Early last year I was one of the biggest winners at both 100nl and 200nl FR on PokerStars and was well on my way to beating mid-stakes NLHE. I moved into a small apartment with my girlfriend and everything was great. Eight months later I was almost broke. So how could this possibly happen? My girlfriend started having some pretty serious medical problems and was no longer able to work and because of the nature of the problems and the lack of supportive family members I had to be with her 24/7. I basically stopped playing, and when I did play I wasn’t playing well and lost money. Things snowballed hard from there and got worse and worse.
Fast-forward to now. It’s mid-late July of the following year, and we now live in my parents’ spare bedroom. The first week of this month my girlfriend was in the hospital. I still have to watch her 24/7, though she has been steadily improving since her condition immerged last year. I’m playing 50nl on PokerStars trying to get my head back on straight, and I owe more in back taxes than I want to think about ($6000+). I have about $650 in my bank account, about $1250 online, and $1500 in a bonus that will clear at the end of this month.
My play is relatively solid right now, so I’m not too worried about that. My biggest obstacle right now is getting in the volume of hands that I need to pull myself out of this. For example, I’ve only played something like 22k hands this month. I’ve barely been maintaining my Supernova VIP status, which is worth a decent amount of money by itself. I’ll post more about this later.