SBR Top-Rated Sportsbooks
The story of a 21 year old Degenerate Gambler
Long read, but I think I've got a pretty interesting gambling story for being just 21. It was somewhat sparked from a thread going on here now, and boredom after finishing up studying.
My whole life I've pretty much known I was a gambling addict, but when I got to college I found out just how big of a degen I was.
Starting at about 8I would beg my dad to take me to the horse races to make small bets with my allowance, got small card games together with kids in the neighborhood, played $1 dice games at school with my lunch money etc. In 2004 when I was 13 I caught the hold'em bug, and started playing online poker at Absolute Poker almost every day. They had a promotion that whenever you reached 1mil in play chips you could trade it in for $10, and I completed that in less than 24 hours of non-stop playing. I took it to a .10/.20 cash table and would raise limits every time I reached the next levels min buy-in. Within a few hours I was at $240 and was positive I was gonna be the next big poker pro. Next step was 2/4, and i was bust in a matter of minutes. I felt so empty that all of my hard work went to waste, but now that I had a taste of playing real money, I was far from giving up. I decided to try to reach 1mil again, but after a few minutes lost the 6,000 fun money chips allowed per day. I was determined to get money on my account, so I convinced my mom to let me deposit $50 of the 3 or 4 hundred I had saved up in a shoe box from mowing yards. Once again, went straight to a .50/1 table, and I was bust in minutes. My mom refused to let me deposit again, but I was still determined to get more money as soon as possible.
I had heard fun money players talk about successfully asking for money in the chat box of higher stakes games, so I figured I would give it a shot. It took me hours of begging til I finally found a guy named SPANKMEE at $3/$6 who said if I get up $200, I'll send you $10. Sure enough, he won a huge pot the next hand and transferred me the money as promised. Lost it in minutes, and went to find him again. He made the same proposition, and astonishingly won a huge pot the next hand once again. He started calling me his lucky charm, and encouraged me to rail his games for small transfers. This continued for days, but whenever he wasn't online I was desperate to keep playing. I started going to sit-n-go's and asking all of the chip leaders if they would transfer me $10 if they won, and surprisingly it was working extremely well. I started getting their AIM accounts and chatting with them about random stories, hands, etc, and made up entirely fake stories about my poker career. Some of these guys had to have been extremely lonely, or extremely gullible, because they ate up all of the bullshit I was feeding em. With one of the guys I had been talking to, I told him I was waiting on my paycheck and really wanted to play in an upcoming $100 + $9 tournament, and I would pay him back the next day. I couldn't believe my eyes when I checked my account and really saw $109 in my available balance. I went straight to the cash tables, and as you might expect, busted in minutes. It became a routine to build a relationship with these random players, ask for a large stake, and never be heard from again. It is probably one of the things I'm least proud of in my career, but at the end of the day the only thing I was worried about was getting a chance to fulfill my new found addiction to online poker. This continued for months, and I had probably gone through about $2,000 of "loans" with nothing to show for it.
I was convinced that I was a great poker player, and couldn't understand why I kept losing my bankroll in no time at all. It was around this time that Moneymaker had won the WSOP, and I happened to find his DVD "Poker for Dummies" at the local library on a visit with my grandpa. It gave me the idea to find more poker related books, and I ended up leaving with Doyle Brunson's Super System, and a few others by David Sklansky. I spent countless hours reading up on poker strategy, and felt like I was ready to take on the world, only this time playing tournaments. I convinced my mom to let me deposit $50 one last time using her card, and if I lost I would "never play again." I couldn't wait to implement all my new play, and signed up for a SnG with my entire roll right away. I busted on the bubble, and felt like I was going to throw up. No more money, no more lenders, and no more second chances. At least that's what I thought until I remembered my mom's CC info was stored into my account, and I just so happened to remember the 3-digit security code. I tossed around the idea in my head for a few minutes, but the degenerate gambler in me knew that it was a fluke, and I was about to make the run of a life-time if I deposited just $50 more. One more SnG, and in minutes, no more money. Without even thinking I deposited $250 more, knowing that if things went wrong I could give my mom my allowance and just be grounded for a few weeks. I pushed submit, and was ready to grind my way to the stars.
I knew I needed to make it last, so for the first time I used what I thought was superior bankroll management, $22 SnGs only. I opened up 3 tables, and due to what could have only been my incredible poker skill, cashed in all 3 SnGs. I decided that I should up the stakes, and I continued to place in tournaments left and right, playing up to 6 tables at a time at some points. When it came time for me to go to bed I had turned my $250 into over $1,000, and I set an alarm to get up and do it over again the next morning. However, the next morning didn't pan out as I expected, and for the first time I learned the true meaning of tilt. I lost my first three SnGs, and was not ready to waste any time in getting it back. I started playing $100 SnGs and didn't even come close to placing in one. I was fuming at this point, and had a whopping $100 and change left in my account. Eager to get it all back I enrolled in an upcoming $100 MTT. The very first hand I busted out on a bluff, continuously firing away at the button, who just so happened to have flopped the nuts. I was devastated. I had never felt so empty in my life, and had no idea how I was going to explain this to my parents.
My computer, allowance, and 12:00 curfew were ripped away from me for a month. I would use the family computer to try my chances at free rolls during the day, and go out and play with friends during the day. Only a few weeks later, I came across one of the best things that had happened to me yet. A sister site of Absolute Poker, Big Chip Poker, was offering a $25 instant signing bonus with no deposit required to all new accounts using the sign-up code 'BCP25'. I had to test it out, so I created 3 accounts (the max allowed), and couldn't believe my eyes when I saw $25 available in all 3. I lost all $75 and began master minding how I could get more out of this bonus. When my parents got home I told them I was heading out to play with some friends, and rode my bike to a community college down the road. I logged into one of the computers and installed Big Chip Poker to find out it had been blocked by their servers. I wasn't ready to give up yet, and after some detective research on Google I found a way to get around the firewall and successfully install the application. I still doubted there was any way that my plan was about to work, but I made my 3 accounts, and boom $75. So i moved onto the next computer, boom $75. I was absolutely shocked that it had worked, and continued on down the line of a computer lab full of computers. I wrote down the log-in info of each account, and after using every computer in the place, dumped it all onto one single account. I knew it would only be a matter of time before they froze my account, so I hauled ass back home and waited anxiously for my parents to head to bed. Once they finally did, I called one of my friends to help me finalize my master plan. I had him install Big Chip Poker and log-in to the account that I dumped all of the money to, and it worked. I knew that to complete everything without getting caught I would have to use my moms CC one last time and deposit $50 to my Absolute Poker account. I knew I would probably be grounded for life if anything went wrong, but it was a risk I was willing to take. I also knew that for everything to work out I would have to make this look as realistic as possible, and so it began. I sat at a $.50/1 heads up table and after a few minutes had him sit in using the account with all of the funds. We played as realistically as possible, and after losing $100 to me I had him say things like, "You're such a donk" and ultimately "Let's move to $3/6." I said I didn't have the BR for that, but I would "Break him in $1/2." After losing over $400 in 1/2, I told him to say "$3/6 now donk?" So we progressed, and after about 30 mins of "playing" he challenged me to $5/10. About 30 minutes into 5/10 he had lost over almost the entire roll, when all of a sudden he got disconnected. When he tried to log back in he got a message that the account was frozen and to contact support. I thought that the gig was finally up, and was just waiting for my account to disconnect. I had $8,200 in my account and in just a few minutes it was pending withdrawal to my neteller. The next two days of waiting were the longest days of my entire life, when finally I logged in and saw that it had successfully withdrawn. I had pulled one over on the giant poker network, and never heard a word about it.
This "heist" was a pivotal turning point in my poker career and drastically changed my life for a few years. I deposited $2,000 of it onto Poker Stars, and the rest back to my mom's account. I was no longer trying to make back money that I had lost, and I was able to play real money poker for fun. Over the following years I became a great player, learned odds, strategy, bank roll management, and much more, never having to make another deposit again. I began cashing out money for the first time once I reached $3,000, and had checks with my name on it almost every 3 months. Once I reached high school I quit playing as often as before due to sports and going out, but still found plenty of time to grind throughout the week. I progressed into college, still playing off the initial $2,000, around $8,000 in my bank account, and $10,000 in a mutual fund. It all came to an end on the worst day in history for American poker players, Black Friday. Luckily I didn't lose much when my account closed, but I didn't know what I was going to do to fulfill my random urges to gamble. I started betting on sports to pass the time since it was still legal and had always intrigued me, but I fell for the high risk high reward of parlays. I went through $200 in a week doing that, and then I started reading forums and doing research to try my best and excel at sports betting. For weeks I worked at finding edges and handicapping sports, when it finally crossed my mind that I was going to college in a state where gambling was legal, much less 2.9 miles away from one of the best poker rooms in the state. I thought this was going to be huge for advancing my poker career, but little did I know how untrue that would come to be.
On a random Sunday night I found out about a $30+$10 rebuy tournament at Riverwind Casino and decided to play my first ever live poker game. After 4 hours it was down to me and one other guy and we decided to chop for $1050 each. Afterwards he asked me if I wanted to go play black jack, and I told him that I had actually never played before. He said he would teach me the basic strategy, and give me a few pointers if I was interested. I figured I would give it a shot, and bought in for $200 at the black jack table. I caught on pretty quickly and ended up spending 2 hours at the table with him, cheering and high-fiving when the dealer busted, calling it rigged when he pulled 21. I loved the fast paced thrill of the game, and couldn't believe how easy it was when I left with an added $500 in my pocket. The next day after classes I couldn't wait to head back to the casino, and decided to buy in for $200 at the $1/2 cash games. After a few hours I was up around $50 and started to get bored with how slowly the game was moving compared to online. Now that I was in my own mind a black jack pro, I cashed out and headed over to the seat I had won in the night before. In a matter of minutes I lost the $250 i brought with me and then my true degen colors began to show. Walked to the ATM and pulled out $200 more, thirty minutes later, bust. $200 more, bust. $200 more, bust. $200 more, bust. It was starting to get late so I finally mustered up the courage to walk out of the door, livid at myself for what I had just done. Over the next few months I continued to repeat the process of winning in poker and losing my winnings back at black jack and baccarat. I was still making money betting on sports, but I was wasting all my free time getting nowhere at the casino.
The summer rolled around, and I was staying in Norman working as recruitment chair for my fraternity. All expenses were paid, and I was receiving a paycheck just to travel to cities attending events and partying for free. Everything was going great, but during most weekdays there weren't any events or parties, so I was stuck hanging around the rush apartment with the 3 other guys on my rush team. Drinking got old, and so did video games, tv, and sleeping. I finally turned to going to the casino in my down time, but making sure to never let myself leave the poker room. I started taking adderall whenever I would play so that I could play for extended periods and be on top of my game at all times. It went fine the first few times, but the adderall mixed with my compulsive tendencies got me in big trouble, quick. I decided to go in for a poker session, and got the genius idea to go play blackjack. I stayed around even for a while, and all of a sudden couldn't beat the dealer to save my life. About 10 hours later and multiple trips to the one machine in the place that dispenses money every time, I had lost $2,000. I was depressed, nauseous, and any other displeasing emotion in the book. I was serious this time that I was never playing black jack again. Or at least until I woke up the next morning. And the next. I started spending all of my time playing black jack, desperate to get back to even and be done with it. The rest of the summer was torture. I would put on a front in front of everyone and at all of the rush events, but inside I felt sick and twisted. The last day of summer before I got to go home and relax for two weeks, everything finally reached its climax. I had a flight home the next day, $3,000 in my bank, and roughly 24 hours to do nothing. I decided to give blackjack one last go so that I could have some extra spending money for my GF and going out with friends back home. Never in my life have i experienced something as sickening as that day. I couldn't bring myself to stop no matter what I tried. I was shaking, hands were cold, mind was scattered, and on a path to destruction. I put the last few dollars of the $3,000 on a hand of black jack: 12, hit, 15, hit, 25, bust. I broke down immediately. I had nothing left to my name. Not a dollar for food, gas, water, anything. FLAT BROKE. I sat in my truck crying for what felt like a lifetime, and then finally built the courage to call my mom and tell her what I had done. She tried to comfort me as much as possible, but nothing could overcome the disgusting thoughts racing through my head. I stayed the night on my friends couch and flew home the next day, brainstorming how I could salvage the pieces I had left.
My mom took me to a GA meeting the first day, but all I met were a few guys that made me feel uncomfortable, and a program that was pretty much a religion of its own. I just had to use my own will power, and common sense to stop gambling. I had always been good at making quick money, so the time I expected to spend with my GF, family, and friends, turned into time spent making money to live back at college. I sold things sitting around on craigslist, bought and resold items from garage sales, and picked up odd jobs when available. I had made over $2,000 in just 2 weeks, and finally felt comfortable with my life again. I returned to school for the upcoming fall semester, and had completely kicked gambling for over a month. That all changed, as did my life did once more a few days later.
On a random drunken night after the bars, a few of my good friends wanted to go goof off at the casino with a couple bucks. They all had no idea of what I had gone through, or that I even gambled in the first place, but I decided to go with them and just watch. I had $60 in my wallet and left my DC at home just in case. After about 30 minutes of watching them play black jack, I decided to sit in with my $60 and just casually play 5 and 10 dollar hands. For the first time ever, I couldn't lose. By 5am we were all up money, but I had $2,000 sitting in front of me. I was ready to leave, but since everyone had taken adderall, they had no intentions of leaving yet. I put $1,500 in my pocket and decided to play with them a little longer. 10 am rolled around, and I had turned $60 into $8,000 playing the game that had ruined my life. I felt like I was dreaming, but it all sank in when I walked out of the door, cash in hand. The following weekend the same guys wanted to go play again, and I reluctantly tagged along with only $200 on my person. I figured there was no way I would have the same luck again, but 10 hours later I once again was holding $7,000 in black jack winnings. I had never played slots before, but put $100 in a high limits slot machine before we left, just because I was having such an unbelievable streak of luck. It was almost surreal when the first spin lined up with 2 bonus symbols and finally a 7. I won $9,000, collected my winnings, and disappeared.
Since then I haven't played a hand of blackjack or even had the slightest desire to touch a -EV game. I have continued to play poker at 1/2, big tournaments on occasion, and bet on sports in my free time, but will never allow myself to enter the low, disgusting, depressed state that I had before. I've invested the majority of my winnings into mutual and index funds, and have more than enough to work with in my "gambling fund." I'll never forget the roller coaster I've experience in only 21 years, and I couldn't be happier with what I've learned along the way. Who knows where the future will take me, but as for now I'm complacent as can be with gambling for recreation, and not letting it control my daily life like it once did.
Feel free to post any stories of your own. Always good to hear others that have changed their ways and also help people who haven't.
woodsyallin gave Only1Oklahoma 2 SBR Point(s) for this post.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by pulledclear
.. chalk it up to being young and doing dumb shit...real addicts, who want to get better , do what they can to stay as far away as they can. 
