Daddy and Rylee

The Degeneracy of Gambling

Degeneracy : The process of degenerating. Corrupt, Vulgar, Vicious behavior.

As a poker player (a professional at that) you witness and sometimes even take part in some form of degenerate action. There are several different levels of this degenerate behavior. I decided that it will make for a good piece to share with my readers about some of the degeneracy that I have witnessed and even took part in during the past few years of my career. Unfortunately the endings are almost always sad, but thats what makes us part of the sickness. We thrive for the non-stop action. We are DEGENERATES!

I started playing poker online around 2003-2004ish. Your main goal when you play poker is to build a bankroll and maintain that bankroll as you make cashouts. Unfortunately, there is always that urge to "take a chance" and play at a level that you shouldn't or maybe even venture out and take a portion of that roll and wager it on sports. Sort of like a quick fix. Back than I played only cash games and ran my online roll up to 45k at one point, which was an enormous amount of money being that I was still living in an apartment. That urge hit me and I took my roll to the high stakes nl cash game and proceded to lose about 40k in 3 hours. I broke out into a sweat as I sat at the computer in utter disbelief. Imagining what could have been with that money that I just lost. This is part of the degenerate in most of us, all though we live and learn from these mistakes and move on. Only some of us repeat that disgusting feeling.

I have witnessed other friends of mine in the poker world go through much worse times than just whiffing away 40k. I have a pretty good friend who is 23-24 years old now, and probably at one time was one of the best Limit Poker players online. He ran his roll up over 7 figures (yea over a milli) before ruining himself in the pits of sports betting. It took him a few years to bust completely, but as of late 2007-2008 he is now completely busto and starting back from scratch after losing it all in sports betting. Good news is I think he has his head back to playing and grinding limit poker. They always say every poker player "goes bust from time to time". That statement can't be more true.

Speaking of the all mighty degenerate. If anyone has any time and wants to be sickened by a real life degenerate. Go rent the movie, "Owning Mahoney". It is a movie based on real life fact on a Canadian Banker who is addicted to Black Jack. Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays the role to perfection and will make you feel so empty and helpless as you watch this movie. It's a good one.

LiL Wayne

From a recent interview with Katie Couric,

"If you need an example on how to live your life, you shouldn't have been born".

I could not agree more. What a great interview.

The Super Bowl

Damn, those Steelers just know how to win and they deserve a ton of credit for what they achieved. It probably goes down as one of the best, if not "the" best super bowl games of my lifetime. It is just unfortunate that it had to be the Steelers who came out on top :( I'm not real sure why I dislike them so much. I think Ben seems like a standup guy and has proven to be one of the best QB's in my time. I mean the guy got 2 rings, so there is no way you can argue that he is just lucky. I was very happy to see Santonio get the MVP since he is a former Buckeye. He made play after play in the post season and the winning TD grab was just remarkable. Congrats to him and to the Steelers, but F their fans imo. Especially Chine, Philly, and Zoc.

As far as life goes, the weather has been standard Ohio winter-like garbage. Rylee is getting enormous and is finally rolling over. I can't explain how much fun she is as the days go by. I am definitely blessed to be able to stay home and watch her grow, smile, giggle, etc etc. I am greatful for that. Poker has been pretty much blah for the past months. Its always a long grind, but im on the biggest down swing of my entire career. Not fun, but it'll end eventually. The WSOP schedule is out and it looks like Im gonna be playing a handful of the events in the first two weeks, which will than determine how many events I'll be playing towards the end. With live poker I never know how I will be feeling mentally until the time comes, so its hard to say how long Ill be in Vegas for. Just have to wait and see.

Congrats to my good friends Ryan and Danielle. They had a beautiful baby girl named Aubree. She is healthy and thats what is most important. Have fun Daddy!

I usually like to post a pic to go along with that days thoughts, however it hurts my eyes to see anything Steeler related. So I decided to post this picture of 14 time gold medal winner Michael Phelps celebrating his 8 gold medals from 2008.