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Should I just play (possible gambling addiction?)

Whosajiggawaaa

Whosajiggawaaa

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Went to the casino last night with a few buddies. Played some poker cash games (my 2nd time live) had a terrific time should have made 3k profit but ended up breaking even (got runner runnered with a flush) and my aces got 2 outered all in on flop, each for big pots (stacks). I was literally rushing after that - heart racing hands shaking. Today all I can think about is going back and playing. Should I follow these urges - I had a terrific time - but it feels sorta like an addiction about to start. Smartest idea is to wait till next weekend I rate.. PS I used to be a profitable online player but stopped

Some input would be nice
 
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I've never been one to gamble, always followed the saying "Never play another mans game" but to each their own. Part of it might be that I have no idea how to play poker or had the desire to learn. Guess the bottom line is knowing when to walk away. Good luck to you, what ever you decide.
 
You have to ask yourself why you want to go to the casino. Is it for fun or is it to make money? If it's to make money, then the only game you should be playing is (a form of) poker. And you should think of it as a job and not something you're only doing for a rush. Study, practice, take enough money to a table so that the law of large numbers becomes relevant, don't drink or do drugs at the tables, etc. It's not gambling as much as it is a side-job at this point, though it still can be very addicting and very taxing on one's head.

If it's for fun, then similar to drugs, you should *expect* to pay money in order to have a good time. The lights, the sounds, getting dressed up, the women...that should be what you're enjoying, and the actual games almost irrelevant. Going to the casino and spending $X on non-gambling things should be the same as going and losing $X on games to you. If you win, great, but you will NOT be happy in a casino if you cannot put this on the backburner. And a good way of doing that is playing with an insignificant amount of cash.

I have a few close friends who have gone through or are currently going through gambling addictions. It might seem benign at first, but it's just as bad as your hard-drug addictions. Especially the ugly rock-bottoms. Gambling addictions are also very hard to put into the past, because even if you quit gambling in a casino, you still have to make uncertain decisions with money nearly every single day in life (Should I buy the cereal if I don't know if I will like it? Should I spend the money to sit this exam I may not pass? Should I invest in this mutual fund? etc). And you might even be triggered by large sums of cash, not unlike us drug addicts are.
 
Gambling is the number one addiction that ex-users tend to gravitate towards. It's yet another cunning way to trick yourself into betting against your own life and sanity. The risk/reward benefit ratio itself is far worse than drug use.

If I were you, I'd stop making excuses to keep doing it, and setting up safegaurds for when to pull out. The house always wins for a reason.
"Ya it's terrible and nothing good comes from it, but, wow the rush!"
 
I've heard from quite a few addicts, who ended up gamblers, in meetings (NA/AA/etc) and ALL OF THEM SAY that no addiction compares to the damage gambling can do (in a single minute!).

I mean, drug users blow hundreds of dollars over the course of a day or days getting high. People with gambling addictions gamble 100k and their families house and lose it all in 1 minute. They wrap up all those nice losses a drug user would feel all into 1 god damn hand of poker/craps/whatever and do far more damage from that than months and months of drug abuse.

I would be very wary of gambling my friend. How would you like to experience the losses you normally would've experienced over a years of drug abuse in 1 minute in a hand of poker? I'm not saying you will this second, I'm just telling you what they've all told me: that they hit that point eventually, very rapidly, and the damage is indescribable.

Just FYI: I do not have a gambling problem (probably because i choose not to gamble) but have heard this sentiment from many an addict. I do play poker with friends once a week or two, but I am NOT talking about a 10$ game of poker: I'm talking about serious gambling either in high stakes poker games or at casinos where you are able to put your belongings on the line for high interest lines of credit (where the interest is probably going to double what you lost to begin with)
 
Ya, the worse part about a gambling addiction is how much it directly affects the lives of otherse, especially when it comes to money. This is indeed a serious problem, especially in the industrialzed world.
 
hehe Id compair you gambling addiction with my computer addiction. Just remember your spending money which you probably worked hard for. Yeah i kniw you earned but it will change... Casinos play with percent and their persentage of winning is always higher than yours. I would say do it with friends but dont do it alone.
 
Thanks for the replies. Poker is different from other forms of gambling in that you are playing other players and not the house - but yes a large amount of luck is involved and the bottom line is it's still gambling. Yeah, gambling can be incredibly destructive. I was just worried that live poker gave me such a rush. When I used to play online poker it was all down to stats and numbers with different tracking programs and addons and I was much calmer. It unnerved me as I thinkthere is potential for me to lose focus and start playing with my heart (instead of my head) and start chasing the rush by playing against the odds - chasing flush draws, inside straight draws etc instead of playing tight and sticking to profitable hands and calls, in this case I could indeed lose a lot of money in a short space of time.

So I think I'm going to limit this activity to a rare treat (good thing I live 45 mins away from the casino).
 
I remember the first time I sat down at a real poker table in a casino. I had occasionally been playing online (mostly with pretend money) over the years, and felt that I had it pretty well down to a science. A numbers game. I knew what to do with whatever happened. But the first time I sat down in person, everything was different. I froze up a lot, got confused and distracted. But I also felt like I had less patience because real-life games move way slower than online games (and yet seemed more confusing, heh). And you only play one at a time. Because I had less patience, I wanted better hands sooner than later, and I felt more inclined to raise when I should just call, and so on. It is a lot harder to play disciplined poker at a casino than it is online. Experienced in-person players understand this and will use this to their advantage when the can sense greed in new players.

Obviously what a person has to do is put in comparatively many hours at the real-life tables as the online ones. This requires a lot of time and money, though, not to mention patience. And the more time you spend doing something addictive, well, the more likely you are to end up fucked in some way.

Another thing to worry about is drugs in casinos. If you don't think that almost every large casino has drug dealers roaming them, you've just not learned how to recognize them yet. Poker players love benzos in particular to make those grueling shifts bearable. And a lot of casinos feed people free alcohol as long as they keep gambling. If you get into the habit of drinking, taking benzos or something similar while gambling, you're going to have to try and walk away from multiple bad habits.
 
RedLeader said:
Another thing to worry about is drugs in casinos. If you don't think that almost every large casino has drug dealers roaming them, you've just not learned how to recognize them yet. Poker players love benzos in particular to make those grueling shifts bearable. And a lot of casinos feed people free alcohol as long as they keep gambling. If you get into the habit of drinking, taking benzos or something similar while gambling, you're going to have to try and walk away from multiple bad habits.
Click to expand...

Sorry for slight OT, but really, benzos in particular? This is after playing to relax and fall asleep in between tournaments right? I'm just curious because I've always found that benzos completely ruined my game by clouding my thinking and sometimes making me kind of carefree in the sense that I would just call stupid things or make stupid raises, even when I knew it was stupid as hell. Stimulants on the other hand do wonders for patience and concentration. I'd imagine there's a lot of 'doping' going on in live poker, especially at professional level.

OP: Why did you stop your online gaming career despite it being profitable? Did you find it too addicting perhaps?
 
FnX said:
Sorry for slight OT, but really, benzos in particular? This is after playing to relax and fall asleep in between tournaments right? I'm just curious because I've always found that benzos completely ruined my game by clouding my thinking and sometimes making me kind of carefree in the sense that I would just call stupid things or make stupid raises, even when I knew it was stupid as hell. Stimulants on the other hand do wonders for patience and concentration. I'd imagine there's a lot of 'doping' going on in live poker, especially at professional level.

OP: Why did you stop your online gaming career despite it being profitable? Did you find it too addicting perhaps?
Click to expand...

No, had no choice. It was made illegal where I live :/ and I didn't feel like risking a heavy fine or my account being frozen.
 
I play poker semi-professionally and what RedLeader has said is true. Playing online and playing in a brick and mortar casino are two totally different experiences. Just because you were a winning player online, does not automatically mean you will be a successful player at the real-life tables. There are several factors to this. Most people who play online are playing more than one table at a time. That coupled with the fact that you don't have to wait for the deck to be shuffled after each hand means you are getting so many more hands per hour when playing online. There are different "tells" from online to live play. When playing live, your opponents might have facial ticks or give off some other type of signal that they are either bluffing, or have a very strong hand. Studying your opponents and picking up on these "tells" will almost certainly make you a more profitable player.

A casino also has table games such as blackjack, roulette, baccarat, etc which can suck you in if you're not careful. I myself have struggled at times to stay away from these games. If I am not having a good session playing poker, I sometimes chase my losses at one of the many table games that a casino offers and end up being down more money than I was beforehand. I enjoy the rush from these table games though. It is very difficult to stay away because of the opportunity to make a lot of money in a very short period of time. This is different from poker in that poker is a game of patience.

Many poker players take benzos or opiates to help.
 
RedLeader said:
I remember the first time I sat down at a real poker table in a casino. I had occasionally been playing online (mostly with pretend money) over the years, and felt that I had it pretty well down to a science. A numbers game. I knew what to do with whatever happened. But the first time I sat down in person, everything was different. I froze up a lot, got confused and distracted. But I also felt like I had less patience because real-life games move way slower than online games (and yet seemed more confusing, heh). And you only play one at a time. Because I had less patience, I wanted better hands sooner than later, and I felt more inclined to raise when I should just call, and so on. It is a lot harder to play disciplined poker at a casino than it is online. Experienced in-person players understand this and will use this to their advantage when the can sense greed in new players.

Obviously what a person has to do is put in comparatively many hours at the real-life tables as the online ones. This requires a lot of time and money, though, not to mention patience. And the more time you spend doing something addictive, well, the more likely you are to end up fucked in some way.

Another thing to worry about is drugs in casinos. If you don't think that almost every large casino has drug dealers roaming them, you've just not learned how to recognize them yet. Poker players love benzos in particular to make those grueling shifts bearable. And a lot of casinos feed people free alcohol as long as they keep gambling. If you get into the habit of drinking, taking benzos or something similar while gambling, you're going to have to try and walk away from multiple bad habits.
Click to expand...
Wise words
 
I have spent hours and hours in Casinos mainly in the UK but also in the ill fated Long Beach area in Mississippi, all for work purposes I don't play although I have an interest in Poker as a game and have read quire a few books and played simulated games many times, it is certainly a fascinating game especially hold 'em.

But my advice would be to steer well clear altogether, just look around in a casino, do they look like they are struggling for money ? I know there are professional players that make a living but I'm betting for every one of those there are a great number who have lost everything.

I see gambling as the purest of drugs in many ways you just hand over your cash, no substance it provided, maybe a bit of a rush from the excitement but its your own body that provides that, then in general you crash and that's it.

I've watched people lose 1000's and that's in the afternoon ! its a mugs game and can take you into financial melt down in a single night of bad judgment.
 
If you like playing poker as a hobby it's ok, I like to sometimes but I'll always just play in one of the tournaments, $60 buy in that kind of thing. Go on any poker forum and just about everyone agrees that casino cash games make almost everyone a loser long-term with rake and tipping etc. etc.

And especially with poker now, it's died down so nobody new is getting into it anymore so just about everyone left playing regularly is an expert by now.
 
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