Since the shutdown of online poker as we know it I've experienced a wide variety of emotions. I try not to feel entitled because it seems like an awful way to go about things but I really do feel robbed that I can't play poker online anymore. I now have a pretty huge gap in my life which was once filled by online poker for many hours day in and day out that now has to be filled by...live poker.

I think for all the good things online poker brought me it effected me in other ways which I was blind to at the time. It was basically too good to be true, logging tons of hours and playing infinite hands in the comfort of my home, playing as many tables as I wanted. I think online poker was a video game and many of the nuances do not carry over to live poker and vice versa. What I'm trying to say is that it spoiled me and made poker into something that it had never been before.

I feel silly equating it to something so extreme but the analogy I'm imagining is some sort of hardcore drug user who has been getting bombed off the same stuff from the same guy every day for years. Then all of a sudden his guy just doesn't have strong drugs anymore, all he has is stuff that is 1/10th as effective as what he previously was indulging in. The obvious difference is that without online poker I don't feel any physical withdrawls but mentally I am definitely struggling a bit. I am certainly experiencing an interesting adjustment period playing so much more live poker than I have before but at the end of the day all it does is make me miss online poker more and more. I am excited to play live poker and try to improve as much as I can because it truly is a different beast than the internet but the process is pretty grueling at times.

Live poker is definitely more of an emotional game despite how much I remove my emotions from poker. I acknowledge the fact that my life would be nothing close to what it is now if poker never existed but it's hard to remain that objective on a day to day basis. Patience is a virtue though and it's never been more relevant for me to maintain it.