To her credit, my gf has been reading up on gambling addiction to better understand my poker avocation. To this point (~1 year) she's been open to accepting that it's a controlled, profitable hobby that I enjoy in moderation. I took one intentional 5-week break to demonstrate to both her and me that I could find other ways to fill my time.
What seems to have her worried now is that the gambling addiction folks ask some vague, unqualified question, "Do you ever find yourself gambling for higher stakes?" Obviously what they're referring to is responding compulsively to a loss by trying to "win it back" immediately. But she's taking this to mean that because I'd rather play higher stakes games in locale X than lower stakes games in locale Y, that means that it's a problem. By the way, this questionnaire
[Upon further review.... she sent me the PDF she was referring to from SAMHSA.gov and it lists several points from the DSM-5, whereas she referred to a two-question questionnaire. So, we need to talk this out further. Fortunately we have a good relationship and can discuss things openly.]
If you read the
Gamblers Anonymous questionnaire, many of the questions are written so that even the most disciplined +EV poker player in history would show signs of problem gambling. "Did you ever gamble longer than you'd planned?" "Were you ever reluctant to use 'gambling money' for normal expenditures?"
Last edited by AKQJ10; 01-26-2015 at 03:55 AM.