Not that degen, but I actually liked the story a bit. I thought for sure you were going to hit black the way you made it out.

My gf of 4 years had just broken up with me 2 days earlier, so I was on life tilt. I was in no mood to do anything but sit in my room with the lights off and listen to Dashboard Confessional's "Stolen" on repeat. But my buddy dragged me out to Mohegan Sun to try and take my mind off of things.

I sat 2/5 with $500, but felt numb to everything. I saw every flop, raisy daisy with Q7o, etc. About an hour in, my stack was around $700 and everybody at the table thought I was a complete clown.

I look down at KK. Young guy across the table opens up to $16 and I 3-bet to $50. He calls and flop comes 88J. He bets $100, I repop to $250 and he reluctantly calls. Turn is a 7. He shoves for $350 and I slowly push the rest of my stack into the middle, indifferent to the fact that I am probably walking into jacks. He proudly flips T9 for the straight and everybody oohs and ahhs like Esfandiari just yanked a rabbit out of his keyster. I keep my kings hidden beneath a $1 chip.

The river is an 8, which fills me up for the boat. Yet some mix of despair, frustration and disgust causes me to not realize this and I muck my cards. The table derisively mutters about how I snapped the turn with air. I can feel my buddy across the table trying to make eye contact with me but I refuse to look up. I know I've been a bad boy and don't need to be judged right now. As I make the long walk from my seat to the exit, my pocket buzzes with a text.

Hoping it's my ex, it's unfortunately my friend at the table, who is familiar with the way I play: "You had a pair there?" I text back, "KK obviously," and he replies, "You just mucked a $1300 winner. Full house." I run the hand back in my head and realize that he's right. Yet I am oddly okay with that. Then another text, "You still have $50 on the table." I am too ashamed to return to the scene of the crime and tell him to let the dealer have it.

I spent the rest of the night at a Jacks or Better machine, ordering lukewarm beers and spewing off another $500 because I kept trying to hit the 4x bonus. Definitely the low point of my gambling career (and life?).

I've read wayyyyyy too many stories lately about mucking winners. ARGH ... so TILTING.

oh man, i haven't even read this yet, but i already know its

the varying quality of failstories and awesome stories is staggering.

gotta keep the story range balanced yo

Your story depressed me

me too

ya man depressing, degens never give up

Well as you all know I've exhausted all credit cards and loans from banks..

So my degen where can i get some money from kicked in...

I thought. I can upgrade my phone plan and get an iPhone5 and sell it..

So I'll he getting my iPhone in a few days. Hopefully I can sell it for nearly 1k and time for the casino!

Can't wait. Once i blow that, I'll have to go back to the drawing board on how to get some more money to gambool!

I really think robbing a bank is the next logical step. Hahah. Having a 500k gambling bender would be heaven!

I'm sure a degen story will come out of my 1k selling iPhone degeneracy

Stay tuned

Yikes! Sad

About a month ago I went to Vegas with $16,000 cash. Proudly declaring my previous Poker and (legal) online winnings at the airport.

Playing 2/5 and 5/10 NLH and a few table games, I not only manage to lose it all, but end up owing my buddy $14,500, max out my $17,500 VISA, $2000 Mastercard and a newly acquired high-interest-gas-station $5500 Mastercard (because my credit was top notch before the Vegas trip). Everything was going smoothly (as you can see from this graph). This is only Poker but I was also doing good in sportsbetting, work and other gambling activities.



^ That's only Poker. Excluding sports betting and table games.

Nothing about that graph screams "winning player" so it was bound to happen imo.

the wrath of the anti-degen gods has been unfurled to you my friend.
Good Luck!!!

that spike

So...just because a graph representation of a tiny sample of a super high variance game doesn't "scream winning player", he was bound to go broke?

Great reasoning skills...you might want to study some math. Start with arithmetic.

The graph reads that you just about broke even. Whoever read broke from the graph isnt worth argueing with.

But what If he started with freerolls. Then break-even could technically be broke. Could it not?

True, except that his post clearly states he was playing 2-5 nl and 5-10 nl.

eventually he lost so much he either stopped graphing or he lost the other money from pit games

hahaha awesome.

My degen story. It's not nearly as good as most in here, but I wanted to get it off my chest because I have never told anyone the full story besides my wife. Sorry for length.

It is late 2006ish and I'm in my 2nd year of law school. I'm a very small winner multi-tabling party and its skins at .25/.50 NL. I made more profit off bonus whoring and rakeback than actual play. It’s near finals time so I do not have time to play poker. However, Party just started including its easy access blackjack. To take a break from studying, I play a few hands of blackjack with my tiny poker roll. I run $1k up to $8k. I go to sleep very happy. The next morning, I run the $8k to $22k in a few hours and am feeling on top of the world.

Well, you know how this goes. The next day, while studying, I decide to take a quick break and play with the roll. I start losing. Every time I put a stop loss point, I would get a split/double down hand at that exact point and lose. After that, it was just a downward spiral. I lost it all and then, through a series of $500 deposits, lost an additional $20,000 of living expenses meant for the entire school year that was through loans. It was just a total shock, seeing $0 in my bank account, knowing I had no money for rent/food/expenses in a very expensive city and I had to study for finals. I became severely depressed and my grades reflected this.

For the next two months, I would attend law school club meetings just so I could get their free food/snacks b/c I could not afford food. When there was no free food, I ate at a crappy subsidized food shelter meant for homeless people for like $.50 a burger. Thankfully, my parents bought me class books as a x-mas gift.

A few months later, I somehow deposit $200ish through credit on full tilt. I play absolutely atrocious heads-up limit poker but somehow run better than god. Go from 1/2 to 2/4 to 5/10 to 20/40 to 50/100. Make $20,000 off that $200. Smartly, I transferred my roommate $7kish of it to pay for the remainder of the rent for the year. Stupidly, I transferred $500 into some crappy gambling site like golden vegas or whatever after receiving a bonus offer (at that point, party had withdrawn from the US). Again, through a series of $500 deposits, I lose the entire $13k. I become severely depressed, grades dropped even more, could only afford homeless food, etc. I go to an extremely bad place in my life. Too long of a tangent, but it involves a restraining order against me filed by another law student I was dating, an arrest, me becoming a raging alcoholic, etc. The impact of stupid online gambling was ruining my life.

Somehow, I get a girlfriend in the summer of 2007. A few months in our relationship, we have a wedding to attend on a Saturday night at 5 pm for one of her close friends. On that Saturday afternoon, I deposit $600 on the same crappy site after receiving another bonus offer. I’m playing on one of the law library’s computers. In blackjack, ran the first deposit up to $5,000, then lost it all. Deposited another $600. Lost it. Rinse repeat X5. Had to go through 5 different credit cards trying to get approved. I really hit rock bottom. Finally, on the sixth deposit, I run it up to a couple thousand. I then start betting multi-hands. First $25 a hand, then $50, then $100.

At this point, it's already 4:30 p.m. and I have ignored multiple calls from my girlfriend. I start betting 5 hands at $500 a hand (so $2,500 a deal), and then 5 hands at $1000 a hand. I run like absolute god and run it up to $80,000. Then, doom switch. I start losing. I’m losing thousands and deep down, I know I’m going to lose it all. I continue to lose.

At around 6:00 p.m., my girlfriend (who is not a student at the school), finds some way to let the security guard to get her access to the law library. To this day, I do not even know how she knew I was there. She is in tears and (correctly) accuses me of lying when I said I was working for my crappy part-time summer job. I come clean and proudly state that I was up around $35,000 gambling online for that day. She then (correctly again) calls me an idiot, saying that I just got lucky at a game I was supposed to lose. She was not yelling, screaming, or even sobbing. Just quiet and subtle tears and telling me matter-of-factly that if she saw me gambling again, she would break up with me. I come clean regarding my gambling history over the last year.

We miss the wedding but make the reception. After the wedding, I cash out. Crappy golden vegas or whatever sends 8 emails saying that they cannot process my cashout b/c I did not provide them with adequate proof. I end up having to send copies of my license, all 5 credit cards I used, a utility bill, a cable bill, and my car registration. Three weeks later, they finally clear me but state that it would not be finalized for 72 hours and that I could reverse the cash out at any time. 2 weeks later, the cash out still was not finalized. After emailing back and forth, they give me some crap about how they can only send a $1985 check once a week, but that I could reverse the withdrawal of the remainder at any time.

It ends up taking 6 months to finally get my money. During that entire 6 months, despite multiple urges to gamble, I don’t. This is despite them sending over 100 personalized emails with special VIP bonus offers if I reverse my cashouts.

19 checks later, I end up with $37,000. I use $10k of it to buy an engagement ring for the girlfriend and I put the remainder straight to my student loans. Besides with friends in Vegas playing table minimums for $10 or $15, I have not played a pit game since. I am now happily married to that girl.

Holy ****ing ****

Good on you for keeping the demons under control, I'm still working on it. I tip my hat to you sir and offer my congratulations

: cool: these faces sum up your story bravo on quitting sick story