Wow, what would undisciplined look like.

It sounds like there's no getting through to you, but you have a gambling addiction which you need to fix. There's no other answer to this problem.

Guys,

Ever since starting this post, I've lost another 4-5k.
Mostly to bad playing. (Never use the system).

All of that $ was "can't lose" money if u know what I meant.
Yesterday was the lowest point of my gambling life.

I need to pay $600 to a loan shark who had ppl banging on my door.
At the time I had $200 left in the casino.
He kept texting & calling me, threating me.

I rushed of course lost my final $200.

When I had $30 left I put it in the slot machine & prayed:
"If the gambling God, (if there is one), let me win $600 with these $30, I'd quit gambling for good)".
I went ahead & did $3 spins for 10 straight time. And OH MY GOD......

I got nothing!!!!

I got in the car & drove home to face the guys.
I drove for 5 min then all of a sudden I just wanted to quit.

I drove back to the casino & SIGNED the self ban paperwork (5 years was the max).

So I finally did it.
I swore to myself & my Mom that was the last day of me gambling.

My Mom has talked to the loan shark about a repayment plan ( I owed 4.5k total).

The guys went home. What a break.

P/S. For those of you who are taking gambling seriously, please STOP!

I'll come back to this post to give some updates, hopefully all non-gambling related stuffs.

Thanks.

good job on the ban, better late than never!

seriously though, there's no winning system..

there's a gambling god however! since if there were no god you'd win one of those spins some % of the time, but you were a mortal lock to bust once you started praying

Attended my first Gambler Anonymous meeting today.

Not sure if that's going to help me much.
I think someone who is an ex gambler but also has some psychology experience can help me more.
I'd like to talk to a trusted person to share my stories (a bit venting at first, to get all frustrations off my chest). At the same time can give me psychologist advice would be a better help.

Instead we were reading off a book on the steps to recover. Helpful indeed but to me it's too much "literature" and not much personal guidance.

But I guess once I've reached some milestones (30, 60, 90 days free) I'd revisit GA. Just as a reminder that I've done it.

Anyone here have any other methods that help you quit gambling?
The mental aspect of quitting, how do you deal with getting back to reality? (After gambling has been 100% of what you do prior to quitting?)

Thanks

Good on you, well done!

I'm afraid I can't help on the advice front though, I've not been there.

Substitute gambling with something else. There is no such thing as a gambling problem. In reality, it's a compulsive disorder. It's just like the people hooked on various types of sports and games like chess. Guess it's like an addiction disorder. Gambling just happens to be your choice over let's say World of Warcraft or something

Apart from obviously being cheaper, how does being addicted to World Of Warcraft rather than gambling help make his life better?

You can probably answer that with reference to your own compulsive message board posting. WC is fun for a while at least.

It has been 9 days since my last bet.

I have to admit that my mind has been thinking about it alot.
But at the same time I also started to think about other aspects of my life.

I really need to balance my life. It's hard to being thrown back to reality.
I've been neglecting everything & now I'm overwhelmed to get back.

But I'll continue to fight this demon.

Sorry about the bad paragraphs. I'm on a phone.

I don't even know where to start but I'll do my best

I was you.

Not really into baccarat but more poker
And roulette. I was quite a good poker
Player and lived in a small
City where the game was really soft. I did well and Had a good
Hourly rate. But I was also a
Blackjack and roulette degen at the time. I
Moved to a new city. Games were tougher. I told
Myself if I just did this different or that different. I would win. But every time I would get in a bad head space and not use my system or strategy. I would
Blame that for losses and go back.

These guys arnt lying. Your a smart enough guy to
Figure out that there's no system or strategy to turn a negative ev into a
Positive. If the house edge is 1% you are throwing $1 in the dumpster every time you bet $100. No ifs and buts or maybes. You need to realize this

Just over 2 years ago I finally
Hit my rock bottom and quit. It's honestly the hardest thing ever. It consumes you. It's all I knew. All my friends gambled it's what I did in my spare time. It was my life.

IMO you need to look at what time and when you use to gamble and make plans for every possible trigger time that you had. If your sitting there doing nothing you can only fight it so long

Unfortunatly a couple monthes ago my wife started
Mentioning some shows she wanted to see in vegas. I figured after a couple years I could go and enjoy some food and shows and not gamble. I was wrong

I almost instantly got stuck a bit and could feel my heart racing like it had so many times before. Long story short I lost 6k faster than I
Ever did before

I instantly felt like I hadn't for 2 years. That sick feeling in your stomach. Where you feel like the worlds biggest idiot. Where you don't know
Weather you want to scream or cry. You think of
All the things you could've had with that money but now it's gone.

I did something different this time. Rather than lie and hide it. I told
My wife. I told my non gambling friends when I got
Home.

It's 2 weeks later and I still pace around every day thinking why did I do it. I was so good for so long. I had my eye on this pellet smoker BBQ combo for monthes and couldn't do it. Now I lost all that money and have nothing to show for it

To sum it up. The degeneracy never goes away. You may think it has but it will come roaring back.

If u check some
Of my previous posts I talk about quitting a
Few
Other times.

Lol. Yes, my 2,500 posts in 12 years has had a real negative impact on the rest of my life.

Grunch: I chuckled at "advanced players". There is no skill, you bet Banker and watch your stack shrink. Or you bet something else and watch it shrink faster. If the game were any more mind-numbing, it would have levers and flashing lights.

Technically you can profit by counting cards (or could at one point), but the EV is so small you'd be better off in a sweatshop somewhere.

Believe me when I say "advanced players".

If u've been playing the game u'd know what I'm talking about.

There are players who are good at it, & suck at it.
Of course over the long term everyone would lose, but they've been managed to win huge sum of money. To the point where I took notice.

Losers:
1) Small stack, grind it out players. Scared to bet.
2) Big stack, play some kind of progressive systems. Win a bunch, but bust on one bad streak.
3) Addicted players, playing to the last dollars no matter what. (Unfortunately, that was me before I decide to quit (& hope to stay that way).
...

Winners:
1) Lucky on that day, win no matter what. (can't count on this long term)
2) Leave when up, doesn't matter the time play. Some ppl just sit down for 15 min, win a few hundreds then leave.
...
Advanced players:
-Extremely discipline, only play favorable shoes that fit their playing style. (Stay out of others).
-Have Win/Loss limits & stick to it.
-Have time limit.
-Excellent money management.

***And most important, NOT AN ADDICTED PLAYER, play often but always maintain a calm demeanor & ALWAYS stick to the set principles.

Of the hundred "regulars" that I used to play with. I've seen around 20 ppl that almost ALWAYS WIN.
Their winning amount is amazing, 5-6 figures.

Now you might ask why don't I just copy what they do.

The answer is I can't. No bankroll like they have, no discipline.
...

Do they identify favorable shoes by card-counting? If not, they're just betting their superstitions. Nothing advanced about that.

If they have an edge, why do they need limits? They must not have an edge. As a poker player, if I'm at a table full of the easiest fish (e.g. Baccarat players ), I'm sure as hell not getting up because X hours have passed or I'm up/down Y amount.

Playing -EV games is not excellent money management, and betting anything >0 in a -EV game will wipe out any non-replenishing bankroll in the long run. What you mean is that these people aren't degens who wager more than they can afford to lose. Again, there's nothing particularly advanced about that, it's just called not being an idiot or raging addict.

+1

For those of you who repeatedly advise: "You'll always lose on an -EV game" and don't agree that there are good vs bad gamblers:

To me saying that is like advising all drivers to stop driving because "eventually you'd have a ticket or causing an accident", and don't agree that there are good vs bad drivers.

Of course I get the idea that over a long period of time all -EV game would leave you a loser, but it doesn't mean that it won't make you a temporarily winner, more so than worst players.

And don't tell me you don't get the idea of an "advanced" gamblers (in other words, better gamblers) than others.

It might be because of many factors: better discipline, better time/money management, better bankroll, better betting method, not yet a "degen" gambler (this I TOTALLY agree with the prior posts)...etc

What I was looking for is someone who has successfully play this game & come out on top. (not necessary overall win/loss result). Just someone who played & still survived, so to speak, & win more often than not.

But anyway, let's end the discussion here if all responses are "you'll never win in an -EV game" & "there are no better gamblers vs worst gamblers, they're all the same, LOSERS".

Look like the 1% of successful gamblers don't come to these "losing" forums anyway. haha

Ill assume you are making sincere posts.

You keep talking about advanced gamblers and how you got a winning system but you lose because you cant control yourself and make bad decisions.

You are really fooling yourself and at some point you wont be able to gamble because your are broke and have to quit for a while and you may even attend GA like you have.

Time will pass and you will think the inactivity has "cured" your bad decision making. "This time Im gonna do it right", and you will go back with your system and repeat the process all over again.

Bottom line is you cannot win in the long run. Once you get that through your head then all will be cured. You will either not gamble anymore or only do it from a recreational point of view with money you can afford to lose with no expectations of winning.

Im writing this from experience and even if I did so to myself 20 years ago i suspect it will have the same effect on you as it did me then which was.,
Bah humbug, my system works. I can beat the casinos if I just stay smart about it.

No it's more like advising all drunk drivers to stop driving, while you're arguing that there are some "advanced" drunk drivers who only drive slightly buzzed and don't usually end up crashed into median.

Don't drive drunk.

Of course there are better gamblers, but as others have said, they don't win in the long run. Better gamblers will so things such as the following:
Ensure they use strategies/play games to reduce house edge as much as possible
Not change this due to results/hunches etc
Use a strategy that means their payoff structure is desirable. In any one session you can't change your expected result, but you can change your odds of going broke. Worse gamblers tend to go broke more often by looking for a big score.

These are the sort of things you are hinting at above, but the bottom line is that if these guys are in profit over a long term, it's luck that pushed them over the edge. You can still gable smart though to improve your chances.

Your chances of being a "better" gambler when you have an addiction problem are not good however.

I am lifetime up in Baccarat over the last 20 years.

This is mainly because I've been very lucky, and that I haven't reached the point yet where the law of averages will doom me.

From my observations, there is only one way to have any chance at all to win at the casino.

1) Embrace a very high risk of ruin
2) Ride all streaks heavy and run the moment it ends
3) Set a stop loss (that you can afford to lose) and when noticeably up, don't leave a loser, leave before have any chance of going negative
4) Don't lose more in one night than you can reasonably win in one night

The above advice is based on the simple fact that it's almost inevitable that you will lose more hands than you will win. Thus, you need to win substantially more when you win than when you lose. This is all due to luck and not a system.

You do this by introducing massive variance in your bets and hope you hit a heater. This is also why there are so many poker players you can't remember anymore, they all hit heaters and didn't have the discipline to stop when it was obvious they were losing to the house (and better players).

Thank you for the last 4 posts.

Those are the answers/comments that I 100% agree to. Funny how "Alpha Fish" brought up "drunk driver", spot on haha

And "ecoeco" gave me the kind of response that I was looking for when I started this post. Someone who has done it & successful to an extend.
More of that is very welcome.

I know I can't stop altogether yet, but since attending GA I only play like 2 times in almost 2 months, comparing to 4-5 times/week like before.

My head is clearer now, but I notice in my 2 sessions that when I play for a long period of time my bad tendencies just came back up.

So more rest & like "magking1" has said, maybe I should only play when it's money I can lose & only for fun. But that should be years from now maybe.

Again, thank you all for the answers. I hope to get some more of those while I'm "curing"...

I am not trying to encourage you at all.

The fact that you are looking for a "success" story is indicative of serious gambling problems in your life. A simple read through your posts makes it obvious that you need to quit asap.

You lose not because of bad tendencies, but because the games are designed so you will lose.

I hit a massive heater during 2009-2014, in which I was playing almost 100x times larger than what I play now for fun. At no time was I playing for a living, and I only rode that streak until I went from Ultra hot to somewhat hot, and I immediately reduced my bet size to near minimum so that when I lose (which is inevitable and must happen), I will never lose it all back to the casino.

You need to quit. It's obvious that it's more than just a game to you, and that's not a good thing.

This.

@OP, every time you play, you're betting against the laws of math. You're betting that arithmetic doesn't work. The drunk driving analogy was great, but it's more like you're trying to drive your car across an ocean or off a cliff, thinking the laws of Physics don't apply to you.

If your main strategy was to ride streaks, the probability to be ahead after 20 years of playing is zero.

You can believe what you like, that's your right.

What you have wrong here is that probability approaches zero not due to time, but how many hands you've played. I haven't played enough hands to doom me yet. An example would be, if I played 100 hands a year, and played 20 years, can I be ahead after 2000 hands? Absolutely. I should probably lose, but hey, Darvin Moon made it to the final table.

Will I eventually lose if I continue to play til I hit the law of averages? Absolutely.

Do betting systems systematically work? Of course not, it's math.

But what riding streaks does is the following:

1) Allows you to capitalize when you are "lucky"
2) More importantly, gives you a clear signal to leave the casino when it ends

As you know, my odds don't change (much) regardless of which side I bet or how I bet, so what I'm doing isn't wrong or right. The true losers are the ones who bet the same amount, every single hand, every single night, for years. You doom yourself because you can't stop and you rack up so many hands even being lucky won't help you.

I've just been very lucky, rode a heater, and knew when to quit (or dial down my bets). Will this work for you? Probably not. Will I eventually lose it all back? Unlikely as I bet way smaller now but if I play enough, sure, I expect to lose it all back. However it's just a fun game to me, and losing or winning doesn't affect my lifestyle because I don't let it.