Averaging 28 BB/hr my first 60 hours back at $1-$2

Just an update: yeah, it’s true, I quit poker, I self-banned at the casino (although, in a sign of how truly evil they are, I learned that I could only ban myself for 6 months at a time…then I’d have to go back and request another ban, which would be for a year….and THEN and only then would I be able to go back and get a perma-ban. Pretty gross.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a happy story. Quitting poker hadn’t done anything to make me happier, gambling was of course a symptom of my depression, not a cause of it, so giving it up has done nothing for me. It’s probably made things worse—poker was at least getting me out of the house, being around people, occasionally feeling good about myself, etc.

I’ve tried other hobbies—bowling and competitive Scrabble, renewing my gym membership, etc—and while it’s nice to track my improvement, they still leave me feeling empty inside. I’m about as close to Cobaining myself as I’ve ever been—there’s just extremely little to look forward to, in ten years my kids will be out of the house, my parents will be dead, and my disease (Multiple Sclerosis) will continue destroying my mind and body at an ever increasing rate.

I don’t want to plans this all on that drunk guy cracking my AAJ9 with some garbage in a $1600 pot, but it has definitely played *a* role.

never give up brother (in life). wish i could have a beer with you or something but i really cant drink.

Davo, I’ve always enjoyed reading your posts on here. I was sorry to see you’d banned yourself but I def understand why you’d do it. Sorry to hear you’ve been having a tough time. Do you have anyone you can talk to IRL? Do you see a therapist? A lot of people close to me have struggled with depression at times and seeing someone can be really beneficial.

Great thread

Indeed a great thread OP sorry you ended up realizing you were addicted but at least you realized it. Good luck in life my man

UPDATE: So I started drinking in October, just to do something, and while at first it was just a couple a night it quickly spiraled out of control, to finally getting blackout drunk in front of all our friends and family at a Christmas party and telling my wife several times that I wanted to die.

Fortunately, this was a bit of a blessing in disguise, as everyone staged an intervention of sorts and I agreed to stop drinking and, more importantly, start seeing a therapist to get some help for my depression.

In the game-playing world, though, I have discovered a new obsession: I joined our local Scrabble club and have become *obsessed*. I swear to God, I pulled ATRESIA out of the bag last night and I got the exact same rush I used to get from getting a big bluff through or flopping a set. And it’s just really nice to have a new hobby—something new I can do in my spare time and track my improvement. Sure, it’s useless—no one really cares how quickly I can rearrange the letters in EGINOSU to make IGNEOUS, and it’s not like I’m even learning what these words mean—but even still…it’s keeping my brain active and gives me something to look forward to every week…which is better than anything I’ve had in a long time.

igneous is a type of rock

this is an interesting fact about scrabble that I hadn't considered....that you can know words without their definitions. There was a guy who won scrabble championships in foreign languages that he did not understand. Pretty funny!

Another update:

I've fortunately discovered that I don't miss poker AT ALL. All the energy I used to apply towards poker, it now goes straight to Scrabble word study.

Last weekend, I played in my first ever Scrabble tournament: 23 games over two days. First game Saturday started at 8 Am and we played until 9:30 at night.

I had an absolute blast. A few weeks before the tournament, I'd happened to play the director of it in a club game, and, against all odds--he has a rating over 1800--I beat him. So on the strength of that, I granted my waiver and allowed me to move straight up to compete in the second division (of three), which I really appreciated.
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...And it was clearly the right decision, for in my 23 games I went 11 and 12, smack in the middle of the pack, against players from all over the country. I made a lot of awful amateur mistakes (I played two phony threes!), but also pulled off a series of great plays, finding words I'd only just started studying in the last few weeks, hitting "bingos" (playing all 7 tiles on your rack for a 50-point bonus) on words like COONTIES, LORICATE, RELIEVOS, DOLERITE, DISSEAT, AEROBIA, DUOTONE and SOLERET. One of my games had the most exciting finish I've ever come across: I was down by 95 points with no tiles left in the bag, but with ACENOR(blank) on my rack I hit ACTIONER for a 72-point out-bingo and, after sticking my opponent with a Z and a couple other garbage tiles, eked my way into a 12-point victory.

I'm obviously nowhere near an expert, but I can compete against them, and Scrabble is a game that, like poker, has enough variance that poor players are still capable of beating very good players on occasion. It really is a wonderful game. It has all the best elements of poker (especially at our level: you can bluff by attempting fake words* and hoping your opponents don't challenge; there are different play-styles, with some playing very conservatively and others very loosely; and, of course, there's a ton of math) with none of the drawbacks. None of the players are *******s. They're mostly just nice old ladies who've been playing since JFK was President, or young guys with a touch of the 'tism who will talk for hours about their favorite anagram of AENORTS or that one end-game they had back in 2017 Albany when they Q-stuck their opponent to win by a point.

*Okay, my favorite fake words that stayed on the board because my opponents were too unsure to risk challenging (if you challenge and are wrong--if it IS in the dictionary--you lose your turn):

WANG
LIBATE
THIANIDE
AEROBIAS (AEROBIA is already a plural--it's the plural of AEROBE--so it can't take an S. But I didn't know that when I added the S to it!)

You should play some WSOP Circuit events; they might let your straight beat a flush and your opponent won’t challenge it strongly enough.

Didn’t Cobain write a song called Thianide? 😉

Sincerely happy for you, I’m a year sober April 3rd.

One more update, since this is just a Scrabble thread now:

I beat a national champion last night!

https://imgur.com/a/kDU8HqE

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Now of course, there’s enough luck and variance in Scrabble that winning one game is kinda like, oh, winning a 100-hand session of heads-up NLH. The sample size is meaningless—Jim is obviously a way better player than I am and it would not surprise me at all if he beat the next fifty times we played—but: it mattered a lot to me! I really felt like I belonged, that I had made the right choice in giving up cards to focus on these word lists. Talking about his end-game strategy afterwards, sharing a laugh over my attempted phony of UNSIZE—it all felt so nice, like I finally have some direction in my life again.

I have another update:

I have won money at Scrabble for the fir...

I competed in the 2026 Greeneye Scrabble Tournament in Bloomington, Minnesota, and finished in the money for the first time ever: I went 14 and 9 over 23 games, good enough for third place, and a $310 prize.

But more importantly: it was just a really great weekend of Scrabble. It's so nice to see my studying immediately pay off, as I was able to play a bunch of really neat words, including GNATHION, JNANA, INDULINE, ASWIM, DIORITES, MOILER, GEUM, KENDOIST, OVOLI, and POINDED.

And there was some drama: my final game, I controlled my own destiny: if I won, I'd take third, and if I lost, I'd take fourth. Fortunately, I was able to Bingo on three of my first five moves (with DOGVANE, DEVISAL, and SAPIENS) and was able to cruise to a stress-free blowout win to capture the prize:

http://imgur.com/a/AEk09Sm

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I've not been back to the casino since I two years ago, and I do not miss it in the least. Scrabble has all the positives of poker with none of the negatives.