Valentines Day thoughts, and an insight into my life playing poker

It's Valentines Day today.

Yeah, yeah, I know that you probably know that. But that and the latest offering from BT over at Swings and Roundabouts got me thinking about relationships and poker, and combining the two or striking a balance between the two. When I first started playing poker in the days of the Poker Project, back in October 2006, I was constantly badgering my then girlfriend to come and join me. Our nightly conversation would usually consist of "I'm going to poker, you coming?" from me, and an emphatic "No! For the last time, NO!" from her. We'd just moved to Oxford and I didn't really know anybody then, so in effect she was seeing poker as me being out with my mates, and whilst I did that, she was out with her mates.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with that, but when it's 4-5 nights a week which is what Poker Project was, I was barely seeing her! Then, one day, she agreed. We went down, I introduced her, and she got heads up in her first ever game (Beginners luck, as is weirdly usual in poker!). From that night on, poker consumed us. We spent 4-5 nights a week in pubs around Oxford playing in the Poker Project league, and the other 2 nights were spent online! All our life revolved around was poker, I even organised a dinner for the 2 of us at a top restaurant in London, only to realise that it fell on the same day as a PP tourney. Naturally, we played the tourney, and luckily bust out early enough to make dinner (which had been hastily changed to a later time!) before heading to the Vic to play cash til 6am!

We split up shortly afterwards, albeit for a very different reason, and I met somebody else who had no interest in poker. That didn't stop me though. I stopped playing PP (because my ex was there) but was playing more and more online, earning enough in 2 weeks play to take the new gf on holiday to the family villa in Turkey. Naturally, this softened her outlook on the game, but when we got back it was a different story. She wanted more attention and couldn't understand just why I played poker so much. I tried, and tried, and tried explaining it to her, I even tried to teach her, but I found out that not everybody can play poker and quickly gave up. We plodded along but eventually drifted apart as, and I quote, "I can't deal with you playing poker". Meh, shit happens.

It was around this time that I started doing the Live Updating for the GUKPT. This, combined with playing online as my only source of income (and that was a pittance) led to me adopting the mantra of "Sun bad, Dark good". Any degenerate poker player will understand that line! This meant that my personal life was complete bollocks, I didn't have one. I got up at 6pm, as the sun set, played poker online whilst browsing Blonde, and went to bed at 6am as the sun rose, rinse and repeat. The only time I stepped outside my house was when I wanted a Chinese or I was staying in Northampton, and even then I kept the same sleeping hours as I was staying with other poker degenerates! I had no interest in getting a job, or a girlfriend (albeit being on tour was enough to satisfy that urge, but that's a completely different post to come) and was focused on one thing, poker.

This lasted from August until the end of the GUKPT, when I decided after the final table that I had had enough of not seeing daylight, and resolved to get my life sorted. And I did. I still play as much as I used to, just at a different time of day. I work full time, and I sleep proper hours. I even had a new girlfriend for a couple of months and I've managed to quit smoking as well, so hopefully I won't fall back into the degenerate lifestyle.

Back to the original point though, as I appear to have gone off on a tangent. Does poker have a big effect on everything else in your life? The answer is yes. In my experience, I don't think I could start dating a woman who has no interest in poker now, because it takes up too much of your life. How some of the big name professionals do it, I don't know. I've seen couples fall apart from poker, and heard even more horror stories of marriages falling apart because of it. Maybe this is why so many of the guys I see on the tours are single. I have a few players on my Facebook and I think about 90% of them are either single, or dating a fellow player. There are 2 that stick out in my head as people who keep their partner and poker on different sides of the wall, the rest, well the poker comes first.

So if you ever see/hear me go on about dating a woman who has no interest in this damn game, please remind me about this, yeah?