run a $23 transfer from my friend into $200, instead of cashing it out i play pl50 and donk it all away in less then two hours

this isn't even close to worthy of being in this thread

I put 100% of my net worth on a single, small-cap, growth oriented, foreign company, and it dropped 90% in value, making me lose 220k, wich at the time was 90% of what i had so i think i win the degen contest!

diversification guys, number 1 lesson!

GTFO

I don’t usually post in online forums, but I’ve been a bit of a lurker on 2+2 and thought I’d join and post my degen story. Bear with me since I have a propensity to ramble after a few.

I’ve had the gambling bug since I was a young kid, started playing the fruit machines (“slots” for our friends from across the “pond”) when I was a teenager and got myself into a mountain of debt, somehow paid it off and moved to the US when I was 18.

Everything was OK for a couple of years, I played the online casinos now and then but nothing too crazy. Then I started going to the pool halls and having friendly games of 9-ball for $20 or so with the regulars. I was never much good at pool, but in those days I seriously overestimated my ability. Back then I had trouble running 2-3 balls, but kept raising the stakes nonetheless. Within about a month I was playing $100 - $500 sets at the match tables at the front of the club and started to attract a small audience (not to mention a queue of people all too willing to relieve me of some of my cash).

I was making good money at work at the time (~80k/year) but the stakes started getting stupid as I kept chasing my losses and within about 2 months I was playing sets to 9 for ~$1-$3k or and I was broke. I borrowed some money from friends and lost that. I went to Montreal with some buddies for the weekend and lost $4k playing blackjack. I needed some cash fast.

One rainy night I was driving round while off my face with a buddy and took a turn too quick, the back wheels gave out (4 bald tires, never bothered getting them replaced), and I buried two parked cars. Couldn’t hang around due to the little “breathalyzer” problem so we sped off, and at about 5am that morning we went out and parked the car next to a fire hydrant, poured 5 bottles of lighter fluid in it and threw in a match. Next day my buddies smuggled me back home and I went down to the local police station to report it stolen. I thought it was only worth about $5k but a month later I had a cheque for $9,985 from the insurance company. Pretty lucky since I believe they investigate all claims over $10,000 much more diligently than those under. Lost the $10k in about 3 days playing pool.

So anyway, broke and pretty desperate at this point, I found a scheme to siphon some money from my employer’s account into my own. White shoe law firm, they wouldn’t notice a measly $5k right? I came into work one night at 3am smashed off my face and simply printed a cheque out in my own name on their cheque printer for ~$4,900 ($5k+ requires two signatures, anything less goes with the printed signature) and without thinking too much deposited it at the ATM. And that’s how it began.

Over the next six months, $5k turned into $10k, $20k, $30k and so on. I was the new whale at the pool halls round town. People from out of state heard about me. I was playing anywhere from $1k - $10k a set, every night, staying up all night every night, turning up to work ****-ass drunk but early enough to print my cheques, locking my office and sleeping on the floor all day before going out at 5pm and doing it all over again. That was a crazy six months, I don’t remember much of it as I was permanently smashed off my tits, going home every couple of days to shower but otherwise sleeping at work all day and boozing and gambling pretty much 5pm – 5am. I didn’t care about anything, I would even park my car right outside my office building in the middle of downtown and throw the two or three daily $30 parking tickets in the glove compartment. I never did pay any of those tickets.

Then the inevitable happened. I’m sitting in my office idly browsing the web and my boss calls me: “do you mind coming down to conference room 4b for a second?” So I trundle down there, and there they are – my boss, the CFO, and 3 plain clothes detectives. They questioned me for a while, I admitted everything, they handcuffed me and led me down to the cruiser and drove me to the holding cells. I was 21 and my world was over.

Bail was set at $50k. I didn’t have a cent to my name, my family didn’t bail me out so I rotted in a county jail for 8 months waiting to plead out my case. First couple of months was probably the worst, coming down off all the booze, no smoking, no commissary, hungry every night. After that it got a bit easier, but being locked in a 9*12 cell with 2 other people and no books for 22 hours is no fun when you’re a). hyperactive and b). verging on suicidally depressive.

Only when the indictment papers came through did I find out the final tally - $257k over the course of just under 6 months. I pled out for 20 months to forgery, larceny and uttering and got paroled after I had served 10. Another 3 months in INS custody and I was deported back to the UK, where I have been since then.

I’m still degen-ing it up these days, mostly on poker (I don’t play casino games any more, and pool rarely), but at least I can afford it now as I’m making pretty good money (~£10-11k/month). Those of you who are regulars at some of the live poker joints around London have probably met me before, smashed off my tits and playing like a crazy fish on the 1/2 NL Hold’em tables.

I’ve had quite a few pretty degen episodes since I got out, but nothing compares to that 6 months. August 2009 was my 6 year anniversary of getting out and all I can say is that I look back at it now as if it were all a dream.

So that’s my gambling degen story (well, the main one). Writing this was cathartic for me, hope it was entertaining for the readers.

Hi my (not poker related) degen story...
I work for a bookie and sell bets on horses and sometimes gamble a bit with tipmoney.
Every year there is a big race in france where some of the best horses meet.
Last year I saved some money and studied the forms a lot and had a tight plan on what bets I was going to place.
My first horse was going to run in the first race of the meeting, the odds were super nice and the horse unbeatable in my eyes (Overdose).
But then there was a false start, because they had probs with the boxes and the race was said to be repeated at the end of the meeting with my horse scratched. That was where my tilting started, even harder because my next horse failed (100€ gone).
Now my well calculated plan was forgotten and I started to bet against my own favourites, mistake BIG TIME!
The day ended with - 5k €,
If I would have kept my route, it would have been 1k € plus.

everyone read firefox than we can /thread

thats a pretty sick sory, but how do u make £10-11k a month now when your a convicted criminal?

^ I'm convicted in the US, not the UK. I would have finished serving my probation next February had I not been deported. Best thing that ever happened to me.

A+

btw what in gods name do you do for work?

Surely it was impossible to get a highly paid job with your record?

^ See reply above. I'm a software developer, and luckily for me, a pretty good one. I read this whole thread, and all I could think was, "if I didn't have that one talent, I'd be posting that."

so howd u earn £10k a month? by your reluctance to say, probably something illegal.

^ I assure you, I don't even cross the road on a red light these days. Despite the fact that I'm a complete gambling degen, I have a modicum of intelligence, and employers don't mind paying for that sort of thing (even if you take the odd sick day because you're still at the casino at 9am in the morning).

lol at anyone who commits large scale fraud, gets caught super easily and then thinks they are intelligent.

This reminds me of that movie "Owning Mahoney" with Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Great gambling degen movie for those who haven't seen it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0285861/

That's a bit of a silly comment really. This is the degen thread, no? I was treating it as my personal ATM, I knew I'd get caught. A bit like when you max out your debit card although you know there's nothing on it. Just on a larger scale.

Anyway, I was replying to the question about what I do for a living. I certainly wasn't bragging.

Looks like a good movie, gonna download it right away.

yeah hence being dumb.

^ I bow to your superior intellect, sir.

firefox: did you, or are you planning to, repay your "personal atm"? as far as im concerned, if not, youre not dgen, youre just a criminal, and will be for the rest of your life.

not degen, moronic.

He went to Jail for it...

i will trade 10mo for 250k or whatever it was, RIGHT NOW. us judicial system is a joke, unless it comes to illicit drugs, in which case...well...i guess its still a joke (in the opposite direction, of course).

every post you make is legendary