This is an unrelated story, but in one of the casinos I play at, Phil Ivey had forgotten he had just under six figures in one of the boxes there and he hadn't been there for years.

Must be nice...

The craziest thing was actually almost getting into a fist fight trying to stop him as he went back and forth to the cashier's cage.

And when he put that last big bet on the table and the dealer turned over an ace, my friend literally turned gray.

wow. so many people have said this, and the posts right before it were people asking "please look through this thread, find that crane story and repost it". cmon guys, he was trying to help.

I was railing HUSNG Hyper on PokerStars when...

Love it. So familiar

I had a rough last night. Betting on Champions League matches. Obviously losing, so I went to the roulette tilting off my last few dimes (1200 eur) martingaling it up. 20 - 40 - 80 - 160 - 320 - remains. Obviously coudnt win, stupid rigged game. First 5 bets were on red. For the last one I switched to black, red hits. **** YOU I screamed out loud, it was 4am, I had to go to work at 7am. I was sitting on the bench, my roomate came in. Apparantly I woke him up. He just looked at me, while I sat there shaking my head. I think I even had a little tear in my eye. He just looked at me and said, "again?" Yep I replied, and he said let's go smoke this joint and go to bed. I didn't sleep, I'm sitting here ****ed up at work. I should quit, but I'm already thinking about my next deposit.. sigh degens gonna degen..

there is a story in the paper today about a guy who lost 1 million euro on online roulette at bet-at-home in a few months. it turned out he secretly used the money of a company account from where he worked.

he sued bet-at-home and they have to return the money, because they don't have a lottery license in my country. they probably have a lot of lawsuits coming now...

it also says in the article that his boss didn't fire him, but instead agreed with him to work off his debt - pretty funny.

after reading this thread it's so easy to imagine him always taking out just a bit more to get even, by martingaling it up...

Just turned 18 and my bankroll is $1400. Lets hope I don't ever have to post here...

Summer 2009

Summer 2009 was the summer before my senior year of college, and I'm as broke as you can get. I had accumulated $8,000+ of credit card debt through college, and always told myself I would pay off the upcoming summer. Never happened. I probably had $200 to my name. I tried to conserve that for upcoming minimum credit card payments so I wouldn't get hassled by the credit card companies.

So being dirt poor and having a desire for poker, I would grind 2NL for hours convinced I will move up stakes up and do one of those amazing $1 to $10,000 feats. (Spoiler: it never happened). Instead I probably wasted hours of my life I will never get back to win some bags of ramen noodles.

I start off getting a job at a place called TRG, a company that Verizon outsources door-to-door Fios sales for. I get $300 for training, and the rest is 100% commission. I work for 4 days and after making one sale I never show up again. I made $1000 the rest of the summer doing some contractor work (which really went towards my absurd minimum CC payments).

I had another friend in the same boat as me (also worked at this TRG place), except he didn't play poker. Instead he had just turned 21, and since we lived only 30 minutes away from AC, he wanted to go as often as possible. He was a roulette junkie who was convinced he could never lose. (spoiler: he almost always lost). We would make these trips with $50 to our names convinced we could make stacks and come home with money that would last entire the summer. (spoiler: we always lost everything).

One random Tuesday night we went to AC, and I had another friend stake me in the daily midnight turbo tournament at Harrahs that I happened to place and give me some extra cash (yes, this is the start I need to build an empire!).

My other friend who is also a roulette degen lost all the money he brought with him. But he was getting a paycheck from Fios door to door sales on an upcoming Friday. Since my friend had just signed up for every possible casino card, he was getting free room offers. So he booked a room for a Wednesday night at the Hilton, where he was going to play free bingo with the old folk and was convinced he would walk away with some cash. Our other friend and I had plans to play at the 8 pm tournament at Harrahs so leave him on his own (big mistake leaving a degen on his own).

I get knocked out of the tournament after 2 hours on some coinflip and am livid I just spent $120 for this tournament that I didn't cash. I go straight to the ATM and take out cash for the midnight tournament. It gets to midnight, and I still haven't seen or heard from my friend who we left at the Hilton. I text him asking him where hes at/what hes doing. I get a response 20 minutes later "i'm ****ed". At this point, I'm sure he gambled away every cent to his name. I proceed to play in the tournament I registered for. I text back what happened, and he never responds back.

An hour later he shows, and I ask him what happens. He tells me he lost the $200 playing the inside numbers on roulette, and went to the ATM and took out the rest of the money to his name and lost that as well. I ask him how he got to Harrahs (it isn't walking distance from the Hilton). Since he has no money, he tells me he was so desperate he got into the fountain at the Hilton picking up loose change from the bottom so he could take the Jitney. I eventually get knocked out on the bubble, and lose even more money I can't afford to lose. I wake up an realize I overdrafted my checking account. -****!

We leave AC sick to our stomachs and get back and declare we are never ever going back to AC again (that was an obvious lie). We both literally have no money. We can't buy food, we can't buy sticks of deodorant. To eat we go to the local bars and participate in trivia (where we cheat terribly), to win the gift cards so we can eat. We still try to make the most of summer by going out at night, even pulling quarters from couches to pay for the bar covers. We smartly became friends with a waitress at one bar would steal other tables' drinks for us.

I still have $50 on my pokerstars account so I continue to try to play 2 NL, except eventually my internet is cut out because I can't pay the bill. So desperate to play, I drive from my apartment to outside one of my friends apartments at 2 am. I have his wifi info saved, so I sit with my laptop in my car and play until my battery dies on me. This is how addicted I was.

My Paypal account was then hacked by some chinese kid, who then took $200 out of my checking account, and overdrafted my checking account even more. A few days later I get a phone call from my father who tells me the bank keeps calling me to inform me my account been overdrafted. I just tell him about the paypal incident and then he puts a deposit in my account to cover the overdrafts and some extra.

Awesome story, loved the spoilers.

Solid degen story, would internet fist bump again

Get a grip.

I did that once.

Joint in a fountain for change in AC is a classic Degen story. I truly think that being a Degen gives you life skills so you will always find an out.

Worst story I have was being up $3k in blackjack in one night and ending the night down $1500. Next day back playing took $1200 and ran that up to around $3200. Went to the bar there got drunk, decided to bet black on roulette for hundreds at a time and lost it all back.

pokerizmylife: Sick story! Well worth the read. Lol fountain change.. that's a first. I graduated in 2009 so you and I have quite similar lives. I was also a mad degen around my last years of university and ****ed my credit up badly. But like this guy said:

Couldn't agree more. We know how to get out of jams like none other. When a degen needs money to lay on a football game that he thinks is a lock, he is going to get that money somehow as if it was more important than saving his mother's life.

Because there is no worst feeling in the world than being dead right about West Virginia and having no action on the game. That feeling is worst than any of the sickening feelings of losing it all in any of the posts in here.

this story is 100% true idc if u believe it or not.


Two summers ago I turned 18 and decided to open an account on stars. I had around 10k to my name at the time. I deposited $100 and started the grind. From the moment I played my first hand I was gifted with success. All I did was win. I soon completely forgot about everything else I did in life. I left my gf, didn't even call her up just texted her - I'm done sorry. I lost contact with everyone. Just sat in my room at my parents house all day grinding.

Within a month my $100 turned into ~$3500. I was ****ing great. I thought that by time I had my next birthday I'd be grinding 50/100 and a year or two after that durrrr would be stuck getting a job at mcdonalds because I will have busted his roll by then (no I'm not isildur).

About two years ago I was forced to attend uni. My parents wanted me to get a good education blah blah blah. So off I went. I took the minimum number of classes and barely ever showed up. My roommate was a great student, very nice fellow. But man he just would never leave that ****ing room unless he was in class. Eventually I stuck a hundred dollar bill in his face, pushed him out the door knowing he didn't have his key and locked the door. I remember that night very well as my roll hit 10K.

Eventually there was a big knock on the door from the university's police, telling me I was in a lot of trouble and needed to open the door. I could hear people on my hall opening up their doors and seeing whatsup. I've always trusted my instinct. And that night was no exception. I put on my shoes, took my laptop, and jumped out the window. I was on the second floor. And there was a few bushes on the ground outside my window, so I thought this was my best option. As I hit the ground I heard a big crack in my right leg and moments later I was in shocking pain.

I grabbed my computer and limped around to the parking lot where I found my car...@#$%^&* I don't have my keys. Luckily, in my days before poker I was obsessed with cars. I got my license on my 16th birthday and from that day I knew everything there was to know about a 1968 toyota corolla...like how to hot wire it

So I took a big rock and bashed open the back window of my car, climbed in and started the engine. Through my mirror I could see lights coming towards me. It was the police! @#$%^&* Still trusting my instinct I stepped on the gas and away I went. Soon I noticed I was being followed. It wasn't a police car but it wasn't an old lady behind the wheel either. After a mile of driving around my uni I was sure this car was following me, so I made some quick turns and through my skillful driving I lost the tale. Yes! So I park my car outside a cafe just outside my university. I had already thrown out my license plate after losing the tale, and I was pretty sure I was safe.

So I took my laptop inside the cafe with free wifi and went back to the grind. Or at least I was about to until my phone rang...it was my father, he had gotten word of what happened. I expected to hear something like "get back home at once" or "turn yourself in" but instead he told me that I needed to stay dark. That I was completely ****ed if the cops ever find me. And that I couldn't go back home.

I was very happy to hear this as I hung up with my dad knowing that I could buy myself a place in no time and can finally get back to 18 tabling 400NL. At this point it was 6:30AM and this cafe was open until 10:00 which left me a whole day to grind...But I hadn't slept in nearly 24 hours and as much as I hate to admit it I am the type of person who needs sleep. But I didn't care. As tired as I was I had to keep grinding. Durrrr didn't become a millionaire by sleeping. Up to this point I was a 15bb winner. But I wasn't playing my A game anymore. I started losing focus, clicking buttons mindlessly, and what followed was the worst losing session I had ever had.

7 buyins. Gone. $2800 down the drain. I had run so good that summer and through the start of uni, I had never dropped more than 6 buy ins at any stake and more than 4 buyins at 100nl+.

I was furios. My roll was now just over 7k. How could I be this unlucky? I thought I had been coolered about 2 dozen times but looking back it was just fatigue. I ordered a large coffee (I've almost never had coffee up until then) and downed it within two minutes. A middle aged woman walks by asking me if I'm Okay. Apparently my face was completely red. And it was clear that I was sweating heavily. I don't exactly remember how I responded but it was something like 'I dropped 3k STFU GTFO'

Then it hit me. I almost never lose. Whats the chance of me losing another 3 buy ins after already running so bad. Surely I was due to run good.

I open up 3 10/20 tables. I was used to 18 tabling, so I figured my edge would dramatically increase playing only 3 tables. And it did. In 30 minutes I won 4 buy ins. $8000 in my pocket. A 15K roll. **** UNI! **** everyone! I was born to play this game. And I will become richer than every bastard at my college within the next few months...or few hours?

Why the @#$%^&* was I wasting my time grinding 2/4 like a ****ing nit. I had a 25 buyin roll for 6 max WTF why am I such a nit. Then it hit me even further. Whats the chance of me losing 25 buyins? Zero. Absolute zero. Whats the chance of me losing 15, 10, **** it how bout 3. I had 15K in my account. No where to sleep but who the **** cares. I opened 3 25/50 tables. I thought in an hour I could go to sleep because I'd most likely have 40K+ to my name and can book a room at a 5 star.

I played 5knl for 20 minutes. I 5bet jammed 86s in MP vs utg. I was so sure he wouldn't 4b AA or KK and would 4b/fold his entire range. The donkey looked me up with JJ WTF?!?!!? I squeezed QQ in SB vs CO open and stacked off against AK board came out Q85TJ @#$%^&*. One buy in left, but I am no quitter. Quitting for the purpose of saving money is being a nit. I get dealt AK utg, open for 3bb. BTN and BB call. flop comes 554ss. BB donks, I raise he ships. I was certain he had the NFD. And I was a decent favorite. So I called. I actually don't even remember the exact hand. All I remember is by the turn I was drawing dead. I opened up the cashier to check my balance which read $42.44. I was so @#$%^&* upset. I just started crying. And I pulled down my pants and ripped off my shirt with my mouth. Jammed my fist against my dick and tore my boxers off. I was completely naked in this coffee shop and was screaming as loud as I possibly could. I proceeded to drop my self on the floor and roll around banging my fists against the floor still naked. Everyone was staring in amusement. Or so I assume.

Today is the two year anniversary of that catastrophe. And I am sitting here at midnight staring at the wall sitting on my bed inside the mental hospital which has been my home for the past two years.

I hope someone takes something from this, and at least one person can learn from my mistakes.

TH

Why were you in so much trouble with the police?

to this day I don't know. I think I wasn't really in that much trouble, and that my roommate had probably called them up asking for help (he was the type of nit who would do such a thing). But it could have been other things as well. I know there was a roomer that I was a drug abuser, which wasn't true, but I could see how it developed as I was a completely in-the-dark person.

Either way, whatever it was wasn't important compared to what I had done after they knocked on my door.

But why couldn't you just play with your roommate in the room? Why did you have to kick him out?

and how are you on the internet in a mental hospital

WOW what. Did you throw him out the window?

He's the type of guy who always asks questions and talks three times as slow as ur avg joe.

Good question I'm not allowed to be on the internet but am allowed to be on my computer. About a year and a half ago when I went on a rare outing with my parents and some security dude I asked my dad to buy me a verizon card and haven't been caught yet in ~550 days

yo ill stake u bro what sites can u play on

So me and my friend were living it up taking limos, staying at the casinos every night, even though we had a shore house on the beach about 15 minutes away from AC, just so we can smoke budd and play poker any time of the day that we would like. Also it was great getting room service, massages, fruit smoothies, and banging food at any point in the day that we wanted. Everyone in the casino knew us like the dealers, floor managers, the regulars, and it was great almost like a big family having fun all the time. We had tons of pain killers and a **** ton of buds, so if we ever got low thats the only time we would leave to re up.

So me and my friend are both on a tear playing poker, making over 7g's for myself and over 10g's for my friend over our 3 week stay with out leaving the casino (the tropicana). So we finally get low on our stash and we decide to get our limo driver from philly to come down to AC and pick us up and drive us back to philly to meet up with some people and then drive us back. We call him up and he says he will be there in about 3 hrs, so we order some room service and then pack our bags and leave the room cause it was just about check out. We take our bags to the front desk and tell them we will be back in a few hrs to get em. Then we proceed to go to the poker room to play a nice session before leaving. We both sit down at 2-5 and I quickly loose a full buy in ($500) and insta reload for another. About an hour later I am down 2000$ and i am ****ing pissed so I go to the other 2-5 table and ask my friend how he is doing and he is up $1000 and i tell him i am gonna go take a walk, and to call me if he stops playing or the limo arrives.

This is where the true degen comes out in me. Knowing we were leaving soon and i just lost $2000 I wanted to win it back real quick so I go over to the roulette tables. I start throwing down 100$ on black and red and proceed to loose 2500$ in about an hour and i am super steamed up, thinking to myself wtf am i doing im loosing all my hard work over the past 3 weeks in the span of a few hours. I now have 2500$ left and I am just standing there thinking what to do next. So a kid i met from poker earlier that day stands next to me and starts talking to me. I look him and say watch it's gonna hit green 0 and it does. I am like wow I knew it, and he says you should have bet it, ur a poker player you always gotta go with ur gutt. But i never bet anything on roulette besides red or black so i look at the dealer and ask what would i have earned if i would have bet 100$ on green 0 and she says 3500$. All i can think of after that is damn why didn't i go with my gutt like that kid said. So i proceed to get get a fruit smoothie and just cool off, on my way back passing the roulette tables where they have 4 of em, i see 3 of em just hit 0 and the one i always play is the only one that didn't, so i try telling myself this is a sign my table is gonna hit 0 ASAP. So i quickly run over and slam a $100 on 0 and the dealer spins and of course it didnt hit. I decide **** it I'm gonna keep playing until it hits and if it hits before i go broke i will have more money then i started with. So i put another 100$ on about 5 more times with out hitting and my friend walks over and is like damn dude ur playing roulette ive been calling and txt u like crazy but u never answered so i decided to come find u. I was super pissed and embarrassed and asked him if the limo was here, which he replied no he will be in 30 minutes. He could see it in my face that i lost a ton of money and tried to get me to come with him to get some food but i kinda snapped on him and told him to leave me alone and just call me when the limo arrived. He is a nice kid so he just said ok and good luck and walked away. At this point i was down to like 1900$ and when he walked away i slammed another 100$ down and of course didn't hit. At this point the dealer tells me i should take a break cause she has seen this so many times and the player never ends up hitting. I proceed to tell herto mind her own business and just start spinning the wheel faster cause i had to leave soon. So thats what she did. I kept playing till i got down to 400$ and i think to myself dammit what am i doing, this is nuts. I think real quick and say to myself if i put 200$ down and hit i will have my original 7000$ back and that would be great and i would have 2 last shots at doing or i am bust. I then start thinking damn am i really gonna go home dead broke, and i say **** this casino i am done with this **** and keep my last 400$. I walk about 50 feet away and sit down at a slot machine just so i can put my head in my hands and think to myself wow i just ****ed up huge. I then call my friend and ask him to meet up, and he says ok just wait there i will come to u cause it was closer to the front desk so we can go grab our stuff. So i hang up and proceed to look back at the roulette table and i notice the last 2 numbers that hit right after i left was 0 and then another 0, and on top of it i see the dealer talking to the pit boss laughing and pointing over towards me. At this point i am irate and scream **** at the top of my lungs and walk over to the table and look the dealer right in the eyes and say thats real funny, i loose all my money and when i leave my number finally hits, right? She just replies saying sorry and wishes me better luck next time. I say well next time is right now. I tell myself there is no way 0 is gonna hit again and i dont wanna try and hit some other number so i slam all 400$ on black with the intentions to double down if i hit and then double down if i hit again, and so on till i reached 7000$+ and first spin the ball lands on red and i say **** it knowing my luck was no good that day and didn't really care about that 400$ after loosing everything else already.

I finally meet up with my friend and tell him i lost everything and how i feel like **** and am super pissed. Luckily i have the best friend in the world who is well off and would do anything for me. He ended up winning 2000$ at 2-5 earlier taking his bank roll up to 12g's for the trip. We then go get our bags and go get in the limo. Right after we leave the casino he pulls out his cash and breaks the 12 g's in half and says here take 6000$, were both winners this trip!! Then said let's go re up back at home and get our asses back down to the trop se we can keep ballin out and living the life. I was so happy and couldn't believe i had such a good friend who would do something like that for me. After that trip ive never played anything at a casino besides poker again.

Solid degen story, glad your friend bailed you out.

Yeah, Roulette is the devils game. Whenever someone is betting a number super hard and losing their ass, the second they leave the table that motherf****in number will hit every single freaking time.

Nature of the beast, and it always hits so that when you look back at the board you can see that number glowing right at the top of the board, waving FU as you leave the casino...

I have banned myself from roulette for life, I will never play that motherfather game again...

It is the most evil degen game there is....

That second last paragraph gave me chills. 5* story.

You seem like an intelligent person. How much longer till they release you from the mental institution?

P.S.: Your father is a moron for advising you to run from the cops.

hilarious xd

I remember I was down to my last twenty bucks and was hammered drunk. I had two friends with me who can swear this story is true too. Harrahs AC about 4:30 AM.

Pulled out the 20 and said "f*** it" walked up to roulette and told the dealer put ten each on 4 and 15 (my bday) and slapped the 20 down. Now he asks me for my ID and I'm reaching in every pocket looking for it but to no avail. He spins the ball while I'm furiously searching my pockets and don't find the ID. I say to my friend "I swear to God if this lands in 4 or 15" clink clink clink "black 15"

I saw red and sort of blacked out and my friends said I walked straight away from the table repeatedly saying "I'm gonna go and rip that fu***ng wheel off the table and hit the dealer with it" and they had to restrain me from going back several times.

Found my ID at lost and found the next day but if I could've hit that number I would've had most of my rent money for the month. So beat.