The legendary 2+2 Degen Stories thread was launched at the height of the poker boom in 2009. For 14 years, it has accumulated more than 14,000 posts and five million views.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/54/poker-beats-brags-variance/degen-stories-447948/

We have repeatedly translated the most interesting stories.

All posts can be found by the corresponding hashtag.

In recent years, the theme has somewhat lost its former luster, but some worthwhile stories still come around.

PokerTwice:

I played in a casino, although most recently they had banned me for a year. I sat down at the No-Limit $1/$3 table and in one of the hands, I made a hand that paid the $500 high-hand jackpot. I had to throw it away and deliberately lose the hand because I was afraid that the jackpot would be paid only upon the presentation of identification documents.

I put myself in such a stupid situation and was so tilted because of this that I called two all-ins with 84o for my whole stack, lost $300, and left.

jcorb:

Yesterday I lost $400 in $8/$16 limit hold'em. I didn't win at all. Came back to the casino today and sat down at $3/$6 to see what other humiliations awaited me. I bought in for $100, and was down to the last $15. I raised with [Qx][Qx], andgot three calls. Flop [Ax][Ax][5x]. The bad beat jackpot was $22,000. ONE TIME!

Turn was an ace! Great. The dealer called the floor. I bet, tight grandma paid. I was sure that she had a minimum [Ax][10x]. River was [6x] and I shoved $2, having no doubt that $11,000 was already in my pocket. There were some ooh’s and ahh’s as I opened [Qx][Qx] and grandma turned [Ax][3x] … Her kicker didn't play, and we didn't get any jackpot ( ed. – to get a bad beat jackpot, both pocket cards must participate in the combination ). FML.

mytvisfree:

Over the past three years, I have lost $170,000. In f***ing online roulette. Once I tore up PLO online. Sometimes I went to the casino to have a couple of drinks and bet $40 on blackjack. I could lose or win, it didn't affect me in any way, I calmly went home. But once I tried roulette. I don't know what’s going on, but when the wheel turns, it's like the devil gets into me. I completely lose control of myself.

Recently, I don’t keep money online at all, otherwise, I immediately lose it on roulette. Once I promised myself that I would hold on. Made a deposit of $2,000 – 40 buy-ins on PLO50. I started grinding, set myself the goal of winning $10,000, and did it in 3 weeks. I won’t say that I played so good, it just went incredibly.

I went to PLO400, opened two tables, and immediately lost the buy-in. It's not a big deal. But then I immediately lost another one, even as a 93% favorite. On tilt, I opened the roulette wheel, then closed it… But I couldn't help myself and opened it again. I made two bets of $200 per dozen and won both. In just two spins, I returned the entire loss to PLO! What a wonderful game. I opened PLO again, but I played too loose and deservedly lost. I started roulette, bet on dozens and numbers, caught an incredible run and spun up to $22,880. Holy shit! A couple of weeks ago I dreamed of winning $10,000, and now I have twice as much. I put $5,500 on withdrawal. No more *** roulette.

On a roll, I opened PLO $5/$10, and promised that I would leave if I went below $15,000. I win a little, then lose two big hands, and it's at $15,000.

I started the roulette. I put $1,500 on the second dozen but canceled the bet at the last moment. It's a lot of money, what am I doing? I'd better go to bed. But I stayed to see where the ball would fall. 16! ****!! I deprived myself of $3,000, now he will definitely have to play.

I bet $2,000 – lost, another $1,000 – lost. What a ***. I promised myself to leave for $10,000. I bet $1,000 on two dozen, lost. What the ***?

For a while, I was betting on two dozen at once and kept around $11,000. Tired, I decided to bet on the color. $1,000 on black – lost, $1,500 on black, missed again. Two bets of $2,500 on red, all lost. A real hysteria began, I screamed obscenities at the monitor, began to choke, and blamed everyone around me. I put the remaining balance on a dozen. Lost.

Continuing to curse the whole world, I remembered about the cashout, it was in the status "processed". I canceled it and opened the roulette. I won't go into details, but, of course, I lost everything. Minus $23,000 for an hour, I spent most of it in half an hour. I wanted to die.

I'm just not capable of winning. Even when I play correctly, it still only does harm. Sometimes I wonder what will happen if I win a major tournament. And I understand that nothing good will happen. With my approach, it is simply impossible to be successful in gambling.

Feen-dog:

I registered specifically to tell a couple of stories.

1. I started seriously gambling at the age of 18. After school, I got a job in a call center for $500 a week and moved out from my parents to live with friends in a small apartment. I went to celebrate my first salary in a bar and ended up dropping it in slots in 20 minutes. There went money for the first payment of the apartment, food, and the way to work. I didn't want to tell my friends that I wouldn't be able to pay my first rent because of my gambling addiction, so I used the old-fashioned way – I called my mom. I said that there was some mistake in the bank, and my money was stuck. I asked for a loan for a couple of days, but she refused to help me, haha. I didn't know what to do, a work friend advised me to call the bank and ask to connect an overdraft. It worked, they gave me $300! This is enough to buy food for a week and pay for an apartment. On the way home from work, I saw a casino, and lost that $300. I had to admit to my friends that I had stolen all the money for the apartment.

2. Around the age of 20, I learned about online gambling. One day, while waiting for friends to visit, I decided to pass the time at blackjack. I made a deposit of $50 on paddy power and quickly spun up to $300. Switched to slots, caught a couple of bonuses, andwon $1,200. At this moment, friends came, were stunned by what was happening, and I decided to continue. After a while, I already had $6,000 in my account, none of us had ever seen such money. My friends persuaded me to stop, I put money on withdrawal, but they refused me because the account was not verified. I had to send them a scan of the documents, but I didn't have a scanner. We agreed that a friend would scan my license at work. But he could only do it the next day. My friends were worried that I would lose everything, but I convinced them that this would not happen, I would be looked after by a girl who hates when I play. In the evening I kept myself in hand, but in the morning I couldn't stand it, opened a client, and lost all the money in five minutes, lol.

3. Of course, I couldn't pass by online poker. My friends and I played microlimits on Pokerstars every day and cheered for each other. One day I decided to play a 180-man SNG for $15 for a shot and won $740. I immediately went to $2/$4, this limit seemed unthinkable for us. I started to run like a God, I quickly spun up to $2,500 and decided that I was the best player in the world. The next day I drank a little and went to $5/$10, where I quickly lost everything. The most fun hand: I opened in the cutoff with a raise of $30 with [8x][7x], the BB reraised to $60, I answered with a 4-bet of $180, he shoved with [Ax][Ax], and I paid. I played so-so, haha.

4. This is the most painful story. Sometimes I would launch the online casino right at work when there was a lull. I made a deposit of $20, and received the same amount as a bonus. I spun it up to $1,000, which greatly impressed colleagues who were not very well-versed in gambling. I returned home and continued to play until the girl returned (not the one that was in the previous story). She also knew that I was a complete gambling addict and would have killed me if she had caught me playing. There were 1.5 hours left before her return, during which time I won another $4,000 in blackjack. We watched the movie, everything was going great. I said I was going to take a shower, locked myself in there, and played blackjack on my phone. You can only play one hand in the app, so I bet $1,000 each to spin as quickly as possible. And I did it, went up to $18,000, utter madness. At two o'clock in the morning, I woke up, decided to play a couple more hands to round up the amount to $20,000, and then put everything on withdrawal. At 2:09, the balance was 0.

Bluffer232:

Played an expensive private game in China. It was Thanksgiving Day in America, and one guy promised his relatives that he would call them on Skype at 8 am. He planned to finish playing in about an hour to make it home. But he lost $15,000, got tilted, and couldn't leave. He also did not want to refuse to talk to his loved ones, so when the time came, he asked the owner of the house for a laptop and a home T-shirt to pretend that he had just woken up. He tossed his hair a little and called home from the master bedroom. Half an hour later he returned to the table and lost another $20k.

Reversed:

Played $1/$2 offline. One guy about 50 years old ran me over in a pot for $100 and threw a $5 chip to the dealer. When she threw it into the tip box, he asked: "Where's the change? I asked you to break the chip." The whole table stared at him in disbelief. The dealer replied that she had not heard anything, and the players confirmed it. He began to argue irritably and demanded the floor. In order not to waste time, I threw him $3, and at the same time another regular, sitting on the opposite side, threw the same chip with me. The best part of the story is that this guy calmly took our $6, added it to his stack, and went to the cashier.

Equity48:

My gambling history lasted 15 years. In 2004, when I was 20, I founded a company from scratch and by 2008 earned $1.5 million. We were engaged in mortgage loans, so because of the crisis, the business had to be closed. Due to the bankruptcy of some customers, the company was left with $750,000 in debt. But I still saved up more than $1 million. I didn't know what to do with myself, I started playing expensive closed cash games and quickly lost everything. I went to Borgata for the last $10,000, where I spun it up to $300,000 in five hours in blackjack. When I was collecting money at the cashier, the manager came up to me and offered me a free suite for the night. I agreed, and the next day I lost everything in an hour. I bet $5,000 each from three boxes.

I began to participate in financial fraud against banks, and a year later I was arrested by the FBI. I admitted my guilt, made a deal with the investigation, and had to go to prison for two years. I continued to gamble even during the preliminary hearings. One day I was playing poker in an underground club in New York, and the police began to break in on us. They were enraged that there were metal doors in the club, and the guards did not want to let them in, so because of this they began to check the documents of all those present. Fortunately, nothing came up about me.

When it was time to give up, I fled to Miami using forged documents. I continued to play there, but there was nowhere to take money, I returned to the dark business again. I managed to hide for 6 years, but one day someone knocked on my door. It turned out that I had been followed for a whole year, so they found and confiscated all the money I had saved without any problems. There wasn't a cent left, I couldn't even afford a lawyer. I had to use the services of a public defender, who made the worst deal possible. However, my flight from justice and repeated violations of the law did not help much either. I was sentenced to 11 years, although I was accused of fraud for only $1 million. This is pretty shitty considering how much white-collar workers usually get for such amounts.

I served eight years and came out quite recently. The last two years in prison were quite easy, as I was transferred to a colony with a light regime. Now I'm 35, and with my track record and holes in my resume, it's not easy to find a job. But I have gained invaluable experience and many life lessons. The main thing is to stay away from cases in which you completely lose control over yourself. Until I started gambling, I did not understand what drove drug addicts who are ready to rob even the closest people for a dose. Then I realized that I was no different from them, I just have a different addiction. The first step is to admit that you have a problem, and the second is to start solving it.

Mustang321321:

I work in a casino. One day a grandmother came to us with her daughter and granddaughter in the last month of pregnancy. They had a coupon for a free frying pan. It took them two hours to get to the casino by car, and about halfway through the granddaughter's contractions began. The mother said they would still have time to stop by the casino. When it turned out that they arrived an hour before the start of the distribution of gifts, the mother made a scene. But we couldn't do anything – the employees responsible for the action hadn't even come yet. The daughter was eventually taken away by ambulance. All because of the $10 frying pan. I'm not even sure she got it in the end.