Poker Wannabe: 12/1/2004 - November Recap

November was a good month. It's been gone barely six hours and already I miss it. And surprisingly, in stark contrast to the previous five months of my poker career, I only played live four times this month while the vast majority of my play came online.

The theme of the month was bonus whoring, and oh boy did I do a lot of it. I managed to bag $1257 in bonuses alone, plus another $130 bonus that won't be payed until mid-December (24h's bonus is payable after 30 days). And that doesn't even count my rakeback. I could have broken even in my actual poker playing and still paid all of my bills. Bonus whoring is great.

And luckily I did a lot more than break even in my poker playing. I made up for all I lost in my disastrous Vegas trip and then some. All in all, it was a great month.

December Forecast

December should be interesting. I already have over $1100 in bonuses to clear this month, with more I'm sure that will be forthcoming. Also, I'll be in Costa Rica for the week around Christmas, and you'd better believe I'll be hitting the Casino Europa and the Hold'em Club while I'm there.

Another interesting thing about December is that I will no longer be "just" a poker player. Yes, that job I might get has become the job I did get. I start Monday.

What? A Job?

As I mentioned before, I felt kind of obligated to get a job. I didn't become a poker player to be a full-time professional for the rest of my life; I became a poker player because I dropped out of school and found out that I could support myself doing that rather than finding a real job. And now that a job has been handed to me on a silver platter, I have to take it.

Surprisingly, my biggest concern is a possible drop in social status. Now, I'm not a status whore as well as being a bonus whore, but, being single, I am somewhat aware of how the ladies perceive me, and so while I certainly don't go out of my way to present myself as being something I'm not, I definitely do not object to being viewed with a certain amount of respect. What that all boils down to is that I enjoyed playing poker and supporting myself solely by my winnings, but I felt that not having a "real" job with a "real" income and a "real" future and, well, real benefits would make me somewhat undesireable to a non-negligible percentage of the female population.

Then I went to Minnesota. Now, I have never claimed to be a "professional" poker player, but I have been supporting myself by playing poker and as one friend told me, "if you support yourself by playing poker, maybe you're not Phil Ivey, but you're a professional." Well, in Minnesota I was absolutely delighted (um, er, really) to meet my sister's boyfriends frickin huge family. They were hanging off the rafters, there were so many of them. And all of them were quite impressed with my profession. This surprised me because I assumed people would see me as a worthless, degenerate gambler. But no, while some were only somewhat interested and others were downright fascinated, all seemed to view me with a lot more respect after learning what I did--and these were successful people, some with Ph.Ds and so forth.

So, of course, I've now downgraded my position from "free spirit poker player" to "working stiff." Ah well. One thing's for sure: I'll still be playing plenty in the evenings and on the weekends. And who knows...maybe in a few months I'll be right back to being a professional poker player.

Poker Wannabe

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12/1/2004 - November Recap

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