Hey Ray sorry to hear you’ve had some bad experiences recently…so you’re leaving us for a bit? Its a shame man, I hope you’ll be back… I feel some kind of affinity with you after we first talked.

I am not going to patronise you by telling you things like “this happens to us all” and “we make money from ‘stupid'”, I know you know all those things and more… But I will just say i too have sometimes seriously questioned my involvement in the game on many levels.

But I always conclude that I never got into poker for the money. We have spoken before about some of my motivation for getting into this game…but the bottom line is I love it.

I know in the States it’s harder to play online for significant sums, but for me those runs when I have the following day off work, I start playing a T in the evening, maybe no expectations of it. The family doing their thing into the evening and I’m still going. Kids in bed…quieter now, just my wife doing her thing. Going deeper now. And into the night when all are in bed and it’s dead quiet and there are significant sums on the line and it’s just myself and my wits  and pure focus…

I live for those moments.

Edit: Also Ray I know you talked about ambitions to go pro. Several years ago, when I finally started to beat 180 SNGs, I had a similar ambition. Having lost my ability to practice my profession due to legal problems, I was ecstatic that I had possibly found a new “out”. At this point I had simply been on a heater, but having studied Harrington On Holdem I was convinced I had put in more work than anyone and knew more than anyone and now I was going to walk into being a poker pro. It sounds silly now, but when the heater inevitably ended, I can honestly say I felt crushed. Not only had I lost my professional career, but now poker had proven to be nothing more than a house of cards also. I got really depressed. It is only now, years later, that the scope of my ignorance about the work involved to beat this game is coming into focus. I am a qualified professional in a respected field, and I can tell you mastering poker is proving a larger and more demanding task than learning to fly a commercial aircraft. And that includes all the ground examinations you need to take. That is a fact, at least for me…(then again, maybe I’m just crap at poker!).

Sincerely Ray, I hope we see you again soon.

Your pal,

Mark