??? time to take the meds

Why would you make a promise like that if you were going to put 300k on the table?
Pick yourself up by your boot straps and quit playing the damn victim role. You screwed the pooch on your marriage, had some serious driving issues, and now noone will stake you.
If you are going to climb out of this, you will need to accept those things and quit making all these damn excuses.

i never get staking? isnt the competition harder when you play bigger games? just grind it up like the real poker players.
If players need backers they almost always are busto, what guarentees that they suck at bankrollmanagement( what is pretty mutch the key for being a proffesional poker player)

Conclusion: Grind it up and go pay youre debts you told in previous posts

I do wish you good luck with getting back on track though

Since you've finally straightened out your drivers license mess but obviously have an uncontrollable urge to drive, why not drive a cab in Vegas until you get your bankroll up? I'm sure in the cab driver world you would be considered a model citizen.

hmmm, all very interesting so here's a view from a blue collar guy heading for Vegas in FOUR DAYs!!! Yea me.

I have a Commercial drivers license I need one for my job at a major utility. I don't drink and drive because I don't want to lose it.

I am not rich, but I'm comfortable, $400k in my 401k and make ~$150k a year with lots of overtime involving climbing poles with high voltage wires on them in the middle of the night by myself.

I am taking $500 a day to gamble with, once that's gone I will TRY and not go to the ATM, this time I swear. Gambling is treated as entertainment just like a trip to the beach, ski vacation, or Disneyland.

I don't ask people to 'stake' me. Never occurred to me to ask other people for money to gamble with.

If you can't lose it don't risk it, whether it's your money, car, horse barn, marriage or reputation.

Cheaters gonna cheat, could be a car mechanic, Bernie Maddow, Bear Stearns, Federal Government, District Attorney, or the valet that parks your car. Realize this and guard against it. I played on FTP and lost exactly zero dollars because I knew that it could dissappear any minute and wouldn't think about risking a large sum of my hard earned money on a virtual game that may not be so virtual.

If you do lose it because you were stupid enough to risk it take it like a man and don't be a crybaby.

Counter intuitive as it may seem the competition isnt harder in the bigger games. At least not as a whole. In a lower level the players may not be that great but you have to battle the rake, and when you find a really crappy player he is only going to dust off a few hundred to a couple thousand.

At the high levels that I would play at there were some tremendous players. The thing was, there are a ton of hot streak shot takers, and rich guys with more money than card sense. When you get those players, they will drop a years worth of money in a night. And there are a lot more of them than you would think.

I may be different than the average nit though. A tight arse player with no reputation may not get the kind of action that I do. But I have years of image that people may have as a preconceived notion, or my table demeanor can make people want to bust me , but i get huge action and payoffs. So for me the higher the better.

I know this from both sides. Hell I am the dumbarse that dropped 300k in a cheating game.

I also just wanted to say thanks to the people that had good wishes for me.

It is amazing what poker can do for people when their minds are right. I lived an amazing life and had a lot of really high highs. But in hindsight it is good to remember that is is not in our control. We are gambling. It may be with an edge, but it is gambling. I lose to cheaters, others lose to black friday, others lose to scammers. We need to remember that no one is above chance and bad circumstances.

I say gamble it up, but make sure to leave yourself with some outs. I would always be willing to lay it all on the line. I would never do that now. Temper heart with discretion. Remember that the people in your life are way more important than the hours at the table. If you have a choice between poker and a wife or significant other, and poker seems to be causing any strife, fix it before it gets bad. Poker will always be there, but people who count may not be.

I guess this is what life is all about. Learn about risk to reward. But dont forget about those intangibles that are so hard to quantify but are super important. As all the new age geniuses say...Balance.

In the US, an annual income of 150K is in the top 5% of annual average incomes. By any reasonable definition, someone in the top 5% qualifies as rich. Similarly, having 400K in assets is well above average. You may be blue collar, but you are also rich.

As someone who has been through two marriages, I can totally agree with OP about divorce. Many on this forum are fairly young seemingly and have yet to understand the enormous responsibilities of a marriage. It's not something easily described as it must be experienced.

Divorce can definitely wreck you financially as it did me and the OP. The damage it does mentally is far worse and long lasting. You enter into this covenant, pact, relationship with someone that is supposed to last forever. You take an oath to such often in front of your families, your friends and your god. Then it ends. You have failed. No two ways about it.

You begin to doubt yourself. You doubt your decision making abilities even if its 100% your spouses fault (it never is btw) because you were the person who picked your spouse. It still comes back on you.

That kind of failure can leave you filled with self-doubt for months, years or even your whole life.

So OP good luck with your efforts to restart your poker career. There is life after divorce once you start to trust yourself again.

No. If he is living in Boston, supporting a family of five on that salary, then he is not even close to rich. It's relative. It's not what you make it's what you spend or what you have to spend.

You nailed it. Poker is all about trusting your reads and knowing when your mind and intuition is telling you the right course of action. A brutal divorce really takes that ability from you. Especially if poker had a large part in the strife.

I noticed that I would push harder and whatever I won it was never enough. I cant count the times where I would win 50-100K and instead of being happy with a great win, I would simply look at it as a gateway to winning 500k, instead of stopping and spending the time with them I just tried to make her happy with money, when it was time that she wanted. I thought that I wasnt providing well enough with 100k wins. How crazy is that? Being baller isnt just about cash. It is about what you do with the cash.

It has taken me nearly 3 years to get back to where I feel I can trust myself. I think it is because I have nothing left to trust in besides myself. If I want to eat I better get to trusting myself and actually playing the game the way I know how to. I no longer have the cash to degen it up, but I still have the know how. It should be cool now, because I think I have found a little wisdom that I didnt used to have, and really the skill never leaves, it just gets buried in other BS. To test it I went up to blackhawk this past week and played satellites into the HPT ..I won every one I played. I hope vegas players have the same skill sets now as colorado players haha.

I don't think jcorb is the man to ask for backing Randy. Cross him off the list.

correct.

I do give my wife money to gamble with but only because I screw her all the time.

And I do feel rich, sometimes. I've been blessed. Three good boys, five grandkids and married for 35 years now.

A long way from working at a marble countertop factory for $80 a week (cleaning buckets with acetone) helping my mother make the mortgage because my Dad left us.

We lost the house, drove across country in a '67 Toyota Corolla, and moved in with my Grandmother who was a waitress for $1/hr plus tips. My mother remarried and left me behind with my Grandma because my stepdad hated my guts.

As John Wayne said "...Life is hard, it's harder when you're stupid..."

Best of luck OP and no, I won't stake you, or anyone else. ('cept my wifey)

Two more days til Vegas!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSLsea7o6zo

Although I see it all the time I have trouble comprehending why people would build such a beautiful family and then toss it away because they refuse to tell themselves 'no'.

No this is common knowledge, also Thomas Keller and his brother implicated, but it is not certain to what they know like with Deeb. Annie Puke directly supervised the development of the software and did QA with the team in Oregon if you don't know that part. She should be taking more blame than Russ.

What is sick is that if true about DreamCrusher is that he is one of about 6 people I know that ended up in the same manner. I am very surprised he got back 16k as anyone who got cheated absolutely nothing, aside from ZeeJustin ofc (who cheated himself on UB). Sigh.

Like building one of those Scrooge McDuck money vaults and swimming in all of your money.

Randy,
Create a sweat thread or atleast give us periodic updates(both good and bad). Everyone loves a comeback story. Also, it might bring you some attention which could lead to a stake.

Randy, you are obviously an intelligent man. Just take a step back and be rational from here, and you will be absolutely fine. What has happened before is in the past. From an economic perspective it is a sunk cost, and to dwell on it further is completely unproductive. You've obviously realized that putting ego aside and seeking to impress others as a "baller" is counterproductive both financially and in terms of seeking happiness, which puts you ahead of so many people already.

If you were an outsider, how would you advise yourself to proceed?

Why would you go on some narcissistic rant out of left field on the 9th page of a thread completely devoted to Randy Jensen? What does you having a commercial drivers license or any of the other insane stuff that you posted have to do with anything? Some people are just socially ******ed. Just go see a shrink if you have a bunch of issues and are so desperate for someone out there to care about you.

"Everyone in here is innocent, you know that? Heywood, what you in here for?"
"Didn't do it! Lawyer ****ed me!"

stopped reading here

also, the big HU match you had against Barry Greenstein for the WPT bracelet, Greenstein told me that they edited it out of the broadcast but that you kept needling him about the fact that he was donating his winnings to charity. He said that during the match you kept saying things like "do it for the kids!" or "if you call here, some kids are going to be very disappointed" to get psychological leverage. Obviously this didn't work since he won the match.

I think from an ethical point of view, assuming this is true, it's very questionable behavior both in terms of poker ethics (how to behave towards other players during a match) and general ethics.

Hey Randy Jensen? Do you think it was a good idea to have your wife and two young children railing you in that youtube video above? Didnt that bug the hell out of you? How did you do in that tourny (serious question). Did they have to get a players card when they entered the casino?

Do you have any relationship with your wife and kids right now? I really am rooting for you btw. Maybe you can sit next to Gus as one of the new faces of FT. Also, what was the highest your net worth has ever been? Does your wife still have a buttload of your money save and shes left you broke?

Have you ever played live poker? Needling is part of the game.