How have you taken advantage of being a poker pro?

[The Dude]

I should add that I've gotten to do a ton of really fun stuff, though. While I was in college, I made probably twelve to fifteen trips to Vegas, always the Mirage or the Wynn. I've also been able to travel to Alaska. I had fun during the time, and it's not altogether that different from what a lot of college grads do, but it was basically just treading water, and in retrospect it doesn't seem like it would have been that difficult for me to get a lot more out of it.

[goofball]

James,

What is your favorite ski resort in Reno/Lake Tahoe?

[James282]

[ QUOTE ]
James,

What is your favorite ski resort in Reno/Lake Tahoe?

[/ QUOTE ]


GB,

Depends on what you are looking for. If you want the best snow/powder, go to Kirkwood. If you want the best steeps, Squaw Valley is your best bet. If you want a well rounded, big mountain with great night life, then Heavenly is pretty much a can't miss. I've never been to the North Lake casions, but nothing can really compare to South Lake when it comes to skiing/night life combo if you aren't an insane serious skier.

James

[MagicNinja]

Here we go: I wrote this while playing hu so its very jumbled.

Cliffs notes: I travelled a lot, learnt some cool skills like snowboarding and diving, will learn to surf and travel again soon, but have found that poker has started to make my mind rot. I am also 21 and own about 2/3 of a pretty nice house.

----

First thing that happened was I quit my job while I was at uni. This was kind of bad because I actually slacked off more once I wasn't working full time because I was way less organised with my time. Oh well. Push came to shove, I dropped out of university and planned to travel; but first I spent a 'perfect summer' in Perth ,Australia (where I live), where I started hanging out with friends who I grew up with but who never did the Uni thing (so we had grown apart: think garden state). But I really liked these guys, and we started hanging out again. They were pretty big into the Ecstasy / Music scene, so I started goign to concerts pretty much every weekend, popping pills and then going to the beach a few times a week. This was the perfect summer.

After that, I had a conversation with my parents after telling them I had a [censored] of money just sitting in my closet. I decided to buy a house, and then decided to go travel while playing poker and basically travel until I burnt my bank roll if I couldn't sustain my travel expenses. I went to south east asia, and had a mad time travelling through malaysia, thailand, lao, cambodia, hongkong, china, then germany, las vegas. Along these travels I met heaps of people, saw awesome sites around the world, learnt to Scuba dive for a couple weeks, wrote in my journal and played very little poker. In Hong Kong I bought a laptop, after this my travelling became much less 'backpackerish' and more 'young professional', which sucked actually. Wish I had never taken those steps.

I did the vegas thing for a while, going out and blowing thousands on strippers and dom, but I wish I hadn't, it really didn't bring me as much satisfaction as going to the beach in thailand and hammering changs. Still, I'm not going to lie and say I didn't have some great times, and it feels good to have experienced the high life. Then Bruiser and I were talking on aim and thought it would be cool to live in San Francisco. At the time we were both a bit apathetic (him less than me), so most the good times we had living together involved eating in some incredible restaurants (thanks el d / scrub) and getting hammered together. This is when I really started getting into red wine and I enjoy some great wines that I wouldn't be able to afford if I hadn't played poker. Since we weren't doing much, I focused hugely on poker, and made an insane amount of money playing 10/25 nl hu on ub, and 80/160 / 150/300 triple draw. Then I went to LA. Cue destruction.

When I got to LA I started the biggest downswing of my life; I just started losing 10k every morning and then i'd stop so i didn't tilt. Then I'd go to CTSs room and we'd drink dom and i'd watch him win a [censored] of dough, then we'd go party hard. Rinse repeat until I'm on a 200k downswing and a month of drunkeness. At this point I am running so bad that RiverBoatLuckBox wins 7k off me in a night flipping for 1k a flip. I go to Vancouver with a little more money than I started my travels with but comparatively broke.

I see some family there and go to Whistler where I learn to snowboard. I get real depressed since I know noone in Vancouver besides my grandparents and family friends. I drink heavily. I continue to lose at poker. I tell randoms on IRC to come see me in Whistler and Dan Bright does. We spend a week getting drunk and snowboarding which was great. I spend a week or two on a girls couch whom I knew from Perth Uni (she was an exchange student). I take her out to Lumierre and Tojos (both ~$500 meals for 2, but we had wine / sake / port etc). They are both awesome places to eat, some of the best in the world, and I was very happy to be able to experience food that some people never get to try because of my relative affluence.

I fly home after Christmas with my grandparents who are getting old. Christmas is spent with just me my grandpa and my grandma and we play rummy and drink scotch and red wine into the wee hours of the morning. I can tell they greatly enjoy our time together which is great because I am not sure how many more times I will see them before they pass away.

When I get home, I instantly grow depressed again. Why do I feel like I have no purpose in my life? Why do I feel like days just slip off the clock with me making 0 progress as a human being? I hang out more with school friends and go to the beach every day but still feel completely unfulfilled. Now I am about to go on a week long excursion to this beach house with a bunch of backpackers in perth to learn to surf. I really feel that through my travels i've learnt the things that satisfy me as a human being better; I've learnt how to actively go out and experience the bounty that life has to offer.

Current plan is to focus on poker again, keep paying off my house, play the guitar, go to the beach, learn to surf, go to concerts, then fly to South America when summer in Australia finishes. We'll see.

Whatever the case may be, I've experienced so much and feel like i'm just on the tip of the iceberg of experiencing so much more, but I always feel strangely unfulfilled lately. I need to find something I am passionate about, I need to find a new poker, before my mind rots and I deal with the brain rot by drinking. It's weird because I am passionate about a lot of things but poker has kind of made it so that I am lazy with them; EG I used to want to be a concert pianist. Now I rarely play, just enough so I don't get significantly worse.

Good idea for a thread james, quite cathartic writing all this down.

[Reef]

I was only a "semi-pro" through college and recently graduated. So I'm saving up for a house (and for the market to cool off), the down payment which will be all from poker. Poker will also have my student loans paid off in full. I now am renting my own place and live very comfortably.

[suzzer99]

Barely really. I was able to take a couple long trips back to back, which would have been impossible in a real job. But other than that I've been working so hard to build my bankroll for the last 8 months I might as well have a full time job.

[Spy Dog]

I was able to move from the US to Ireland with my wife without the worry about finances and 'getting a real job', although it did take me about 7 weeks to get a phone line so I was out of poker work for awhile. That was 2+ years ago. Because of the US legislation, I feel very lucky that I live in Ireland now.

Also, my wife and I had our first child and I am able to spend way more time with him than if I worked a 'real job'.

[Oki-Oki]

James, what is your playing schedule when you are skiing. Do you play around 2 or 3 hrs a night. Or do you Ski 4 days a week and try to play 2 days with one day for resting/relaxing.

I love snowboarding and live in Australia and my dream is to own a home on the New Zeland ski fields. Probably 12mths away at my current rate.

Overall I just really wanted to know how you balance your skiing with earning. Great thread.

[Jay.]

10 month bump for those who also included what they wanted to do in the future in their replies. Did you do what you planned? If not, what else? and also bumped for so the new EDF crowd can share their stories.

I completed all but one of mine (the one i was least interested in), which is interesting because i never set in stone any long term plans to complete them. I guess just having them mulling around in the back of my mind was enough to one day make sure i did them all.

[bmxicle]

I'm back in school as a pro, and it's still pretty awesome.