I remember going through alot of degen stories from sites that try to stop gambling addictions (it makes me feel better when I have a bad session), this is a just a few.

Michigan - A small-business owner, had just returned from a trip to the Las Vegas Strip's MGM Grand Tuesday when he allegedly killed his pregnant wife and three children (under 7 years old) before turning the gun on himself. In his Mich., home, police found a suicide note blaming gambling addiction - and $225,000 in shredded casino markers. His business was $500,000 in debt because he withdrew the money to cover his gambling.


Las Vegas Sun 11/22/00 Las Vegas Review-Journal 11/23/00

Bob and Robin C. sent their middle child off to college with high hopes. Rann was a state speech champion who graduated from high school in Kalispell, Montana. During his freshman year at Montana State University, they thought all was well with Rann. It was not. His first extended time away from home left him feeling isolated and lonely. He found relief by playing video keno. Virtually overnight, he was hooked. Within months he had pawned almost all his possessions to gamble. He was forced to live out of his car. His parent remained in the dark until they discovered that Rann had been forging checks from their checking account. And until they found rifles, skis, and other belongings missing from their home. Rann had pawned them for gambling money. Bewildered by their son’s behavior and at a loss as to how to help. Bob and Robin decided on a “tough love” approach. They called the authorities, who placed Rann in jail, and then in a prerelease program. During the months in prerelease, Rann was allowed to work. When he completed his sentence, he was given the $2,500 he had earned during that time. Within a few days, Rann had gambled it away. Then he stole and pawned a VCR belonging to his employer. He was caught and sentenced again, this time for seven months.

Rann has begged for help for this “devil” that has tormented him. But the state of Montana, which profits handsomely from the losses of problem and pathological gamblers, does not offer help for compulsive gambling. Rann’s parents are attempting to locate professional help and to find the resources to pay for that help. Without it, they fear greatly for Rann’s future. —“The C. Family,” Kalispell, Montana



A man in southern China appears to have died of exhaustion after a three-day Internet gaming binge, state media said Monday.

The 30-year-old man fainted at a cybercafe in the city of Guangzhou on Saturday afternoon after he had been playing games online for three days, the Beijing News reported.

Paramedics tried to revive him but failed and he was declared dead at the cafe, it said. The paper said that he may have died from exhaustion brought on by too many hours on the Internet.

The report did not say what the man, whose name was not given, was playing.The report said that about 100 other Web surfers "left the cafe in fear after witnessing the man's death."

lol that's tilt on a higher level

this + several

Reading this thread is like going to a GA meeting. Depressing, but reassures me that I'm no where near an actual degen.

That's right...first step into degeneracy is not to admit you're not as degen as other people...

I like minbet poker more than unlimited holdem...does this count as "degen" or just "******ed"?

maybe not as degen as the others but still my most degenerate moment....

it was week 15 of the 2004 NFL season, and i had just started betting football that year. (was a winning poker player in the live games i was playing in, so don`t ask me why i was betting, was only 19 years old at the time and still lived with my parents)

no bodog accounts, no online ****. it was the call in some random italian dude and make your bets.....all credit, no cash up front.


anyways i was on some crazy heater. think i had one or maybe 2 loosing-break even weeks so far. so obviously as a newbie i though i was the king-**** and i could beat football no problem...

cue week 15.

in the teeth. fumbles, interceptions, missed-field-goals, etc. all the standard NFL stuff. the numbers were vague, but at the time my life BR was 3.5-4k max. and after the sunday night games i was -2k at the book. with a 500 teaser pending on the monday night game. so i had NE at like -2 or something.

monday morning comes along. and i go with my routine, grind some partypoker, smoke a joint, check the lines for the monday night. No problem i told myself. New England was the best team ever and they had won like 20 games in a row, they are going to crush miami (the worst team in the league, and hadnt even won a game all year)..

so BOOOOOM. call up the italians and place a 2k wager @ - 600 on new england moneyline.. the dude on the phone was like `you know you are going to loose 12k??`, i tell him not to worry that XXXX is backing the bet. (did it behind my agents back, he would have never let me make that bet)

anways, for those that didnt see the game.
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/recap?gid=20041220015


so yah. was with some friends and i blacked out at the end of the game. (nobody knew my action on the game).
woke up and reality hit me. owed the freakin mobsters 14.5k. had about 4k max to my name.

so wtf would the average BBV do? well.....
at this time there were plenty of live games in my city (MONTREAL) but no 24hr action. so i took my BR and drove down to Atlantic city with the intention of playing poker and making 10k to pay the italians on thursday (due date for the 14.5k).

anyways i didn`t make the 10k needed. i broke out about even and came back for thursday basically ****ting my pants.
had a metting in a fridge with some dudes, and long story made short they were actually pretty chill about it. (ie: they didnt cut my fingers off or bust my knee caps).

they put me on juice at 2% a week and gave me a job as a runner for them. took me about 7-8 months to get outta that debt...

Am I dumb or are you talking about a refrigerator?

no you are not. was at some restro/cafe place that had a big fridge to store the stock in. they were yelling at some point and must have been +ev for them in terms of scare tactics

wow man you are soooo sick. i wish i was that degen. you are my hero.

I'll share one.

May of 2006 I decided I'd had enough of the LV heat for a while and moved to Vancouver BC. I've got friedns and family in the North West and thought it would be fun to bum around for the summer. I put my stuff in storage and loaded up my car.

Shortly before this poker became my only income and I still had some BR issues. I didn't have many expenses so I wasn't too worried. Anyway I lucked into a $2/5 PL O8 game at the River Rock in Richmonmd BC where most people didn't know how to play omaha hi/lo let alone pot limit. The game only went for 6 weeks or so before all the fish went broke and it became a $5-10 limit game. So I was off looking for better games.

A couple of months later I had spent through most of my money and needed some income. My buddie told me about a $30-60 full kill limit holdem game at spirit mountian in Oregon. It only ran on monday nights so and he said he would steak me for half or loan me whatever. I drove the 7 hours to the casino and got on the list for the game. He met me there and we each put up $1000 (I was all in at this point so I HAD to win). The game started at 7 and I didnt ge in untill 9 or 10. It only ran for about 2 hours before we were 3 handed and about 3 hours after that it broke. I won almost $3000 which we split leaving me $2500 or so. I won a couple hundred more playing Chineese in the room from my friend and left in the morning to go back.

I made it as far as La Center, WA where there are 4 ****ty little casinos where I first played poker in high school (they are 18 and over but didn't card us back then). I figured I stop for lunch and see what they had going. $10-20 Limit was the biggest game they could spread by law at that time and they had a couple of games going. I failed to adjust my short hand play to a 10 player game full of drooling idiots and out leveled myself out of a couple racks. I then got cold decked and tilted off $1500 more.

Finally I pulled out my last $200. It was about 11:00pm. I knew that was enough for gas and food and figured I should just go home. I was sad... then I got mad I couldn't just go home. I told myself I didn't deserve to go home. I told myself that if I lost $2800 in that $10-20 game I may as well kill myself. So I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't leave La Center untill I had won the money back. I would do whatever it took. I would have friends and family wire me money or live im my car and get a job, whatever.

I felt relaxed and calm. I wasn't worried about the money anymore or how long my lunch break had taken. I knew that the only thing I had to do was win. So with my new game plan I played as good as I knew how and by the time the casino closed at 4:00am I had aobut $700. It re-opened at 8:00 so i got in the back of my car and slept till 8. I go up brushed my teeth in the parking lot with a bottle of water washed my face in the bathroom and got on the list. All that was running was a $3-6 game so thats what i played. I got on a heater and won $400 or so in that game before the $10-20 game started at 4 or 5. I kept my heater going in the $10-20 game too. By the time the casino closed at 4:00am I had about $1900. Got in my car and went to sleep the next morning I did the same thing. By 6:00pm that night I had won all the money back plus about $80.

Not the most Degen but it has stuck with me. I learned a lot from that.

MOST DEGEN
I lost $10,000 playing black jack one nigh when I had $10,800 to my name. That was like 2003 when I first moved to Vegas.

lol...you are just as if not more degen then the others!

man, i love this thread so much

la center is such a piece of ****. i was born and raised in vancouver (moved to portland when i was 21), and played at la center many times.

sick

Had to register just to add to this thread.

To begin, I had a friend who used to stake me to play poker at Fallsview usually at the 5-5, 5-10 nl tables. This guy was more a friend of a friend, and his entire life was degen. He smoked crack constantly, sold pot for a meager existence(prob had a couple thou after bills per month), had child support to pay, looked like an extra from Michael Jackson's Thriller video that went on the super size me diet, etc. But, I digress. The point being that this 'character' was a walking disaster.

Anyways, one of the times he staked me 500 he decided to come to Niagara to watch(I think it was his paranoia that I was keeping an unbalanced or dishonest share of the profits when returning to Toronto, which was justified as I was--but how he knew I'll never know). So being the impatient addict he was, he could barely wait a 30 min session, let alone the 5 hrs it usually took to hit a heater and make a decent profit. This is how he found out about roulette. He took to small bets while waiting for me to get off the felt.

Here is where it gets truly degen. After that night, he became rouletteman. Every trip got more outlandish than the last. It usually consisted of the guy betting 2k a spin spread across the board, with money that was supposed to pay back his higher up dealers. Very rarely did he win. If he did, somehow it was a ridiculous amount of 7-10k, and he'd patch together his finances in the city with criminals so he could get back to the roulette table not worrying about his knees or worse--his life.

One episode in particular was astoundingly degen. I went up there with him, and within 10 mins of walking into Fallsview, he had drank 2 shots of vodka and a stella, and proceeded to lose the 4k he arrived with in three roulette spins. This meant he would not be staking me on the felt. As I tried to console him, he reached into his pocket and found a lime green 25 dollar chip. Cashing it out, he headed to the video roulette table and deposited it. As I cynically watched, the crackhead ****ing ran it up to a ridiculous amount of 400-500. I thought he might lick his wounds with this and call it a night(even though it was still early afternoon). Nope, not him. He hits the roulette table again, and hits red 23, and the odd among his bets, to bring him to near a grand. After a few spins it was now a stack of black, red, and green totaling 2200ish. I joke to him, after looking at the history of recent numbers being red for miles, "Put it all on black and let's gtfo of here." Sure enough he does the opposite and lays heavy on red 23 and the odd. Black hits. His newly found stack gets about a fourth smaller, and would eventually be gone a few spins later.

We walk out to the car, barely enough gas to get back to the city, and completely in shock. Atleast, I was. Never knew degen until I met this character. I had to honor him and his life with one of his quotes as my user name. God bless the degens.

he spells phoenix wrong?

This might be my favorite one of the whole thread

That's gold. Completely consistent with the rest of his life.

I type non home row, and have a propensity to miss word/letter orders when typing fast. I rushed registration to post.

370 replies and this is the most gut-wrenchingly honest one I've read.

mrsmokey1 from lastest cardplayer issue:

"He built up his bankroll to around $15,000 by January of 2005, and he was determined to play in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, an event in which 18-year-olds and up can compete. After many unsuccessful attempts to win a seat into the event, Billirakis packed his bags and went to the Bahamas anyway. He sold 30 percent of himself and plopped down 60 percent of his bankroll to play in the $10,000 buy-in tournament. After day 2, he was chip leader."

That should have been me, but after a year of doing this in college my parents kicked some ****in sense into me.

Chalk me up for this too. I want to learn how to degen $100 into $10,000.