There was a song back in the day called Manic Monday that was sung by a group called the Bangles. The song sucked to be honest but was very popular because everyone could relate to it. It was about dreading Monday because the work week starts and it is back to reality. I myself hate Sundays (today is Sunday by the way) because that is when the big buy in poker tournaments are. You can have a great week and have it ruined by a mediocre Sunday which happens more often than not. I have been struggling to say the least for the last few months and with recently losing my backer due to him going busto was forced to agree to a small time backer who is a bankroll nit. I have never played for anyone who is so nitty and though part of me is thankful, a part of me is annoyed when I want to play a certain tourney and cannot.
I had a very successful last week at low stakes, cashing for around 15k for which 9 of that is profit and I get half of that. It is a week that I desperately needed but I am not even close to satisfied with. I have set some goals for myself that I am staying up at all times of the night trying to accomplish. The immediate goal is to make another 7k by Wednesday night so I can go to Oregon for a live tournament. I love everything about Oregon (except for that replay official who screwed OU fans by cheating and he can go ahead and die of aids!). The people are friendly, the golf is cheap, the women are easy, and the poker players suck. I mean seriously , what more can I ask for? The next goal on the list is to get this to 50k by May 28 so that I have $25k for the Venetian tournaments to play on my own. I am sick of playing for other people and it feels impossible to get out of debt playing for others. You lose, you lose, you lose, and then you win and you don't even have enough to be out of makeup, much less repay people you owe funds to but I can promise you that all they see is that you won money and that's all that matters to them. It is a vicious cycle to say the least which is why I want to start playing for myself. I think a good start is to start taking Sundays off until I find a big time backer or maybe until I am not so worried about the end result and just play which is harder said than done at times.
I hope the next time that I write I am in a place called Pendleton. And 36 hrs from now I start my 90 day training session to try to not look so fat on my 40th birthday which I can't even say w/o feeling nauseas. I don't feel 40 but that isn't gonna stop me from being it. I think that deserves a FML
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Madness & Balance
This last week has been a tough one on me! Imagine you are an alcoholic and it is New Year's Eve, you are at the bar but you aren't allowed to take one sip of alcohol; how bout if you love to smoke weed and you are in Amsterdam but cannot, whatever the analogy is that you want to use. That is this week for me.
The NCAA conference tournaments and than the big dance is the absolute grandest time for a bettor, way more exciting than the Super Bowl. There are games all day every day for several weeks and this is the first time in 20 years that I haven't and won't be betting any games which will no doubt make me depressed but I am going to try to watch the games and find a team to pull for regardless (It won't be Oklahoma as they stink since Blake Griffin left).
I am playing a couple of 45 man sit n gos right now and I just got coolered with 12 left and I had to laugh because I was getting to the crazy part of my week that I still cannot believe happened. First of all, this persons name won't be divulged so don't ask but it has become commonplace for poker players to say FML (fuck my life) or say I wanna die but I was chatting on aim with a friend recently who told me that he was going to kill himself. I didn't think too much about it as I had heard it before from him but something told me this was different so I asked him if he was okay, can I do anything , etc and he just said he really didn't want to live anymore and that he had bought a rope and told me he loved me and wished me good luck.
At this point I got worried so I tried to talk to him some more and he just talked about how bad everything is , mostly about finances and just feeling alone. He then told me how together his sister has it all and boy can I relate to this. Both our sisters lives in a beautiful homes, have what seems like the perfect family, and neither have money issues which I know is huge when you yourself have them. I find it so funny when somebody with money says that money won't make you happy, it might be the dumbest comment someone ever came up with and people with it don't realize how bad it is for people who do not have it. Back to the task at hand, I am pleading with him to not hurt himself because there are people who love him and I know from reading and studies how suicide really haunts those left behind. He was having none of it and when we talked on the phone (thank God he picked up this time) he was crying uncontrollably more than I have ever heard anyone weep. He then hung up, logged off his computer and it was at this moment when I had to decide what to do. He lives a long way away from me and I had to make a snap judgment as to whether or not he was serious and I decided that I would rather him hate me and be alive than me not say shit and regret it for the rest of my life so I picked up the phone and called the police where he lives and once I got through getting asked 20 questions by the operator (wtf is wrong with those people anyways?) , they sent out a couple policemen to check on him. I got a phone call back about an hr later (felt like a day) from the police and they made my friend talk to me and he was okay but had drank 2 full bottles of wine and anything else he had at his place. I also contacted his sister whose name I knew online and talked to her and he is not going to be left alone for quite awhile. I talked to her at length and it seems as though she really cares about her brother and I know if my sister had a friend contact her that she would drop everything as well and make sure I was ok which is nice to know.
Although everyone who battles depression and suicidal tendencies has different reasons, I wanted to share this link with you because I used to believe that those who took their own life were selfish pricks and after reading this I have a totally different view.
I also have a friend in Vegas who said she had 3 friends commit suicide in less than a weeks time recently and while I know it is Vegas , this just made me sick to my stomach as I only know 1 person who has taken their own life (for those of you who remember Brandi).
As far as what I have planned now I am looking into possible backers for the World Series of Poker which I do not want to miss for the first time in 10 years,especially after having my 2nd best finish last year (15th in $2500 HA) and am anxious to get finally get my first bracelet to go along with my WSOP circuit ring. Good luck all
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Therapy?
I've been told by a hell of a writer that writing is theraputic but is it? Writing down your feelings for the world to see is kinda scary, especially when you are totally in disarray and unhappy with your life.
I can't remember what movie or show it was from but throughout it someone would hold up the finger 1 and at the end all it referred to was the 1 thing that makes you happy. For me that is easy, it's my kids and nothing else comes close. Whenever I take a ridiculous beat or I am worried about bills or anything , that is what I think about and I feel better.
Lately I have been miserable because of work and it absolutely pisses me off when someone tells me to just quit poker. Poker isn't the problem, doing poorly at it is. While poker is different from most jobs, it is the same with every male friend I have in that until you can't be happy in life until you are happy in your career. I can only imagine that a car salesman who can't sell a car would hate his job, a restaurateur with no customers the same, and so forth and so on.
For now I have 2 goals in life. First and foremost to find a backer for poker and in the meanwhile look for a job I can enjoy and secondly to drop a ton of weight. I have not been eating well or exercising for quite some time and I am giving up soda for the next 90 days which will be excruciating on me so forgive me if my coherence level dips after this entry. Maybe my health is hurting me in my poker but since I am hardly playing it is hard to tell.
Til next time
I can't remember what movie or show it was from but throughout it someone would hold up the finger 1 and at the end all it referred to was the 1 thing that makes you happy. For me that is easy, it's my kids and nothing else comes close. Whenever I take a ridiculous beat or I am worried about bills or anything , that is what I think about and I feel better.
Lately I have been miserable because of work and it absolutely pisses me off when someone tells me to just quit poker. Poker isn't the problem, doing poorly at it is. While poker is different from most jobs, it is the same with every male friend I have in that until you can't be happy in life until you are happy in your career. I can only imagine that a car salesman who can't sell a car would hate his job, a restaurateur with no customers the same, and so forth and so on.
For now I have 2 goals in life. First and foremost to find a backer for poker and in the meanwhile look for a job I can enjoy and secondly to drop a ton of weight. I have not been eating well or exercising for quite some time and I am giving up soda for the next 90 days which will be excruciating on me so forgive me if my coherence level dips after this entry. Maybe my health is hurting me in my poker but since I am hardly playing it is hard to tell.
Til next time
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Worst Bet I Ever Made
It has been almost 18 months since I entered my last entry and I think it's time to get back on the proverbial horse as the saying goes. I recently spent a little time with an old friend who, though we haven't spent a lot of time together, get along rather well, especially for a couple of struggling poker players. This particular person has seemed to come from rock bottom to a really good place in a real short period of time and has inspired me to do the same. It is so easy to get down on yourself when you are losing in this profession and even easier to take a lackadaisical approach when you are winning, thinking that it is always going to be this way.
I have never talked about my addiction to sports gambling publicly and the things that this friend openly shared about his troubled past with drugs and psychiatric issues made me really think, why not? I remember it like it was yesterday, Syracuse +2.5 points vs Indiana for the 1987 National Championship. Hell, I can still name every starter on the Syracuse team. I bet my hard earned $30 on the Orange to cover and they did. Boy, did I know it all at the ripe age of 16, I would never have to work again I thought but how little did I know that this would be the start of the worst habit I've ever known.
It's now almost 25 years later and I can say with 100% conviction that I don't know how many worse habits there are out there but I don't wish them on my worst enemy! I had a very supportive mother (maybe too much but all she knows is how to love and the best sister in the entire world. I never had a Dad but my mom was both mother and father and great at both jobs. Besides, I have never bought into the no daddy shit because people everywhere had and have it a lot worse than I.
You know that 12 step program where it's like "Have you ever lied about your addiction, Have you ever stolen? Have you ever had nightmares? Has it ever cost you to miss work? " I can say that I aced that test with a perfect score of 12 for 12. I have done other stupid stuff such as drink too much at times , partake in illicit drugs a few times, and various other things, but nothing has ever been an addiction such as this. I will never say I have kicked it because I don't believe you ever can completely kick something out of your mind like this. Even though I haven't made a wager in quite a long time, it still lingers in my head. Just tonight I was watching the ending of a game and I immediately wondered what the point spread was. I didn't bet on the Super Bowl but I knew the line and rooted for my friend Dave to win which wasn't a good sweat seeing as how he bet the Steelers and under. I obviously liked the Packers and over but kept my mouth shut when he told me, not that he would listen to me anyways.
So back to my friend, he has been talking about having organization and passion and I definitely have been lacking that. I don't think I have been playing bad, in fact, I am playing some, if not the best poker of my life. I will say that I kept an even keel tonight even taking a 1 outer to go out like 50th of an 1100 player field. I feel good about myself even though I don't really have a way to play the games I would like to play but I will get back to the top where I was in '06, I have no doubt about that.
I have never talked about my addiction to sports gambling publicly and the things that this friend openly shared about his troubled past with drugs and psychiatric issues made me really think, why not? I remember it like it was yesterday, Syracuse +2.5 points vs Indiana for the 1987 National Championship. Hell, I can still name every starter on the Syracuse team. I bet my hard earned $30 on the Orange to cover and they did. Boy, did I know it all at the ripe age of 16, I would never have to work again I thought but how little did I know that this would be the start of the worst habit I've ever known.
It's now almost 25 years later and I can say with 100% conviction that I don't know how many worse habits there are out there but I don't wish them on my worst enemy! I had a very supportive mother (maybe too much but all she knows is how to love and the best sister in the entire world. I never had a Dad but my mom was both mother and father and great at both jobs. Besides, I have never bought into the no daddy shit because people everywhere had and have it a lot worse than I.
You know that 12 step program where it's like "Have you ever lied about your addiction, Have you ever stolen? Have you ever had nightmares? Has it ever cost you to miss work? " I can say that I aced that test with a perfect score of 12 for 12. I have done other stupid stuff such as drink too much at times , partake in illicit drugs a few times, and various other things, but nothing has ever been an addiction such as this. I will never say I have kicked it because I don't believe you ever can completely kick something out of your mind like this. Even though I haven't made a wager in quite a long time, it still lingers in my head. Just tonight I was watching the ending of a game and I immediately wondered what the point spread was. I didn't bet on the Super Bowl but I knew the line and rooted for my friend Dave to win which wasn't a good sweat seeing as how he bet the Steelers and under. I obviously liked the Packers and over but kept my mouth shut when he told me, not that he would listen to me anyways.
So back to my friend, he has been talking about having organization and passion and I definitely have been lacking that. I don't think I have been playing bad, in fact, I am playing some, if not the best poker of my life. I will say that I kept an even keel tonight even taking a 1 outer to go out like 50th of an 1100 player field. I feel good about myself even though I don't really have a way to play the games I would like to play but I will get back to the top where I was in '06, I have no doubt about that.