Post: #1

Before I go my sob story, I want to iterate that my life is good, I have gratitude for the many wonderful things in my life. I've got a good sex life, I've got my health and a good group of friends, not to mention the family that is RVF. But here goes..

I have been a professional poker player for about 2.5 years now, and a couple months ago I went on a disgusting downswing which cost me about 90% of my entire living bank roll. It was a combination of disgusting luck and some poor play. Most of you know Texas Hold 'Em as the game of poker, but I have played Omaha (different variant) in the last 6 months. I lost about 25k and it has destroyed my confidence, and my passion for the game.

What I had planned on doing is transition from the casino to online poker, so that I may move abroad to Vietnam or Thailand and make money from online poker. But the downswing has both destroyed my confidence and my passion for the game. I have considered playing under a coach to up my game, but I don't have the passion for it anymore, and I never had the talent.

I spent the last 3-4 hours flipping through the forum looking at how to make money, how to regain confidence and I came across a few helpful threads such as

Cleanslate's online service based business

Weekend Casanova's Dropshipping Datasheet

My problems are twofold.

First, I don't know how to make money beyond playing poker.

Second, I have crushing self doubt on my ability to make money any other way.

Since I have been poor my whole life, poker was the only way I identified with making money. I worked lots of customer service jobs and such, but not good money. Now that I question my ability to make money through poker, I feel incapable of making money at all.

In Game, it was simple. Start out as a chode, make a few approaches and a girl would give you a positive reaction. Snowball that positive reaction into other girls, eventually getting phone #'s, dates, make outs and sleeping with them....and you suddenly stopped seeing yourself as a chode. This is what worked for me. I eventually got a couple cute girls to sleep with me, and voila self confidence with women was born.

With money however, I can't look back at a place and time that I was making good money at all in my life, beside these couple years of playing poker. So I cannot 'trick' myself into having confidence.

This was pretty difficult to write out, but I woke up this morning looked into the mirror and realized consciously I do not trust myself. It was a terrible, awe-inspiring feeling.

I don't know what skills I have, considering I worked at mostly coffee shops/daycare stuff with kids. If I were to get a job, I imagine sales would be the best money earning potential for someone who only has a 2 year degree? I have considered Amazon FBA (I have a friend who does modestly well as a side hustle) or copy writing (I've seen some forum members have success on here) but the crux of the issue is I don't believe in myself or my capabilities to make money. The end goal would be have some way of making money online, and living abroad within 2-3 years.

Post: #2

Look at rags to riches stories

If they can do it, so can you

"can"...meaning the blueprint is there but it is up to you to make it happen

Post: #3

Get into crypto man. Gambling pays off here.

Post: #4

Sorry to hear about your situation.

The only useful thing I can think of, is to find someone who is making money doing what you want to do, and then ask to be an unpaid apprentice/intern/assistant to that person in return for learning everything there is in their way to make money.

If you can't have confidence in your own skillz, rather find someone else you have confidence in, gets money that you think is reasonable, and let them teach you their skillz.

You might have to approach a lot of potential mentors (about a hundred approaches seems par for the course) but someone somewhere is looking for an extra hand for help and also some guys get a big ego boost from having someone to pass their knowledge on to. Find that guy and let him teach you how to make money rather than doing it yourself, because then you can rather have confidence in your teacher rather than drudging up self-confidence that you struggle to have anyway.

Good luck!

Post: #5

Sorry to hear about your situation too.

What limits were you playing and how many buyins were your monthly living expenses?

Did you move down or did you chase losses? Were you playing PLO? Yikes, lots of variance that game.

I would suggest doing something you're good at in the meantime, just to regain some confidence and to get your mind off the losses. Then try a bunch of things and see which one you like best.

Post: #6

OP how old are?. if you truly want to stop playing poker you need some type of skill or trade behind you..is it possible to go back to school and study in some capacity? This would be my first action especially if I was still young.

Post: #7

Tough, I can't say I know what you're going through. As others asked, let us know your age.

It's not the end of the world. But you may have to move away from poker. Sounds like it's crushing you. Best case scenario you recover from that downswing after sometime and break even on your losses. But what if you go into another downswing again? If you're being rational as any poker player should be you know this could happen suddenly when you're back to playing well and if it does, you could just be in the same position as you are in now with more wasted time.

Your issue I think is this. You said: "I don't believe in myself or my capabilities to make money"

Don't believe in yourself is one thing. Ability to make money is another.

Work on the first issue. Then, invest in some skills or education or any form of training that gets you making money.

Confidence is earned through experience and success. You're not expected to have it all figured out yet. You learn as you go.

Post: #8

Like someone else said, PLO is very high variance, and PLO in a casino is the closest thing you get to playing the lottery at a poker table. I played PLO at a casino in Stockholm recently, the blinds were low but almost every pot still ended up being in the 500 dollar range because every single player was a complete maniac. One guy 4-bet all in before the flop, then after losing said "I knew he had aces, but..."... I suppose this is the kind of thing you are dealing with. A good opportunity to make money in the long run, but extreme variance that gives you the kind of downswings you have just experienced (I'm assuming this was not a chase/tilt type of situation). In online play, your opponents will be far more solid players. Your expected ROI will go down, but reduced variance will give you more stability. The rake is also smaller, and you can play more hands.

Of course, the big question is whether you should keep playing poker at all given your level of self-doubt. It would be easier to comment on that if you tell us a little about your lifetime stats for different games and levels.

Post: #9

(07-26-2017 12:47 AM)RustyShackleford Wrote:  What I had planned on doing is transition from the casino to online poker, so that I may move abroad to Vietnam or Thailand and make money from online poker.

My problems are twofold.

First, I don't know how to make money beyond playing poker.

Second, I have crushing self doubt on my ability to make money any other way.

Since I have been poor my whole life, poker was the only way I identified with making money. I worked lots of customer service jobs and such, but not good money. Now that I question my ability to make money through poker, I feel incapable of making money at all.

With money however, I can't look back at a place and time that I was making good money at all in my life, beside these couple years of playing poker. So I cannot 'trick' myself into having confidence.

The end goal would be have some way of making money online, and living abroad within 2-3 years.

As hard as it may be to hear right now, this may very well have been a blessing in disguise - life's way of showing you that the lifestyle or profession that you had chosen for yourself is not a long-term sustainable way of making a consistent stream of income. This bad streak of yours could have come much later, maybe after having invested a lot into making the move to South East Asia, and the impact could have been much worse then.

If your goal is to build up a solid skillset that will enable you to make solid money and give you the capacity to be very flexible with your location, I would recommend getting into programming- web development to be specific. It's a highly in-demand skillset, it pays well (even with a junior-developer salary in North America you will be making significantly more than whatever odd-jobs you've been working so far), great future outlook in the industry and ability to work from wherever with just your laptop once you have achieved a solid baseline of skills.

Learning code part-time is certainly doable- working whatever day-job you need to support your expenses, and spending all the time that you have remaining learning to code, there's plenty of people who have started their coding journey this way.

If you want to get a taste for coding I would sign up for this course on udemy:
https://www.udemy.com/the-web-developer-bootcamp/

It should give you a solid grasp for a lot of important concepts in programming- a solid baseline from which you can continue learning.

Udemy has sales on all of the courses it offers multiple times per month, so you can simply wait for the course to go on sale and buy it for 10 bucks. If you visit the page you'll probably even get an ad on your facebook telling you when udemy courses are on sale (at least that's how it was for me).

A possible path that I could foresee (depending on how deeply you invest your free time into learning programming) would go something like this:
Spend all of your free time learning the basics of code for 6-12 months, build projects that demonstrate the skills that you have learned (e.g. can do unpaid projects for nonprofits at https://www.freecodecamp.org/ to build up your portfolio) --->attend local web dev/startup meetups (all kinds of stuff on meetup.com) ---> look for internships on all online channels / based on your networking at coding meetups and such, or even look for a full-on entry-level job based on how your portfolio is looking.

Once you have the internship/entry-level job, it's a matter of further building up your skillset to the point where location-independent companies would be willing to hire you on their team, or that you could start working on a contract-basis for companies that don't mind remote workers.

As an example to show you what's out there:
https://weworkremotely.com/

Would encourage you to do some googling for yourself, but here is some food for thought to get you started:

http://fireandforget.co/2017/02/04/teach...ix-months/
^from forum member rafaelD
http://christhefreelancer.com/podcast/dylan-wolff/
https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/co...ndent_web/

Post: #10

These are the guys you need - http://wallstreetplayboys.com

I'm not in favour of making a living via Poker but Poker skills are very important
(maybe you need an SEO-customized website to sell products that teach how to play poker quickly and practically)

Post: #11

Would you like to work where you want, when you want, and make as much money as you want without having a boss? Would you like to get job offers from day one? Then go to STENOGRAPHY school and become a court reporter. It takes about two years but it's like learning a language, once you learn it, you know it. Just my two cents

Post: #12

Take a break and start grinding hold 'em at the casino again. It's virtually impossible to lose playing live hold 'em. Online is very difficult these days so makes little sense transitioning. AI can beat the best in the world- online will be completely dead in a couple of years.

Post: #13

I've spent my entire 20's routinely going broke, a naturally result of being a student for most of that decade of my life.

There's a special kind of freedom at the bottom. You're not free to do all the things you want to do, but you're free from fear of losing it all.

It's probably easier to have nothing when you've never had much (and I never have, at least monetarily), but try to see these types of experiences as an opportunity and not entirely as a loss.

Post: #14

I think OP is talking about a specific kind of going broke.

In OP's case it is based on the fact that he lost the money doing his job - that is a severe impact. No way around this - you either become better, get your risk management improved (never risking so much as it can be wiped out with a few games) or you find another niche. There are only hard solutions in that field. Since it is a competitive job, you can only build it up again, become better or get a different job.

Being broke is not the issue here - being in doubt of your very own job to make money - that is the issue.

Post: #15

(07-26-2017 01:26 AM)[email protected] Wrote:  Get into crypto man. Gambling pays off here.

You're gonna get the man killed, dude. We're in the middle of our second gigantic correction in a month.

Post: #16

(07-26-2017 01:26 AM)[email protected] Wrote:  Get into crypto man. Gambling pays off here.

lol I actually have a poker friend who made 7 figures this year from crypto. He is 21. I don't have any roll to invest right now though.

(07-26-2017 02:05 AM)Thomas the Rhymer Wrote:  Sorry to hear about your situation.

The only useful thing I can think of, is to find someone who is making money doing what you want to do, and then ask to be an unpaid apprentice/intern/assistant to that person in return for learning everything there is in their way to make money.

If you can't have confidence in your own skillz, rather find someone else you have confidence in, gets money that you think is reasonable, and let them teach you their skillz.

This is a good idea, and if I wanted to stay in Vancouver I have an acquaintance who has a company in merchant sales. I think I could get a job from him if I really wanted. But I had really hope to be moving to SEA at some point by the end of the year.

(07-26-2017 02:52 AM)hiphoppotamus Wrote:  Sorry to hear about your situation too.

What limits were you playing and how many buyins were your monthly living expenses?

Did you move down or did you chase losses? Were you playing PLO? Yikes, lots of variance that game.

I didn't chase losses, we have only one game in our casino and it is the most twisted buy in system. It's 1/2 with no maximum, so u get a weird table with 2-3 short stack amateurs ($2-300), few huge stacks who are whales + the good pros ($2000-3000) and then small time pros like me ($400-500 buy in). About 80% of my losses were disgusting beats. I lost a 5k pot with nut straight + top set vs naked q high flush draw (AAKT vs Q986ss on AQJss) and that was when I stopped playing omaha consistently.

(07-26-2017 10:21 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  I think OP is talking about a specific kind of going broke.

In OP's case it is based on the fact that he lost the money doing his job - that is a severe impact. No way around this - you either become better, get your risk management improved (never risking so much as it can be wiped out with a few games) or you find another niche. There are only hard solutions in that field. Since it is a competitive job, you can only build it up again, become better or get a different job.

Being broke is not the issue here - being in doubt of your very own job to make money - that is the issue.

This is the crux of the issue. I don't believe I am capable of making any real money in any form. I have no evidence in my life to show for it. I am the only one in my family to even go to post secondary (have only a 2 year degree). I've been poor my whole life so this scarcity mindset has been slowly eating away at me.

I have confidence in other issues, I was a competitive athlete in a niche sport at the national/international level. I was once a dork with girls but have my dating life figured out. I just don't know how to make money, and I don't believe it's possible. Everywhere I look around me and my friends, people got rich through poker (8-10 years ago they started, not 2 years ago like me) or dealing drugs.

Post: #17

I am 27, turning 28 by the end of the year. I have considered a few different paths but wanted fresh perspective from you guys.

I am not on the streets. Since going broke I am playing Hold 'em on the weekends to pay bills. It's better than a dead end job and I could easily support myself on 15-20 hours a week of Hold 'Em, but it's not good money.

I could easily do poker for the next 5 years and have a bit of money and some freedom, but it wouldn't be good money. I see the writing on the wall and I want to start developing skills or something to give back to the world. I don't want to go busto at 35 and have no skills other than some tangible poker ones. That is a big fear of mine.

Post: #18

< If you can survive in the US working 20 hours playing online poker, then you can survive with 2-3 times the living standard in EE, FSU or SEA.

Most people cannot make any money playing online poker. That means that you have some ability and talent, but need to polish that more. Moving into a country with lower living costs and doing what you do already is a way to give you time to become better to reach that breakthrough phase.

Give yourself a year. You will still be young enough to do something else if you feel otherwise.

Hang in there. I know a few men - one who worked hard and always wanted to become wealthy. It was only in his mid 40s that he found a niche where he was really good - real estate broker, then real estate investor. He is now 65 and worth 10 mio. $. He made it all from his mid 40s to mid 50s, but he worked hard all his life.

Post: #19

(07-26-2017 05:12 AM)thebassist Wrote:  As hard as it may be to hear right now, this may very well have been a blessing in disguise - life's way of showing you that the lifestyle or profession that you had chosen for yourself is not a long-term sustainable way of making a consistent stream of income. This bad streak of yours could have come much later, maybe after having invested a lot into making the move to South East Asia, and the impact could have been much worse then.

If your goal is to build up a solid skillset that will enable you to make solid money and give you the capacity to be very flexible with your location, I would recommend getting into programming- web development to be specific. It's a highly in-demand skillset, it pays well (even with a junior-developer salary in North America you will be making significantly more than whatever odd-jobs you've been working so far), great future outlook in the industry and ability to work from wherever with just your laptop once you have achieved a solid baseline of skills.

Learning code part-time is certainly doable- working whatever day-job you need to support your expenses, and spending all the time that you have remaining learning to code, there's plenty of people who have started their coding journey this way.

If you want to get a taste for coding I would sign up for this course on udemy:
https://www.udemy.com/the-web-developer-bootcamp/

It should give you a solid grasp for a lot of important concepts in programming- a solid baseline from which you can continue learning.

Udemy has sales on all of the courses it offers multiple times per month, so you can simply wait for the course to go on sale and buy it for 10 bucks. If you visit the page you'll probably even get an ad on your facebook telling you when udemy courses are on sale (at least that's how it was for me).

A possible path that I could foresee (depending on how deeply you invest your free time into learning programming) would go something like this:
Spend all of your free time learning the basics of code for 6-12 months, build projects that demonstrate the skills that you have learned (e.g. can do unpaid projects for nonprofits at https://www.freecodecamp.org/ to build up your portfolio) --->attend local web dev/startup meetups (all kinds of stuff on meetup.com) ---> look for internships on all online channels / based on your networking at coding meetups and such, or even look for a full-on entry-level job based on how your portfolio is looking.

Once you have the internship/entry-level job, it's a matter of further building up your skillset to the point where location-independent companies would be willing to hire you on their team, or that you could start working on a contract-basis for companies that don't mind remote workers.

As an example to show you what's out there:
https://weworkremotely.com/

Would encourage you to do some googling for yourself, but here is some food for thought to get you started:

http://fireandforget.co/2017/02/04/teach...ix-months/
^from forum member rafaelD
http://christhefreelancer.com/podcast/dylan-wolff/
https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/co...ndent_web/

This is really great, and something I have not really considered. Are you a programmer yourself? I worry that I do not have the aptitude for it, as I took a couple of courses in high school for computer stuff and I would say I would be average in math/programming if that. I feel similarly about programming as I do copywriting, I could probably make it work life or death but not sure I have the aptitude for it. I'll google and do my own research.

Post: #20

(07-26-2017 01:56 PM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  < If you can survive in the US working 20 hours playing online poker, then you can survive with 2-3 times the living standard in EE, FSU or SEA.

Most people cannot make any money playing online poker. That means that you have some ability and talent, but need to polish that more. Moving into a country with lower living costs and doing what you do already is a way to give you time to become better to reach that breakthrough phase.

Give yourself a year. You will still be young enough to do something else if you feel otherwise.

Hang in there. I know a few men - one who worked hard and always wanted to become wealthy. It was only in his mid 40s that he found a niche where he was really good - real estate broker, then real estate investor. He is now 65 and worth 10 mio. $. He made it all from his mid 40s to mid 50s, but he worked hard all his life.

To be clear, I have been playing in the casinos at Hold em to pay the bills, not online.

I have recently gone to online since going busto in Omaha. I have a friend who is doing quite well online after only playing 6 months, he has a fresh perspective to the game since he has only played a few months and does not get locked into 'standard' thinking.

If I was making even just 3,000 USD from online poker in a month I would snap leave and be on the next plane to Vietnam, no questions asked.

The interesting thing is I have been approached by a mutual friend for coaching. He is a high stakes heads up Hold em player, with his coaching (it's much cheaper than market rate) + my 2 friends who are trying to become high stakes online players, there is SOME hope to making online work. But to circle around again, I do not feel capable.

Post: #21

(07-26-2017 01:44 PM)RustyShackleford Wrote:  I lost a 5k pot with nut straight + top set vs naked q high flush draw (AAKT vs Q986ss on AAQJss) and that was when I stopped playing omaha consistently.

Err forgive me I haven't played in a while but don't you have quads here? The only way I see him winning is if he binks a straight flush on the river (wouldn't be surprised if he did though).

Look into programming. I am also doing that udemy course and freecodecamp.

Post: #22

@hippo My bad that was a typo. All in on flop I managed to cold 5bet Aces pre as it was that kind of table. The whale cold 4bet her hand about 5k deep (which isn't all that terrible of a play tbh). Programming eh? I will do some research

It was AAKT vs Q986ss on AQJss flop

Post: #23

Hey bro,

Sorry to hear you’re in a downswing and questioning what’s next. But it’s good that you still have a solid perspective on life and your reasons to be grateful.
Having met you, I can assure you that you should have full faith in your abilities. You are smart as a tack. You have a lot going in your favor that you can leverage to make a success of things.

I just think you haven’t found your niche in business yet. You are extremely passionate about poker (or you were), but even a year ago you were acknowledging that the online game is getting harder and harder every year. In fact, if I remember correctly, that’s why you started learning Omaha.

The big swings can be emotionally draining – I remember even out in Asia you were somewhat stressed about making ends meet. You seem to have a lot more success taking money off people in live casino games. However, I’m guessing that doesn’t mesh well with the dream of living the good life in Thailand or Vietnam.

There comes a point when you have to weigh things up. My feeling is that by continuing down the poker road you will forever be subject to these wild fluctuations in bankroll, security and emotional well-being.

I know quitting poker would be a hard decision to make. Hell, I would love to have been a professional golfer, but there came a time when I had to admit that I could have a better life doing other things rather than scraping by pursuing my passion.
What else could you do? Some good ideas have already been mentioned in this thread.

Copywriting - could be an option for sure. You write well on your blog. I personally know numerous members who are doing very well from this (Cleanslate has lots of good info). It takes a while to build up your income, though.

Coding – I’ve seen your mathematical/analytical mind at work (while you schooled me at cards). You could succeed at that no problem whatsoever.

How about Social Media Management and/or Advertising? You have an engaging Twitter feed. You could take an online course in Facebook advertising and start from there. I have access to one on Udemy…PM me if you want the log in deets.

Another thing that you have in your favour is your location. If I remember right, you’re in one of the more affluent cities in North America. You could make yourself a website, get some business cards and hit the sidewalks looking for small businesses who need their facebook or website spruced up with some targeted ads or copywriting.

Once you get a good base of clients paying North American rates in your home city, then you could move to Asia, continue to grow your client base and enjoy some geo-arbitrage with the dollars you’re earning.

This doesn’t mean you have to turn your back on poker. Once you have a good, steady income coming in you can enter live tournaments, have a night at the casino and get back to enjoying your poker, knowing that a bad run isn’t going to have you in financial peril.

If you can survive there on your earnings from 20 hours of live play, that leaves plenty of time to get yourself off the ground in another venture. Say you pick something like coding - if you put in 30 hours a week on that, I have no doubt that in a year from now a man of your caliber could be on a flight to Bangkok in a very good situation indeed.

Whatever you decide, good luck and keep us posted.

Post: #24

OP your issue is a Blindspot from yourpsychological perception. You hace the knowledge to be great at Poker... since you were great at it. You have an inability to say No to bad bets that are destructive to you.

I would strongly suggest for you to look into the works of Dr Paul Dobranski and his Mind OS book, and Vital Lies Simple Truth by Daniel Goleman. You can download for free the Dr Paul book on Pualib.com. To this day... it's the greatest thing I've ever done for myself. Give it a try!

Post: #25

@captain Interesting, but I don't consider myself great at poker. I had a high level coach teach me for a few months and I still struggle with my same weaknesses (mental game mostly). I beat low/mid stakes for a few years to pay the bills, I don't consider that great at all. Anyone with a decent passion could do that within 3-6 months.

@potential Thanks for the kind words man, I really appreciate it. I will certainly amp down the poker I think going forward, and pick something I can learn online and make it work. You're right, I started learning omaha because I am not optimistic about the poker landscape going forward.

Ironically, even after the downswing looking at my poker tracker, I am still hovering around $40/hour playing omaha. I guess I should be more confident, I always let the recency bias impact me.

I'll consider the pros/cons of writing copy and programming and the rest. Much love bro.