I am very very depressed by my current situation. Because things have not been going well I have managed to deprive myself of sleep on a number of occasions which leads to me feeling even worse about everything. I feel completely helpless at the moment, I've lost more on the bounce before so it really isn't entirely that.
I'm depressed by how I seem to react to things since I took poker up as my living. When I was doing it part time alongside a full time job I was eager to play, took beats in good humour and genuinely cherished the time I had to play. Don't feel like that any more.
I don't know whether I can handle having to win - it doesn't matter if I know that I can, because I don't have a paycheck it means my results matter more, whereas before it was all bonus money now it is essential and holds a lot more importance, especially emotionally.
My primary reasons for getting into this were profitability and lifestyle. Thusfar both have been pretty poor. I struggle with the lifestyle because it is now my job - when it goes badly it eats away at me and because I have no actual job during the week it means that I can play whenever, think about it all the time and this is not a good situation for my brain to get into.
When I'm winning it is never enough and when I am losing it is always too much and it takes so little for me to start to feel negative or vulnerable. This is not what I want!
I've realised that I am absolutely at rock bottom now so have locked myself out for a week - after that I shall return play on and see if I can impose my regime and start enjoing it again. If not then we'll deal with that when we come to it.
If I was to predict right now I honestly believe I will quit playing for a living purely because I find it almost too hard to motivate myself to live a worthwhile and meaningful existence. This seems ridiculous but it's surprising how little I have bothered to do during the past few months. I have dvd's I haven't watched, books I haven't read, games I haven't played and ton and tons of other stuff I could enjoyably get on with... but I don't.
This just wasn't something I was concerned about - why would anyone actively not make the effort to make their lives as full and as enjoyable as possible?? Seems crazy but it is easier and often more appealing not to bother.
I've always known that there would be some major downs as well as ups however I am simply not dealing with them very well and that disturbs me, in fact I regularly make them worse and this leads to me feeling pretty worthless and stupid.
My game has and always will rely on patience and concentration, I feel like these have actually got worse since I could play whenever I like rather than having a job gettingn in the way.
If I do decide that this is just not for me at some point I won't have any regrets about doing this. It has come at a time in my career where I'd have left my previous job anyway and moved on to something new..sadly I don't really know what I'm looking for if I do decide to return to work.
It may be that I'l come back fully rested, looking forward to playing and on form. Still might not be enough though. The thing is you have to want to change things and make the effort and I've never been any good at this trying malarky - things either work for me or they don't. I'm not going to try to convince myself what I want either way.
Thinking through my time as a pro so far I'm unimpressed. Cash wise it's been ok, lifestyle wise it's been horrendous - obviously this is changeable but it takes a really strong will to rely on yourself every single day, to motivate yourself to be productive, to quit when you should and generally to have the emphasis entirely on yourself to impose structure, routine and pick yourself back up when things go badly. I don't know that I want to do this long term
I love the idea of playing for a living, I'm just not so sure that I enjoy the reality...
Steve
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6 comments:
steve,
you're depressed plain and simple. you need to win i suggest that when you play that you should when you find yourself up a buyin or two. booking a win, ant win is a must for your poker confidence.
don't go back to omaha right now. the game is too volitale for someone in such a fragile state. stick with what you know.
i also think that you came into your poker career with unreasonable expectations. if you can win between 1 and 2 buyins a day on average playing full ring, you'd be doing very well, especially playing only 4 screens. you also must remember that the player pool for the full ring stakes that you play and want to play is very small. even fish can learn to stay away fom your big bets from experience after playing with you for thousands of hands.
our whole poker session depends on usually no more than 3 hands. did we win or lose them is is an obvious question to ask. did we get action when we wanted it and should have gotten it is an question we will never get the answer to. one of the main reasons i abandoned full ring nl holdem was for this reason. i know people were learning to laydown top pair to me when i made big bets. it was killing my bottom line. since we play a similar style, i think you are facing some of the same problems.
finally, from my experience, a week off is too long, remember this is your job, you can't run and hide because it isn't going well. an extra day or two is fine. i did exactly what you are doing and regret it. my poker new years resolution was to play more. and this is what i meant. i used to take extended periods off when things went horribly wrong. and they did and will do often. if i'm a winning player with an edge over my opposition, than i need to put in a large number of hands to exploit my edge. also, the more hands you play, the more the variance will even out.
good luck and hang in there,
dave
my typing is wretched. i meant to say quit to protect a win in the first paragraph.
dave
I agree I am depressed - that's why I'm taking some time off. Start appreciating life without poker and stress and then return when I feel better able to handle things. Much as I agree with not taking extended periods off in general I definitely need to do this right now!
Steve
When you quit your job to play poker full time how much was your bankroll?
You really need to be starting with over £5000 otherwise the bad beats are going to be wiping out your profit and leave you struggling.
Play a few tables at once, play the highest stakes you can afford, play fewer hands and play aggressively. We would all love to play as a lving but in the reality most of us couldn't.
Start playign tournaments, big profits for small stakes. It also improves your patience for the game. I won £1000 last week against 398 players off a £10 stake! Since winning ive rarely played! And ive completely stopped with the cash games for the same reasons your struggling with now. You'll end up in a lot of debt mate!
Money management is the key to poker as a living. Set out how much you can afford to lose and stop when you win your chosen profit for the day. Remember this is your living and not a hobby anymore.
With patience and aggression as well as good management there is a lot of easy money to be won at poker. There are some bad bad players out there. You'll find the worst and the best players the higher up the stakes you go.
I have a ton of notes on the bad players with too much money and too much time on their hands!
Not going to end up in debt - that's a ridiculous comment if you've read any history in my blog at all. I've won consistently at cash games for 3 years - 8 months of which has been at 5-10nl. When I left my job I had made £1k a week for over four months on a very consistent basis.
Financially I am very secure however as I have said I know I keep to small a bankroll online.
It is the day-day control and routine which I am struggling with and letting losses bother me and these are the issues I am trying to deal with. Playing tournaments isn't going to help this as it is a totally different form of poker which is a lot less consistent than cash games and not something I intend to play regularly
Steve
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