gotta be addicted to poker to be successful at poker imo
is not okay but whatcha gonna do?

I understand this debate well. Western medicine and psychiatry in America and ROW tend to define addiction in several ways, but it almost always must negatively affect family, work, financial, health, social, etc.

Winning players can not lose so you can likely rule out financial impact. Except if your current job or job you could be performing if not for poker is stronger on a per hour basis. Still does not qualify for addiction though.

Addiction is about making promises to yourself and then breaking them.

If you are a sharp, but decide at the last minute to play poker by yourself online during a 7 hour family and friends football sunday marathon there could be a problem.

I havent seen it mentioned here, but people are addicted to the loosing not the winning. I know it sounds weird, but this is how the brain works.

Winner after 500k hands and pretty sure i am addicted.
Is like a mix between video games addiction and being a workaholic.

Grunch but I'm not convinced it's possible to be addicted if you're a winning player (winning as in positive results after infinite hands.) Seems like part of the addiction is not having the self control to say no, which inevitably leads to blowing your winnings. Even if you only hit rock bottom once every ten years, you're still busto, which means short term winnings are just fool's gold.

I've never studied addiction though.

I see poker as an outlet to a better life, so I work hard at it and I think about it all the time throughout the day. I'm unhappy with my current job (even though it's steady, has benefits and pays decent), but I hate it and I know that I could play poker instead even if I make less money in doing so. I am striving to always become better at poker. My family and friends have sometimes taken a backseat to poker and as someone already mentioned I have also missed work and other life priorities as a result of poker. Do I have an addiction? Well, maybe, but if I'm playing/studying to become better and to make a better life for myself in the future, is that a bad thing? I am really working hard at the mental side of the game as to me this is the most important factor and reading the previous posts makes me really think about how I can improve to play for a living while having a balanced life.

I actually see poker as a tool to get myself healthier. I have been reading a lot and see that many top level players meditate, do yoga and have other great activities to improve themselves at the table. I do not see this being a bad thing akin to an athlete who eats well and trains in their "off time". I see poker as a way to have a happy life. I am starting to realize that I don't needs heeps of money to be happy, I just need enough for the basics. I may one day bink another nice one (hopefully more than one), but it's not my main goal. My goal is to live minimalistic, enjoy nature and reduce stress from the humdrum of the Mon-Fri 9-5 workweek which is killing me. So am I addicted to poker? No, I don't think so, but I'm striving to have a better life because of poker and in order to do so it has to be on the top of my list.

I don't believe it's healthy to be addicted regardless of whether you're winning or not.

I was addicted to online poker for years and was a healthy winning player but it would have ended my marriage if I didn't give it up such was my commitment to it at the expense of other more important things in life.

To Answer the question, no its not!
Addiction is one of the worst things what can happen to you in life.
I am not sure if I am addicted or not to the game...
To figure this out I banned myself from onlinepoker for one year and try to forget poker...poker is a game of devil, if you lose your control

Perfect statement of it, imo. Addicted to playing, not gambling. This type of process addiction is a choice to escape one's actual world into the world of the activity. It entails, by definition, seeking as the primary motive and motor of playing to escape elements of one's life and self.

Passion is not (necessarily) indicative of addiction; escapism is.

If one is asking, "Is being addicted to poker okay?" and they are using this critical standard, then it's the same question as, "Is it okay to seek ignorance of oneself or is it moral to seek to know thyself?" It's the same question once you define it properly, imo.

Our Father who art in Heaven
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,
on earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power
and the glory, for ever and ever.
Amen

Voodoo runs deep. It did do the exact same thing again for 51st time. Every card and situation just twists and turns toward totally stymieing my hand. Miss every single flop for 7 hours but two ... flopped the nuts both of those times, and in one of the mini-themes of this run, I"m in heads-up and they have the same hand. "Okay, you can have your chips back for the nuts," in other words. Forget about winning. One premium hand, QQ, get called cold by solid player and maniac, flop comes exactly what I envisioned, A-K-rag rainbow, and they both take off one with A-Q, one with A-10.

Guy sits down next to me in seat I vacated. His first two hands he flops top two pair to Q-J once and 9-7 once, both times I have flush and straight draw, and both times he fills up on turn making me dead. He didn't even know how to bet and fouled continuously when trying to raise. But he knew how to catch perfect against me.

Bye-bye hand was shorthanded game, I call raise with K-7 of clubs. Flop 6-8-9, two clubs. I make the mistake of checking to the guy, very aggressive, but he figures to have nothing here and the flop is too coordinated for him to continuate (new word, neologism). He checks. Turn is King. I fire into him he instacalls. At this point I am about 97% sure he has a King with bigger kicker. I have a strong read which does tend to mess with me at times in uber-bad runs. The river is a king. Yes, he has K-J and the whole hand has just been a twist and turn saga to "You lose your chips in a maddening way so sit there another couple hundred hands and then you get another one beat, in the interim two deuces beats all your hands, and nothing works, every situation twists and turns into a stymie F job for your seat. Feel free to try another one. Not gonna work."

I had such a UConn Women's Hoops type winning %s for so long in last five years, it must just be correction for that super hot run which obviously was way, way, way over my expectation.

I know this: the addiction to the highs of winning is now understood to be superfluous to consciousness which is something I adamantly did not realize before. I was dependent on it in a way which profoundly colored my consciousness. Now I don't have it and don't need it.

Can depend somewhat on the life situation you're in. Say you're in college. If you're doing a decent subject at a decent college, it starts as fairly hard and sometimes boring work and becomes over 3-4 years difficult and sometimes a very boring chore. But you have to do it. There's no way to reach an interesting and meaningful outcome without putting yourself through this grind.
So you go to college and in your spare time you dabble in poker. Unless you stick to HE limit at the micros poker is not mostly a dull grind. Even if you lose, you've gone through this emotional, engaging rollercoaster of exciting situations with interpersonal psychology, complex decisions that have to be made in seconds, sometimes with life-changing money on the line that demand serious emotional and intellectual engagement. It contains the high-low reward system that is intrinsic in gambling addictions.
So you finish classes at 2pm and the rest of your day is yours. Choose between trudging through 3 Chapters of a book on the Social Contract or........the enjoyable heart-wrenching ups and downs of a card game where you think you could walk away with 20 grand. You're more likely to choose the latter. Time after time. Study can wait to tomorrow. Then this becomes habit. Then you're way behind on the reading. Then you're skipping lectures. Then you're failing exams. But you're getting more and more into poker, giving better rewards now, and trying to catch up on your missed reading means missing out on the $500 big-overlay on Sunday. University career ****ed. Poker bios are littered with examples of dropouts who couldn't keep this balance.
There's some 'excitement Index' in the mind which makes mundane (but necessary) tasks look far more boring and unbearable to most people when you're routinely exposed to the kind of over-stimulation that poker and many video-games bring. Humans were not designed for these kind of roller-coasters. There is literally no experience in the evolutionary history that shaped you where you're exposed to such pervasive and enduring emotionally charged situations. The mind, pretty well-shaped otherwise for the mundane and rote, becomes like a fish out of water. This is also why so many online grinders cannot easily just drop everything to go socialize, where is the exciting roller-coaster in sitting chatting about normal life?
What might save you from this is a core sense of discipline, a strong internal locus of control. But most people don't have enough of this to withstand the ravages of a serious poker addiction. If I had a friend who was serious about college and wanted to build a bit of a bank roll on the side I'd tell him to stay the **** away from online poker til he came out with his degree.
And to people that say poker is a game of skill and not luck and it's not gambling I'd say 'what sites do you play on?' Sure there's a skill edge for some people in some games but for many it's a zero-sum gambling game with money just swishing around between fish and in many games it's more akin to roullette with a very small/negligible skill edge: games like the hyper turbos/spin and gos. Just because you're dealt two cards doesn't mean you're really playing 'poker' as we once knew it. The sites know you came for the excitement and not the grind and they shape the 'games' accordingly, more than happy to feed your addiction as their rake money piles up.

^I dropped out of college to pursue my real passion in life: poker
Stay in school kids. I had 20 credits out of 40 of electronic engineering.

GLGL

Addiction is never good


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Session 52

What this anomaly might be revealing -- and quite sagely at that -- is an addiction to the flop (the excitement thereof). After all, I grew up playing Omaha ... where half the point of playing at least in my psyche, was the anticipation and excitement of taking the flop, and where, of course, connecting with it was paramount each given hand.

Each session that a streak like this goes on, it feels impossibly unlikely, but that is misguided because with each successive session you aren't really getting any closer to the theoretical long run. It takes a thousand more sessions to do that. So it continues, "none of the above every flop," and (if only, perhaps) seems incredibly unlikely.

Here are the prospective hands tonight that I took the flop with (as tonight I started writing them down): 8-10 suited, 7-10s, 7-10s again, 6-7s, 3-4s, 8-Js, Q-8s, J-8s, Q-10s, Q-10s, A-8s, A-2s, A-3s, J-6s (desperate), 9-10s, 9-Js, 8-10s, A-K, A-K, A-K, A-K, A-Q, A-Q, A-Q, A-J, A-J, A-10.

Two deuces beat all those hands on the flop, every one, and none of them had flush or straight draws. Just absolutely zero.

Then 10 hours into the session came this string of hands within 30 minutes:

1. My K-Q suited versus a Q-J suited heads up, all-in pre (in fast blinding game). He makes a royal flush and goes on the high hand board obv.
2. My J-J versus J-Q of diamonds heads up. I way over raise preflop. It's late at night he calls. Flop is Ad-K-d-5c. One of worst flops possible for my hand. He flops royal draw, charges and I can't play.
3. I have 10-J of clubs, flop is 6-7-9 all clubs. Flush and straight flush draw. I'm heads up with preflop raiser and have no win. Lose my stack and get slow rolled with him hollering for 10 of clubs the whole time. He has the one total killer of course, A-8 of clubs.
4. I have A-K of clubs versus J-J. Flop is 2-3-7 with two clubs. Runs out two red queens.
5. I have 7-8 of spades. Flop is 5s-6s-10. I"m up against two jacks. Two deuces beats me at the end, my new favorite saying.
6. I have A-Q raise heads up versus A-10. Flop 10-9-2. Turn ace, River ace. Somebody comments that it is some kind of cooler or something. Doesn't look that way to me.

Zero touches on all these drawing hands, not cherry picked. The cold stone snider is in effect.

I did start with the best hand four times (that I know of), and won all 4 unhelped for significant pots (aces three times, kings once). But the game was fast and that's not enough in 10 hours of play. Not one single card on any board can connect with my hand ... for 52 sessions it continues, revealing perhaps that I have too much emphasis on connecting, ala Omaha, instead of playing this maddening game called hold'em right.

I walked out 1500 loser, but turned around and plopped 700 on PLO table. Immediately versus apparent aces and a couple other hands I play 3-4-6-7. Flop 4-6-J. I have aces beat and gutter. Apparent aces bets 200, someone calls in between, trouble, I call it the hell with it, guy behind me check-raises and stacks are in. I call the damn thing just out of options. I veto offer of running twice, don't care. Pair the four on the turn. Winner.

Walk out the door 800 winner.

How do you play Texas Hold'em?? Obviously not like I'm playing it ... trying to connect with the flop.

So what I’m trying to say I think is I’m trying to win at hold’em by a combination of matching the flop, counterpunching, and knowing when I’m beat. That won’t work of course as I’ve proved over 30 years of very occasional play (usually I play PLO).

But the point of this streak is the uncanny run of not one card on any board improving my hand. Say 100 flops taken this 10 hour session – that’s 500 board cards – not one card made anything for my hand. And this stymie job for 50 sessions in a row.

I was tearing my hair out over it, so to speak, but now I’m just looking at it numbly … saying “two deuces beats me” no matter what the draw or hand, unless of course I have a pocket pair in which case I end with exactly what I started with. Another twist on this latest session was taking 5 stabs on the turn in checked flops, all five times called by one player. And all five times they caught their dream card on the river (two pair, trips, or flush).

It starts looking strange. It all started exactly when I stopped taking my usual intense energy to the game, out of passion for it, checking out. And the universe dealt me card death. It knew. It knows all. At the conventional level of perception of “reality” that sounds strange. At deeper levels it’s inarguable. Mind is dealing its own hands, universe is the quantum dealer most certainly in the know, and notions of conventional probability are wholly shallow shortcuts to understanding what is happening and what life is.

I think I listed 29 non-paired hands that I took the flop with this session in contested pots (where there was a flop), and in all 29 after five board cards the hand was the same unpaired hand it started out as. I’d like to know what the odds of going 0-for-145 on those cards is. A hold’em player doesn’t think that way, but I never said I was a hold’em player. I’m not a hold’em player; I’m a metaphusician who dabbles in poker and has filed on winnings 28 of the last 30 years (not in hold’em and not this year, obv.). And I’d like to know what 0-for-145, some semblance of which repeated session after session for 50+ sessionss, can be if not dealt with intent/meaning by the universe itself. I believe in fluid, intelligently aware statistics … not cold random ones (which has no real meaning anyway).

"What am I addicted to?" is a powerful question that, when asked sincerely, leads to developments front the netherworld. The universe deals it all. It created you through stardust, through quantum apparitional foam ... and to think that the bottom line of probability is on a calculator, is not quite the real story. Deal'em, you quantum aware apparatus ... and lead an open mind to water.

BTW, what exactly is a Truman Show? That guy may have been on to something.

We know all this already through your webcam feed
I appreciate your situation and how horrible it feels.
We have an innate desire to make sense of it all and a strong pattern bias to remember when things are 1) going against us and 2) seemingly out of the norm. We don't remember the norm so well because it doesn't matter so much for it to have our attention. I went for the train 50 times last year and 45 times it came on time. I never FB / Twitter posted about the punctual ones because that's what's supposed to happen. I barely gave it a second thought. But 1 hour delayed trains loomed large in my consciousness. 'Trains are crap'. 'The network is crap'.
Write down about when things went normally. Write down when they didn't but the glitch/beat turned out in your favour. It will overall be slightly against you compared to the other guy because you're better than him. But apart from that, and over a large time-span, the cards come out exactly as they should with no bias.
I know that words help the feeling little though. It really sucks to be there.

Thanks for the input but it's not the typical selective bias. I"ve never seen this in 1/3 of Century of steady play and wonder how exactly it is possibly random. A player doesn't get anywhere near the long term by playing part time in casinos (they certainly might playing online millions of hands), so the idea that it is all even for everyone is bunk. This is 52 straight sessions of death configuration of deck, not the train was late 5 times. That's thousands and thousands of outs and catches very near zero, I say, very near ZERO of thousands expected to hit.

No big deal. I've already said of myself "I'm not a poker player anymore." I meant that, I came to realize, the same way I meant, "Tiger Woods is not a tournament golfer anymore." You drift away from the game, come back a little, de-commit a little more, drift away, dabble back in ... drift quite a bit more .... then stop playing for long stretches, and at some point you cross a threshold where your head and body isn't even in the game anymore. That's not irrevocable, but it's a big change in status.

One other thing about the streak: I've pulled up on how far I go, going very short with 2 buy-ins, and not once in the streak was the loss anything short of incredibly long and drawn out, just tortuous never lose it quick. I go every time refreshed thinking, "How can they tilt me on two buy-ins?" And the super slow motion beat goes on ... 10 hours of behind the whole 10 hours each time. I do admit, I am sensitive to playing behind for long stretches. I guess I could just start shipping massive overraises continuously and make something happen fast. Only 3 hands that I remember in the whole streak did I do that, just way overship hundreds of dollars over the pot size, was insta-called all three times, I won one but can't remember the hand right now.

And as I've covered I had a bizarrely extended heater of a lifetime preceding it all. Doc Holliday might call it a reckoning but that doesn't make much mathematical sense, does it? Then again, I'm not a mathematical player.

It worked and it worked and it worked and it worked and it worked ... and then this. Actually, it never really worked in hold'em. When this chill hit the Omaha table, losing 61-of-62 runs during one stretch, I backed off to hold'em where you aren't supposed to have to catch. And I caught ZERO outs for ~ 10,000 hands. All at the same time my energy was way off at the table. Weird stuff, but really not a big a deal as it is interesting and anomalous.

Well, I have studied addiction ... and what's going on is something like: I go to the game primarily to feed my addiction to the excitement of the flop, always have, but now I have this side question in my head each time, "Will this session be another utter stymie succession of cards and situations?" ... surely not, since that is a really long shot in any given trial.

Yet what the experiment yields repeatedly is, "Yes, it is another stymie zero percent deal. How does that play with your subconscious purpose for playing (the addiction)?" says the universe. Obviously not very well on one level, but sublimely on another level.

I'm a good candidate to show this kind of anomaly to. My frame of reference is uncommon, as all are, but uncommon in a way which would be greatly facilitated by receiving these results of the experiment. I ... scoured ... the earth ... not for poker strategy or expertise, but for understanding re what such a process addiction might be offering the host consciousness and how that might relate to the universe's structure.

I either don't know anything about the odds of what these flops might bring, or something is happening that is perfectly designed to further my investigation ... this, as a product of an intelligent universe.

Really, what's the Truman Show??

when i played poker for a living i eventually started to hate the grind and played less and less until i no longer played enough to earn enough

i wish i was addicted

Well a lot of what psychology as a science is about is just separating chance findings from correlations and causations. Using those models, if you fit what happened to you within a statistical framework you should be able to say with reasonable certainty 'this thing that happened is not just chance'.
I mostly play online but when I play live the skill (for want of a better word) edge is definitely enough to make the random caprice of the cards, even clustered, ignorable. But I get your point, it can hit hard especially live and when the variance takes large chunks of cash.

Well handicapping my own BS here ... obviously it is possible randomly by my own argument that 52 sessions is not anywhere near a long run so why couldn't it happen? As I tried to say earlier, the fact that I go to the session now thinking, well it can't be that 0-for-everything session again, is itself kind of setting me up for thinking it's "impossibly unlikely." Still ... never seen it or anything close ... and for it to show up right when I am challenging my addictive orientation toward the game seems metaphysical.

Session 53 (for the hell of it):

I'm sitting there very fresh, rested, okay mentally I think, thinking again they can't really phase me by losing these 2 buyins ... but that belies that I'm really worn to the nub by this streak when I get scratched a little. First hour two deuces beats all my holdings had I played them all, including several group 2 and 3 starters, then the following sequence:

1. I have 5-7 of spades, flop 4-6-Q with two spades, I take lead in pot get played with by 2 callers, on river one guy bets out his last $18, I can't even call as I'm still sitting there with 7-high. Everyone looking at the guy who has completely inexplicably folded for $18 in 500 pot and who just seems to always disappear at the end of a hand.

2. I have 10-J of spades, flop 10-Q-K, two spades, get raised all in on aggressive flop, guy turns over A-9 oif spades and I throw my hand in the muck on turn as 2-spades hits. Sick he's got the nuts and my two straight flush outs.

3. A big foul/row occurs in a hand. Then a hand where same player gets timed out just obstructing the game. Next hand same guy starts crap over his own illegal raise which he strung. Raise doesn't count and for third time in 4 hands floor is called over about his objections. Unreal. I have straddled this hand under the gun. I have 10-10 and in all the brouhaha, both the dealer and myself forget that I have straddled. Flop is 10-3-4. I didn't realize until the turn, when I'm wondering what the big blind might have that I never got my option, but way too late to say antying, of course. The turn is the deuce of spades again and I lose my stack to 5-6 in big blind.

I'm cool with losing but not so cool with the freaky way I'm losing.

4. Next hand dude doing all the fouling calls for 8 on river (3rd button), and 8 comes, but I don't pay off all I had was open end straight whiff, another guy pays off he shows the A-8 name-your-card-play.

5. I'm on the brink. It looks like Beelzebub is in the shuffle machine. I move tables, up a level while waiting for same limit table change. Dude gets felted 3 straight hands and reloads each time a nickel as I fold first three hands. Now he reloads 300. He straddles and raises, I have A-J off. I'm playing. Flop A-9-4. At this point, we are hundreds of hands beyond believable in this streak, which I realize, so I wouldn't embellish anything. As I'm raising on the flop from 25 to 75, for info and because of the guys recent history, the floor comes up and is moving me to the table change I had requested. And the floor is real insistent keeps asking me are you going to take it, apparently not realizing I'm in the hand. I keep shaking my head up and down, obvious nod yes, and it's like this guy doesn't understand a head nod. "Do you want it?" Afterward I think he was hawking for a tip but I didn't realize that until later as I was involved in the hand. But he doesn't realize I'm in a hand and keeps bothering me. Finally he walks off. So what does the dude have steaming his eyes out?? He moves in on the 300, now I figure he's got A-K or A-Q at least, so in the one hand I play at this table I'm obviously going broke. Incredibly he's got three aces. EXCEPT: I won the frickin' hand. Two running hearts, four hearts on board I have ace of hearts, and I beat 3 aces with 2 aces. Sick. Now I gotta listen to everyone at the table say, "God, he had ace-jack, har har har." One of them said he knew the guy had three aces when he bet 25 on the flop. I have a history with the guy at PLO and I didn't say sorry but I said what was I about 30/1?? Surprised right now putting it on hand calculator that I was only 21/1 dog. Was thinking back door flush was about 24/1 and in this case a pair on the board still loses.

So anyway, I actually won that hand. Played one lap, got badgered for taking my waiting seat, won one over there, can't remember what it was, and left up about 400 as the room was down to 2 tables 9 AM.

Any questions?

Session 54:

All fail to beat two deuces: A-K, A-K, A-Q, A-10, A-9s, A-9s, A-7s, A-4s,A-3s, A-2s, A-2s (that's a lot of aces suited for one session I just realized), K-Q, K-Qs, K-10, K-10, K-9, K-9s, Q-10s, 10-Js, 10-Js, 10-J, 10-J, 8-9s. Perfect snider continues.

I had 3-8 in BB unraised, flop 3-3-5. Everybody folds turn (only winner at that table).

Moved to PLO. First hand double aces suited, Ac-Kc-As-10s, raise it, flop 6-7-9 red and everyone who took the flop calls 200 except, of course me. Didn't like game. Moved back to holde'm. Get two red sevens, flop comes A-K-Q of clubs. I bet min $5 as joke and four people throw their hands away. I turn it face up. Everybody talks about the monster. "Yeah, it did crush two deuces I said." I felt proud. I felt insane.

And I wrote this in my journal: "Eradicate this impulse from me ... and do it through this run from hell. Thank you." Addressing, of course, whatever wrote the DNA code and created the quantum apparition experience we call life. I bow humbly to it generally, when my sanity isn't being tested that is.

Now is the time that tries men's souls. Now is also the time to get the last laugh over playing way under my means over the years instead of over, as so many do. And now is the time to sling chips and not care what happens. "Release valve," as Negreanu (I think) said.

I no longer use poker as some kind of big kick escape. You can't under these conditions. That's what behind the universe dealing me this trillion-to-one shot run. Make no mistake: the universe knows who you are and what you need. And randomness has no meaning other than as a shortcut to when we don't understand what is creating the results and how.

"No look" like Magic Johnson in my next session. In the dark: AMC. Until somebody bleeds. PLO at Lucky's. Monday. Then sayonara and happy trails.

I want to help people anyway. What's wrong with helping gambler's with their bankroll? Funny, I'm much more generous tipping and otherwise when losing. I think it's respect that people are struggling and don't have it easy.