"How Poker Made Me Bipolar"

Yeah it's a bitch. Having poker as your sole source of income gets old after a while. Poker players usually have lots of free time though so you should use that time to
create other revenue streams. Invest some of that money into projects that generate passive or at least semi-passive income that cover your living costs.

Learning how to use the web to make money is such a good skill to have. Building and selling smartphone apps like FoldEqu1ty is doing is one good example. There is a great thread about that in BFI forum: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/30...rience-282753/

There are tons of people making a living playing video games on YouTube. It's crazy! You can turn ANY hobby or interest into a business online.

Big downswings always motivate me to improve/get unstuck because I remember how much I hated a 9-5 and even more so living in the USA. That said, I'm not sure what would happen if I ran 100+ buyins under EV. I've always run at/above EV and it makes me sick this sort of variance exists.

RIT I guess especially now that it costs no rake. Curious if anyone has any idea how much variance you can shave off with it.

I Pmed you about developing Apps about 4 yrs ago Rollin on my pre hack SN and investing but i digress,
IMO as you grow/mature as a person online poker loses its appeal when you want to fullfill other ambitions and interests in life not to mention all the other setbacks that happened to online poker in general over the last few years.
thepizzlefosho i would never advise using your savings to get back in action I would suggest work part/full time to rebuild if needed.
Stress is one of the worst things for the humanbody and removing yourself from situations that trigger this is the best thing you or anyone can do if you dont want longterm adverse health effects.

well I'm still in action. I still have 100 BI for 1/2 and enough savings to pay the bills for several months.

plus a nice six figure start on retirement. But I'm a cash flow nit. If I'm spending more than I'm earning for a given time it drives me crazy. And I've been about even for the last year, but I'm running like dog ****. Instead of moving up, playing higher games, trying new sites, I'm stuck in the same old grind. Which again wouldn't be an issue if my huge FTP roll didn't get taken from me. I rebuilt from a small deposit on a small site last year, but the whole time I had to pay bills out of my savings which was really frustrating.

I'm not worried about walking away broke, or being unable to find a job (again I finished college and got a masters). I'm just trying to decide what is the right thing to do. And I'm running so bad I can't tell if I still really love poker and just hate the results right now, or if I'm tired of poker and even if I was winning I wouldn't be loving it.

obviously these are all first world "white people" problems. I realize that compared to other people's serious and tragic issues what I'm complaining about is very trivial. But it's all relative. Righ now my personal life is great, I have the education to fall back on, and I don't really have any other complaints. So this is what is consuming me. Do I still love playing? Should I keep playing?

thepizzlefosho,
I can not tell you one way or another only you know your values and personal goals, in regards to playing or not and what will make you happy or contented in life.

Personally I dont like wasting my time as we have precious little of it to be wasting so if Im breaking even for a year and using my savings to pay the bills I have to seriously consider my options in regards to my future.I have stated before I dont think I will be playing cash regular online from next year due to a myriad of reasons all considered very carefully.

Goodluck in your decision and make the right choice for yourself and your future.

thanks very much. fwiw I'm not breaking even, just not making enough to be putting away money for retirement or investing. two things I was able to do for the first 3-4 years I played professionally.

and thanks for your input. I don't expect anyone to be able to tell me what to do, I'm just trying to see what others think about running awful and what their mindset was during it.

I'm trying to determine if running bad enough for long enough is what is making me not enjoy poker, or if I'm just not enjoying poker. If others have run 100s of BI below EV, and had a roll stolen from them, and their thought is that they still can't wait to grind everyday that would give me some insight. Or if others say they kind-of hate poker when running not even that bad it might give me pause about walking away.

I'm at a crossroads. I know I won't be doing poker forever. But I had hoped to make it to US legislation to at least have a shot at new legal games in the US. But more and more I'm thinking bad luck, bad timing, and my personal weariness of the grind is going to cause me to move on before that happens. It all came to a head this week when I ran 25 BI below EV for the week and then finally saw my FTP balance through an account audit. That was kind of like twisting a knife after stabbing me in the back.

Again if anyone has similar stories, opinions, thoughts, anecdotes, whatever I'm interested to hear them. I'm kind of using this Cheese thread as a chance to clear my head and throw a lot of stuff out there. I've talked to my wife about all of this stuff, and she has a very reasonable and balanced perspective. But she's an medical doctor so obviously has chosen a very different career path and has very different day-to-day stresses. It's nice when I can read about the thoughts and frustrations of other professional poker players.

Oh I don't remember that. What was the project and what happened? Was your old sn KJM?

stop looking at your EV line. pretend it doesn't even exist. focus on winning.

good advice considering how broken and useless the ev line is

I don't disagree with your point, and I agree with the impetus behind trying to refocus on your goal and ignoring results and misfortune.

But you're kind of suggesting that the cure is to treat the symptom. Looking at my EV and noting how poorly I'm running is only occurring because I'm running horribly. And questions about whether or not I still love the game are only confusing because I'm having trouble separating how much running this bad upsets me vs whether or not I've become tired of poker.

I'm not asking how to improve my state of mind when grinding. Although I think what your suggesting is good advice and I've both given it and taken it before.

I'm asking people to try and describe similar feelings they've had about poker. Have you ever run so bad that you thought maybe you didn't like poker anymore? Have you ever left the game and decided to come back?

I'm just interested in hearing other's perspectives on loving playing poker for a living, and how that love is of playing is impacted by an extremely long and frustrating period of poor variance.

What do you love though? Do you love the game or what the game affords you?

http://www.pokerstatic.com/hot-seat/...ith-sauce1234/

If you haven't watched this interview, watch it.

If your love for the game isn't close to his level, personally I don't think you should be playing professionally (bring on the flames). And some might say, "oh, it's easy to love the game when you're a sicko like Sauce." No, he is a sicko because of his love of the game. He went from playing Rail Heaven to grinding PLAY MONEY ffs.

The problem with playing professionally when you don't have this love is exactly what you are experiencing now. Instead of lighting a fire under your ass and having some sort of positive impact, the negative variance is just pain.

My guess is you are suffering from moderate burnout at the very least, and possibly something much more severe. I can imagine what your mindset is when you start your sessions. You shouldn't play until you are excited to play a session - regardless of results. If this takes more than a couple weeks, you should probably start thinking about Plan B. Imo.

GL

How many hours per month of play have you averaged the last 10 months?

I had a serious hand injury that require surgery that cost me a month, and I took a month off to work as a volunteer DIII baseball coach (well I played 20 hours that month but basically took it off).

so ignoring those two months I averaged 75.735 hours a month.

really looking forward to watching the interview.

if you dont mind, do you play professionally? and if so do you feel like you love the game that much?

sauce the boss

Yeah. I don't post much in here anymore cause I've been playing PLO since 2009.


Yeah pretty close. It wasn't always that way though. The game has definitely grown on me.

IMO, AI-EV is poison and not a really helpful stat. if you run over EV you will feel gross and maybe feel like you an undeserving luckbox that might be doing something wrong. on the other hand, if you run bad you will feel like something is owed to you. Neither of these things are healthy. I also believe I have played enough poker to understand when I am running good or bad. I don't need some line on a graph to tell me how I am running. It gets ****ed up a lot of the time anyways.

Hoopster made a really good post. I have to say I love the game as much as Sauce. the passion for the game is what will get you through the tough stretches. if you are not wanting to play, DONT force yourself. that is one of the +'s to being a poker pro. you play whenever you want to play. if you are a true degen and love the game your desire to play will always come back to you at some point. if it doesn't, then poker probably isnt for you.

the second part of this post is more what I'm looking for.

for the time being let's ignore debating the value of AIEV, and how it's impacting my mindset. I'm actually not concerned with my mindset or efforts to improve or study. I'm positive that I've put in a ton of time working on my game this year, and it's had hugely positive impacts on my results. I'm also not really concerned with tilt control as tilt caused by run bad is not a huge issue for me. It's an issue, but far down on my list of faults as a player. And I do things to work on it.

unless you're suggesting that being unsure about my desire to play for a living is in fact a form of tilt, in which case yeah it's problem.

FWIW I've been playing full time for over 5 years now, so this isn't so new thing to me. And I really appreciate you guys giving advice and opinion that goes above and beyond normal trolling or just telling me to quit bitching.

Again anyone that has any opinions, thoughts, or stories about their mindset about the game during their toughest times it would be great to hear from you. Guys who have left the game, when did you know it was time? Guys that came back, why did you decide to return?

thanks everybody for letting me dominate the cheese thread with this discussion. it's much appreciated.

The AI-EV line is the only line I look at when I do look at my graphs. I don't look at actual winnings at all and in general I couldn't tell you how much actual $ I won or lost in a day/month w/e.

+1 Clay

Although def not getting into this debate because it's so counter productive.

Pizzle I def know where your coming from man, I've had a rough past year or whatever with the FTP fiasco having a large % of my net-worth and then proceeding to build a roll again from scratch basically because of the unwillingness to really invest any of my newly high valued liquid...

Add that together on top of running str8 horrid for 500k+ hands and all the sudden I'm not playing even close to my A game and questioning my abilities and desire for the game, sick vicious cycle. For me, remaining objective has been pretty tough. In the end, the only solution is to improve and increase your actual winrate, best weapon to combat variance obv...assuming you still want to pursue poker of course.

All in all I downswonged like 130bis lol and ran like 160+ below EV or so, feel like I'm finally turning the page...

Last 500k hands


I've played less msnl than most in here fwiw

that's pretty sick shipit. I'm assuming you're playing for a living, have you thought about quitting poker? Do you think you would be thinking about quitting anyway if you were winning at a somewhat average pace for your career (taking into account the obvious drop in stakes and winrates that occurred as a result of BF)? do you still love the game?

Meh, that is a really strong implication. I know a lot of pros that simply dont love the game as much as in earlier years or dont love it anymore at all, yet they keep playing and simply treat it as their job.
The idea of love for the game becomes kinda dangerous as soon as you dont beat the game anymore, you sure know where im going with that.
So, I dont think that love for the game is necessary to play professionally. It can creaty the perfect environment like probably in sauce's case, it seems pretty rare though.

Taking a long break from poker can be very good. I stopped playing for 3-4 months this year and it's the best decision I've taken poker wise. I probably love poker more than I ever have at the moment, although that's ****ing up my university studies atm.

This seems pretty ridiculous. AIEV has a lot to do with play style, and has no way to incorporate cooler situations.

Not knowing how much uare winning/losing is a pretty good approach and I would say you're better off just not looking at any graph instead of using the broken AIEV

Hate AI-EV. Sometimes when I run bad it feels like I make bad rivercalls in big pots when I feel like im def not gonna win "but it will add to my running below-EV"