it’s time for the simple truth and we have a special guest that’s also joining us today she’s one of the top ranked female poker players in the world and she’s also dr. Judy’s sister [Applause] today’s question comes from will who needs help knowing when to Hold’em and when to fold them so well how is gambling impacted your life over the past 11 years I lost 300,000 plan Texas Hold’em I will that’s a lot of money a lot of money when it’s all you have that sounds like to me that you have a bit of a problem and it’s not like you’re playing poker anymore for the skill aspect of it for the strategy because you love competition it’s because you’re chasing your losses i journaled about everything when I started this journal you know what the title of it was cause I was gonna think about me to turn into a book how I lost a hundred thousand dollars playing Texas Hold’em mm-hmm that was in 2011 I went on to lose another 200,000 do you find sometimes that you have an urge to gamble like kind of sitting there and you think have you really fun right now I want to scratch that itch whenever I go it’s like because I want to try to win my money back it’s not okay what about lying to other people about your gambling or how much you’ve lost I wouldn’t have told anybody if I hadn’t gotten down to where I needed money for food right and that’s the other thing starting to ask for other people to take financial responsibility for your losses so that’s happened that’s happened so has it affected your relationships that people said that they were worried about you or hey this is sister okay sister so that’s another one that’s another criteria just so you know for gambling addiction what about the fact that sometimes you do it too maybe escape a negative feeling I definitely boredom or no question about that that’s a big one okay and then what about it impacting your ability to work or your jobs or being able to financially care for your stealing cars it’s a stressful job anyway it does stress me out I’m good at it I do good at that but it’s not really what I want to do I really want to play poker I know you want to play poker and let’s talk about having the gambling addiction where you’re sort of chasing that high and you’re saying there’s no urge but actually just gave me six criteria for gambling disorder so you definitely meet the criteria in order to be a professional poker player you have to have so much self-discipline if you weren’t doing it out of boredom then when you sit down you would appreciate the strategy element of game the skill element of a game and you wouldn’t be thinking oh man if I just get involved in that pot it’s $3,000 pot I have a really bad hand but I’m gonna go with it anyways because then I can make back my losses from the last time I played and now you just are completely stuck in this vicious cycle where you will just keep losing first of all this is a big thing because we do want you to get a handle on all of this first so you can move on so Kentucky Counseling Center is offering you a free evaluation just to assess whether or not this gambling addiction is going on and if there is a gambling addiction which I believe there is then you’re gonna get some resources for next steps from here to really make sure you get this all sorted out thank you also we’ve arranged for ten sessions of financial planning was the kiyose financial to help you get back on track thank you thank you you told us that you wanted to create your journal and wanted to turn it into a book so we’ve signed you up for online writing classes for one year taught by some of the best in the business we want to reach her we want you to read thank you so much for having the courage to face the truth and know that we wish you the absolute best thank you all right
Mario Ho rocks..