V
vis
Enthusiast
Silver Level
Hi,
Since December last year I started to put it a lot of time in poker hoping it would get me some additional funds some day. At first I was (looking back at it) playing terrible but without experience I didnt pay attention and also didnt know what to pay attention to when playing and I think I basically just kept playing day after day just for the high (got some history with early gambling addictions).
Starting this year I started playing tons of MTT's on stars and had some nice cashes. But lost most of it to playing a ton more on autopilot (again after the succes I think it turned back to playing for the 'high'). Around the same time I signed up here on 2+2 and my overall game was going up significally.
During the summer I started playing online cashgames starting with 10NL and later 25NL and 50NL all FR. After 130k hands I had a winrate of ~6bbs on all stakes. My live game also progressed and I actually knew what to look for and pay attention to. Around that time i had a part time job on the beach but I started to play more and more and working less. When summer ended, so did my job. And I thought why not try to play (live 2/2) poker for my main income. I'm 22 live on my own but expenses are not so high.
It's only been 3 weeks but I already feel like the pressure of having to play for my bread or my psychological reasons to play are getting the best of me. Now I have to say the first week I was running horribly and running ~2k -ev. Which is a huge blow for me both financially as emotionally. I think this led me to the mindset "i have to play to get my money back" instead of having the mindset "making the best poker decisions in every hand". The weird thing is when I miss a day of cashgame at my local homegame, knowing that there's game... I get the same feeling when i try to quit smoking and i just had dinner (smokers will know what I'm talking about _)
To all this I have to add that poker has pretty much taken over my life this year. For example before poker i was working out every day, being pretty shredded. At the moment I havent seen a gym for 6 months.
Should I take a break from poker?
Whatever honest advice is welcome.
Since December last year I started to put it a lot of time in poker hoping it would get me some additional funds some day. At first I was (looking back at it) playing terrible but without experience I didnt pay attention and also didnt know what to pay attention to when playing and I think I basically just kept playing day after day just for the high (got some history with early gambling addictions).
Starting this year I started playing tons of MTT's on stars and had some nice cashes. But lost most of it to playing a ton more on autopilot (again after the succes I think it turned back to playing for the 'high'). Around the same time I signed up here on 2+2 and my overall game was going up significally.
During the summer I started playing online cashgames starting with 10NL and later 25NL and 50NL all FR. After 130k hands I had a winrate of ~6bbs on all stakes. My live game also progressed and I actually knew what to look for and pay attention to. Around that time i had a part time job on the beach but I started to play more and more and working less. When summer ended, so did my job. And I thought why not try to play (live 2/2) poker for my main income. I'm 22 live on my own but expenses are not so high.
It's only been 3 weeks but I already feel like the pressure of having to play for my bread or my psychological reasons to play are getting the best of me. Now I have to say the first week I was running horribly and running ~2k -ev. Which is a huge blow for me both financially as emotionally. I think this led me to the mindset "i have to play to get my money back" instead of having the mindset "making the best poker decisions in every hand". The weird thing is when I miss a day of cashgame at my local homegame, knowing that there's game... I get the same feeling when i try to quit smoking and i just had dinner (smokers will know what I'm talking about _)
To all this I have to add that poker has pretty much taken over my life this year. For example before poker i was working out every day, being pretty shredded. At the moment I havent seen a gym for 6 months.
Should I take a break from poker?
Whatever honest advice is welcome.
