Yea...maybe that was uncalled for. My bad.

No, no I'm not.

You are 100% correct. Forgive me, I should have used the word "gambling" instead of poker. I speak from experience, so for me, it was "poker." Still, they're in the same category.

Irrelevant. Fortunately for me, I never made it to Vegas. I wasn't trying to raise awareness about poker, or BJ, or whatever. I wanted to raise awareness about problem gambling. I think you're missing the point.

LOL this isn't about me. I have fixed my problems. As it were, they were all gambling-related. Once I quit gambling (which was poker for me) I was able to fix my problems. I have no "axe to grind." I have no grudge against gambling institutions. You don't seem to understand my motivation to help other people who are hurting because of their gambling addictions. I don't feel like I deserved to win. In fact, I'm glad I DIDN'T win, because I was living in a "degerate sense of ... reality," as you put it, while I was gambling. Also, of course there is a skill element to poker, but to say that poker isn't a game of chance is completely ridiculous. You know it, and every other reader here knows it.

The first part of this describes perfectly my worldview while I was gambling. I have already addressed the second.

Done. Admitted and moved on.

Thanks for your passionate participation in this conversation, really. But you seem to think that I'm your enemy. That's not the case. As I said before, my goal is to raise awareness about problem gambling. It's a real problem that affects millions of people in the United States alone, and deserves focused attention.

*sigh*

It is a game of chance, but playing enough will take care of that.

The main issue is that the game is now unbeatable unless you are very good, at pretty much every level above 10nl. A lot of the people on 2plus2 who can't understand why so many people are now losing, simply don't recognise how good they themselves have become.

There are others on here, who would take CrazyESP's side on this, who haven't yet accepted that they themselves are losing players, also.

And tomorrow, the game will be just a little bit harder than it is today.

Who paid your roomate back? Did you pay your parents back for the tuition you wasted?

I knew a guy that lost 3 successful restaurants. No book or movie for him.

I paid my roommate back, and yes, I'm chipping away at the debt to my parents. They know I'm in a good place now, though, since I have quit gambling.

I'm sorry to hear that. Did he lose the restaurants as a result of his gambling?

The director of this film sought me out. I didn't set out hoping someone would make a movie about me, and I hope people will understand that my story isn't so much about me as it is about a much larger problem that affects millions of people.

Also, just to be clear, I am not an official spokesperson for this film. I received no compensation for participating, and will never request nor accept any in the future. It is good, though, and I think most poker players will enjoy it.

No offense, bro, but your poor poker play may be the result of poor deductive reasoning:

a) losing at $75/$150 is expensive
b) I wouldn't post about it if it was due to cocaine or something else

What I was getting at is that he may have lost his livelihood because of other circumstances (i.e. bad economy, weather, fire, divorce settlement, etc.). It is a false dichotomy to assume that all problems that gamblers/poker players have are related to poker, because there are any number of other reasons for financial demise. People who don't have gambling problems are able to separate business budgets from gambling budgets; those who do have problems usually can't stop themselves from taking money from pools they shouldn't be dipping into. That's what I did, and that's why quitting gambling was the best choice I have ever made. Again, I'm not anti-gambling; it's just not for me. And don't patronize me. I'm not stupid.

If it was due to anything other than gambling, I wouldn't have mentioned it. I wasn't patronizing you, hence the emoticon.

Sorry, my fault. Missed the emoticon the first time :/

^dude gtfo

just because you sucked at poker/ life doesnt mean you have to walk around the country like a Jehovas Witness and try to get people to stop gambling.
PPl like you are ruining pokers reputation, just because YOU are a scumbag who would steal from your friends just to donk it away. Believe it or not, 95% of all pokerplayers would never do this. So stop trying to be the martyr here, you fat scamming POS

just my 2 cents

A+ I agree.

Only briefly browsed this thread. Some very harsh stuff is being said here, ouch. Saddly, I agree with most of it. SISTEBOSSEN's post would have probably gotten to OP better without the hardcore insults, but yeah, he's pretty spot on imo.

OP, so you clearly have an addiction prone personality. Hence you have kind of an extreme personality, and you probably tend to prefer "extreme" solutions, that "break" quite a bit with the past. Ie you went from extreme poker playing to extreme denunciation of poker via this hardcore walking adventure thing. Both options are not super healthy.

So at the end of the day dude, just get help. Not talking some sort of support group here, I'm talking therapy. I will probably do you loads of good and put your life back in perspective thanks to a real understanding of who you are and how your tendencies affect your life decisions.

Also, you need to understand you're a whinner, and that's a life leak.

/end of pseudo psycho bable talk.

This "documentary" reminded me Nazi videos about jewish people..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwsySS2EzgU


Or anything racist. Thats simply ... How can you go Jail by playing 10nl please explain me?

Truth? How bout people losing their life savings on Wall Street? Do you ever hear about that?

Oh it's bad investment when it comes to Wall Street but when it comes to online poker, it's gambling.

Our government wants to deregulate Wall Street, the highest form of gambling, and regulate everything else.

It's all in your perception pal...

+1, couldn't have said it better.

Saw that the film is completed and has premiered at some film festival. Is there any place we can watch the full thing online?

@MichaelWalksUSA - good on you bro.

I live in Vegas and play regularly and have mixed feelings about poker's role in life. The threads started here on two plus two about guys who's lives have changed are not all hero stories. Yours is one more people should know about - and will.

I was always a winning player. But when I played online, I never cashed out once. I would take my deposit up ten times or a hundred times, and eventually go broke and have to deposit more. I could never understand why I had a solid brick and mortar success rate, but completely failing online win rate. Then the flurry of cheating scandals and corruption caused me to quit online all together.

Don't know if I'll play online right away if/when it comes back. But I'll be sure to hold the operators to a high standard for player protections, and transparency about controls that deal with cheating.

Good luck bro, you're big.

Lol, you're just an online fish. Once the UIGEA started to grow teeth, the online games became more difficult than live games by orders of magnitude. You're just the typical live fish that looks for other reasons why he can't beat an online game instead of examining his own game. A common tale...

Is there cheating online? Sure. Is there more cheating online than live? Probably. Is that the reason why you couldn't ever cashout? No.

Also, maybe just cashout? You said you would take a deposit "up 100 times". $100 * 100x = $10,000. That's a pretty good run. Why not cash out some instead of degen $10,000 away at a big game?

Poker is a tough way to make an easy living......................

Oh, Dr. Drew, thanks so much for weighing in. Or are you Rich Muny's blow buddy?

What's common are trolls that have nothing better to do that trash people that bring legitimate concerns to light. Online was always insecure, despite whatever lengths you and others may go to try and deny this. Do you know for a fact that DrawingDead Michael wasn't one of a specific group of players that was targeted to bleed out his roll? The fact is, you don't know diddly, ...you're just a foul mouth troll that has nothing constructive to offer in a complex and dynamic, technological consumer marketplace.

Listen to your parents, stay in school.

All I know is I played over 4 million hands online before Black Friday and was able to deflect the cheating you say is so rampant enough to earn a living from it.

I've seen lots of live players that say they used to crush Stars, that come to the casino and lose their rolls and after abou 3 months you don't see them anymore. So, either they are lying about how well they did online, or they ... I dunno ... Found a way to cheat? They are bad poker players. Frankly, I am in the profitable in B+M and never really did well online group. They are 2 different skill sets. Anyone who says online players are better, or visa versa doesn't know wtf they are talking about. Apples to oranges.