In this article our resident poker writer reveals his thought about being a poker pro. The writer used to be a professional poker player for 4 years, but in the fall of 2008 he decided to quit poker as a profession and focus on other things. Read what lead to him leaving professional poker life behind and looking for other things in life. “PokerSpewer” will be writing as lot of articles and poker strategy information in the future. The fact that he is a former poker professional is obviously good for our readers as you can rest assured that he wont keep anything to himself but instead will share all the secrets and poker strategies that he knows.

First of all as this my first article on Play Casino let me first introduce myself. I’m a 24 year old person from Scandinavia (that is my explanation for the funny phrases and spelling erros). I began playing online poker when I was only 16 years old. So this was pretty much at the beginning of the poker boom. I had always been interested about different games and as a kid growing up used to love playing poker games and board games. So when my friend told me back in 2001 that I could play poker online for real money I was obviously extremely excited. The only problem was that all the poker rooms require you to be at least 18 years old in order to even register at their site. But being a creative little bastard a made an account with my father’s information and asked him to deposit little money to the account. Much to my surprise he did and so I was ready to start playing poker.

Obviously at the beginning I was absolutely terrible in poker. However two things saved me from losing my father’s moneys: 1) Everyone else was also absolutely horrendous poker player and made the type of mistakes that you these days wont see even in the play money poker games. 2) I realized that I was terrible so I ordered several poker books from the online book stores.

After reading the poker books I had some understanding about the concepts such as starting hands and pot odds. Armed with my new knowledge I began winning money in the low stakes cash games and taking shots (which always ended badly) to the bigger games. Many people say that they got started playing sit n go tournaments and multi table tournaments. Those never really interested me and cash games were the thing for me. The thing that always annoyed me about tournaments was that you usually ended up playing solid poker for hours just so that you could lose all your chips in a coinflip, finish just out of money and realize that you just wasted several hours of your life for nothing.

After enjoying the initial success in poker I actually managed to lose my entire poker bankroll several times. When I look back there is no doubt in my mind in why that happened. I was simply playing way too big games for my bankroll and when I lost even a little bit money in those tables I lost the control (thus the nickname) and began spewing my chips around like the biggest retard. The spewing always ended up with my wondering what the hell went wrong this time and how I could get more chips to continue playing poker.

Well I always somehow got a small new poker bankroll and started my grind to the top from the bottom. It wasn’t easy getting these new bankrolls I for an example remember grinding $100 freerolls for hours jus so that I could get $2 to play poker and try to get the big winning streak started. This was obviously in some sense also humiliating to me as the players who I was playing against the freerolls had probably seen me playing the big real money games before and now they noticed that I was playing freerolls against them – even a two headed monkey could conclude that I was broke. And for an egoistic poker player nothing is more humiliating than being poker and having others know it.

Either way those times that I went broke also made me a stronger poker player and when I finally got a decent bankroll so that I could play $1/$2 no limit games without having to worry about losing half of my bankroll in one sitting I was determined to never go broke and instead become the best poker player in the world.

From the $1/$2 no limit games I gradually grinded my way all the way to the $25/$50 no limit holdem games (I will share some strategy advice in the future articles that might help you to make that transition, though I have to warn already that it much harder today than it was 3 years ago). At this point I also became a poker pro and left the school behind.

The second rough patch (the first one being the countless times I went broke being a new player) on my poker career became right after I had made my way to the $25/$50 no limit games. The players in those tables were much stronger and had no problems at all with finding my leaks and taking money from me. And so I lost majority of my poker bankroll and most of my confidence as a poker player.

But thanks to the fact that at that time I knew much it sucks to be poker I actually dropped down in the stakes to rebuild my bankroll and confidence instead of tilting away rest of my bankroll to the poker pros at $25/$50.

Once I had build my bankroll up to the amount that I was ready to face the $25/$50 no limit players again something weird. I noticed that I no longer had the desire to actually be a professional poker player. The idea of sitting in front of my computer all day playing poker had actually begun disgusting me. Having read that many poker players go through times like this and that the wisest thing to do during periods like that is simply to step away from the computer and poker for a while and return when the desire comes back. But it never came.

After that I really tried being a professional poker player, I tried to tell me that playing poker is the easiest way to make living. I tried playing new poker games. I tried playing new poker formats. I tried setting challenges and goals for myself as poker player. I even tried playing poker drunk just so that I could enjoy it again. However I never was.

So what lead to me quitting poker:

1) It was no longer a fun game. When I began playing poker I did it because I felt like it was a fun game, I viewed it as a computer game or board game. I never began playing poker so that I could make money from it. But the further my poker career went and the more serious I became about playing poker the less fun it was and it began feeling just like any other job that I had done.

2) I became scared of losing. If a boxer starts to fear injury he is soon a former boxer. If poker player starts to fear losing he is soon a former poker player. Being scared money simply isn’t working in poker. When I was supposed to go back to $25/$50 no limit I was more than adequately rolled for it, but I simply was so afraid of hitting a downswing again that I wasn’t able to go there. And soon after these thoughts entered my head I also began fearing losing money in the $5/$10 which I had just while ago been crushing with my aggressive game.

3) I realized being poker pro isn’t what I want from life. I had seen the life that majority of poker players live. It is certainly an interesting and intriguing lifestyle when you are twenty-something with no responsibilities. And I certainly enjoyed the life of sleeping till noon, partying hard and playing poker to some extent. But at the same time I became increasingly aware that it wasn’t something I could do that much longer, or even wanted to do that much longer. Also seeing the type of people that most who had won some money in poker had become wasn’t exactly attracting.

Have I regretted leaving being professional poker player behind:

I would be lying that if I didn’t say that at times I have thought that certain things would be easier if I still was a poker pro. For an example when you work in a so called normal job it is harder to justify flying first class, as a poker player you could easily justify buying a first class ticket by saying “ I just won the price of the ticket so I might just as well buy it”. When you work in a normal job you will think that if you buy the ticket you will have to work two weeks “for nothing”.

On the other not being so money oriented has also opened my eyes and I these days realize that the vacation doesn’t really get that much better if you fly first class or live in the expensive ***** hotel. It is the things that money cant buy that make the trip better.

I would say that I’m also certainly a more relaxed and easy going person now that I don’t have to deal with the swings and things associated with poker. Naturally there are bad days in my new job as well, but unlike in poker the good days outweigh the bad days.

All together I’m happy with my decision to quit poker, but I’m also happy that I had the chance to experience the life as a poker pro.