The Short Story - Still Way TLDR

I’m not really sure where this thread will go. I’ve been playing poker for a number of years now and I’m currently busto.

This is not a new experience for me. I'm used to it. The amount of life leaks I’ve had over the years have ensured that I’m in this position now. You see, addicts rarely hold on to money for long. I have a history of substance abuse and suffer from an Impulse Control Disorder. I have no off switch and have been that way since I was a child.

Mainly I played MTTs. I’ve won and lost fairly large amounts over the years, but the money has mainly been spewed away in other areas of my life. After a solid 2012 I hit a bad downswing in 2013. WSOP was not good. I ended up bricking almost everything I played which was not much anyway. I skipped a bunch of events including the ME and went and found gear. Then I found some pretty ****ed up people to do it with. I returned home a few days later almost broke and in a pretty questionable spot mentally.

At the airport back in Australia I set off the drug dogs. I didn’t have anything on me but they can smell traces on your wallet, money etc. This resulted in a humiliating experience of dealing with customs. Basically I went through the whole process of making sure I didn't have anything in my luggage or body. They kept telling me it doesn't matter if I used overseas, they don’t care and if I admit it the process will be quicker. I couldn’t admit it and kept telling them I was outraged, and blaming it on my imaginary drug addict room-mate in Vegas.

They were actually quite pleasant throughout the whole process and eventually they confirmed I had nothing and I was allowed to leave.

The rest of my savings was then spent on more drugs over the next couple of weeks. Some pretty weird **** happened, I let some people down and I’m now ostracised from my family. They don't want to see me at the moment and I don’t blame them. I’ve been tough to deal with for years and I’m killing my mother with my life leaks.

Since then I’ve had another stint in rehab. I’m lucky enough to have an old friend take me and pay for it. He’s been a successful poker player for a long time and has other businesses so the money wasn’t a big deal to him. I tried explaining to him that he may be setting that money on fire and that I’ll probably just break his heart like everyone else. He wouldn’t have a bar of it and insisted I go.

This place had a different method to what I’ve experienced in the past and so far has worked. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve thought I’m cured. That’s part of the problem. I’ve spent my life deteriorating, then being pulled apart and built back up. You end up with structural integrity issues. Weak spots. Vulnerabilities. You kid yourself that you’re strong, but you know that while you might be walking around in a concrete shell, all it takes is a tap with a small chisel in the right spot to become rubble again.

Current Situation
I’m living in the house of my aforementioned friend. There’s another guy here too and he’s a poker player too. They’re both cash players and do pretty well. They live pretty clean, exercise a lot, eat well, don’t do drugs. They drink a bit but being around alcohol isn’t a problem for me.

Now that I’m back I’m keen to get back into poker. I’m hoping to return to university in 2014 but have a few months to kill. I’m also doing some work through another friend. A few days a week, it’s backbreaking **** but I'm enjoying it. It's nice to be about normal people talking about their normal lives. It's enough to pay the bills for now and is good for me.

I’m steering clear of MTTs as the highs and lows are too extreme. It’s not good for someone like me. I just need something to grind. I’m being staked for cash by my housemate in what has got to be the greatest staking deal of all time. It’s basically charity and I know it. Coaching and reviews too. I’ll just make sure he gets it all back and if I run good I’ll do something to show my appreciation for this and everything else he’s done.

I haven’t played any serious online cash for a while. I was able to beat midstakes a few years ago, but I know the games are different now. I’m just going to start grinding 10c/25c for a while and get into the flow. I could start higher, but as I see it I’m on someone else’s cash. I haven’t put in a hand yet and plan to start later today.

Poker Goals

• Start ginding nl25 to assess my game.
• Abosorb knowledge from my housemates

Poker Goals are a WIP and will develop when I start playing

Life Goals

• Stay Clean
• Exercise
• Eat well
• Become someone my family can trust again

What Is This Thread?
I don’t really know what I’m doing with it. I created a 2+2 account a while back when a mate told me to add some stories to the degen thread. I had no real intention of participating in this community. I’ll see what happens. I can get pretty weird at times.

I’m hoping to keep track of my poker and life goals. At the same time I might tell my story a bit. I’ve always enjoyed writing and people usually enjoy my stories. A lot of them will likely be unflattering towards me, but let’s be honest I’ve spent a decent part of my life being a piece of ****. I think getting some of this out somewhere may be good for me and hopefully others can get something out of it, or find it eye-opening or just have a laugh at or with me. I don't mind.

1st! Best of luck in life and poker. Anyone can change for the better if they desire change.

First session is done.

Made about 2 buyins profit. AllInAdj says i should have lost 2 buyins. I'm going to suggest that AllinAdj is a bitch liar and leave it there.

Feels good to be back at it even for fairly meaningless pot sizes. I'm a long way from an advanced cash game strategist at this point so mainly just going to sit back and capitalise from others obvious errors, of which ther seems to be a lot at nl25. Even for my level of understanding.

I also plan on cracking people's Aces, spewing chips around and getting there on the river a lot too. Seems to be working so far.

GL Sir. I just found this thread by looking for part 4 of your story in the degen thread. What's up with that?! Don't leave us hanging

Thanks guys.

I forgot about that. I'll have to reread it and see where I'm up to. I did try to finish it up but was having trouble squeezing it into one more part and just gave up at the time. Last couple days of that is real hazy too, so didn't want to just outright bull**** to finish it up. I'll have a look today and see what I can do over the next couple days.

Oh yeah poker.

Played another session last night and again today. 3k hands total. Pretty good for 24 hr window but not the pace I'll be keeping up. I'm still about 2 BI up, playing pretty bad.

Non-showdown plummeting
Playing too loose VPIP 29
Flatting too much, not 3beting enough
Cbeting too much
Running good allin. Should be way down.

You get the idea. Going to fuel up on coffee and get another session in now. Will post graphs and spots when there's more content.

5000 hands and I officially suck at cash these days.

Was hoping to breeze through with confidence and jump to nl100 quickly.
Sample is lol and meaningless but reviewing hands has been pretty demoralising.

My leaks have leaks, and I'm spewing pretty bad. Still playing too loose. I have to admit that immediately upon looking at a hand history I usually see my mistake immediately and wonder wtf I was doing. This is tending to suggest mindset issues rather than theoretical and hardly surprising at the moment.

In other beats, I realised yesterday I have almost $3K on lock poker. I haven't played on there since last year. To put this in perspective my current net worth is approx 5K including lock funds. So I guess judging by the Lock thread in NVG my net worth is actually 2K. Easy come, easy go.

I was tempted to jump into the biggest games or HUSNG they have and **** about for fun. Then I realised that if I somehow run it up to 20K and can't get it off that I would probably end up killing myself. Think I'll just forget about it for now.

I'm pretty sure I may have some small funds tucked away on ****ty small sites like Everest and Betfair. Prob not much, but not sure I could even access Betfair. They exclude Australian's unless something has changed recently as I only played them when I was living in London.

****ing beats keep on coming. Back to getting owned at NL25 for now I guess.

Just went back and read your degen stories, looking forward to the rest.

You may have mentioned it, but are you playing on pokerstars or euro sites?

GL with this (Y)

GL, following!

I'm avoiding Stars at the moment as a calculated strat, but will reassess later. I don't want to play MTTs and I know the tempatation on Stars will be hard to resists as the schedules are so much better than anywhere else.

Euro sites suck for MTTs. They're soft but the volume is awful so I'm just not tempted to play them. I used to play them but it was usually only to add volume to my Stars schedule and to try and get some soft small field stuff in to smooth out variance and to get a decent spread of Sunday majors. By sticking to one non-Stars/FTP site for cash I'm just unlikely to end up regging MTTs,

Glad you enjoy the stories. Seriously I could fill 2+2 with them. Some are funny, some are outright pathetic. Not sure if this is the right forum or if they're better in the degen thread though.

GL man and there's no shame in starting from the beginning with your cash game. Work from micros up if you need to-relearn the basic **** and go from there. You're in a relatively good spot now so take advantage of it and set yourself up for better times.

Anyway, gl again, subbed.

Gl dude, it's nice that u have some generous poker guys there to help u through the hard times, hope it works out for u.

First week down. Much happier with my play at the moment. Have tightened up considerably and trying to think about spots a bit more instead of just clicking buttons.



Quite happy with volume, played a lot over the weekend. My friends went out drinking so I decided to just stay in and get some hands in last night. It's Sunday afternoon here and have just finished a decent session from today and ready to pack it in for the day.

Going to go out and get some exercise. A friend of mine wants me to go with her for a walk through some god-forsaken countryside area. Climbing up hills and gullies and walking through prickles while trying not to get attacked by snakes or possums or covered in spiders.

She's convinced this is the solution to my problems and what I'm missing in life.

LOL Just wrote out a huge emo post and then deleted it before posting. Took me about 30 mins to write too. ****ing psycho.

While I'm here I may as well post something. Poker is going ok. Backer wants me moving up. He wanted me starting higher anyway. I want to get more hands in but have been beaten into submission. I'll grind NL25 until the end of the week and then take a shot at 50. He wants me at NL100 asap, but I'd rather take it slow for now.

In slightly more interesting news, I'm supposedly being setup on the weekend. Have been invited to dinner at a friends house. A few people I know will be there but apparently her grand plan is to set me up with her friend.

Kinda ****ty friend in my opinion. Setting this poor girl up with someone like me. Anyway, hopefully she's decent looking or at least decent to talk to. If none of the above then this will be a huge grind as I'm not drinking either right now.

Maybe she thinks you have potential?

GL sweat. Sounds like you are practicing good discipline.

Just about to start my shot at NL50. Will post 25 graph later. I'm beating it for about 4.5bb/100 currently but think I could do better if i stuck around.

Hopefully the shot at 50 starts well,

Had a pretty good weekend. Dinner on Friday was pretty nice. I didn't drink at all and while everyone else was and it got a bit rowdy it didn't bother me. Surprisingly I was able to enjoy myself anyway just chatting with people and came home at a decent hour.

Girl I was being setup with on Friday is supernice. Nothing to really report but I'll probably see her again. The friend who's party it was, is the same one who is making me walk through prickles with her every weekend. I've known her a while and it's pretty clear she sees me as a project. Trying to get me healthy and introduce me to positive people who are likely to be a good influence.

I've still got a healthy collection of mates that I'm currently trying to avoid. Mainly because of them being a bunch of degenerate gamblers, drinker and drug users. Once such mate called me yesterday to see how I was. Haven't seen him for at least a year but we used to get pretty crazy together. From the sounds of it he's much the same as before, and is involved with some pretty ****ed up people. While we ended the conversation saying we'd catch up soon, it's probably not going to happen.

Feel like a bit of a turd for not having the balls to say it to him directly, unlikely to be good to be around that environment at the moment. I'll just dodge for a bit and see if he loses interest. Otherwise will have to say something. I've been on the receiving end of these conversations before and they suck pretty hard for everyone involved.

Move up has gone well. Running well which obviously helps but feel I'm playing good too. Adding table so volume is getting better. Depending on results over next couple of weeks may end up shot taking 100. Backer is keen for it sooner rarther than later.

About 3K hands of that is from November.



Now that I'm settling in, it's probably time to firm up on some short term and longer term poker goals.


November Goals
Minimum 50K hands
Self-review study 3 session a week.
Review with housemates twice a week
possible shot at NL100

Longer Term Goals
Become a proven winner at NL200 to avoid needing to work while returning to Uni next year.

So, 50K hands/month is about 1600-1700 hands per day. Actually not as much as I thought it was. Still I think it's a good floor to set myself but hope for more.

3 days in I'm about on pace and could easily do more. Going to take the rest of Sunday off though as I'm not really feeling it today and have made a few questionable calls.

Volume pace should be about 8333 hands, on 8308.

The thing about making bold statements about a certain volume level being easy....

It's all well and good when things are going well.
Then you have downswings, and it gets harder.



Of course it would be easy to complain. Complain about the deck spitting in my face. About running under EV, or about losing several buyins to a complete spaz.

I wont do that though. Instead, I'm glad I lost 12 buyins in about 2500 hands. I'm sure I've learned a lot from the experience. I don't know what, but I'm sure it will come to me eventually.

I love your writing, keep it coming. I hope you stay on the good path.

Side note on where to post stories and what-not, I'd say keep this thread for your progress through the poker ranks and save all your juicy degen stories for the degen stories thread, just to keep this one on the topic of your recovery.

thanks man

I agree, which is why I've refrained from putting anything in here. It's pretty fun to have a laugh at some of the stupid things from my past, but positivity is probably better for here. I may write some stuff later on if I keep this thread going but it would probably be more reflective and serious in tone. I'm in a pretty good headspace right now so keen to keep that going as much as possible.

Poker Update
I'm lagging behind pace to hit 50k hands but have hit a decent upswing so I'm not complaining. Feel like my game is improving every day. Feedback and sessions from my friends is helping with eliminating leaks from my game. It really helps to have a network of players to bounce things off, especially when they're considerably better than you are.

I feel like I'm significantly +EV in every lineup I'm currently sitting at NL50 and will probably move up to NL100 before too long unless I hit another downer.

My confidence is growing quickly and we're obviously looking to move up quickly. It's probably best to clarify a couple of things though, as otherwise it might seem strange to be pushing up so quickly. I've played higher in the past.

While I was grinding MTTs for several years as my main game I've also played a decent amount of cash too. I would often grind cash during MTT sessions if I didn't have enough tables up and often took mtt breaks for anything from 2 to 4 weeks when i got bored. I spent a lot of time traveling at one point and found trying to maintain an MTT schedule to be a huge pain, so frequently jumped between the 2 games.

Since BF I have barely played any cash. Prior to that I'd played as high as NL400. I had modest winnings at that level over a measly 40 to 50k hands. I suspect I was probably a breakeven player/small winner when game selecting and definitely -EV in the tougher lineups. However, I had about 400,000 hands logged at NL200 which I beat at a reasonable rate.

MTD Graph

Update - Poker

50K hand pace - 28333
Actual Pace - 24577



Need to make up some hands but shouldn't be a problem. Last week of the month I've got a break from work for a few days so plan to grind pretty hard during that. Should be able to stay in touch and hopefully end the month well over 50K hands.

My play has been ok. Tending to autopilot a bit when I'm pushing for volume, but I think that is a skill in itself. While it would be great to 4 table and really think about every decision, the reality is most decisions should be fairly elementary in a small stakes 6max game. I may take a 100NL shot in the week I've got off, otherwise might postpone to next month.

Running a decent amount under in AllIns, but nothing that's tilting me too hard, as I ran pretty good last month.

Update - Other/Life
I drank some alcohol last night. Not much but first drop I've had in a long time. Alcohol isn't what I'm addicted to, but it has caused me a lot of trouble in the past for a variety of reasons. It's more to do with my lack of control, so while I don't crave alcohol the way some other things, when I drink I get messy and usually look for something else to prolong my session.

I went out to dinner with about a dozen people last night. There were only a couple of people there who are aware of my issues and I was sitting at the other end of the table from them. Soon after we sat down people started ordering drinks. Bottles of wine turned up and before I knew it the guy I was sitting next to was pouring me a glass of red.

I haven't touched alcohol for quite some time. I was planning on staying dry until the new year. We're running into summer over here and I always planned to try drinking a few beers at some point but not yet.

The glass of wine sat there for a while and I didn't touch it. I was kind of hoping the wine would run out and I could just pass on my untouched glass to someone else.A girl sitting across from my commented that I hadn't touched it and started carrying on about how nice a bottle it was. I didn't really know hat to do so I just drank it.

It tasted like poison to me. Bitter and sickly. I smiled and agreed with everyone about how nice it was. I caught eye contact with my friend who was sitting down the other end. She looked worried. I just smiled back and tried to telepathically assure her I was fine.

I didn't have anything else as I made the excuse I was driving (a lie) and wasn't feeling too well (now the truth). After dinner they were all going to find somewhere for a few drinks. I made my excuses and went home, the whole time praying that nobody would ask for a lift home in my imaginary car.

I walked around for a while. It was getting later and things were getting busy as people were arriving for their Saturday night out. At one point I was leaning against a wall watching a group of guys. I was pretty positive they were on something and probably had something to sell. Junkies are good at smelling out their own kind.

I was never for a second going to try and get anything but didn't like where my train of thought was taking me. I jumped in a cab and went home. My housemates were out and just echoed around the house doing nothing for a while. Tried playing some poker but couldn't concentrate. Eventually I just went to bed and for some reason slept for almost 12 hours straight.

Kind of in a weird spot at the moment, but nothing to particularly worry about.

Had catchup with backer and short review of recent sessions. Agreed to play Nl100 today (he's very pushy). I was a bit worried as my sessions have been swingy lately.

Played a bit tighter and managed to stay out of trouble







Decent start. Got some reviewing to do so will call it quits tonight.

50K Pace: 31666
Actual MTD hands: 28277
MTD PreRB profit : $772.85
bb/100: 4.74