My new life - poker free!!!

[thesilkworm]

Good post OP.

I have no doubts at all that poker can negatively affect one's social life, especially if you find it hard to balance it with other aspects of your life.

A couple of years ago, I had this problem (although I doubt I would have admitted to it at the time).

Having said that, I would say now that poker has had a positive effect on my life.

2005 had been a pretty bad year. I had dropped out of university, and was playing far more poker than was healthy. To be honest, I was going nowhere, until I lucked out and managed to get a job working for a poker network in Malta (a small island in the Mediterranean). This gave me just the change I needed. I played hardly any online poker for months, I really enjoyed my job in the fraud department, and met loads of great people. I had a normal social life again. Malta in summer is a bit of a party island, and I had a great time. And when I started playing online poker again, I didn't play alone. I met a girl out here and we played tournaments together online. And hey, we even won sometimes!

This girl is now my girlfriend and we recently moved in together. I now work for a different (better) poker site, and definitely see my career in this industry. I still play poker sometimes, but I do it now to relax rather than make money. I have a job for that now. If I happen to make money, then that's a bonus!

Sometimes I wonder where I would be today if it weren't for poker. I might still have been in university, studying for a career I would not have enjoyed.

I don't really know what my point was here. I'm just rambling.

Sorry, didn't mean to hijack your post OP. Just wanted to say good post!