In my opinion it is not. But everybody is attached to something. So everything in moderation and everything will be fine.

Session 55 (which is when I thought it was going to stop to tell you the truth)

The main reason I don’t go insane during this run is that I’m the dog to this poker environment anyway … so what difference does it make how I lose? I tell myself that in an attempt to cope. Here’s the hands from tonight.

The first three hours was the arctic chill … just nothing. I just wonder what the odds of for hours on end two deuces beating your holding after the whole board is out and not one of those 300 cards has touched your hand … this as a way of life in 2016. I would bet money I’m the coldest poker player in the USA for 2016, and pay off on it if I had too.

Three hours in I get the 9-10 of clubs to a 10-10-8 flop. Yes, it’s the best hand. Yes, it’s time to rebuy. Flush draw beats it.

Then another hour of death. Then the following three hands on consecutive deals of what look like cards to us but are really quantum information:

1. I have A-9 of spades and the flop is A-9-2. My opponent A-10 plays the hand for his stack and catches the 10, still checks the river, I don’t slow down on a A-9-2-7-10 board of course … he deliberates for 5 minutes on river, then says the death comment: “You have trip deuces?” Then I know he has A-10, has caught his only out, then check hollywooded for 5 minutes.

2. Next deal, I have 3-4 of clubs: flop 2c-5-c-10d. I lose my stack and end up with 4-high. The biggest draw in the game (practically) peters out into the worst hand possible.

3. I move tables. First hand I have 8-8. Flop is 7c-8c-9s. I get one call. Turn is 6c. He checks and I check behind him on ridiculous board. River pairs the 9, so I fill up and I’m beating a lot of hands now, a whole lot. He has 9-10 of clubs for straight flush just right before my little full house showed up. Imagine that.

Then several hours more of nothing. I get pocket 10’s against a straddle … make it 35 to go. He calls with pocket 8’s. Flop is K-7-9. He calls. Turn is 8. Looks like a pretty good card, makes me open end straight, but in fact is his only out. River is 8. Quad 8s for homie … perfect perfect. “You can put him on the board….” No there’s no high hand today. Bad beat dude. Very bad luck. So sorry. My apologies.

I move to PLO. First hand I straddle and have 3-3-3-Ah … the only unsuited ace to the trips of course. The flop – listen up – the flop was 3-6-8 with two hearts. LOL. Everything is just bizarre in this run. I have to be there to bluff the ace of hearts if the heart comes and I have trips and the whole hand, flop, and scenario is ridiculous. I bet the flop and nothing developed … took down the ante right there. Something in the back of my mind said that’s an absurd hand/flop combination. Really, really perverse.

A few hours later back in the hold’em game I have Q-10 of clubs. Flop comes Q-Q-10. I’m just gonna vomit when everybody throws their hand away which is yet another feature of this streak. Check around. Turn is a J, putting three made straights and a flush draw on the board. I bet $25 looking like a stab the best I can. Everybody, five players, fold practically at once.

Yeah, I’ve never seen this run or anything close to it in 1/3 of a century of play. I’ll bet I’m the coldest player in the country. I was telling myself for the longest time, “Yeah but look how much I saved, and it’ll be easy to win it back.” Now I can’t resist the thing anymore. I plunge. 55 sessions of being stuck. It starts doing it, I play loser in the game 99.9 percent of the time for 2016 (a new world record even for drunk gambling addicts) … and now it defeats me in ways it didn’t before.

In writing these hands I realize there seems a double hit on many of them. Two 9-10 of clubs hands, two A-9 of spades hands, two 8-8 hands ... with me royally crushed on each side of each hand. Hmm.

It really ended me in the last session when I had 10-J of spades, the flop was Ks-Qs-10d (open end royal draw and a pair obviously) there is war on the flop that only two of us survive, so I’m heads up. One second after the turn card comes my hand is in the muck. Now I’ve never seen anything like that in 1/3 of a century of play. How is that possible? Here’s the nuts and bolts: my opponent after raising all-in on the flop over my raise, when the original bettor folded, I instacalled … and he turned his hand face up… A-9 of spades, nut flush draw. The turn was the deuce of spades, so we both make the flush and my one opponent has both blockers to my straight flush in his hand. I’m totally stymied in that hand too. Drawing dead. That’s a death configuration of the deck, that is.

When you get on the wrong side of it for long enough you begin to sense how helpless you are. It's kind of like when you mail something important somewhere and it never gets there. And you realize all this time I assumed mail would always get there but in actuality I had zero control all along.

The hands ... it begins to feel quantumly orchestrated, non-random. If the other possibility is the cards are coming randomly as if they were set up at odds of billions to one … then I’m more in the quantum camp. The thing knows. Every atom is information, say guys like Bohm, Bohr, Bell, Heisenberg … and we witness figments of the information field. There is no random but the shortcut in trying to generalize what is happening.

The normal limit on utter coolers is what, one a month?? Not three or four a session, session after session.

Forgot this one from last night:

I raise pre with As-Qh. Flop is A-7-4, all hearts. Turn is ace. I have three aces and second nut flush draw heads up. Auto stack loss to flopped nut flush. What was I supposed to do? I would play for whatever was in front of me regardless. I'm commenting on a run of world class coolers dozens of sessions in a row that I have never seen before and regard as at the complete outside of statistical likelihood. That's all. The thing is stuck on world class coolers and none of the above and I"ve never seen that before.

2016: The Year of Gambling Disastrously

Session 56 (in run from hell)

Tonights significant hands:

1. I have 4-5 of spades, flop is 3s-7s-5c … I lose my stack to Q-Q

2. Next deal I have 6-7 of clubs, flop is 6-7-3 rainbow … I lose stack drawing dead after turn K. Not much mystery about what the pre-flop raiser had and what he caught on turn. I go from like 3/1 favorite to zero effing %.

3. Four or five hands later, flop set of sixes to 10d-Jd-6c flop. Dude drawing to royal that I feel real bad he missed for the high hand and royal bonus and all. Don’t worry, he made the nut flush. I folded on river when diamond hit and he showed hand.

4. I have 3-5 of diamonds and the flop is 4-6-7. Dude has 5-8 of course. Flush hits on river and I fold that hand face up, he shows the 5-8.

Maybe I need to quit shipping so much. That is Omaha mentality showing through. Just get a good hand or draw, ship, and see who takes the punishment and who catches … something like that. Not a plan in hold’em apparently. Maybe I need to stop with the suited connectors. It is mindboggling what I’m up against in this run. Near 100% perfect catch by opponents, near 0% catch for me for 56 sessions.

None of this is about bad beat stories but about a once-in-a-lifetime run. I realize that it takes thousands more sessions to get anywhere near true long run. But this is worst I've ever seen. Two years ago admittedly I was on a heater of similar proportion.

This morning I bet UK +27 against Louisville, the ridiculous line of the year … and one of the most ridiculous of the last 1/3 of a century, I assure you. Anything over 10 was massive value on UK. The money line was an obscene +1750 on UK. I took it. Anything much over 2/1 was value on UK, imo. 10 minutes later the phone rings and I’m informed the money line bet is cancelled: no action. It wasn’t a mistaken line posted, just no action accepted. Never seen anything like that in well over 30 years of betting. Well it just showed up, it just happened in this streak. Of course UK pulls classic “November surprise” upset, one of my bodacious specialties, with 41-38 win.

It’s happening, it’s real, it’s on me. It’s a good reason not to be addicted to any games you should understand. Addiction and success do not go hand in hand. Obsession and success often do … but addiction is bad news every time ... if you have any idea what the definitions of the words you are using are, that is.

I'm sorry but can we not turn this into your own personal bad beat / run bad thread? Seems like an odd place for it, imo.

Being "NON-Addicted to poker will make you a better and more profitable player.

Obviously being addicted to poker and losing is even worse.

Go ask anyone if Michael Jordan was addicted to basketball. In sum its great to have a burning passion in your heart for poker, thats how you crush the game and can play monster winning 36 hour marathon sessions on weekends.

Its all just words though, and addicted sounds bad. So that is bad mmmkay?

I can't say at one point in time I was addicted, but it was definitely on that edge. I was desposting 1/4 of my weekly paycheck onto stars before Black Friday, probably did this 3 times over a month-2 month span.

I just couldn't get behind quitting, I just wanted to win so bad. It made me stop and learn the game. I didn't learn a whole lot, but I turned from having no bank roll management to having a solid foundation and then combined that with learning to play certain ranges.

Fastforward about 8 years.

I live in Europe, the Netherlands specifically, I have a successful business, I still play poker and I built a home this past year.

Looking at my personality, I seem to do this with anything I find I enjoy more than normal. I consume myself until I become good enough to where I find it acceptable (the standard is somewhere in my head). I did this with sports, stupid petty competitions, video games, and I've even had my run in with minor drugs.

Life goes on, ultimately I came from a competitive background youth and that lead to some skills in life that are useful and some that can be overbearing.

In the end, it's the person that makes the addict, are you addicted in a good way or are you addicted in a bad way? Are you addicted because you want to better yourself or are you addicted because you're chasing a feeling?

In the beginning it was always the feeling for me, but was not long until I was figuring a way to better myself.

No he wasn't, and being a winning poker player has nothing to do with your ability to play 36 hours straight.

So not! Money is one of the least problems in GA. GA shrinks your life. You become like this rats in experiment, that could push a button for endorphine release. They pushed it instead of eating or procreating. It substituted everything unless they died.

You can have a look at GA page at the questions they set-up to define if you are gambling addict or not. Most of them have nothing to do with money. There is a bunch of other problems connected with GA.

XOXOX

As I was saying, the universe is redressing my addiction because I did the homework and am open to it. The quanta knows this, knows my exact position. So this isn’t about beats or running bad, but thanks for the weak attempt. Now …

More from The Year of Gambling Disastrously (and it's important fallout for the subject of this thread)

Woke up in a haze with only 90 minutes sleep this AM (Sunday). I look at the schedule of games. I call looking for GBay – 6 ½. He puts me on hold for several minutes. I’m groggy. I’m looking them over talking to someone else, talking him out of New Orleans teaser wheel. Somehow I have the wrong game number in my head when he comes back on. I say, “What is 359-60?” He says 6 ½. I say give me minus the 6 ½. He reads it back to me but I’m not paying enough attention, listening for the number, not the team. I pull for the game, chalk it up a winner in my head. But 359-60 is New Orleans, not Green Bay. I’ve bet the wrong team minus 6 ½. Just guess what happened in the two games? Mistaken bet N.O. doesn’t cover, intended GBay bet does cover. Never done that in 1/3 century of ball.

When that realization came to me what I did, something went through me like, “The hell with all these trials and the hell with the results. I don’t care anymore. I’ve been addicted to both the process and the winning for decades … and suddenly, with this Year of Gambling Disastrously 2016, where nearly everything imaginable rolls the wrong way … I said it: I DON’T GIVE A BLANK.” There are much more important things than this (but I sure don’t live like there is if I’m honest about it).

I suspect many of you are in a similar place. An addiction is an alternate reality used to transport oneself out of their actual existential experience, which means, into an alternate mood and emotional landscape while ignoring the actual deep truths of their being (and their concomitant feelings, often very unpleasant … so it’s like, “Lets’ do something that gets us high”).

I’m addicted to the playing, to the winning … adamantly not the gambling. Run almost a year without those jolts of winning, 70% wins to 10% in poker, all kinds of never-before weirdness in ball … the winning jolts are totally MIA … and one's real landscape, the non-“watch-me-thrill myself with these games” landscape, comes front and center.

A poker addiction, if it means anything, means the addicted party is escaping his actual life issues via the game (its thrills, its diversionary value, the wins, the losses … take your pick).

The flop is a quantum wave just like everything else is, and the universe delivers it via its ingenious quantum machinery. In this way, precisely when you question your status as to addiction, it gives you supposedly billion-to-one results that in fact enhance the redressing of the addiction. It does this because of the non-random, in fact teleological nature of the universe. If you are hip to it, you’re dealt in accordingly. If not you can live on a calculator and get the shortcut version of it all.

Weak attempt? It's blatantly obvious that you're attempting to hijack this thread to make it all about you and your bad beat/run bad. It's annoying and, frankly, rude. To be blunt, nobody cares. To be even more blunt, your ramblings are incoherent at best.

Luckily, I have figured out the ignore function and am putting you on my ignore list. Carry on with your nonsense as it will finally no longer be annoying to me.

If it was blatantly obvious you wouldn't have to lie about it, or say it at all, to try to make it true. The posts are about addiction and one man's tale of it unfolding. For the non-willfully ignorant it is about the horrendous run within the framework of the addiction. I can't tell anyone else's tale ... I don't know it. The main problem is when people aren't up to the level they can't risk showing up in the thread. If it was idiotic there would be dozens all over it mocking it. Instead they run. Like you. Good riddance ... meh to your doctorate.

Session 57

I tell myself “You aren’t a favorite in the game anymore so what difference does it make how you lose?” Doesn’t really work, though. Not that it matters but here’s the hands from tonight.

1. As soon as I sit down I have A-K suited vs. A-10 big blind. He flops deluxe gin, as has been going on for 10 months, trap flop 10-10-2 two of my suit. I whiff it.

2. I have K-K versus Q-3 of hearts he’s big blind. Flop Q-9-4, takes punishment and in fact catches perfect, perfect to make queens full of threes.

3. I have Q-8 of clubs on 6-8-9 rainbow flop. Turn a Q with board picking up a flush draw. I check raise with Queens up and get cold called behind and I figure for him to call that he has a 7 and a flush draw. River comes second running spade Jack and he has nuts, A-7 of spades. I can get away from open ender hitting, but not really the running flush. Lose what’s left of stack on river just refusing to check to the back door flush arrival.

In fact for the first time in the streak at this point I threatened to lose it fast, which would be a welcome relief. But then I won a hand in which my opponent had no win and put his stack in on a call on the turn (he has A-K, me 7-7 on A-7-2 flop, and somehow, incredibly, when a blank came on the turn, his hand didn’t beat mine on the river, I think it might have been a misdeal). He put his stack in with no win and therefore I think I have to be awarded the pot. I’m not sure. Then:

4. Flop is 4-4-K to my A-4 – the second time in nine months that when a pair hit the board I had the trips, and the other one of course I lost stack to flush draw. Somebody bets their flush draw, I raise … they double up.

5. I have 4s-8s and flop comes 5s-7s-10h. A maniac way overbets five times the pot with A-5. I called it. Whiff, whiff … in fact it comes 10-5 making him a full house.

6. Next deal I have 6-7 of spades and flop is 8s-9s-Kh. Dude jamming into me the whole way, I whiff, whiff and raise bluff on river and he insta-folds disgustedly knowing I couldn’t possibly be bluffing (way to weak for that), had to be slow playing all along … so I show the hand. Real smart for the coldest player in the United States to do, I know.

7. The “I can’t take any more I’m out the door hand”: I have A-9 of hearts and flop is a 9c-3h-2h. Obviously another stack loser. Top/top/top. It comes nasty 4-5 off making me a wheel, and he turns over 3-6 off suit in middle position for the 6-high straight to beat my wheel.

Same old same old. I have never seen hands run like this and don’t consider it typical run bad stuff. It’s the death configuration of the deck on steroids. Whoever takes a wild hair in a hand against me is the one for whom the deck is set up to catch perfect perfect … over and over and over and over. 10 months, 57 sessions. Yet that is no closer to the long run than the first hand of it was. But I feel like I’m looking at something very, very strange. In one sense it is just a correction of a UCONN women’s team type win rate I had experienced for several years, not just a correction but an avenging of that anomaly, My mistake is thinking it’s important. It’s not in the top ten billion important things on the planet or even high in importance to my life, but my experience of it is skewed. There are things millions of times worse than bad luck at cards, some of which I am also experiencing.

It’s a teleological teacher in this respect, not a random card game. That’s what it is and I don’t curse it (except in my baser moments). Take heed, grasshopper, the lotus grows in the sludge and nowhere else. It kind of threatens my sanity a little bit to witness this I have to admit -- unless I see it in this enlightening way.

Here’s the import for addiction study:

The flop/deck is a teleological quantum wave function (like everything else is) first used, in the addiction, to escape my experience of self-in-the-world, then, with the enlightenment door opened, delivered as a teacher of how to step down the addiction. This is the precise quantum mechanics/perception relationship that our “very mystical” “world” is made of (note double quotation marks).

Nobody is in the position I’m in with regard to poker and addiction. Rigi gives an encompassing, penetrating view. The homework is done; the deck is dealing the agenda of the universe. The quanta recognizes me as it knows all.

Session 58

For the first time in my life, since adolescence anyway, I sat down at a poker table and the primary (hidden) agenda was not to transplant myself away from A (experience of self-in-the-world) and into B (an alternate world) … was not, that is, all in service of the addiction. I was very atypically empty in regard to any ulterior motives for playing.

“Lets’ see some death configuration and some card tricks,” I said good-naturedly, partly to the dealer, partly to the universe, as I sat.

Put $300 in front of me. Nothing much happened. Nothing notable bad or good. At time to go I had $352 in chips. Hmm. I think that means I must have won. Not ‘til the next day did I realize that 52 could be seen as a pretty symbolic number, given the going’s on and all, that this self attempting to escape into the 52, get high on the 52, doing that for a lifetime … wasn’t doing any of that and the number came up 52. It seemed like a better “answer to everything” than 42, given the circumstances.

Session 59

It seemed to break as hands in the session went my way generally, including a couple dramatically. At the end I flopped an open end royal draw to 10-J of clubs, whiff, whiff ending my session. But ... a substantial misdeal brought a second river.

Still whiffed it. After the smoke cleared (and would they have payed the royal bonus on a misdeal? ... I forgot to even ask as I left) ... I racked up what I thought was $961 (300 in). When I got to the cage it came up 966, one extra redbird, meaning +666 for session.

Perhaps symbolic again. Perhaps "the beast" -- one I'd never quite seen in that dosage (and I've seen some)-- is off of me.

The point, as always, is the bizarre long shot horrendous run ... and not just that ... but the bizarre long shot horrendous run showing up precisely when I needed it to to write effectively about what the whole addiction was to me. Excuse me, I don't chalk that up to randomness. The addiction was not about money, was not about gambling, was not about playing ... was not about, at the core level, any of the surface goings on. Addictions arise from the core ... the biggest core issue there is: "How do I feel about my position in the universe?" Investigations there are just my game. Poker not so much.

My first all-in hand of 2017:

Super fast game and suddenly everyone folds to me in the cutoff, figures, me with K-K, I min-raise trying to keep someone in but look legit. Button and small blind call. Good. Flop is K-9-3. I check to button. He never took that as a danger sign; that’s his level. He bets, SB folds, I smooth. Turn is 7. I check again. He fires. I triple it. He insta over-shoves. Well, I’ve got him obviously. He can’t have a draw, he has a no-win two-pair, I tell myself. He’s on the button and plays every hand, total loose cannon.

The river is a 3. Board: K-9-3-7-3.

He stacks all my chips in his stack in yet another card trick from Hades, kind of 2016-extended “the joke is on you” run of hands. Funny, I had had the thought just the other day that when a horrible run ends with me there is most usually one last total F job. Whatever.

My psyche is so far removed from caring about the results of these trials that it’s like I’m not even in the casino, and I’m saying things that reflect that. “Happy New Year” is all I said after this one … 30 seconds later I’m in my car.

I’m getting ready to catch some incredible break, a life break unrelated to gambling. I’m not gonna just get murderously unlucky then die. I can sense that. The flip side of the notorious red hot heater before dying is in play for me here. As in, the murderous voodoo negative run right before living. All these horrendous trials count in my favor when the books are balanced by “The Break.” I know not what it is. The universe knows. But the prelude to such an unlikely critical break surely looks like pure Jonah stuff.

What makes you feel good when your addiction doesn’t?? I could do a dissertation in answer to that but I don't have it experientially.

I was kinda skimming this thread too much, but this seems accurate. There's a forum for bad beats and one for personal blogs. This thread is not the place for such posts. It is a place for a discussion on whether being addicted to poker can be ok.

And no one has offered 1% of the insight into poker addiction that I have in this thread ... and you have to work very hard not to see that. The beats are simply an intervention of sorts of the addiction, because the addiction is winning poker chips. That's important so pay attention. Why don't you get out of kindergarten for five seconds on this or go back to adding two and two?

It's because either no one it interested, or has the time to trawl through your rambling.

+1 this thread is not the place for your bad beat stories.

agree with guys above, you seems to have a serious problem w/ gambling when have a need to cry here....maybe finding a specialist would be the best option (with dead seriousness)

I almost replied with LOL without even reading. Missed a good chance. There is always the outside chance that someone, in a thread on poker addiction started by the Top Dog, will be interested in meaningful delving into the subject. He started it and as a result now has some world class input on the phenomenon on his site as appears in few other places.

When you're substitute world and substitute emotional landscape is the poker world, as it is for many on here -- you are in the grip of an addiction. When you are just playing for profit -- you aren't (experiencing addiction).

Such an addiction, as is epidemic on here and in the poker culture at large, can indeed be tempered by an obscenely bad run. The float is over and reality comes calling. Stay out of my pots with the kindergarten flames.

If someone, even a consistent winner, is married, but is paying more attention to poker than the spouse, divorce court is a real possibility.

What makes your experience of addiction "world class"? More specifically, how is it superior to the average person's experience of addiction??

The addiction is as garden variety as they come. The analysis of it is not and incorporates hundreds of authors and specialists frameworks of what and why it is.

I want to take a look at Walker Percy’s take on addiction as extrapolated from his book, “Lost in the Cosmos.” In it, he is addressing what he calls the predicament or plight of the self in being alive and conscious … the great existential angst that can accompany the simple fact that you are there and you have to cope. One of man’s basic ploys to deal with this is the attempt to “transcend” it … meaning to occupy oneself with something in which the central plight receded into the background and one is unaware and untroubled by it. Human beings do this in all kinds of ways from drugs, to television, to reading, to fantasizing, to … playing games. Then whatever one’s choice of escape, Percy calls the cessation of that activity “reentry” into the predicament (self versus reality, i.e. “being”). So we have the predicament, transcendence, and reentry.

That’s a world-class framework for understanding addiction in my opinion … and poker addiction in particular. Even casual casino goers have commented on the totally transporting nature of the environment there … like the rest of the world and one’s life doesn’t exist. Mesmerizing, transcendent, etc. Well, a poker player practically lives that daily. He or she can attempt to assuage or avoid any existential angst via just leaving that plight and going into their "poker world." And judging by the social isolation complaints of people on this forum, a lot of us are doing exactly that. The role of the poker addiction is to change their basic experience of life, and since that won’t actually work, it’s to escape into the adventure in lieu of dealing with one’s deeper truth or even living one's actual life.

The reentry is always a bitch as there sits reality/wider life and its demands, every time one is done playing. This is a classic repetition hangover effect.

So to think about “predicament, transcendence (of the predicament), and reentry (into the predicament)," is quite enlightening about what is going on in the addiction.

Tonight, in session 62 of the run, what raped my ability to pull this transcendence off was the following hand(s):

I was up a few hundred and it was my dead last hand (or supposed to be). I flopped a full house to 4-4 got it beat when trips hit the board and the overpair beat me. Then I immediately flopped two nut flush draws with overs and whiffed them, then an open-end straight and flush draw which lost to ace-high as my chips were so depleted that I couldn’t move him. Then another nut flush draw missed in which I called the exact two cards of my opponent (because it was the worst hand he could have possibly called me with and that is indeed what he had).

Then the biggie:

I pick up Ac-Ad on the button of a shorthanded game. Flop is Q-8-3 all clubs. Dude with Q-7 check raises me on flop. I moved in. He catches 7 off-suit on river. I walk out in a haze, in wonder, in awe really of what has been happening for 10 months.

I run into a guy in the parking lot who beat me set-under-set the other day in my first all-in of 2017, one-outer. Then I pull around the corner and down comes the railroad crossing right in front of me, no other cars there. The rain Is torrential … I stay back about 100 feet in case I start floating into the damn path of the train or something or if it runs off the tracks.

Someone in this thread said it sounds like I have a gambling problem. Well, that "problem" netted me bukoos of profit and a very healthy win rate........ until ...... 2016. It is showing me the death configuration. I don’t care about poker chips any more is the lesson …or about this alternate reality where the score with poker chips is supposed to replace the score of how you feel about being alive. Pay attention, poker degens.

The rain slows and I pull into Walmart to get some chips and peanuts for ball game viewing tomorrow. I’m in a daze. I go to self-checkout counter, swipe and bag my items … but totally forget to pay. I’m walking out of the store with the stuff. The cops are all in the parking lot; it’s next to a donut store. The checkout lady grabs me by the arm and I realize right then I hadn’t paid, hadn’t even taken my wallet out so it dawned on me. Only the fact that I knew her from going in there a lot saved the arrest, I guess.

Right when I saw that “Why would anyone take up poker in 2016” thread, my life kind of took on poster boy status for its message. I have never seen anything remotely like this string of coolers, beats and card death and for it to appear, really as an intervention to this "Walker Percy described game" of dodging the predicament, right when I’m studying the subject laboriously … I take that as an intelligent, alive universe orchestrating healing. I’m willing to bet on that. That's a teleological perspective: if you want to understand something, the universe will help. Nature will help. If you want to stay in the bubble of the addiction, that's our choice.

"I am me ... and I feel good about that without the false buoying of the whole experience of self offered by a 'successful' poker addiction."

The universe - or at least extreme circumstances within it - can impose this path, this realization. Amen.