out the brain – as poker sounds for you. I’ve used poker to engage my brain and haven’t been near a pokie since. Engage your brain on something, anything. Collect stamps, become a trainspotter, go bird watching (feathered or otherwise), anything.
5. Take pleasure in small victories. Do the shopping, more than you need. Then you can say “Hey, I’ve got heaps of tucker in the joint, you beauty!” Tidy up your living space. Grow some herbs. From little things big things grow. Go for a walk. Make sure you enjoy it. Say to yourself after each one, “This is pretty bloody good.”
6. Help others in even the smallest way. Do favours, volunteer some time somewhere. People will genuinely value you and that’s a pretty good base for starting to value yourself.
7. At the very least, change your playing behaviour. Give Hold ’em and Omaha, PL or NL, a swerve and start playing small limit stud or draw. Concentrate on strategy and small victories. If you need an adrenalin hit go bungie-jumping or get into a political argument in the pub (although never raise your hands against anyone – aggro makes everything worse).
8. Have an occasional wank (and enjoy it for what it is), but otherwise give sex a miss. Concentrate instead on getting to know people. If your attitude is you’ll bonk anyone who is (a) breathing and (b) ambulatory, you’ll never get anywhere. Like people first, and if sex happens it happens.
9. The body image thing is unimportant. Keep telling yourself that. I’m fat, bald, ugly, sluggish and pushing sixty. Answer: Become a Jack Nicholson fan.

These are just a few ideas. Hope they help.

[tthree]

OP is levelling us all.

[EL Burro Loco]

[ QUOTE ]
To me, it's become painfully obvious that the OP has no desire to change any of his/her behavior.
It strikes me that, for whatever reason, the repeated "pleas for help" seem to be more of an attention getting device than anything else.
If that fills some need for the OP and others that feel compelled to "help", fine. Maybe the OP is serious. I just don't see it.

[/ QUOTE ]

QFT Lucky Jimm is always making fun of himself or trying to call attention to his degeneracy but anytime someone says something about it he has these clever rationalizations or responses. This whole thread people tried to help him and he dismissed every scrap of advice and turned it into his poker blog. Then he starts a thread about begging for money on the rail online... hmm... was your brother a lot more successful? Everything you do screams attention whore.

[luckyjimm]

I haven't dismissed people's advice. I'm very grateful for all the great advice you've all given me. I just have been too weak / addicted to act on it. Perhaps having an addiction is comforting. I realise I actually live a very safe life free of risks - I am always broke, I don't go out much, I don't meet new people or try new things. Sure I can lose a couple of week's wages in an evening, but that's just money; and losing means I can continue my risk-free existence of go to work, spend the evenings surfing the web, repeat. No progression, no new experiences; no chance of failure if I never try to achieve anything.

Yes, I have tried to turn this thread into a personal blog, posting narrative updates of my latest disaster. But perhaps you can excuse that. It's good for me to write; it's the only way I can make sense of why I am living this way and hopefully start to make better decisions.

I feel like a tramp at the moment - no bank card, no cash all week, living on pasta with salt, butter and garlic; I need a haircut, and my suit needs a dry-clean. I find myself slipping more into tramp-like habits, like picking up a newspaper out of a bin to read on the tube home, or asking strangers for cigarettes. There must be some part of my psyche that wants to be a bum.

Payday tomorrow, but since I have no cash card I'm limited in what I can withdraw. I'd like to get a haircut, buy new shoes, have enough money to go swimming three-four times next week as I'm disgusted with how much weight I've put on (another defense mechanism, shutting myself off from the possibility of sex/a relationship), and have enough money to see friends in the evening if I'm invited to something spontaneous.

Of course I'm going to want to play poker. I think I will try actually having a bankroll - if I deposit $200 I will try two-tabling $0.05/$0.10 (rather than $1/2 or $0.50/$1 like I'd usually do). I can also play the $5 PLO tournaments which are enormous fun and run nightly. As a matter of urgency I need to seperate the money I have available for poker from the general money I have. Also I need to be able to go to bed with money in my poker account; not to have to keep on playing till I'm broke. I'm so addicted, though, I can't sleep if I know there's the possibility of me being sat at a PLO table being dealt a hand; even if it's 6am and I've got to leave for work in a few hours. I need to get over that.

I'm thinking of making a little card of poker wisdom saying something like: "You always want to play poker, but it will always be there. Save it for the times you're not tired, angry, drunk or upset. And remember you can have a break-even session; you don't have to play till you've won or lost as much as possible." I could pull this card out and use it to help me when I'm tempted to play at a bad time.

[luckyjimm]

[ QUOTE ]
G’day mate,
I’ve a lot of sympathy for you. My own story involved having a successful career, a major breakdown and, associated with that, bad addiction to booze and an addiction to what are differently called poker machines/slot machines/fruit machines. So I was addicted to a behaviour where it was statistically inevitable I would lose. So at least you’re starting one-up with poker.
Here’s a few strategies that have worked (very slowly over 10 years) for me:
1. Find a counsellor you get on with and can converse with. Avoid anyone who has a label such as CBT, Psychodynamic, etc.. You sound like you need socialising above all else. Someone who is paid to be on your side is a good place to start. Just talk about what’s happening to you.
2. Essential: Get a family member with whom you have a good relationship of trust and share the problem with him/her completely. Do not pick someone you can bluff or intimidate. Then get this person to open a cheque account in his/her name. Then arrange to have a base amount credited automatically to that account as soon as you are paid (if you are paid electronically) or hand that base amount in cash over to that person (run, do not walk, to them). Make the amount sufficient to cover ongoing costs such as phone, power, etc. Then when you need to pay those bills get a crossed cheque made out to the provider. You can arrange cheque facilities with your local supermarket and get a blank cheque, crossed and made out to the supermarket, to pay for food. Have your rent automatically deducted from your own account before you can get access. Your bank will help with all this.
3. A major benefit for me was to move. Having been an inner-city leftie all my life, I moved out of Sydney to the scrub. Now I live in a granny flat on a farm in a hippy-trippy sort of area. It’s up in the rainforest, is idyllic and most of all quiet. It belts you over the head with peacefulness.
4. You sound, like me, to be a very left-brain person (you write well and can’t learn languages). No point forcing creativity that isn’t there. Find something you can get interested in and use your intelligence. I’m very interested in political philosophy and use spare time to read about it. It’s important because my previous behaviour with the pokies was dissociative – there to block out the brain – as poker sounds for you. I’ve used poker to engage my brain and haven’t been near a pokie since. Engage your brain on something, anything. Collect stamps, become a trainspotter, go bird watching (feathered or otherwise), anything.
5. Take pleasure in small victories. Do the shopping, more than you need. Then you can say “Hey, I’ve got heaps of tucker in the joint, you beauty!” Tidy up your living space. Grow some herbs. From little things big things grow. Go for a walk. Make sure you enjoy it. Say to yourself after each one, “This is pretty bloody good.”
6. Help others in even the smallest way. Do favours, volunteer some time somewhere. People will genuinely value you and that’s a pretty good base for starting to value yourself.
7. At the very least, change your playing behaviour. Give Hold ’em and Omaha, PL or NL, a swerve and start playing small limit stud or draw. Concentrate on strategy and small victories. If you need an adrenalin hit go bungie-jumping or get into a political argument in the pub (although never raise your hands against anyone – aggro makes everything worse).
8. Have an occasional wank (and enjoy it for what it is), but otherwise give sex a miss. Concentrate instead on getting to know people. If your attitude is you’ll bonk anyone who is (a) breathing and (b) ambulatory, you’ll never get anywhere. Like people first, and if sex happens it happens.
9. The body image thing is unimportant. Keep telling yourself that. I’m fat, bald, ugly, sluggish and pushing sixty. Answer: Become a Jack Nicholson fan.

These are just a few ideas. Hope they help.

[/ QUOTE ]



Thanks for all your advice. The one thing I can't do is involve my family, since I already did that a couple of years ago and it's taken a long time to rebuild our relationships, after all my lies and deceit. It would cause too much damage to tell them that I kept on doing it; I have to sort this out - or not - on my own.

I believe people become addicts for many different reasons, but for me it quite clearly comes out of fear of sex, of intimacy, and not feeling good enough for a relationhip. This is what I need to address; and until this is sorted out, I will always be some kind of addict.

One of the most positive relationships I ever had was with my AA sponsor, who was a large, shaved-headed, ginger goatee-bearded Kiwi whose alcohol story was much more extreme than mine, involving being a rent boy, sleeping and sleazing around for money and booze. Although we had wildly different stories, there was a simple honesty about his experiences in making a new life for himself as a recovering / ex-alcoholic which really impressed and affected me. He gave me limitless amounts of time when I was going to AA - for a period, I would call him every morning. I have very fond memories of all the times we met up, how honestly we could talk. He was unshockable, and I could talk more openly to him than to anyone; he was better than any therapist I ever saw.

Ever since then, I feel I've been living a diseased life, dosing myself with alcohol, porn, poker and food, and just deepening the feelings of worthlessness which, for a time at least, I was starting to address. The problem is, vices are often fun, they each give their own high, they stop you from having to think about how you're messing your life up, and they give instant rewards which for the lazy addict seems much more rewarding than the genuine achievements of sobriety.

When I stopped going to AA, my sponsor said he couldn't speak to me any more; I thought at the time he was being brutal, but I now understand where he was coming from. He said he didn't want any practising addicts in his life. I did meet up with him again, a couple of years later, after he called me one time by mistake. I told him all about my gambling problems; I found him to be as articulate, intelligent, open-minded and calming as ever. He said the offer was there for him to sponsor me again, if I'd go back to AA. But since although I'd started drinking it was in very small quantities, and my raging problem was with gambling, I didn't take up his offer. I do regret it, I think; it is hard to admit you need to give up all your vices, all your addictions, but ultimately it makes for an easier life than to keep going with them.

[Trier]

You still don’t get it son.

Obviously, your entire life is this one particular problem. Solve this and you’re still not anywhere. Life’s got heaps of other problems to throw at you. I understand completely that looking from where you’re looking from, nothing else is in sight.

But will you stop, right now, whining. The only way to get on the front foot is to decide, right now, as you’re reading this, to want to get on the front foot (and bugger those who don’t understand cricket).

WANT to get out and start in the smallest way. First step, next post, stop telling us why you can’t do anything. Tell us what your next step is going to be. What is it? Are you going to save up enough for a haircut? Are you going to go out and buy yourself the makings of a good meal, and then cook it? Are you going to have a shower?

What is it? Don’t tell me what you can’t do; tell me what you’re going to do.

Here is how it goes. You’re totally in the space you’re in. Tough. You could be a refugee in a sub-Saharan camp wondering if you’re going to get a cup of rice to keep your family going another day. “I cried I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”

You have the ability to make decisions, but you don’t. You play poker very badly because, whatever your luck, you are depending on luck.

Your relationship with your former AA sponsor was positive, why can’t other possible relationships be positive? Personally, after admitting myself to a psych hospital and undergoing an intensive two-week program with the 12 steppers, it finally foundered on the rock of my inability to believe in a ‘higher power’. If you’re going to do that belief thing, you actually have to ‘believe’.

Here’s step one: Next post, tell us the good thing you have done today.