Poker Players who went insane and/or succumbed to serious drug issues
They all seem to share a high IQ, sometimes well-educated, sometimes not
Stu Unger: Drug addiction,
Vanessa Selbst: Currently publicly ranting about delusional and insane conspiracy theories
Matt Marifioti: Talented HS reg online, sadly too his life
Credit to
Garrett Adelstein: Seems to realize his paranoia was wrong
ADZ124 comes to mind. A sad ending to a troubled mind.
Doing custom HUDs for about 15 years professionally, never met anyone with bipolar disorder in real-life, but 3 of my customers suffer from this, one of them ended his life. I wouldn't say that Poker is the cause, but rather that it's appealing to this kind of minds. And can also confirm the statement about high IQ. I'm tested on 133, my average customer is doing better, have to admit that. Really want to urge people to take care of themself and their social environment. Life is short and the sexy thing about it, is to live it!
Is the amount of people who went insane, or became highly addicted to drugs much higher
than the average. This will happen to some measure of the population.
Is this type of thing worse in poker?
Durrrrr
Doing custom HUDs for about 15 years professionally, never met anyone with bipolar disorder in real-life, but 3 of my customers suffer from this, one of them ended his life. I wouldn't say that Poker is the cause, but rather that it's appealing to this kind of minds. And can also confirm the statement about high IQ. I'm tested on 133, my average customer is doing better, have t
♥
What conspiracy theories are Vanessa into these days?
Is the amount of people who went insane, or became highly addicted to drugs much higher
than the average. This will happen to some measure of the population.
Is this type of thing worse in poker?
It seems surprisingly rare to me. Sure we have a few examples but after 20-25 year of poker players being in the public eye, the number is fairly low. Just from my high school year as an example of a random sample of people off the top of my head, the rate of mental illness, suicide, problematic drug abuse seems way higher in that sample than in poker.
On one hand it seems intuitive that poker, being a loner friendly activity, would attract more people with these kind of issues. But in reality it doesnt seem to be the case.
Maybe the fact that you need some level of mental stability, focus and clarity of mind to get into poker and succeed, even for a short period of time, filters out a lot of these people with more unstable personality traits.
Just in my grade 5 class alone two of the like say 14 boys in my class are convicted murderers from drug induced actions. We doin alright. and they were not even the two sketchiest dudes
Apparently being publicly anti-Trump counts as a conspiracy theory.
We should not overlook the fact that the poker world is full of people with serious compulsive gambling issues.
The late Bill Allan, for example, a mid-stakes Foxwood regular, freely admitted to using +EV poker as a sort of methadone maintenance for his gambling addiction.
Doing custom HUDs for about 15 years professionally, never met anyone with bipolar disorder in real-life, but 3 of my customers suffer from this, one of them ended his life. I wouldn't say that Poker is the cause, but rather that it's appealing to this kind of minds. And can also confirm the statement about high IQ. I'm tested on 133, my average customer is doing better, have t
Statistically it's likely you've met other people with bipolar disorder and not even known it. I used to work in a related field to the mental health industry, and I would see paperwork that included peoples' mental health diagnosis. There's a misconception that everyone with bipolar disorder is "crazy, " while in reality many of them probably take a pill twice a day and would otherwise appear stable and normal when their condition is well treated.
I just googled it and about 4.4% of the population will experience bipolar disorder at some point in their lifetimes. Add in people with other disorders and drug problems, and it's a significant percentage of the population. So I don't think it's anything in particular about poker players, although I do suspect that poker attracts many people with certain characteristics, especially "addictive personalities, " and predispositions to various sorts of addiction, including to drugs and gambling.
I remember the days around 20 years ago where he (ReloadThis) would sit at the highest stakes of NLHE cash games that Pokerstars would offer at the time (I think it was 5/10), and would get absolutely and utterly destroyed.
The funny thing is, he would sit at the 100/200 LHE games and just monkey-aggro the games for a short amount of hands and completely crush them, and then go lose it all and more at NLHE.
I played with Flack a few times live. He played relatively solid if he wasn't absolutely smashed. But holy **** his soft skills were incredible. He would get people to do exactly what he wanted and probe information out of them incredibly well.
The WacoKidd, dude got a full running start before he jumped off the deep end
Stealthmunk, haven't heard much about him in the last few years
I remember the days around 20 years ago where he (ReloadThis) would sit at the highest stakes of NLHE cash games that Pokerstars would offer at the time (I think it was 5/10), and would get absolutely and utterly destroyed.The funny thing is, he would sit at the 100/200 LHE games and just monkey-aggro the games for a short amount of hands and completely crush them, and then go
Flack scummed me and cancelled like 8 winning bets I had placed with him and accused me of sharping a few yrs before he passed. Not to muddy his name or anything, it is what it is
Gavin Smith, Chad Batista
Matt Marafioti definitely at the top of the list and was so obvious that it was not going to end well for him. Played right out on social media for all to bare witness yet family and friends could do nothing to help
Lil Holden is another that pops up. He admittedly would tell you at the table after he went busting how messed up he was mentally another sad ending.
Rich Lyndaker Nutsnho is another one that comes to mind. Brilliant mind but his own worse enemy no social skills and an alcoholic with drugs
These kids were all brilliant but suffered severe mental turmoil sadly they passed away too young
Matt Marafioti definitely at the top of the list and was so obvious that it was not going to end well for him. Played right out on social media for all to bare witness yet family and friends could do nothing to helpLil Holden is another that pops up. He admittedly would tell you at the table after he went busting how messed up he was mentally another sad ending.
Lol, he was universally well liked asfaik so lack of social skills seems like a dumb thing to say. Even though I don't had any close mutual friends what I heard is that it was a legit accident and he had not been on prescription drugs for a long time at all. Mentioning him in this thread is so dumb, you dont have a drug issue if you accidentally overdose on prescription drugs. If you are a former friend of him and know more its even worse that you mention him here.
We might need a bigger sample size. Also, how many non-poker players post delusional, conspiracy stuff on X? Any other areas standing out outside of gambling? The drug usage might be related to the money itself + highly stressful profession. I think it is fairly well established that drug usage was/is a big think on Wall Street for example.
