Originally Posted by pimpxxxdaddy42069
Nov 5th was my second year anniversary of unemployment so wrote some thoughts down to commemorate it. obv tl;dr etc etc. quick background- been playing 2/5 and 5/10 live full time mostly in australia for past 2 years. Not a good player, not a baller, never claimed to be, but still going where many have failed. anyways enjoi' (or not)
I've always thought of myself as a positive human being derailed by life. I'm not sure when or how it happened but sometime during my long and strange residency in Australia I became a complete ****ing mess. It might have been too many drugs. It might have been coming to terms with the brutality and pointlessness life. It was probably some combination of excessive masturbation, insomnia, and chlorofluorocarbons. Regardless, I spend most of my life on a vomitcoaster between moderate joy and abject misery. There was a time though I can remember being at my most disparaged...The absolute **** hole rock bottom hookerstolemywallet end of the rope and it revolved around full time work for a phone company. It was the most ****ing hopeless job in the world.
Every morning was the biggest ****ing grind. Wake up two hours before work and wonder how the **** I ended up here. Look over at my partner and lament how poor I treat her. Spend the next hour and fifteen minutes masturbating because the anti depressants I'm on make it hard as **** to actually orgasm and god help everyone if I don't finish that **** properly. So this left me roughly ten or so minutes to shower, put on clothes, and get gone. Morning commutes ****ing sucked and they were typically shared with my girlfriend who hated mornings and traffic which tended to spark off giant raging domestics which were always sub textually based around my sexual insecurity but verbally just involved being mean to each other. The drive just served to amp up my rage meter to max and when I get angry my quickest response is regret followed by self loathing. I would run this whole **** gambit in 30 minutes flat which was just enough time to squeeze a few tears out in the elevator ride to the sixth floor.
Then comes the desk and the mechanical encouragement from the fellow workers and middle management,
"Hey Sam how are you?" "Oh you know, I woke up alive again so just another testament to my inability to commit to killing myself which is all I really want to do. I'm trying my hardest to drink and smoke myself to death but apparently it takes longer then I originally anticipated." "LOL you are so funny Sam."
HAHAH funny. Right.
So that puts me at a desk where I sit and get the **** abused out of me. Endless. ****ing. Abuse. Just take a moment to consider the telephone. It is a piece of technology that has been around since the 1870s. If you are an adult in western society and you do not understand the basic concept and workings of a phone you are a ****ing idiot. If you rage so hard when your phone has an issue that you feel the need to take it out on a stranger then you are an even bigger ****ing idiot. I can talk like a methed up auctioneer and would easily go through 80+ calls a day. Half of the calls straight from customers involved the end user being either stupid or an *******. Needless to say this did not help my already waning opinion of humans and society. Even if I did manage to avoid getting an aneurysm from the endless calls, the ineffectual and passive aggressive micro management by my team leader would make sure to drop my self worth down to zero. The worse thing was, achievement was never properly recognized while any flagging performance was instantly admonished so there was never any incentive to be a good employee which basically sucked any possible reason for caring from the job.
Eight hours later and I was headed straight for the pub. I was raking in so much money at this time and had so little overhead that I could afford pumping bulk cash straight in to consumption and my blossoming gambling problem. So I'd roll up at the Shamrock or the Rising Sun and start smashing down schooners of new and dumping as many 20s in the pokies as I possibly could. I'd ****ing lose. Pokies are pretty much the biggest losing bet you could ever do. I didn't give a **** though as I was having mental hyper tilt release. These sessions combined substance abuse, video games, and gambling which pretty much sums up all my favorite things in life except for prostitutes.
$300 to $500 and a savage drink drive later and I was back at home slinging my **** at my flatmates and spreading misery likes Herpesjesus. I don't know why I'm so ****ing brutally honest with my closest friends that I treat them like **** when I'm in a bad mood instead of sucking it up and being polite for once. It's an issue that still continues to this day but you'd think the people that are my constant rock and support in this country should be given an award instead of getting chest-dumped like a pack of faceless used up hookers. I guess....my bad? I must possess some sort of redeeming quality that makes up for all the times I'm a moody little prick but sometimes ****s me how these people find it. Anyways I would typically keep getting ****ed up until late then try to guilt trip my girlfriend into having sex with me before spending the rest of the night taking mini naps between bouts of anxiety attacks.
Rinse. Repeat. That was my life. When I was poor and smashing through university I dreamt everyday of making medium bucks working a cruisy ass 9 to 5 job. I wanted to type up papers at a desk and file things. I wanted to wear button up shirts and slacks. Take calls. Business lunch. Turns out the male, middle-class, and white dream was ****ing stupid and painful. This was a huge disappointment in my life because, for as long as I could remember, being the standard white male was my only ambition. I wanted to contribute to society and vote republican after abandoning my wanton youth. I wanted to be a master of fantasy football. I wanted to come home really drunk one night and accidentally strike my partner in a fit of rage and then somehow she doesn't leave me and I only half apologize for the instance because deep down inside I really thought the bitch was being mouthy (intermission to lol @ females in abusive relationships .…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………….ok I'm good now) But after spending two years in the work force the only ambitions I really had left were to get ****faced, get laid, and drag my ass through the next day.
Enter poker. I had been playing poker most of my life. Every few months there used to be a cash game for change my dad would go to and I ended up playing a lot and never doing too bad. I love strategy card games. I love money. Poker is what happens when these two things copulate and anyone that is my friend knows I ****ing REALLY love copulating. Poker had been in and out of my life forever but it wasn't till I ran into 3van, the consummate freeroll king of the pub poker scene, that the concept of actually making a living out of poker occurred to me. I still remember the instance. I was ****faced at a RSL freeroll outside having a smoke when I struck up a conversation with him. Idle chat led on and he explained how he was currently making a living grinding out the live game at the local casino. Something clicked in me as soon as he told me. My eyes went doey and I wanted to face**** him or him to face**** me. Someone needed to get face****ed. It was the sweetest concept ever to me at the time. Living the high life as a rockstar playboy gambler. All the romantic songs about answering to no man and your fate relying on the flip of a card. I had to try really hard to hide my gambling inspired boner while keeping the conversation going with this man. I'm sure he noticed and it was probably the reason for all the still unresolved sexual tension that exists between us to this day.
So I started to play. A lot. As mentioned previously I had bulk cash plus a gambling addiction which allowed me to quickly build up a pain tolerance for losing, at least what seemed so at the time, large sums of money. However a bit of run good plus playing like a nit at one of the biggest action games in the world led me to making some decent amount of cash. This went on for the better part of the year where I was on 55k annually plus making 500 to 1k regularly on the weekends. Despite my massive spending habits my bankroll blossomed up to about 30k cash between when I left uni penniless in 2007 and late 2009. It came to a point during one of my countless miserable days that I realized I was pulling roughly the same amount of money on the weekends as I was slaving my dick off at work. I loved gambling. I hated work. I was about to **** off to the States for a few months and was in a **** fight about getting extended time off from my job since I had been skipping work religiously to burn through all my sick leave. Finally it all just came together. I put in my two weeks notice and as of November 5th 2009 I officially dropped out of the productive side of society and committed myself to a life of stealing and bankrupting other people. Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.
Okay so I'm two years deep and going strong. I got a lot of ****ed up and awesome stories but I want to discuss what the lifestyle itself is like more then what I've done with it. For starters that wonderment and childish glee that I experienced when 3van told me about playing professionally is not the norm. In fact most times when I tell people what I do the responses range from unsure to negative. Despite my personal opinion the greater public, especially women, do not find gambling sexy. To help iterate this point I'll give some real life examples from my last month of constant club trolling-
Me- "Sup hotty I'm a cashed up gambler desperate for any female attention want to bang?"
Her- "My last boyfriend ran up a $10,000 debt in my name because of his gambling problem and almost bankrupted me." Me- "Standard. Guess I'm masturbating tonight (again)."
Different women another night:
Me- "What do I do? I gamble for a living.” Her- "My Uncle was a gambling addict and end up committing suicide because of it."
Me- "Whoa sick coincidence bro my step mother's first husband totally killed himself after moving to Vegas to become a gambler. So you want to ****?"
Her- *leaves*
Further on the topic of poker and sex appeal I have also come to find that money by itself does not attract women. Women are impressed by the trappings of wealth; the nice watch, a sporty car, or a gold necklace. Walking around with 5k in your pocket and looking like **** doesn't even attract hookers. I don't own any nice things. In fact on a typical night at the casino the money I have in play will be worth more than my car, my wardrobe, and all my other possessions combined. Unfortunately, I was born lacking a sense of style and class but possessing a jewish dragon-like hoarding instinct for collecting hundred dollar bills.
Poker is also not an exciting game. Editing does some ****ing amazing public relations for the game on television with people always getting there stacks in and playing for millions but let me give you a rundown on how it really operates:
Look down at 8-3 offsuit . Fold.
Repeat for hours. **** it. Repeat it for days or even weeks. I have played 10 hour sessions without even winning a pot before. It's demoralizing. If the prospects of sitting on your ass and bleeding money for months on end waiting for that one spot to make a fortune doesn't tickle your fancy then do not ****ing bother taking up poker as a profession. One week when the home game scene was at full swing in Townsville I managed to log over 50 hours around the felt. If you look at the end result of the week I was up 3k at roughly 60 bucks an hour. What you would not see is almost all of that profit came from two huge pots I ended up playing and I was virtually card dead the rest of the time. Can you imagine masturbating for 50 hours straight only to pop off twice? Now imagine instead of masturbation being pleasurable it's actually painful and stressful and you have to do it in front of a bunch of random older men. THAT'S POKER FOLKS.
Another odd by product of this lifestyle is a skewed view on the value of money. I treasure cash and yet I find it really difficult to care about spending anymore as every ordinary transaction becomes insignificant compared the amounts I gamble with. What is a $50 dollar steak when I just shipped 2k sitting on my ass all night drinking black coffee and bragging about my small penis? Who cares about my $500 pair of glasses being broken when I regularly lose three or four times that amount. I spend like crazy these days and just don't give a **** until it gets into the four digit price tag. This thought process also makes it hard to justify getting a standard job and working for $20 an hour. However, I also have an issue where I almost NEVER let free money get by. If I'm driving down the road and I spot a 20 cent piece I will stop the car and pick it up. The other day I was hit with a moral dilemma in a nightclub when I found a five cent piece lounging sexily in a giant puddle of urine on the bathroom floor. I tanked for ages on whether to retrieve it. The stress and uncertainty was palpable on my face. A man walked in and saw some creep with painted nails standing motionless in the middle of a male toilet staring at the floor. He probably thought I would blow him if he played his cards right. He was probably right. What he did not see was the value. Pure, free ****ing value. I crave that **** more than nicotine and lesbian fisting. I ended up leaving the five cents. This was the second time I had been challenged by the loose change ensconced in human excrement scenario and both times I have failed. That is $1.05 free profit that I will never realize and I regret it to this day.
At the end of it all, poker has a crushing loneliness to it. The game is exceptionally self absorbed. Think of hungry hungry hippos. There are no teams or altruism in hungry hungry hippos. While it is quite reasonable to assume the hippos could all survive if they evenly shared their limited resources, the cruel rules of the microcosm these hippos exist in demands that you obtain as much as possible by any means necessary and if other hippos must starve to satisfy your insatiable greed then so be it. Remember, if you win at hungry hungry hippos then you are a murderer.... and a rapist. It is not lost on me that to obtain money I have to steal it from someone else. I've sent people home broke and crying (not as often as other people have done that to me though). I put big fish up to their eyes in debt to me to keep them in games I know they can't beat. Word to the wise, if everyone wants you to show up at their poker game they are not doing it for your pleasurable company. While many recreational players enjoy the atmosphere of a vivacious game, the professional ringers are bottom feeders looking to bust you at any opportunity. They say there are no real friends around a poker table so when you begin to immerse yourself in the game and your social life revolves around the felt where does that really leave you? I'd consider most of the regulars I play with here great friends, but at the same time not a single one of them would have any qualms about taking every last dollar I had and leaving me broke and homeless....and **** them I'd do it to them if I could as well. It is good times and laughter with knives to each other’s necks. So when you go home after the most mind****ed unreal session of getting your dick kicked in who do you turn to? You can commiserate with some of your fellow players but they are likely the ones that ****ed you in the first place. No one outside of the poker world gives a **** because all they see is some stupid mother****er with a gambling problem. In fact, across the board NOONE GIVES A **** ABOUT YOUR BAD BEAT STORY. When all hell breaks loose on my bankroll I'm stuck alone wallowing in my own self inflicted **** in a secluded parking lot kicking the **** out of my car. If poker has taught me anything, it has drilled the point into my skull that life is really ****ing unfair and very few people actually give a **** about you.
Despite it all....I keep on doing it. I'm a sadist at heart. Sometimes I think most of the problems I have with poker would go away if I was actually any good at this game instead of just bumhunting weaker players. I'm the **** up out of Townsville in about a week with my bankroll shelfed up my ass to tackle some bigger live games in the states. Going to attempt some sick shot taking and I harbor no illusions about the possibility of coming home completely penniless and disparaged. Hopefully if the worst happens all the free drink and cigarette karma I've been spreading around this area will come back to me in the form of bread loaves and instant coffee.
Anyways, that's a part of my story. Peace mother****ers.
