I agree.. This is an epic thread and the stories people tell on here all hit home for me.

5 stars imo

go to bar
get speech from guy who just learned the rules about how internet poker is nothing compared to bar poker. And how i need to learn about live poker.
Shrug it off, whatever, iv played more live poker than any of them combined. Just cause im primarily online doesn't mean i don't play live...

get told to double peoples money constantly.
Get told about bad beats, and how onlines rigged.
parents ask me how much im up, then ask for me to go buy them something. When im down apparently i need to quit.

Random fish who plays $5 mtts and keeps upto date on pokernews always acts like he knows more than me when he only plays freaken AA.

Working a 9-5 poker dealer job after 2+ yrs playing full time. Zomg I have become the receptacle for bad beat stories, line checks, and approval. But mostly bad beat stories. #makeitstop

colleague of mine actually gave me an envelope with 2k sayin' "I have full confidence in you"

Op speaks the truth, I was at a home game at his place back in 2005 and I had to ask other people why he had two large monitors. They answered its for poker

Or they think "degerate gambler" because:

They have seen drunks and degens at the casino.

They hear about players who don't really have the money to play (they win a million dollars and get less than half of it because of "selling pieces.") Or even worse, they hear about a "pro" on Twitter begging for money so that he can play a tournament.

They see obnoxious (at least to them) players like Dwight Pilgrim, Phil Hellmuth, and Tony G on TV.

They hear about poker players golfing for 10K per hole. Or they hear about Phil Ivey or someone else blowing off thousands of dollars at the table games.

They hear a carefully framed response about dating being a "volume game" for Tony Dunst. (Recent WPT episode.)

Degenerate gamblers? Nah!

We know and love these guys, and to many of us, their foibles are part of their charm. But there are a lot of people out there who don't drink alcohol, don't smoke, don't swear, go to church every Sunday, wait for sex until marriage, and don't gamble--not even lottery tickets. I know because except for poker, that's me.

Many of my friends have that same lifestyle and mindset. They generally have no problem with my playing, mostly because they already know that I'm not a degen, and that to me it's a job to make money for my family. Also, as soon as I say "risk of ruin" or "expected value" I have the attention of my nerdy friends--there are a lot of engineers in my church.

I know what most of my friends and relatives would think if they turned on the TV, and saw Tony G., looking across the table at a nervous amateur playing for more money than he has seen in his life, sitting there with pictures of his family at the table. Then Tony starts screaming at the guy, "I'LL TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY, AND YOUR CHILDREN WILL STARVE!"

Mostly, my friends would be horrified.

There are a lot of minds out there that you will never change. If you try to explain it and you aren't getting anywhere, accept it and move on. Nothing I say to my brother-in-law will ever change his mind. He doesn't have a computer in his house because his wife was a compulsive online casino gambler, and it almost wrecked thier marriage.

It's an interesting dynamic being a Christian poker player, I'll tell you. I generally don't tell people what I do, except for the people I care about and that I spend a lot of time around. The youth minister at my church knows what I do for a living, and he is pretty supportive of it. He may have some negative feelings about it, but he's never expressed them to me. There are plenty of other people at my church, however, that I wouldn't even consider telling what I do, because I know it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to get them understand it. To people I chat with on the fly, I tell them "I do online work." I would guess they assume I'm like some kind of telemarketer or web page developer. There are actually a couple of people who ask me pretty regularly about what I do, and I've actually resorted to saying stuff like "I don't like to talk about my work.", or "I'm in investing." Because of this, they jokingly ask me how my work for the mafia is going, if I've had to kill anybody lately, etc...

You've gotta be choosy with who you talk about poker with. I have a lot of reasonable, intelligent, open-minded friends that understand very well how I play poker for a living. There are plenty of others, however, that will never understand, and unfortunately, there are even more out there who will be actively against it (think: Rick Santorum).

Interesting post, thank you. I know I'm not the only Christian in this situation. I wonder sometimes about other faiths or belief systerms--how many closet poker players are Othodox Jews, or Mormons, or whatever? Or how many players keep quiet because, like me, that have a compulsive gambler in the family?

I have also been selective who I tell, but I think I'm about to "out" myself. Members of my church who are Facebook friends with my wife have been asking to go on my friends list, and I think I'm going to do it. I have my occupation on my Facebook page, and I'm getting tired of avoiding the issue when someone asks what I do for work.

That's a very personal decison, and if you decide to keep it quiet, you have to do what works for you. Of course there are some who can't under any circumstances tell others what they do (if their job involves classified information or operations, for example), so I guess the problem isn't that unusual.

Although a few in my church (about 10, including the senior pastor) know and understand, doubtless some will be upset, so I'll just have to take my chances.

I love this thread.

I just got my application turned down after 6 months of going through the process of becoming a Royal Canadian Mounted Police member. Been crushing the process so far and hit a snag in the process by disclosing that I played poker on the weekends for extra income.

I was told that the only way I wouldn't get through the polygraph portion of the recruitment process was if I didn't disclose everything that I was asked and the polygraph picked up that I wasn't being completely truthful. Apparently should have "gambled" on the lie detector not being able to pick up on me leaving information out of the gambling section of the question booklet.

You'd lose them either way

Yeah, I wouldn't consider myself a "closet poker pro" by any means. I just don't go out of my way to tell people who I barely know, and I don't usually bring it up in casual, shoot the breeze conversations. To anybody who I consider a good friend, however, I tell them no problem. Like I've said, to a reasonable, intelligent person, it usually only takes me a few minutes to explain how I make a living at cards, and generally, most are receptive.

I'm very comfortable being a poker player and a Christian. I strongly believe that being a poker pro is not immoral or wrong, and I stand by what I do. There are a number of professions where you'll get people who question what you do, question your integrity, etc... you just gotta be able to brush it off.

Link to video?

can I borrow your mom's psychic powers and go back to April 12ish?

Basically this.

At the end of the day people are right to be sceptical about people who claim to be a professional poker player (its really especially understandable if its a potential mate)

Furthermore the number of people who claim that Blackjack can be beaten does muddy the waters a fair bit and there's really no reason that anyone should believe someone who claims to be a poker pro over someone who claims they can beat any form of gambling (if they have no interest in gambling and thus can't help their ignorance).

I guess what I try and say (to prove poker is a game of skill) is just to assure people that professional poker players DO exist - and therefore there must be a reliability factor in the game which allows them to make money. Having said that I don't claim to be any sort of pro (i'm just a breakeven fish and only play casually) and only really have to defend a casual hobby.

Nevertheless, its quite strange how irrational people get when it comes to gambling. I know several (genuinely intelligent) people with decent degrees (even in respected and mathematically based subjects like economics) who (for instance) CANNOT drop any kind of draw no matter whether or not the odds aren't in their favour.

Its pretty curious because it is such a basic principle to grasp, yet they'll still shrug and say " it paid off!" when they hit their gutshot and people criticise them or w/e.

I think the combination of ignorance, lack of interest, the irrationality that is triggered in most people by any form of gambling and comparative obscurity of poker means that scepticism on just HOW profitable poker can be is completely reasonable.

Add to that the fact that until friends and family members start noticing your living a wealthier lifestyle and success in poker is the only explanation they have no reason to believe that you aren't in the 90% of players who lose. (Even if you do make a modest, but still significant $5-10k a year from your hobby, its a great achievement but that kind of money probably isn't enough to give your average joe a chance to flaunt their success to much of an extent.)

The poster I've quoted summed it up best when he said that "don't gamble" is good advice as a general rule.

I used to be a SSNL grinder but now I'm just a recreational player who plays mid stakes NL at one of the smaller poker sites. I don't tell my friends, co-workers, and especially my family that I play poker online. The reason for this is because I had a problem with gambling addiction when I was a college student just betting stupid and losing a lot money in college football. So if my family finds out about it they would freak out and naturally I can't tell everyone else because words might leak in the air since I kind of live in a small community of family and friends.

I'm single and have no girlfriend. I met this young girl in one of the hostess bars in town. We started out just chatting on phones and became good friends and later came to an arrangement that I would pay her certain amount of money to have sex with me. We did this for like 6 months just once or twice a month. At one point, she told me that she liked me enough that I don't actually have to pay her for her services after all she was not a prostitute. I told her that I want to pay her because I care for her and she needs money for rent, food, clothing, and etc. But that was a lie, the truth is I wanted to keep this relationship strictly business because she was not the type of person you want to have a real relationship with.

So one night as usual I called her and she was coming over so I unlocked the door to my apartment and played some poker online while I waited for her. She came in and sat on the bed next to my desk and asked me what I was doing. I told her I play poker online for fun and that I'm actually playing real money. She showed great interest in the topic and proceeded to tell me that she loves all kinds of gambling from slot machine to race tracks. She then told me that she couldn't win money in any of them and that she was down about $10,000. An alarm clock should have went off in my head when I heard this but I was too preoccupied to pay attention...

She liked the idea that poker is a form of gambling but takes skill to win and she wanted to try it. I told her that you take up swings and down swings but as long as you make some money over all then it's OK. I told her to first learn the rules of poker and try to read a book or two about it before she opened an account. I told her if she is that interested then start out playing just one table of 5NL or 10NL and let me know how she is doing on phone or email. I clicked on micro and small stakes at my site and found a decent traffic so I emailed her the link to it later that night. I closed all my tables, gave her the agreed amount, I took her out to dinner as usual, came back, took shower together, had sex, and off she went.

About 10 days after our heated conversation about online poker, I got a phone call from her one night. She opened the conversation with something like "It's all your fault!!" She went on to tell me that she started losing almost immediately playing 10NL and apparently she chased her loss playing higher stakes and then higher and higher she went. She ended up playing 400NL in the end, losing $5,000 in just 6 days!! Lucky for her, the deposit limit at my poker site is $1,000 a 24 hours and her credit card maxed out at $5,000 otherwise, she would've lost even more money. She accused me of making the game look easy and demanded that I should pay at least half of her loss if not all. She even asked me what my screen name was because she thought I took some of her money on the table. I felt somehow responsible so I tried to console her but it was no use. I told her never to play online poker again because I could see that she was a compulsive gambler. She called me many times after that night but I ended up refusing to pay for her loss. She broke off our arrangement in the end and I have not seen her to this day.

That is like the only time I seriously told someone about online poker. She was so young and good looking. I kind of miss her nice body. I wish I didn't say anything.....

It's not your fault that she's mental.

this +1
Sounds epic.

He says it at the WPT final table doesn't he?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtE5Hx740Pc

Few WPT clips made me lol

I figured I'd tell the one story where someone got a positive, reasoned response.

We had some banker look at our financial situation because my wife and I are looking at buying a house. He wanted to know the nature of various large cash deposits/withdrawals. I had the following conversation with him:

Bank person: "So what's the nature of these large cash deposits/withdrawals?"

Me: "Well, I play poker and I don't like to carry more than a few thousand in cash, so I deposit the rest and then I use the ATM to take out what I need if my cash reserves dip."

BP: "You play poker?"

Me, expecting the worst: "Yes..."

BP: "That sounds volatile."

Me: "It can be, but you'll see that I'm coming out quite a bit ahead with these cash transactions."

BP: "Yeah, I noticed that. So it's volatile, but profitable in the long run?"

Me: "Yes."

BP: "So it's like a high-risk, high-reward stock that is very swingy in the short run, but will generally yield good returns in the long-run?"

Me: "....YES"

BP: "Glad to see that you're able to make money doing this, then. I'd make sure about having enough cash on hand to deal with the swings, but you look fine on that front, and you've probably worked all that out anyway."

Me: "I want to marry you. And I'm not even gay."

(Okay, that last one I made up. But that's what I was thinking...)

This has never happened to me IRL. This bank person is awesome!

Yeah, we talked quite a bit. He used to do some high-risk stock trading (before the Lehman collapse in 2008) and said that his job was basically identifying stock trends with high standard deviations, identifying which ones were +EV (basically undervalued because people didn't understand that it was +EV due to its volatility), then getting enough iterations of those types of trades that the variance evened out in the long run. That's not exactly how he phrased it, but that's what was going on.

And it turns out bankroll management is just as important when it comes to high-risk trading. =-) We had so much in common.

Crushing highstakes=

[IMG]http://the-*********-code.maxupdates.tv/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Making-Huge-Dollars-on-*********-a.jpg[/IMG]

Loads of cash=



Heavy use of cocaine=



Roumors about heavy use of cocaine=



Arrested by cops=



Prison=



..thats why....

whenever people don't believe you can play poker for a living i just challenge them to HU4ROLLZ