I’ve been noting the possibility of this day for quite a while, and it’s finally here. I am saying farewell to online poker, likely for quite a while, but also likely, not forever.<\/p>\n
I expected the day to come sometime in January, having gone through a very long drought of cashing in a tournament. Then, as I was about to run out of money in my account, I cashed on back-to-back days, coming fourth then eighth, adding enough money to last another two months. Since I didn’t cash again (though came very close a number of times), and the two months have now passed, it’s over.<\/p>\n
I have a small amount in a secondary account, and could play some very low-stakes tourneys if the itch really hit me, but I don’t intend to do even that.<\/p>\n
It was a fantastic run. I played my first ever online poker game on September 1, 2004. The last time I deposited money in my account was April 2005, so that money has lasted a very long time, and given me untold pleasure (yes, I still love online poker).<\/p>\n
So, if I love it, and can afford it, why am I giving it up?<\/p>\n
I have had to hop from site to site to site over the short number of years, as the US frightens online operators into dropping US citizens. Along the way, I have enjoyed the sites less and less, and the schedule of tournaments hasn’t matched my interest as much either.<\/p>\n
Still, I was reasonably happy with my main site for the past two years. Until they changed their software and schedule so dramatically that I cut back to one tourney a day for the past six months (on the days that I played at all).<\/p>\n
To add insult to injury, while I was draining my account, I got a note from them telling me that I wasn’t playing enough, and my status<\/em> was being downgraded<\/em>. Nice. In a down economy, rather than trying a carrot approach to entice me to play more, they chose the stick. Well, it worked, they won’t have to worry about downgrading me any further. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n Given my obsessive personality, I am sure it won’t take long for some other activity to fill the void. I already have a good idea of what that will be, but this isn’t the right post to announce it…<\/p>\n Poker, thanks for the ride, see you down the road! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been noting the possibility of this day for quite a while, and it’s finally here. I am saying farewell to online poker, likely for quite a while, but also likely, not forever. I expected the day to come sometime in January, having gone through a very long drought of cashing in a tournament. Then, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3,12,2,18],"tags":[1363,1368],"class_list":["post-1243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4","category-3","category-gambling","category-2","category-poker","tag-gambling","tag-poker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1243"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1247,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions\/1247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}