About poker, I was winning at it for years, like 2000-2007, not much but 50 to 80k every year. I wasn’t a stellar player but other players were so much worse. I had a gambling problem even when I was winning and I did nothing about it. I often played badly, i chased and i was often steaming. And I remember thinking back then how good it would be if I played my A-game all or even most of the time. How much more I would win…
Guess what, nowadays, even if I played my A-game 100% of the time I still couldn’t beat any games at a meaningful level. I mean I could probably beat 0.25-0.50 limit game, but I know I couldn’t beat 0.25-0.50 plo or nlh games, no way. These games are infested with pros and regulars.
Guys like us, at our age, have no chance at poker whatsoever. None. Even if we played our A-game which we know ain’t happening. It only takes a semi bad beat or two for me to start steaming out of my ears and do crazy crazy sh*t.
I’ve been clean 62 days and I’m happy about it, but it doesn’t mean much. It only means that maybe, just maybe there’s hope.
You know I always knew that gambling is a tough animal. I wasn’t kidding myself. I knew it’s hard to quit, I was never like “I will quit when I decide to quit, but not just yet”. But I never realized until recently that “quitting” is not something you try and do and when you finally succeed you’re done with it and you don’t need to worry about it any more. I never thought I’d go gamble-free for 2 months and still fear every day to come.