Quote:
Originally Posted by Pokergfnyc
So do poker players get down like that? Use girls for money and live and tell them you love them and show them everyday?
I truly do not believe he is using me. I truly believe he does this as his passion & so that we can have nice things in our future... I dont want to sound brainless cause I am only telling you a bad part of our story. All couples go through up and downs...Im not here to rant on my bf. Like i said everything is great & He is with me all the time and treats me well. I believe he loves me and trying to do good for us. He is also a good hearted person who has a heart of gold. He tells me all the time when he wins he has all these nice things he wants to do for us. and he also makes me happy with the little things he does. I didnt come on here to ask if i should stay with him- I came on here to learn more of a poker lifestyle and how many people were going through the similar situation so I knew it was kinda normal or if I should support him more then getting upset...when he is facing a losing streak. I am an independent college educated women and hold a degree and a teacher as a profession so Im not some fluff girl with no brains. I like to learn the ins and outs of the poker lifestyle so I can make my own judgements and decisions and looking for some info from long standing career poker players and their gf's if possible bc I am new to this kind of lifestyle. Thank you for all your posts.
As a poker player who did it as his sole source of income for a number of years I can tell you that your boyfriend is not built to play poker, he is a gambling addict. Bankroll management is the most important skill anyone who plays poker as their sole source income can have. If you can't manage your finances, you can't play professionally, and your boyfriend clearly can't manage his finances. You're helping him, and I know you think you're doing good, but you're not. He won't quit playing so long as you keep supporting him, and if he can play he won't feel as driven to try and find or keep a job.
Honestly every objective assessment of your situation leads to the same conclusion, he's using you. Maybe your love and your situation has twisted so far that neither of you can realize it, but that's what's happened. You're not being unreasonable at all, the way you wrote your post speaks towards the way I imagine he treats you. The line "I don't know what I'm doing wrong", along with all your questioning of yourself and placing the blame on yourself indicates that he's convinced you that it's your fault, not his.
Anyway, everyone is right that you should just get out right now. But if you can't, which I suspect, then I suggest you do this. Make him get a job and save up a certain amount of money before he plays poker again. Then he can play poker once he has a bankroll. If he loses the bankroll that is that. He has to show that he can manage his finances and get out of this hole he's dug you both in. Hopes and dreams are great, but I've got a 4k bankroll, a few months living expenses saved up, have played roughly 50 months (say 40 professionally, 10 recreationally) only having 3 minor losing months and I am still not in a position to financially go back to playing poker for a living because it would be irresponsible for me to attempt it. Imagine how ridiculous it is for your boyfriend to be in the hole $10k+ and borrowing money every week while considering himself a professional poker player.
For the record since you probably don't know poker statistics and stuff really well, let me break some things down. You play 30 hands per hour live, so if your BF is playing like 8 hours a week live he's basically straight gambling as the results over 240 hands are meaningless, if you're a winning player you need to put in heavy hours to minimize the effect of variance. Online you get rougly 75 hands an hour per table, playing probably 4 tables at a time on American poker sites that's 300 hands an hour. Any sample size under roughly 50k hands is meaningless, and even 50k hands isn't a lot, that's a small month for most players. Playing tournaments luck is even more devastating, and you need to play >500 tourneys for your sample to be at all significant, and even then a great player will lose roughly 30% of the time. You can read more about that stuff here.
http://www.nsdpoker.com/category/poker-pro/
I hope you end this painful relationship soon, it's a terrible situation you've ended up in.