Alcohol … The Party's Over - Part III

Part III of this trilogy is clearly the most difficult for me to write. In Part I and Part II, I shared with you some of the sillier things I've done in my life, but they pale in comparison to what I'm about to tell you. This isn't exactly a rags to riches story; it's more of a riches to rags story.

In Part II, I left off at the beginning of 2000 when I decided to play live-action poker that year and take a break from the rigorous tournament circuit. Well, that's exactly what I did.

I planned on playing poker at Bellagio perhaps two or three times a week. The rest of the time I would spend playing golf, relaxing, and hanging out with friends. It all sounded like such a great idea, and exactly the life I always wanted to lead … but be careful what you wish for!

At the time, I was as financially stable as I'd ever been. I had just come off a huge month at the Taj Mahal in December, where I won the championship event and did very well in the side games. I could, in essence, spend the entire year playing golf and having fun, without playing even one session of poker, and still be OK financially. As it turned out, I wish I would have stayed out on the links the whole year and as far away from the poker room as possible!

So, what happened? What went wrong? I'm getting to that. Suddenly, I just didn't care that much about my results in poker. A win or a loss wouldn't change my life any, and that is supposed to be a good thing! I didn't play with the same tenacity I once did, and basically became bored within my first two hours at the table. So, what was my cure for boredom? You guessed it! Bring on the cocktails!

Oftentimes I'd play a round of golf with some friends and have a couple of beers in the clubhouse afterward. Then, I'd go home, surf the net for a little while, and head for the poker room. Before that, though, I'd meet some friends and have a fancy dinner at one of the million places where you can do that in Las Vegas. This is where I found my new weakness – red wine.

Dinners usually took close to two hours, which was more than enough time to polish off a bottle of wine on my own. I'd follow that up with a Bailey's coffee, and then it was off to the poker room to socialize. Of course, there is no way I could play poker in that physical state – not if I expected to win, that is.

Miraculously, there always seemed to be a seat open in what appeared to be a good game (the games always look good when you're drunk). Ah, what the heck, I'll sit for a while, I thought. What's the worst thing that could happen?

If I had stopped drinking at that point, I may have had a chance. If you read Part I and Part II,though, you'd know that's just not how I did things. My after-dinner drink was Corona beer with a lime, which I drank until quitting time.

I was beat before I even sat down. I wasn't mentally prepared, and there was no way that I was going to beat a $300-$600 game without all of my available wits. Every once in a while I could get lucky, but in the end, the outcome was inevitable: At 6 a.m., I could barely keep my eyes open, and had a stack of maybe eight $100 bills and four $100 black chips left – a far cry from the $30,000 that was sitting in front of me about six hours earlier. "All in … you win … good night, boys," was the typical end to my night.

I'd wake up the next day at around 4 p.m., hung over and feeling like a complete idiot – a total sucker. Why was I being so self-destructive? I didn't know. Was boredom worth giving all of my money away? Of course not. "I'm never going to do that again," I told myself several times that year.

I can still remember the day I hit rock bottom as if it were yesterday. On my 26th birthday, I embarrassed myself in front of my peers and didn't remember much of anything. I was drinking kamikaze shooters at the table after already doing a week's worth of drinking in one night. I woke up not remembering even one detail of any hand I played that night. I had no idea if I'd won or lost until I went to Bellagio the next day and noticed that there was $70,000 missing from my safe-deposit box.

I went from being financially stable in January to all but broke in August. What a shame. I blew a bankroll that I had spent years and years trying to build. All that work went down the drain in half a year. How pathetic; how embarrassing.

So, I'd have to start all over from scratch. I was able to salvage enough money to make sure that I could pay my bills and other living expenses, but I certainly didn't have the required bankroll to continue playing high-limit poker. I was lucky, though, in that I had people close to me who were willing to loan me some money until I could get back on my feet again.

I went back on the road in December of 2000, and until this present day. I wouldn't change anything that happened to me in the year 2000. I was broken down mentally and physically, and was forced to completely rebuild myself. I learned so much from that experience, though. It has changed my outlook on poker and alcohol – and life, for that matter.

On a more positive note, I was able to come full circle, and I'm a much stronger person and poker player today than I ever was before. I was able to recoup all of my losses from 2000, and haven't really looked back since.

I wouldn't want to lie and say that I'll never drink again, as I still do on occasion. But now, I try to drink more responsibly. I no longer disrespect my money or my opponents by playing high-limit poker while under the influence. It has caused me far too much grief in the past, and I don't want to go down that road again. I know where it leads.

OK, I guess it's time for the moral of the story, although it seems self-explanatory: Drinkin' and gamblin' just don't mix. Allowing alcohol to clutter your decision-making can only hurt you in the long run, despite all the success stories you've heard about drunks.

If you want to be successful at poker, you really have to give every decision you make your full attention. You just can't do that when you're drunk, even though at the time the alcohol demon is telling you, "C'mon, you can beat those guys. They all play so bad that you can beat them with one eye closed, too! We'll just play for an hour and 'see what happens.'" Don't listen to him … I've just told you what happens.

Daniel can be reached via his website: www.fullcontactpoker.com. If you enjoyed what you just read, you can often read similar stories by Daniel that he posts on the poker newsgroup rec.gambling.poker.