Hi, everybody. My name is Sid, and I’m an addict.
It took me a long time to accept that. But when you take a job in a casino just so that you can be there all the time and try to gain an edge, you’re an addict. It’s obvious even to me. More so to my family and friends, who I barely see anymore.
It’s not pills or coke, booze or heroin that I’m hooked on. I’m addicted to gambling.
The casino that made me so obsessed is not an ordinary one, though. It’s far from ordinary.
You don’t play for money at Fantasy Casino. You play for your dreams.
I hear you laughing.
But have you ever had a really, really great dream? One that got so good you snapped awake the second it started to get really excellent?
Well, imagine that times a thousand. Times a million.
A dream so real and so perfect that all of your fantasies become reality. Time stretches out. You feel like you are there forever. A lifetime passes before your return.
Infinite wealth, the ability to fly like superman, you’re surrounded by sex and beautiful people all day as you relax in a palace built to your mind’s most exacting specifications of perfection.
But then you wake up, and in an instant it is gone.
The power, the wealth, the endless sex and supernatural powers.
Everything is suddenly NORMAL again.
And so you go back to the casino.
I went back to the casino.
But the problem with gambling is that you don’t always win. And when you lose, suddenly the winnings are gone as well, vanished without a trace. All I knew was that I had to have that feeling again.
So I went inside the giant building and then followed the secret signs which led to a door that led to a staircase going downwards.
I went down the stairs and knocked on the door marked “Private” and waited for an answer.
“Password.”
The voice on the other side of the black door waited for my response.
“Seramth Gin.” I said the unnatural words carefully and deliberately, still not knowing their meaning.
A friend had told me the password, a fellow gambler who I would later find dead in his apartment. His corpse white, bloated, and maggot-infested.
His eyes were black and filled with blood which streamed from his eye sockets like tears. He had bit his tongue clean off and his fingernails were found lodged in various surfaces throughout his apartment. Like he had been trying to claw his way out of a steel box that only he could see.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. That was later. At this point I was still hopeful for another wonderful dream. Still thankful for his advice to seek out the place.
The door opened and I walked inside. It was the same as it had been the day before, only less busy at this time – still early afternoon.
I approached the table I had been sitting at the night before.
Poker – Texas Hold ‘em: Ten dream limit – the sign read.
The rules were simple. You got a stack of chips. If you doubled them, you received a dream. If you lost them, you lost a dream.
I wasn’t concerned about losing dreams yet, I still didn’t understand exactly what that meant.
When I lost my first stack of chips, I quickly bought in again. And again. And again.
Pretty soon I realized I had lost eight dreams with no winnings whatsoever. I was in a slump. A losing streak.
I decided to go home and count my losses. Literally, since I had no idea what that even meant.
As I got up to leave the table, the dealer looked at me. His eyes were remorseless and cold.
“See the cashier on your way out,” he said, handing me eight black chips.
I gulped and walked over to the glass window where the cashier sat waiting. Handing him the eight chips, he raised his eyebrows and clicked his tongue.
“That’s a shame. Hold out your hand please.”
Two men in black suits came up behind me suddenly and stood on either side of me, intimidating in their stature and demeanour.
I did as he asked and held out my hand with the palm facing up.
The cashier pulled out a strange-looking device from beneath the counter. It had a vial of vermillion-coloured liquid at the top that was attached to the rest of it which resembled a gun with a hypodermic needle at the end.
I screamed and tried to pull away, but the two men grabbed me and held my arm through the window. Thrashing and elbowing them, I tried to get away but it was useless.
The cashier injected the stuff into my veins quickly and it felt cold and slimy going through my system. I could feel it suddenly in my heart, turning it cold and then up into my mind and my lungs and all extremities causing me to shake and violently seize. I writhed on the floor, blood pouring from my ears and my eyes.
Finally the feeling settled down into a numbness that prickled the insides of my blood vessels. It wasn’t until later, once I realized what the casino really was, that I found out what they had done.
I went home with the certainty that they had injected me with something. If winning had resulted in the greatest dream I had ever had – essentially an almost never-ending fantasy – what would happen after a loss?
Nightmares. That was what it would be. I was sure of it.
I settled into bed that night and closed my eyes, drifting off to sleep quickly after such an emotionally exhausting afternoon.
As soon as my eyes closed, they opened again and it was morning.
It felt as if I had not slept at all. My mind was fuzzy and it was difficult to focus. My eyes wanted to close again but my alarm was telling me that it was time to get up for work, so I hit the “dismiss” button and hopped in the shower.
I threw on my clothes and went out the door. At work I noticed a few people looking at me strangely, but I didn’t realize until someone pointed it out to me that my shirt was on inside-out. At this point I was still working in an office doing commodities trading and such lapses were frowned upon.
If you couldn’t focus enough to put your shirt on properly in the morning, how could you focus enough to get the work done in such a demanding environment? Millions of dollars changing hands with each transaction meant that such trivial things were put under a magnifying glass and coupled with other subsequent mistakes each following day after that, I found myself in the boss’s office by the end of the week being handed my walking papers.
Desperate for rest after days of not feeling any benefit from sleep, I went back to the casino.
They knew just by looking at me how to dig their claws in further. After a couple hours I had managed to win myself a dream.
They handed me the complimentary cocktail as they had the time before. I hadn’t realized the significance of it and still didn’t, despite the unusual vermillion colour of the drink. I swallowed it in one gulp and went out the door practically dancing and clicking my heels, ready to go home and feel rested again.
My dream that night was wonderful. Everything I had hoped for in many ways.
But not as good as the first time. I wanted that feeling back again.
Knowing that it was a dream the whole time and realizing that it was going to end seemed to shorten the fantasy, made it seem hollow and manufactured.
If I could win again maybe it would be like that first time, I thought.
The casino drew me in again and again. I found myself a zombie most days, exhausted, at my wit’s end. Ready to call it quits for good and say goodbye.
But then I would win again and it would all seem to be alright for a while.
My debt kept growing and growing with nearly every trip. The hypodermic needle would be plunged into my skin and every time they had to hold me down. Every time I would feel a little more empty. A little more hollow.
Waking up every day began to feel the same. Nothing had definition or purpose.
“You’re here all the time,” one of the goons whispered to me as they shot the needle into my vein the time after that. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? You should just get a job here and then at least you’ll be in on the secret.”
I applied the next day and got an interview with the boss. I would find out later that if you got someone to apply there you got a one dream bonus.
In his office, the well-dressed man was sitting behind a massive polished ebony desk. The room was adorned with paintings, sculptures, and other high-priced artwork. He had photos everywhere of himself shaking hands with world leaders, new and old, for hundreds of years.
His face never changed. Never aged.
“So, you want to work with us? Tired of dreamless nights without end? You want to have some relief, is that it?”
“Yes. Please. Anything. I’ve been coming here for so long and it’s an endless cycle. I want back what I’ve lost but I keep finding myself more and more in debt with each visit.”
“Ah, so do you understand it now, then? What the ‘injections’ are?”
It finally dawned on me, sitting there. Not injections at all. They weren’t putting something in us. They were taking something out. The vermillion-coloured liquid in the vials – our dreams.
“If I take a job with you, will the same rules apply? Will they still take my sleep, my rest, every time I lose?”
“Yes. We can’t have the employees living by different rules than everyone else. But we will give you an alternative injection, so that you feel well-rested when you come in for your shift.”
“I’ll do it. I need to rest. I need to get some meaningful sleep. My life has been miserable ever since coming here.”
“Well, I can’t promise that this will help,” he said, getting up from his desk with a hypodermic gun in his hand. The vial of fluid sitting atop this one was jet-black and looked evil and poisonous. He rolled up his sleeves as he primed it and I watched a few beads of it drip oil-like out of the tip of the needle.
“What the hell is that!? I don’t want that stuff in me!”
“But you need to sleep, my dear worker. I can’t have you passing out at the blackjack table like a narcoleptic! You agreed to this, after all. You wanted to rest, and the only way for that to happen is for you to have SOME sort of dream. Not everyone is as lucky as you, you know. To have that wonderful vermillion fluid in your veins. Some people come to us begging to take it from them. Some of our employees for example, the ones who do the recruitment for us, are full of this black stuff.”
“What?” I had gotten up from the chair and was backing away from him towards the door. But I found it was locked as he approached.
“First you have to tell me the password, Sid.”
“Seramth Gin.” I said the words that I had said every time to gain access to the casino, only this time I pictured the letters and rearranged them in my mind.
“Nightmares.”
He smiled as he injected me with the vial of black hate, and it went into my veins feeling hot and unpleasant. I began to sweat and the beads of it turned cold on my skin as I shivered.
I’ll sleep tonight. I might even wake up feeling rested. But as long as I live and work at that casino, I’ll be afraid to dream again. Because now my unconscious hours are occupied by the most terrifying experiences imaginable. Nightmares beyond imagining in their awfulness. That is my fate.
Unless… Just maybe, I can win one more time.
JG
TCC

I walked in and was immediately awestruck by the ornate interior of the best casino in the world, The Barterer’s Lounge. Some players were walking around with suits and escorts while other people looked like they had not eaten for days. My cohorts? Adam, Bart, Carl, David, and Erin. We decided to have a seat at a “Texas Holdem” table with someone waiting to play. This guy looked like he had just snorted cocaine, after a 2 day bender on whiskey, but hey, “When in Rome” right? Weird thing is, this guy was in a suit and had five escorts. Five! Judging by the sheer boredom of his lady friends, this dude clearly hasn't left this table in over eight hours.
The table seats six and the rules are very clear. At a new table: The only buy-in is allowed once at the beginning of the game. But you don’t have to pay the fifteen dollar entry fee in cash or otherwise until the end of the game. If you go out, only then do you have to pay the cash. We already knew this and we had plenty of cash for a trip to the casino. Woo! Adam had been saving for, jeez, over a decade? Adam’s been family friends since as long as I can remember. Who knows how old the guy is but he’s Bart’s dad and I love them both. Carl lives next door and we do some work from home but mostly sit at home playing some consoles drinking some beer and doing neighborhood poker with David and Erin. They’re an awesome pair. We all looked at one another and visually confirmed that we had exactly fifteen dollars in cash ready for the game because once you sit down, there is no turning back. Security has a person watching every individual one to one while sitting at a table. It is kinda creepy to have someone watching over you, but hey, I know the rules.
Carl and I were already doing a visual check on this guy and figured he’s too whacked out to be a smart player in this poker game. But he can obviously afford the buy-in so we were very happy to have a few more chips to pass around between the five of us at the end of the game. “Frank, you ready?” Carl asks. “Yeah, let’s rock,” I replied. We all sat down together and the player at the table eagerly agreed to play a game with us. Once we all agreed to play together, one of the security guards powered up the dealer. The automaton started whirring up and a few sparks flew from faulty wiring that obviously hadn’t been maintained in years. But if it works for the house, it works for me.
“Sir, this is a casino,” the robot said. I replied, “Duh,” and the dealer dealt our first two private cards each. Our extra player says “Hold on a sec, I want to make a side wager. I want to put a chip in saying that the old fart loses all his money on this first hand.”
The dealer mechanically screeches “This is a side wager separate from the game’s pot.”
We all looked at each other dumbfounded. “Does this guy even know the rules of Texas Holdem?” I thought. I looked at Carl and I knew that is exactly what he was thinking too. “Yea, I’ll call that for a chip.” We all threw a chip in. But not Adam. Why would he? He still has all his chips and as long as he doesn’t do anything stupid, or even bet at all, Kevin loses that bet.
Our extra player was turning out to be a real go-getter, so I wanted to do some small-talk to bring him off the game. “Hey, My name’s Frank. Yours?”
“Kevin,” he says abruptly between the twitches of his eyelids. “Hey Kevin, nice to play with ya dude,” I reply.
Kevin immediately says, “Hold on, I’ll bet another chip that the old man goes under this hand.” Easiest call of my life. Everyone throws another chip in because old man Adam ain’t no fool when it comes to poker. All he has to do is not wager “all-in” on a losing hand and we all get a few extra chips at the end of the hand. We all toss in that chip.
“Alright let’s get on with it,” Kevin barks at the dealer. The first three cards are shown and immediately Kevin wants to do another chip that Adam goes under this hand. We all call.
I ask him, “So what do you do, Kevin?” He says with a straight face, “Well if I’m not here I’m on my jet going between my five mansions.You know what, let’s put in another chip that Ole Yeller flops on this hand.”
I knew this guy was off his rocker and we didn’t care because everyone knows we’re all good for the money or else the “barter rules” come into effect. We all had visually checked our cash before we sat down. Well I don’t actually know about Kevin but I figure he’s good for it considering his escorts had all bought themselves Wendy’s chicken tenders from the food court on Kevin’s credit card.
Play resumes and Kevin puts a few chips on the actual game of poker this time. Adam does nothing, no surprise there. But the rest of us call Kevin’s position. Who knows what each other’s dealt hands are. I only know mine. “So five mansions huh? Nice,” I say. “You do anything else for fun?”
Kevin looks at me like he wasn’t expecting such filth to speak and disgustedly replies, “Well, I like my yacht. It’s got its own docking port for a smaller yacht. So you could say I’m into water sports.” After realizing he spent even a few seconds humoring me, Kevin shouts, “Let’s do three more chips in another side pot that the old man actually literally dies during the game.”
We all chuckled pretty good at that one and threw our three chips in each. “Let’s play.” Kevin demanded. “Show the next card,” he snarled. As the card lands on the table, Kevin bets ten more chips that Adam goes all-in on a losing hand. Seeing as this is the first round of the game and we all had the same chips at buy-in, it’s a no brainer match position for 10 chips. Meanwhile Adam is stone-cold poker face and hasn’t actually put any chips in on the opening three.
“Alright 15 chips on the play,” Kevin absent-mindendly said without even looking at the card. I noticed that he hadn’t even looked at his hand because his two cards were strewn out in front of him in the original place the dealer placed them.
Everyone but Adam plays Kevin’s bet and the showdown resumes. Well, almost resumes. “And I’ll put half of my remaining chips on my initial bet that pops loses all his chips this hand,” Kevin states. And guess what we all did? We called the bet because we’re all keeping track of how many chips were initially given out and this was a no-brainer that we were all on the same pace of losing chips. Except Adam of course because he hadn’t placed any bets so far. He was ready for a few actual full games of poker. I know he had more than only the fifteen dollar pay-out fee for a single game if he lost.
“And I’ll put the rest on my other bet that the boomer literally dies during this game.” We all blankly looked at each other and threw our remaining chips on that bet. But not Adam, why would he? He’s got all his chips from not even Adam’s old but he’s not on death’s door by any means. He lifted weights professionally in his earlier years and still does cardio daily. Naturally, he doesn’t look a day over fifty.
“We have an ‘all-in’ at the table” the junkbot for a dealer said and an extra set of lights flicked on at our table. They were so bright I was getting a terrible glare from an heirloom ring I had on my finger. I rotated the rock to the inside of my finger and made a fist so the glare wouldn’t blind me.
The robot dealer plays out the last card but it doesn’t matter to Kevin or anyone else because we’re all-in. “The player who placed the initial bet shows their hand,” says the dealer.
And we all waited patiently. We sat together in silence for what seemed like forever.
Until Kevin’s casino-assigned agent realized that Kevin was too coked out to do it himself.
“A two of hearts and a seven of clubs from the initial bet maker.” The dealer continues, “There are no additional plays on the field for the bet maker. The player with the best hand wins.”
I only had a pair of three of hearts and a four of diamonds in my hand.
Carl immediately turns his cards over. “A pair of sixes with another on the table. That’s three of a kind.” We all split the earnings of the initial side bet amongst ourselves minus Adam. And since Adam still had a pulse we all split the second pot too. “This game is closed. All players must pay their cash fee for the round. If any players do not have the cash initially agreed upon to enter the game, barter rules come into effect,” the dealer said. We all reached into our pockets and put the fifteen bucks on the table. Kevin reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a ten dollar bill and a half eaten chicken tender. Kevin frantically searches his other pockets for any cash on his person. “Oh shit,” Kevin muttered as his face turned pale. “I must have spent my cash last night when I was more drunk.”
I perk up a bit because I had no idea that there was even a chance to trigger the barter rule with this guy. The dealer asks, “Do you accept the remaining payment of meat to cover the remaining five dollars of this player’s entry fee?” “Hell no!” I shouted. “I want a million bucks, and one of your houses.”
Bart finally chimes in and says, “Me too. Oh yea and I want your jet.” Carl agrees and adds “And the yacht!” David says, “Don’t forget the mini-yacht too.” Erin says, “I know you have a nice car, We’ll take that too.” Kevin slumps into his chair as the dealer asks, “Are there any other terms to this agreement?” We all looked at each other and Adam added, “And an order of tendies all around. But not for Kevin.”
That was a bad move, Kevin.

my deposit was 10.00 then I won 5 bucks with 6 Max somehow.
15.00
and played roulette. the previous day i had seen success betting on a train of reds and blacks. the next day i picked the correct number, and won
4.90 with 0.10 bet on a whim. there were two triplets that day....so why not a double....after all there are patterns in random....
19.90
feeling good. I fall asleep. the next day I hope to repeat my success....like a stupid heres my thought process and if you can point me to right direction I would be grateful. so i went from 10 to 20 and then went on a full tilt and lost it all.
i had some issues with my back shoulder....had to lay in bed couldn't sit completely or stand so laid in bed decided to play poker and well heres how i lost it all
went to 17.99
i should quit come back when theres more players...but i feel insulted by that slow play.
goes to 15.99
okay get up. this time i get sucked out with KK. cmon man!
9.99
okay definitely walk away. this time I get slapped around like a whore by bigger stack. no honour!
4.00
on my last buy in I thought 'okay playing AAs only.' Shove! bad beat. how is it that i am getting beat with a shit hand when the chip difference is significant?
2.00
I get frustrated and bet it on a number on a roulette. I lose of course.
0.00
I vow never to use 888poker again...
on pokerstars, back when I was a degenerate gamblger...literally went into debt which I paid back. I lost $10,000...also I was on anti-depressants and for some reason started to gamble and I looked at the fucking symptom list and gambling is part of it lol...
so like a stupid person I thought I could make back what I had lost on wsb-esque dangerous stock option bets. calculated insanity mind you but who could predict SEC freeze would end reliably at the end of the day....I fucked up shoving all in...coulda made a million fucking dollars with about $15000. The previous similar shove on this same stock have netted me $5000 USD man I was fucking hooked. thats why I went all in. well some contrarian extremist like me bet almost half a million...poof gone....he lost his entire fucking fund....I think $400K? Imagine buying 400,000
GOAL: I really wanna make back the $10,000 I lost playing also tournaments but dont wanna spend any more than $200, do you know any good stuff on that too? I have already sunk $125. $100 in 888 and $25 in pokerstars..... so I 'm gonna try my luck with bodog.eu with a 40 deposit which I've heard is softer. tbh pokerstar felt softer compared to 888 as it nowhere near has the pokerstar number of players...but pokerstars felt very quite hard.
should I continue or nah? are the tutorials on youtube any good? what books should i read?
I don't think I am reckless as before....back when I was on anti-depressants when I played $500 Spin and Gos...holly hell....what a fuking degen...I just had no sense of fear at all...now I just look back in complete regret
now I strictly fucks with very small buy ins...like 10, 20 deposits that I have lost....this helps me control.
question: are there people out here that make rent by grinding 0.02/0.05 6 max zoom/snap poker?
edit: heyhey i just wanna learn how to do this properly. I appreciate any help.

99Online Poker tells the story of one poker pro who tries to make it big in the world of holdem poker. As he enters the scene, the tables might be a bit shaky due to his overly aggressive play, and his overly aggressive style of playing is what lands him first in trouble. When the tables start to turn, so does 99Online Poker's winning streak. He wins more, until one night stands out above the rest. That night, 99Online Poker shows the world what he can do when he's playing holdem poker online against some of the top players in the world, and this leads 99Online Poker into earning millions of dollars.
This isn't done overnight, though. For the next three years, 99Online Poker slowly gains more players by the week. The holdem poker community at these times consists of hundreds, if not thousands, of players. This is because online poker allows players to play in large poker rooms where holding the actual poker cards is much easier for them. Many of these players join because they like the challenge of working their way up in the ranks from being a regular table poker player to being one of the top players at a known poker room. Others join simply because they love poker and would love to participate in online poker's high-stakes world.
It's understandable how these players feel. They've worked hard to get where they are, and now some online poker room is going to tell them that they're going to be cheated out of their winnings if they stick with their tables. This, of course, doesn't sit well with 99Online Poker players, who see no reason not to fight for their winnings, and aren't willing to give up the chance of seeing their name written all over the internet thanks to some new competition.
It's an interesting part of this story, however. 99Online Poker players treat competition like they do their friends. They respect their opponents, because they recognize that the people who frequent the tables on the site play just as good or better than the players at the big "table" itself. They do this even when they might lose a few wagers, because they know that their opponents can be just as consistent as they are. 99Online players treat their competition with respect for some reason, perhaps because they enjoy the challenge of working their way up through the ranks of the poker world, or maybe because they want to see other online poker players take advantage of the easy, low-stakes way of playing poker that 99Online offers. In any case, it works out pretty well for everyone.
While some players make a living playing poker online, there are plenty of others who lose money doing so. Some of these players simply quit because playing in the real world is just too hard, while others simply give up because they're not seeing consistent winning payouts in their online games. Fortunately, the players at 99ptions always have another room to play in if they lose, so there's really no quitting for these people.
The final reason why players at 99ptions are so successful is because the site is so user-friendly. 99Poker includes many different types of poker chips, including very tiny ones that you can't see with your naked eye. The nice thing is that these chips look and feel just like poker chips in the casino, so you know you're playing in a real casino. When you sit down at a table, you'll be greeted by flashy icons that indicate which game you're playing, and then by colorful buttons that allow you to put in more money to play. Everything is clearly labeled and easy to use, so even the most inexperienced players can quickly learn how to play the different games.

Link to Previous Tales From 2+2: Poker player steals $1m+ chips and tries to sell it on 2+2 poker forums
More Tales From 2+2: A Very Controversial $70k prop bet
Tales from 2+2: Homelessness, Grinding and the Biggest Shot of a Grinder’s Life: The Jared Huggins Story

The Blossoming of TV Poker

The Year is 2006. Online poker is thriving. Partypoker has the highest traffic of any poker site but Pokerstars are gaining new players quickly with aggressive marketing strategies. Lots of poker sites are investing heavily into marketing and one key place to channel their advertising budget is TV. New innovations, improved graphics and increasing funding meant that poker TV is at an all-time peak of popularity.
40% of the the 2006 WSOP Main Event’s attendance is from online sites and poker sites are offering large amounts of cash for players on TV to wear an advertising patch. According to Dan Goldman’s blog, Pokerstars spent over $730,000 on WSOP players’ gift bags. The WSOP is seeing more TV time and this year the $50k HORSE event is added to the TV schedule alongside the WSOP main event. This year’s $50k WSOP HORSE final table saw some huge names including Chip Reese, Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius and Doyle Brunson.

The Path of a New Player

In Finland, Mikael Paisting is watching the 2006 WSOP on TV. He enjoys watching poker broadcasts and is fascinated by the game. It’s a very common story for players to catch an interest by watching poker TV and sign up with to one of the many poker sites available. He chooses to deposit on Partypoker. Mikael is a committed learner and player. He reads several poker books from well-known authors such as Dan Harrington and David Sklansky. He also watches many training videos. Like many players starting in online poker he begins at the microstakes cash tables.
Microstakes are a rite of passage for many online poker players. The limits range from 2nl to 10nl, so the standard buy in is $2-10. Some will play microstakes for weeks, months or even years improving their game and increasing their bankroll so they can move up to small stakes, 25nl and above. Some players see the microstakes as a job and play as many tables as they can to eke out a living wage. Some players have never played microstakes and skip it entirely for higher stakes. Mikael starts to play and doesn’t do well, this is normal for many beginners, even those who study. However, over the next few weeks Mikael continues to lose. Months go by and Mikael still hasn’t turned a profit. He discovers problems with tilt and often takes his frustration out in the chat box. An example of his rage:

Paisting:THAT IS NOT NORMAL OMG!! JUST UNBELIEVABLE

Mikael doesn’t play 10nl very often and spends the majority of him time playing 2nl and 5nl. He continues to multitable cash games on Partypoker but he just can’t win. He starts to lose big, thousands of dollars, mostly at 2nl which is known as the softest cash game on the internet.

Getting Noticed

Mikael continues to play long sessions over the next five years, he claims to play 5-7 days a week for 4-8 hours a day. By 2011 he had played 2 and a half million hands while playing 6 to 9 cash tables at one time. Mikael is still mostly playing 2nl and is down a colossal amount: $7000. Mikael has been suffering from major tilt problems and has a very wild and noticeable style of playing microstakes. He starts to get noticed on 2+2, a very popular poker forum. A player posts a link to his PTR graph, a site which tracks online cash games. They are shocked at his losses over so many hands:

yegor: wow such a massive fail
he played 2.5m hands at 2nl and 5nl and he's losing
Donkey111: I remember him from my 2NL days.
often goes on some massive tilt sessions and spews like 20 BI in 500 hands by shoving any 2 cards preflop.

He even gets hate from his PTR account where he is ridiculed on his profile comments, he also replies:

VELAir26: Spend your time with family, friends or other hobbies instead
Paisting: im fine with this you stupid idiot

Mikael continues to play his reckless and tilting style over the years. By 2014, he has been playing for 8 years and is down five figures at microstakes; he starts to look for excuses for how much he has lost. He posts a thread on 2+2 detailing how he feels that he wins at the start of the month and then inevitably starts to lose. He asks how he can take legal action against Partypoker. His fellow posters tease him:

5thStreethog: Did the thought ever cross your mind that it might be possible that the reason you cant beat NL2 in over a million hands might be because you arent very good at poker?

An Attempt at Redemption

2019 comes and Mikael Paisting has been playing microstakes for 13 years, and steadily losing a lot of money. He got a new computer in late 2018 and has been grinding away on it. Mikael is getting mentioned more on 2+2 and he is well known on the tables of Partypoker as he drops stack after stack. Many players on Partypoker furiously try to get on his tables to call his tilt shoves; when Mikael is present other player’s stacks can get as high as $100 at 2nl as he shoves buy in after buy in to button steals. Some were said to be using seating scripts to instantly be placed on a table with Paisting. At this point he is feeling very low. But despite years of losing money and insane tilting he is determined to improve. Mikael is aware of his losses and has a fierce desire to make back the money he has lost since he’s started tracking on his new PC.
He decides get help and he looks to 2+2, the very same forum that had mocked him over the last decade. He logs in as Paisting, his last name. He starts a new thread, types out a post and chooses a title: 'Biggest loser in online poker history wants to grind $16k'. He posts this thread in the sub-forum Poker Goals & Challenges, a place where players post their goals and try to update their thread with their progress. He posts graphs of his losses from his database on his PC. He starts the thread by posting some shocking graphs of $8700 lost at 2nl, $6000 lost at 5nl and $800 lost at 10nl. At 2nl he had an incredible rate of -170BB each 100 hands. The final graph of his microstakes losses posted show $15,000 lost over 365,000 hands. An average loss of $75 a day.
The 2+2 poker community are stunned by the graphs:

HorseofHell: I'm actually shocked it's possible to lose this much at 2nl
Mahsjdj: This can't be real can it?

Mikael posts about the hard work he’s put into poker and mentions that has watched videos, read many instructional books and is honest with his astounding losses:

Paisting: I've lost literally all my money including all my life savings to online poker. I want to try one last time to win those money back and little bit of extra. That's why $16k. What I need is support and guiding.

The community react to his plan to grind all the money back at microstakes:

Fodersneso: This is really disturbing.
Why on earth would you try to grind this all back? Losing at this rate is traumatizing. You're going to grind out 3000 BIs @nl5 now or what's the plan? Really curious how you think you can turn this pile of insanity around...

The community show disbelief and doubt that his story is real but several posters claim that what he says is true. He has been active in Finnish forums for more than 10 years and players starts to share hand histories and stories about his playstyle. He posts about his regret of picking the game up:

Paisting: Never had a winning week in 13 years.
If it were possible to go back ten years I would say to myself "Do not never play single one hand!"

He then goes on to tell 2+2 posters a disturbing source of his funds for his staggering 2nl losses:

Paisting: I've taken huge amount of fast loans.

He sheds a little light into his personal life:

Paisting: My age and relationships has nothing to do with this. But not working, no kids or wife and middle aged. What I have is time to play.
I get a little unemployment benefit that goes straight to the rent. My eating costs are very little because I'm only eating one meal per day. There are times when I must take more fast loans if need of clothes, unexpected bills, sickness etc. That's why getting back those $16k is so important to me.
No disability, never played anything else than poker or lottery when pots are bigger, maybe 5 times in year. Playing poker does not give me any excitement or I'm not cheering won pots.

Posters try to give him strategy advice, they try to persuade him time and time again that shoving 100+ blinds to a minsteal isn’t a good idea. Some others question his sanity and tell him to quit:

FazendeiroBH: Not trolling, I´m actually serious here. You lost an absurd amount of money playing the easiest stake in the world (nl2). You keep losing doing the same faulty strategy. No book ever said you should jam 100 bb preflop rfi. It´s quite obvious there is something wrong with you and your brain, and the more you delay seeking professional care for your mental problems, the worst it´s gonna be for you.

Paitsing updates his thread with highlight hands from his cash sessions. He seems to cherry pick hands to post and will only post hands where he loses all ins as a 70-95% favourite. He delusion leads him to blame the site, his luck and the other micro grinders. He often writes about specific players and gives his opinion on how badly they play. He often quotes their HUD stats and wide calling ranges while ignoring that they are probably adjusting heavily to his own playstyle. Some time passes and he discloses that he has lost almost $500 at 2nl since starting the thread three weeks ago.
He updates his followers with the first monthly graph of the thread from his 2nl play in April 2019. He plays for 90 hours in April and his average daily loss is $50, 25 buy ins each day. 2+2 players start to analyse the graph. They notice that there are several breakeven spots where he may be playing reasonable poker but also huge 150 buy in downswings, some drops in the graph are so steep that he is losing about a buy in every 5 hands for periods of hundreds of hands. He says:

Paitsing: Only trying to get my money back from guys who are playing nl2 forever and never moving up. When I started poker long time ago I tought it's exciting to read watch videos if it gives me more money. After 2 years figured out it's just sitting on computer like in work and if I'm someday +-0 never ever playing this stupid game. This is like war.

The thread goes on like this for almost a year. The thread repeats itself over and over. He will post a few selective bad beats, ignore good advice and berate his microstakes tablemates. A fellow microstakes grinder makes his first appearance in the thread: 6betpot. 6Betpot would play at Paisting's tables and often win many buy ins, 6Betpot would go on to post highly contrasting hand histories to the bad beats that Paisting posts, he would also reveal Paisting’s preflop 3 bet is around 30%. Some players would criticize 6Betpot for predatory behavior but 6Betpot would maintain that he would try to persuade Paisting to stop playing in a spewy manner. Someone asks to see the hands and 6Betpot posts some, here is one:

888 Poker - $0.02 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
BTN: 250.5 BB
SB (Paisting): 425.5 BB
BB: 101.5 BB
UTG: 100 BB
MP: 106.5 BB
CO: 84.5 BB
Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) BTN has AdQs
fold, fold, fold, BTN raises to 2 BB, Paisting raises to 425.5 BB and is all-in, fold, BTN calls 248.5 BB and is all-in
Flop: (502 BB, 2 players) Kh4s4c
Turn: (502 BB, 2 players) 3h
River: (502 BB, 2 players) Jc
BTN shows AdQs (One Pair, Fours)

Paisting shows 5s Js (Two Pair, Jacks and Fours)

Paisting wins 471 BB<
Later in the thread Paisting would reveal his line of thinking during hands like these; a poster asked why he though 3 betting hands like J5 was a good idea. Paisting replies:

Paisting: If you don't want them to run over you, you must do something. Blind play is very important and you can't let them run over you. When 80+ habit stealer gets shoves straight to his face he must learn at some point that I'm not giving blinds.

Many tried to reason with him and show him clearly why this was wrong, he not only refuted their strategy but would argue against them, often citing his opponent’s HUD stats.
Later on in the thread Mikael posts horrifying news. He explains that he didn’t transfer hands from his old computer to his new computer. The graphs he posted at the start of the thread only showed the tip of the iceberg. He reveals that $16k loss from the graphs was from just 7 months of play!:

Paisting: That 16k is in 209 days and in about 1 year as you can see from the first post. Big part of my losings has left to hard drive of my old crashed computer. That's past and I don't wanna think about it anymore. Main goal is this database I have here in my computer. But yes what I have been repeating many times, moving to 888 poker has sky rocketed my losses although I can play only 6 tables compared to party's 9 tables.

Posters speculate that his lifetime microstakes losses probably amount to six figures:

SpinMeRightRound: I mean if he's lost $20k in the last year, and he's been doing this for more than 10 years, he may have lost $200k or more.

In late 2019, Paisting claims that there was a ring of players were colluding against him. He goes on to say that the new site he plays on, 888, were asking for hand histories from certain players. He showed emails of his communications and posted that 8 players had had their account frozen. He also shows screenshots that his account is temporarily frozen during the investigation. Posters speculated:

CrunchyBlack: Pretty sure they think you're chip dumping lmao
.isolated: They think you're chip dumping to him. Funniest. Thing. Ever. The irony here is nearly palpable.

2020: The Struggle Continues

At the end of the year Paisting posts his 2019 graphs. He says that he hasn’t had a winning week yet and he’s still committed to making back 2019’s losses. His graphs show down 12k from 320k hands of 2nl in 2019.
In January 2020 he continues to post regularly and makes comments about him hunting down players worse than him:

Paisting: When you hunt really bad player (yes enzet there are plenty of worst player than me on 888 look those hand histories really carefully) hours and hours and wait good hand just to site let them to suck out it is affecting your game really badly.

He posts about his continuing struggle to win back the $16k:

Paisting: I have years dedicated for this project and anything back from that amount is winning to me. At this point it’s impossible to make any profit because of horrible suckouts.

He also posts about the high interest loans he’s taken out:

Paisting: I have huge amounts of loans that are basically all taken for poker. I don't eat much and all my other costs are very low.
And because of those loans I must get back so much money that is possible and these suck outs must stop.

February 2020 arrives and he posts his January chart, the worst posted yet. He takes a gigantic loss of $1,550 at an eye-watering rate of 210bb/100 hands. Often when he posts monthly graphs he would highlight that he ran a few buy ins below EV when he would be down hundreds of buy ins for the month.
The months pass and the cycle continues. Paisting posts the usual bad beats, posters berate him and try to give him advice and Paisting resists their efforts. Here is one of many similar hands posted in February:

888Poker, Hold'em No Limit - $0.01/$0.02 - 6 players
UTG: $1.46 (73 bb) Paisting (MP): $7.45 (373 bb) CO: $15.44 (772 bb) BU: $2.00 (100 bb) SB: $3.47 (174 bb) BB: $2.00 (100 bb)
Pre-Flop: ($0.03) 1 fold, Paisting(MP) raises to $7.45 (all-in), CO calls $7.45, 3 players fold
Flop: ($14.93) 6c7c4d (2 players, 1 all-in)
Turn: ($14.93) Ts (2 players, 1 all-in)
River: ($14.93) 8h (2 players, 1 all-in)
Total pot: $14.93 (Rake: $0.93)
Showdown: Paisting (MP) shows 7dTc (two pair, Tens and Sevens) (CO) shows JsJc (a pair of Jacks) Paisting (MP) wins $14

March comes and the regular monthly graph is posted. The uploaded graph shows is he down $1900 or 950 buy ins for last month. Mikael refutes that he is a gambling addict:

Paisting: 888 has given many 10 dollar bonuses to me play slots. I have never played them and in fact my account has 20 dollars freeplay bonus to play their slots. I will not use those money now or in future. So that's gambling addict to you.

April and May roll by and the monthly graphs are posted. He played fewer hands than normal, 43,000. But is down $1,250, all at 2nl.
In June he posts the usual monthly graph with -$1900 and it’s the lowest win rate he’s posted before, a colossal -335b/100hands, the graph has some alarmingly steep downswings with one section where he loses $500 in 1000 hands. That’s a loss of one buy in every 4 hands. Getting these monthly updates shows how quickly he loses money at 2nl and collaborates with earlier estimations that he is likely down more than $100k at microstakes over the past 14 years. Approximations indicate that Mikael has paid over $20k in rake to poker sites over the years.

The End, for Now

Mikael is still playing microstakes to this day. His poker story isn’t over yet but so far it is a sad one. My previous two Tales from 2+2 stories had mostly happy endings but not this one. This story is like a car falling down a cliff and it hasn’t hit the bottom yet.
Let this story be a lesson that poker isn’t for everyone. Players with addiction or mental issues should reconsider if the game is best for their lives. Serious poker players should consider bankroll management and how tilt affects their winrate if they do choose to play.
Seek help if you think you or others need it.
Original thread (Still active)

Link to my online poker HobbyDrama posts: Poker player steals $1m+ chips and tries to sell it on 2+2 poker forums
A Very Controversial $70k prop bet
Poker Forum Help Homeless Player Attempt The Shot of a Lifetime

The Blossoming of TV Poker

The Year is 2006. Online poker is thriving. Partypoker has the highest traffic of any poker site but Pokerstars are gaining new players quickly with aggressive marketing strategies. Lots of poker sites are investing heavily into marketing and one key place to channel their advertising budget is TV. New innovations, improved graphics and increasing funding meant that poker TV is at an all-time peak of popularity.
The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is the biggest event in the poker calendar, it features many poker tournaments culminating in the prestigious $10k Main Event tournament. The Main Event is a popular televised tournament. 40% of the the 2006 WSOP Main Event’s attendance is from online sites and poker sites are offering large amounts of cash for players on TV to wear an advertising patch. According to Dan Goldman’s blog, Pokerstars spent over $730,000 on WSOP players’ gift bags. The WSOP is seeing more TV time and this year an extra event is added to the TV schedule alongside the WSOP main event.

The Path of a New Player

In Finland, Mikael Paisting is watching the 2006 WSOP on TV. He enjoys watching poker broadcasts and is fascinated by the game. It’s a very common story for players to catch an interest by watching poker TV and sign up with to one of the many poker sites available. He chooses to deposit on Partypoker. Mikael is a committed learner and player. He reads several poker books from well-known authors. He also watches many training videos. Like many players starting in online poker he begins at the microstakes cash tables.
The standard buy in for microstakes online is $2-10, if a player plays microstakes for an hour they would probably win or lose a few dollars. 2nl means the big blind is 2 cents and standard buy in is $2, the standard buy in at 5nl is $5 and 10nl is $10.
Microstakes are a rite of passage for many online poker players. Some will play microstakes for weeks, months or even years improving their game and increasing their bankroll so they can move up to small stakes, 25nl and above. Some players see the microstakes as a job and play as many tables as they can to eke out a living wage. Some players have never played microstakes and skip it entirely for higher stakes. Mikael starts to play and doesn’t do well, this is normal for many beginners, even those who study. However, over the next few weeks Mikael continues to lose. Months go by and Mikael still hasn’t turned a profit. He discovers problems with tilt (when players get angry and it negatively affects their play) and often takes his frustration out in the chat box. An example of his rage:

Paisting:THAT IS NOT NORMAL OMG!! JUST UNBELIEVABLE

Mikael doesn’t play 10nl very often and spends the majority of him time playing 2nl and 5nl, buying in for $2-5 at a time. He continues to multitable cash games on Partypoker but he just can’t win. He starts to lose big, thousands of dollars, mostly at 2nl which is known as the softest cash game on the internet.

Getting Noticed

Mikael continues to play long sessions over the next five years, he claims to play 5-7 days a week for 4-8 hours a day. By 2011 he had played 2 and a half million hands while playing 6 to 9 cash tables at one time. Mikael is still mostly playing 2nl and is down a colossal amount: $7000. Remember that he is mostly playing 2nl, with a buy in of $2, even losing $1000 at 2nl is unheard of. Mikael has been suffering from major tilt problems and has a very wild and noticeable style of playing microstakes. He starts to get noticed on 2+2, a very popular poker forum. A player posts a link to his PTR graph, a site which tracks online cash games. They are shocked at his losses over so many hands:

yegor: wow such a massive fail
he played 2.5m hands at 2nl and 5nl and he's losing
Donkey111: I remember him from my 2NL days.
often goes on some massive tilt sessions and spews like 20 BI [buy ins] in 500 hands by shoving any 2 cards preflop.

He even gets hate from his PTR account where he is ridiculed on his profile comments, he also replies:

VELAir26: Spend your time with family, friends or other hobbies instead
Paisting: im fine with this you stupid idiot

Mikael continues to play his reckless and tilting style over the years. By 2014, he has been playing for 8 years and is down five figures at microstakes; he starts to look for excuses for how much he has lost. He posts a thread on 2+2 detailing how he feels that he wins at the start of the month and then inevitably starts to lose. He asks how he can take legal action against Partypoker. His fellow posters tease him:

5thStreethog: Did the thought ever cross your mind that it might be possible that the reason you cant beat NL2 in over a million hands might be because you arent very good at poker?

An Attempt at Redemption

2019 comes and Mikael Paisting has been playing microstakes for 13 years, and steadily losing a lot of money. He got a new computer in late 2018 and has been grinding away on it. Mikael is getting mentioned more on 2+2 and he is well known on the tables of Partypoker as he drops stack after stack. Many players on Partypoker furiously try to get on his tables to call his tilt shoves; when Mikael is present other player’s stacks can get as high as $100 at 2nl as he shoves buy in after buy in in bad spots. Some were said to be using seating scripts to instantly be placed on a table with Paisting. At this point he is feeling very low. But despite years of losing money and insane tilting he is determined to improve. Mikael is aware of his losses and has a fierce desire to make back the money he has lost since he’s started tracking on his new PC.
He decides get help and he looks to 2+2, the very same forum that had mocked him over the last decade. He logs in as Paisting, his last name. He starts a new thread, types out a post and chooses a title: 'Biggest loser in online poker history wants to grind $16k'. He posts this thread in the sub-forum Poker Goals & Challenges, a place where players post their goals and try to update their thread with their progress. He posts graphs of his losses from his database on his PC. He starts the thread by posting some shocking graphs of $8700 lost at 2nl, $6000 lost at 5nl and $800 lost at 10nl. At 2nl he had an incredible rate of losing an average of $75 a day. The final graph of his microstakes losses posted show $15,000 lost over 365,000 hands.
The 2+2 poker community are stunned by the graphs:

HorseofHell: I'm actually shocked it's possible to lose this much at 2nl
Mahsjdj: This can't be real can it?

Mikael posts about the hard work he’s put into poker and mentions that has watched videos, read many instructional books and is honest with his astounding losses:

Paisting: I've lost literally all my money including all my life savings to online poker. I want to try one last time to win those money back and little bit of extra. That's why $16k. What I need is support and guiding.

The community react to his plan to grind all the money back at microstakes:

Fodersneso: This is really disturbing.
Why on earth would you try to grind this all back? Losing at this rate is traumatizing. You're going to grind out 3000 BIs [buy ins] @nl5 now or what's the plan? Really curious how you think you can turn this pile of insanity around...

The community show disbelief and doubt that his story is real but several posters claim that what he says is true. He has been active in Finnish forums for more than 10 years and players starts to share hand histories and stories about his playstyle. He posts about his regret of picking the game up:

Paisting: Never had a winning week in 13 years.
If it were possible to go back ten years I would say to myself "Do not never play single one hand!"

He then goes on to tell 2+2 posters a disturbing source of his funds for his staggering 2nl losses:

Paisting: I've taken huge amount of fast loans.

He sheds a little light into his personal life:

Paisting: My age and relationships has nothing to do with this. But not working, no kids or wife and middle aged. What I have is time to play.
I get a little unemployment benefit that goes straight to the rent. My eating costs are very little because I'm only eating one meal per day. There are times when I must take more fast loans if need of clothes, unexpected bills, sickness etc. That's why getting back those $16k is so important to me.
No disability, never played anything else than poker or lottery when pots are bigger, maybe 5 times in year. Playing poker does not give me any excitement or I'm not cheering won pots.

Posters try to give him strategy advice, they try to persuade him time and time again that his strategy isn't working. Some others question his sanity and tell him to quit:

FazendeiroBH: Not trolling, I´m actually serious here. You lost an absurd amount of money playing the easiest stake in the world (nl2). You keep losing doing the same faulty strategy. It´s quite obvious there is something wrong with you and your brain, and the more you delay seeking professional care for your mental problems, the worst it´s gonna be for you.

Paitsing updates his thread with highlight hands from his cash sessions. He seems to cherry pick hands to post and will only post hands where he loses all ins as a 70-95% favourite. He delusion leads him to blame the site, his luck and the other micro grinders. He often writes about specific players and gives his opinion on how badly they play. Some time passes and he discloses that he has lost almost $500 at 2nl since starting the thread three weeks ago.
He updates his followers with the first monthly graph of the thread from his 2nl play in April 2019. He plays for 90 hours in April and his average daily loss is $50, 25 buyins each day. 2+2 players start to analyse the graph. They notice that there are several breakeven spots where he may be playing reasonable poker but also huge 150 buy in downswings, some drops in the graph are so steep that he is losing about a buy in every 5 hands for periods of hundreds of hands. He says:

Paitsing: Only trying to get my money back from guys who are playing nl2 forever and never moving up. When I started poker long time ago I tought it's exciting to read watch videos if it gives me more money. After 2 years figured out it's just sitting on computer like in work and if I'm someday +-0 never ever playing this stupid game. This is like war.

The thread goes on like this for almost a year. The thread repeats itself over and over. He will post a few selective bad beats, ignore good advice and berate his microstakes tablemates. A fellow microstakes grinder makes his first appearance in the thread: 6betpot. 6Betpot would play at Paisting's tables and often win many buy ins, 6Betpot would go on to post highly contrasting hand histories to the unlucky hands that Paisting posts which shows the hands Mikael was not posting. Some players would criticize 6Betpot for predatory behavior but 6Betpot would maintain that he would try to persuade Paisting to stop playing in a crazy manner.
Many tried to reason with Mikael and show him clearly why this was wrong, he not only refuted their strategy but would argue against them.
Later on in the thread Mikael posts horrifying news. He explains that he didn’t transfer hands from his old computer to his new computer. The graphs he posted at the start of the thread only showed the tip of the iceberg. He reveals that $16k loss from the graphs was from just 7 months of play!:

Paisting: That 16k is in 209 days and in about 1 year as you can see from the first post. Big part of my losings has left to hard drive of my old crashed computer. That's past and I don't wanna think about it anymore. Main goal is this database I have here in my computer. But yes what I have been repeating many times, moving to 888 poker has sky rocketed my losses although I can play only 6 tables compared to party's 9 tables.

Posters speculate that his lifetime microstakes losses probably amount to six figures:

SpinMeRightRound: I mean if he's lost $20k in the last year, and he's been doing this for more than 10 years, he may have lost $200k or more.

2020: The Struggle Continues

At the end of the year Paisting posts his 2019 graphs. He says that he hasn’t had a winning week yet and he’s still committed to making back 2019’s losses. His graphs show down 12k from 320k hands of 2nl in 2019.
In January 2020 he continues to post regularly and makes comments about him hunting down players worse than him:

Paisting: When you hunt really bad player (yes enzet there are plenty of worst player than me on 888 look those hand histories really carefully) hours and hours and wait good hand just to site let them to suck out it is affecting your game really badly.

He posts about his continuing struggle to win back the $16k:

Paisting: I have years dedicated for this project and anything back from that amount is winning to me. At this point it’s impossible to make any profit because of horrible suckouts.

He also posts about the high interest loans he’s taken out:

Paisting: I have huge amounts of loans that are basically all taken for poker. I don't eat much and all my other costs are very low.
And because of those loans I must get back so much money that is possible and these suck outs must stop.

February 2020 arrives and he posts his January chart, the worst posted yet. He takes a gigantic loss of $1,550 at an eye-watering rate.
The months pass and the cycle continues. Paisting posts the usual unlucky hands, posters berate him and try to give him advice and Paisting resists their efforts. Here is one of many similar hands posted in February, this hand shows him making an awful play and raising huge with a weak hand:

888Poker, Hold'em No Limit - $0.01/$0.02 - 6 players
UTG: $1.46 (73 bb) Paisting (MP): $7.45 (373 bb) CO: $15.44 (772 bb) BU: $2.00 (100 bb) SB: $3.47 (174 bb) BB: $2.00 (100 bb)
Pre-Flop: ($0.03) 1 fold, Paisting(MP) raises to $7.45 (all-in), CO calls $7.45, 3 players fold
Flop: ($14.93) 6c 7c 4d (2 players, 1 all-in)
Turn: ($14.93) Ts (2 players, 1 all-in)
River: ($14.93) 8h (2 players, 1 all-in)
Total pot: $14.93 (Rake: $0.93)
Showdown: Paisting (MP) shows 7d Tc (two pair, Tens and Sevens) (CO) shows Js Jc (a pair of Jacks) Paisting (MP) wins $14

March comes and the regular monthly graph is posted. The uploaded graph shows is he down $1900 or 950 buy ins for last month. Mikael refutes that he is a gambling addict:

Paisting: 888 has given many 10 dollar bonuses to me play slots. I have never played them and in fact my account has 20 dollars freeplay bonus to play their slots. I will not use those money now or in future. So that's gambling addict to you.

April and May roll by and the monthly graphs are posted. He played fewer hands than normal, 43,000. But is down $1,250, all at 2nl.
In June he posts the usual monthly graph with -$1900 and it’s the lowest win rate he’s posted before, the graph has some alarmingly steep downswings with one section where he loses $500 in 1000 hands. That’s a loss of one buy in every 4 hands. Getting these monthly updates shows how quickly he loses money at 2nl and collaborates with earlier estimations that he is likely down more than $100k at microstakes over the past 14 years.

The End, for Now

Mikael is still playing microstakes to this day. His poker story isn’t over yet but so far it is a sad one. My previous two Tales from 2+2 stories had mostly happy endings but not this one. This story is like a car falling down a cliff and it hasn’t hit the bottom yet.
Let this story be a lesson that poker isn’t for everyone. Players with addiction or mental issues should reconsider if the game is best for their lives. Serious poker players should consider bankroll management and how tilt affects their winrate if they do choose to play.
Seek help if you think you or others need it.
Original thread (Still active)

Tran was a shitty gambler, Chi mused. He played poker like he was sure the next hand would save him. It didn’t. He overpromised and underpaid. Chi planned on kicking his ass to send a message, but Tran ran that line of shit about millions in bitcoin. Against his better judgment, Chi settled Tran’s debts with every other loan-shark in town and fronted another stack of cash.
And all that ended with Tran gambling that away, talking a load of shit and ending up in this dumpster with a trash-bag tied around his neck.
Chi looked at Tran’s phone and wondered if the money was ever real. Considering it might point back at him, he smashed it against the corner of the dumpster a few times before dropping it and walking back to his car. He had some debts to pay.
Falstaff looked at the paper maps in the motel’s office. He followed the Interstate southeast to the desert and what used to be the California- Arizona border. He looked for places he hadn’t heard of being associated with edgy festivals. Even better, motels with chain-sounding names. That’s the place nobody’d look for him.
He packed his car, coaxed Hank back in the carrier and got in his car. Before he got going, he booted his laptop and put the memory card back in. Evidence wasn’t a problem any more, it was getting found.
He copied the contents to his laptop and poked around. Ten minutes later, he had set up a password cracker against the accounts, hoping that Tran would choose something easier to remember and therefore guessable.
He plugged the laptop’s power supply into the car’s cigarette lighter, then put the laptop on a bag on the back seat.
East he went.
Geoff had the night shift on another Internet giant’s campus. This meant he drove a golf cart around once or twice, then parked himself in the camera room and tried not to sleep. Sleeping would cut his hourly wage and get him kicked back to dangerous, dirty jobs like protecting rail yards from motivated thieves.
He used to pick a skill and research it. He learned to get basic vocabulary in Spanish, Mandarin, Fujianese and was trying Tagalog. He could carry a conversation as long as it revolved around simple topics, like where the bathroom, parking lot and reception desk were, or that he wanted to purchase something.
Tonight he picked at that truck thing again. He used a map application to virtually drive between Phoenix and San Diego. After a few hours, he found the spot on the Interstate that looked like the right landscape from the cameras on the pinball machine. He looked at the street view and the camera view over the older man’s shoulder.
Motherfucker. Spot dab in the withdrawn zone.
Who travels to the middle of nowhere to steal from a truck and only take some stuff?
Couldn’t be locals. Locals would strip the truck bare.
He watched the video again. Looks like they took plain grocery shipping boxes.
Inside job? And steal boxes of fresh pasta and imported wine?
He scrolled back and took a few screengrabs. When he worked security at the shiny new headquarters, they had some wild surveillance tools. Real time tracking using AI image enhancement and they taught you how to use it.
Geoff got pretty good at it. He looked over at his phone and opened the scheduling application for his employer. He underbid a few other people and picked up the next shift.
Which got him reinstated access to the HQ’s slick surveillance system. He uploaded the images and asked it to clean it up. He expected this to take a bit of time, so he cleaned up and got ready for his shift.
And his phone dinged. A match.
That he didn’t ask for. Ten seconds later, he saw a corporate ID card. With that bored look of middle aged techie.
Falstaff.
Huh. Dumb name. Looked familiar, but so did every other techie from where he stood. Probably had more money in options than he’d ever earn.
As he drove to work, he wondered why a techie would be robbing trucks in the middle of nowhere instead of getting rich or dying fat here.
He parked, took the shuttle and made it a few minutes early for shift change. He expected a slow night.
Five minutes into the shift, he was sipping good coffee and watching the camera feeds when someone asked for him by name at the desk.
He looked up and saw one of the muscular internal security people smiling at him. Close cropped hair, clear coiled earpiece and the look of someone who worked out at an actual gym instead of lifting five gallon buckets filled with water in a rest stop parking lot. Looked like internal security, maybe even VIP protection.
Guy probably had pretty good benefits. Geoff would love to get a job like that.
Geoff pushed his coffee to the side and stood up to greet the guy asking about him.
Enzokuhle gave Geoff a broad smile and introduced himself as Enzo. The two men were pleasant with one another, but Geoff seemed wary. Enzo didn’t know why he was there either. He was scheduled to do driving and personal protection for a senior exec working in his office, but he got tasked with asking a contract security guard some questions about something very hush-hush.
Whatever. He was good with people. Perhaps he’d learn something.
“Geoff, may we speak outside? This is a sensitive matter, requiring some discretion”
Geoff motioned to his puzzled co-worker by holding up his hand, splaying his fingers and mouthing the word “Five”. The two men walked through the stark but stylish lobby onto a manicured park-like field.
“So, what do you want from me? Not too often we get you guys involved”
“An hour ago, you performed a lookup for a company employee. Have you been in contact with that employee?”
“No. I had an image I wanted processed”
There was an uncomfortable silence as the walked. Geoff realized that Enzo was listening to his ear-piece. Enzo was nodding as he listened.
“I see. So you haven’t seen this person outside the picture you uploaded”
“No, but I have an idea where he might be”
Enzokuhle put his hand up. He wanted to end this transaction as quickly as possible.
“Thank you. Please do not speak of this to anybody else. Your discretion is most important here. Return to your post and we will contact you if we need more from you”. He pointed Geoff back to the lobby without making eye contact.
Galina Ivanova spent a few more minutes talking to Enzo, then thanked him. This was a false lead. AI must be glitchy. No chance that the developer who stole almost a billion dollars was unloading trucks instead of moving that big pile of money somewhere.
Any additional time logged to this goose chase would make her metrics worse. She took off her headset and tried to go back go sleep.
Geoff sat back in his chair. He remembered a video of a scuba diver diving under a moving container ship, looking up at the moving propeller and how close they almost came to a gruesome death.
Why was that guy important enough to throw an alert to internal security?
He looked at his phone and the email with Falstaff’s ID photo. He couldn’t do any lookups to see the last time he was in any of the buildings, since that fed into whatever alerts that brought Internal Security down on his head.
But he remembered something. Employee parking wasn’t owned by Corporate. It was a separate company, which required him to remind annoyed techies when their photo ID wouldn’t trip the gate when some absent-minded developer forgot their garage access card.
Last time this Falstaff guy used the garage was almost two months ago. Such a stereotype. Silver Porsche. Now he knew why the guy looked familiar. He left the day that big brouhaha happened. Rumors flew about the security and custodial staff- some developers stole the next phone design or a treasure trove of celebrity nude photos or something else of value to these people. Anybody too vocal with their opinions got fired and walked out, which Geoff wanted to avoid.
Whatever it was, it was valuable and embarrassing. Made sense to go hide in the desert.
And he had an idea where Falstaff was. Maybe, if he brought him back, there’d be a big enough reward to let him to leave the Valley and go back to Ohio. Pay off debts and raise his family.
It wasn’t like he was making any headway here anyway. He was going on a road trip.
Falstaff was driving slower now. He needed better fuel economy and to take the time to scout out his next stop. Some towns had plain dried up and others still too connected. The last place looked promising. The gas station was a weatherbeaten Sinclair, with a repainted dinosaur. They only took cash. The chain restaurant was burned out and there was a motel “a few miles up”.
Hank was sleeping, but Falstaff’s laptop dinged with the results of his attempt to crack Tran’s big blob of data.
He had passwords for the handful of accounts Tran had dumped on that chip. They weren’t for the financial application he and Tran were working on. Instead, they were for the store’s production environment. He didn’t have a billion dollars in untraceable currency, but he could send almost any consumer good to anybody on the planet and clean up afterwards.
He had some investigating to do, and he preferred a cheap motel to do it from rather than his car.
He rented a room for a few days from a surprised old man and tried to ignore the curious stares from a few permanent residents of the motel.
At least Hank enjoyed exploring the room and this motel would not get the camera friendly festival crowd.

"Due tonight, or you'll never need to come back here again" my boss told me before heading back to his office. A tall tower of filed documents leaned on the wall of my cubicle, emitting a foreboding sense of dread and helplessness.
I wanted to say something. Like maybe along the lines of I’m no damn robot!! sending the pile of papers flying.
But of course, I couldn't do it. I just let out a sigh, stood up from my chair and headed to the vending machine. This was going be a long night, I needed all the caffeine I could get…
Working an office job isn't an occupation I'd relate to "Reaching my dreams!". Doing paperwork while being inside a box was one thing, being in a group of people who barely knew my name would be the straw that broke the dreaming camel's back. With fatigue and self-loathing coming together with the short and awkward conversations, it felt as though I never left college.
At the start of everyday, I would get up from bed, get dressed, eat whatever leftovers I had in the fridge and then head out. Where I'd go down to the same building to do the same damn job. After a long shift of hunching over a computer, it was time to go back home. Then repeat everything.
Other people would make things a lot easier, but friends were hard to come by. Oddly enough, none of them lived anywhere near my apartment. Walking home with someone was as rare as me cooking food I actually liked.
As a result, motivation ranged from Oh god, not another day of this! to simply Do people even know I exist? The monotony of the day-in and day-out work cycle seeping away whatever life energy I had.
Cutting the pretentious crap aside, I was getting sick of my life. I wasn't asking to be a multi-millionaire, I just wanted something more exciting to happen. At the very least, a good change of pace to make things feel less like purgatory.
Something to break the monotony in my life…
Holding a can of "HI-Octane Caffeine", I slipped a bill in the vending machine and pressed the button for a snack. The metal spring slowly twisted. Much like someone spitting me on the face, it stopped halfway, forgetting to dispense the candy bar I paid for.
“Of course…” I mumbled to myself.
Before I turned away, I saw a certain somebody hitting the machine with her fist. The treat inside got unstuck and fell down with a resounding THUD!
"Trouble with the vending machine again?" Tina asked, one of the receptionists and one of the only people that talked to me on a daily basis.
“Yeah, can't catch a break today" I reached down and took the candy bar. "Thanks"
"Don't mention it, I'm always down for some vandalism every now and then" I hoped to god that wasn’t true.
"Tim and Catherine already out?" I asked.
She nodded. "You know how they are” she said. "They're probably at the bar right now, drinking as much cherry pop cocktails they could afford"
"Ah, I see…" Why haven't you joined them? I thought of asking her.
We both met around our second year of college. We only saw each other in one or two subjects. I only got to spend more time with her when we were part of this study group. She constantly asked me for help in Statistics, and we pretty much got along after that.
Out of everyone in that group—hell, out of everyone in all my classes—she seemed to be the only person I found myself feeling attached to.
Imagine my surprise when I happened to spot the same short and short-haired gal in a receptionist uniform when I applied. She was pretty ecstatic that day, and honestly, so was I.
"What about you? Any of your friends still around in the office?" she asked. I fell silent. I could only give her a look that said what I couldn’t. “Max…you’re kidding?”
I wished I was, but I could only shrug and look away.
“You’re pulling off an all-nighter again? By yourself?!”
I slowly nodded. “Afraid so…”
“You cannot be serious! You’re gonna kill yourself over a bunch of papers?”
“Not like I have a choice, Carlos said that I shouldn’t bother coming back if I go home without all of ‘em finished” I popped open the can of coffee and took a sip. “Besides, I think I’m getting used to it by now” though I wish I never needed to in the first place.
“But this is the fourth time in a row this week! Are you sure you don’t wanna…ya know? Do something about this?” she asked, following me as I walked back to my cubicle.
“Do what? File a complaint?”
“Yes, you have the right to do that!”
“I don’t know if I could” I said, a little ashamed of how spineless it sounded.
“And why not?”
“T-too complicated,” I lied. “And really, I can handle this!” I lied again…
“Max, that’s not…ugh, never mind” she groaned. “Still, you shouldn’t do all of this by yourself… Or hey! Maybe, I can help you”
“No, I don’t wanna keep you here because of me” as much as I appreciated her company, I didn’t want her to suffer along with me. “Go, I’ll be fine, really…this is my job after all. I chose to be here…”
Her hand fell on my shoulder, stopping me in place. I turned to her, a genuine look of concern on her face. “Max, I…just don’t overwork yourself. You’re not some superhuman who can take on the same crap everyday. You deserve a good break every now and then too” A cold shiver washed over me, feeling the sting of those words. Same crap everyday
“I know…” I replied, turning away.
“If it’s Carlos you’re worried about, we could tell HR some news about him…” she vaguely suggested.
I looked back, and she flashed me with a warm smile. A happy smile that I couldn’t help but be drawn to for years…
“I-I don’t think that’s necessary” I stammered.
“Aw, come on! I mean, if push comes to shove, we can just tie him up and throw him down in a lake”
“Please don’t do that” much like vandalism, I prayed to the heavens she’d never do that.
“Relax! I was only kidding” she said, punching me on the shoulder.
We both chatted on for a little while longer, until I got back to my cubicle. We managed to kill an additional fifteen minutes, talking about last year’s Christmas Party. Soon enough, I managed to convince Tina to go home…all by her lonesome. I was willing to come with her, walk her home, even if we lived far away from each other. If it wasn’t for my job on thin ice, I’d go the extra mile. And if I lost my job, what would stop us from drifting apart completely?
“Well…I guess I’ll see ya tomorrow then” Tina stated.
I nodded, sitting back down on the office chair. “Yeah, thanks for keeping me company”
She gave me an awkward shrug. “N-no problem, hehe”
She turned around and started walking back down the hall. “Have a safe night, and good luck”
I smiled and waved at her as she went…
There was something at the back of my mind that I’ve been meaning to ask her…
A question that could lead to the break in the cycle that I’ve been looking for…
“Uh, hey! Tina!” I called out to her.
She stopped midway, turning back towards me. “Yeah? What is it Max?”
Something that I had been wanting to ask her for a long time now…
“I…uh…” it was on the tip of my tongue. I just needed to force it out, take a step away from my comfort zone, finally say the words. “Y-you have a safe night too!” and yet, I couldn’t bring myself to do it…
She gave me another smile before saying “Thanks!” and continuing her way down the hall. “Goodnight Max!” her voice echoed as she left.
A big, long sigh of disappointment escaped my lips. “You blew it Max, way to go…”
There I was, sitting at the office chair that became more and more uncomfortable with every minute and hour. Typing away as if it wasn’t 1am in the morning. The caffeine had did its job…but in an ironic twist, a strange feeling of paranoia began to manifest within me. Being alone in that building suddenly hitting me.
The irrational fear soon subsided as another hour rolled by. Along with the energy I had. 2:32am, still there, working and still wishing I had a better backbone for myself to finally say something to my boss.
Somewhere down the line, I thought about Tim and Catherine, out drinking in a karaoke bar, singing the hit singles of the 90’s and early 2000’s, generally having a great time. Just like Tina had told me…eventually, I thought about Tina herself.
I wondered if she was already home, or maybe she decided to catch up with her two coworkers. Thinking about her smiling and happy made me feel a little better. At least she was having fun…
I began to wonder if she would even consider going out with a loser like me. A lonely slob who was somehow fine with going through the same crap everyday; ate the same microwaved breakfast, dressed the same stupid clothes for work, and took in whatever annoying task my boss had to give me.
Yet another hour passed, and my eyes grew heavier with each key I typed. Everything seemed to slow down, no matter how hard I tried to quicken the pace, it didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere anymore.
My arms were tired, my legs were numb, everything in my body felt cold…
Typing…
Tabulating…
I had to be awake…
I opened my eyes, the faint sunlight coming in from a slit between the blinds of the windows. I looked around, trying to recall the reason I wasn’t in my semi-comfortable bed…
Eventually, I remembered…
The urge to go back to sleep held a tight grip on me. I thought better of it, and reluctantly stood up, shaking the grogginess out of my system.
My stomach suddenly groaned in hunger. I needed to eat. I didn’t even bother checking on my laptop. That was a nightmare I was willing to put off for now.
The building was deserted. At least from the floor that I was on. There should be at least a janitor or someone from the maintenance crew coming in; if they had already, then seeing my passed out self must not have made them flinch. That, or they didn’t care at all.
My footsteps echoed in the dim hallway. That dreaded vending machine being the only source of light, other than the covered-up windows. The lighting made the long walk feel a lot more ominous than it was.
I walked towards it…but then decided to go for the one downstairs instead. I did not want to waste five dollars over fault machinery…again. Besides, I might finally see another person, maybe even chat with them if I was lucky.
Much to my dismay however, the elevator was still out. Thankfully, the door to the stairway was unlocked. The same stairs where I last saw Tina the other night…the same stairwell where I stopped her and almost asked her out, but didn’t.
Despite being in the office at the early hours right after sunrise, it still felt like I was stuck in this godforsaken loop. This was not the kind of break I was looking for. If you can even call it that.
I let out a yawn as I got down to the ground floor of the building. It was still 6:28am, a little early for any of my coworkers to come in.
Despite this, I heard somebody opening the front doors.
Going to the main lobby, I just missed someone entering the receptionist’s office. Someone with long grey hair…a bit odd. I never really knew anyone, at least people that had business with that particular office, with that shade of dark-grey on their heads.
My stomach roared with anguish again, and I had to switch my focus back to what I was doing. I figured it was nothing anyway; maybe Catherine trying out different hairstyles again or whatever.
The vending machine was tucked into a corner right beside one of the waiting area’s couches. The sight of it gave me a feeling of comfort for some reason. Maybe it was because this one didn’t have a reputation to eat my money more than I ate the snacks it had.
But…right as I inserted the five dollar bill, it spat it back out. Letting out an automated voice that I never heard before.
Please insert only the corresponding bills into the slot, thank you!
My brow furrowed in confusion “What the hell…?” I tried it again, but still, it refused.
The oddities seem to just continue on from there. Looking at the items inside the machine, they looked like your standard everyday candy bars and other branded snacks…but taking a closer inspection told me otherwise. Odd names such as “Mulchy Grass-Chips”, “Worm-O-Bars” or “Sperry Energy Brick: Xtra Fishy flavored”.
I slowly backed away, the familiar machine now looking like an otherworldly contraption trying to blend in with everything. A feeling of uneasiness settled in, along with utter confusion.
Just then, I heard the sound of a door opening behind me…
A couple of footsteps rang out before the person stopped abruptly, letting out a surprised gasp.
“Uh…Hey, does the vending machine look weird to you?” I asked. I turned around, hoping to meet a familiar face and help me…
Instead, it just made things a whole lot worse…
The person in front of me was definitely not Catherine, or any other employee I knew. Or human for that matter.
The eyes…
Two large and wide green eyes with only black slits as pupils. Reminiscent to the gaze of a cat. Deadly looking fangs protruded from her mouth, which was currently hanging agape. Fluffy and pointed ears sat atop of her head, with long and thin whiskers from the cheekbones. Claws extending slightly out of each finger of her human-like digits. A lighter shade of grey on all of the short fur that covered her face, neck, hands and legs. With her dressed in a business uniform that hid the rest of her body; blue coat, red tie, and a black pencil-cut skirt.
I was petrified, unable to move or think of what to do next. Was this a dream? It had to be. What the hell was I seeing?! The concept of being mauled to death by this outlandish creature made my legs tremble. She stood on the spot. Unmoving and unblinking as I was.
I extended my shaky index finger and pointed at the creature. “What…what are you?!”
As soon as the words left my mouth, she let out a blood-curdling scream! The shrill voice cracking as she frantically backed away. She stopped midway, grasping for what looked like a large notebook behind the receptionist desk. Raising it in in the air, she screamed again and threw it directly at me.
I raised my arms and managed to block the notebook from my face. Before I could run, I felt a barrage of different office supplies hitting me. Pens, more notebooks, a clipboard, even a desk lamp, shattering on the floor.
Just as I thought it was over, I could hear the doors behind me opening. “Isabelle! What’s wrong?! We heard you…” a deep voice behind me trailed off.
I heard another high-pitched scream, coming face to face with three more unnatural creatures dressed in formal business attires. The short one who was currently screaming and pointing at me had orange hair (and fur), squinty eyes, and a long snout similar to that of a fox. Another one was behind her, tall, full of feathers, a long pointed beak, and a puffy arm that was holding what looked like a phone that kept flashing and accompanied with faint Clicks! as she did.
The last person, there really was no better way to describe it. It was a bear! A bear dressed in a business coat and slacks! A shocked and angry looking one at that!
All of them kept staring at me, making me feel like I was the foreign entity in the room…
The bear stomped aggressively towards me. “What did you do to Isabelle?!” he shouted, leaning closer and towering over me in height and size. I could see the rows of scary-looking teeth he bore. I felt the need to answer, to tell whatever the hell this thing was that I didn’t do jack crap to anyone named “Isabelle”. But my throat went dry.
“I-I…” I tried to tell him. Despite the modern and civilized attire he had on, the predatory gaze, the blaring of his teeth, and the overall menacing killer features were still there…
Without warning, it grabbed me by the collar and raised me up in the air. “What did you do?! W-what even are you?!”
I could see the fox run up to the bear before grabbing him by the arms. “Greg! Calm down!!” it pleaded. “Put him down!!”.
Finally, he did let me go, and immediately, I booked it. Running off to the opposite direction. With the group of animal people still blocking the entrance, I headed back up the stairs in a frantic sprint.
I didn’t know where I was going, I just wanted a place to stop, be safe, and think. I came running back to my cubicle…but seeing the entire office made it impossible for me to clear my mind. My eyes darted everywhere, spotting each alarming difference made me shiver. The printers, PC’s and other equipment looked normal, but many of them were either a few sizes too short or too big. In fact, the room was a lot more spacious than I remembered! Even my familiar cubicle, the same one I woke up in, not only did it not have my laptop nor the stack of folders my boss had given me, but the normally bleak and bland space I owned was now plastered with different motivational posters and random photos. How the hell did I not see any of this?!
I ran to the bathroom, seeing the larger and wider stalls at the end of the room making me even more dizzy. “I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming, I’m DREAMING!!” I shouted at my reflection. I splashed cold water on my face, slapped myself multiple times, but still, the minute but incredibly concerning differences were present. A tall toilet here, a short sink and mirror there, Eucalyptus scented toilet paper. It all still felt like I was in a strange funhouse for children, the sizes and shapes of everything being exaggerated.
I managed to at least keep myself calm enough to comprehend everything. No matter how hard I tried to push the thought down, what I was experiencing at that very moment was no dream. Whatever building I found myself standing on, it wasn’t just a figment of my imagination. All those things outside, however…that was a lot harder to accept.
I kept my eyes on my reflection. “You can do this, you can do this…you can do this…” I kept repeating.
After a while, I realized that staying there wouldn’t really do anything for me. I decided to leave the bathroom, then just figure things out from there. My hand was back on the knob of the door, the cold metal bringing me that sense of familiarity, while seeing how big the door was reminded me of how surreal the entirety of the situation was. With another deep breath, I turned the knob and stepped outside.
Everything was quiet. I walked toward the windows and pulled the blinds open to get a glimpse of the environment outside.
The city had changed. Immediately, I saw a billboard with the words “Glam-Fur Moisturizer” above a group of slender but still very hairy figures with tails. On the corner of it, were the words “Best in New Randall Jarellonia!”
New Randall Jarrellonia? I found myself repeating in my head. Is that the name of this place?
It sounded like a town, or a city more than anything else. Especially with the buildings that surrounded the billboard. From that height, I was able to look at the other citizens walking around…
All of them were animals. Tall birds with beaks and feathers, hairy mammals with fluffy tails and ears, scaly reptiles with large bodies and mouths. I could correlate each and every one of them to some other species in the animal kingdom, accompanied with clothes from modern day fashion. Not a single trace of a definite human being…
I tried to rationalize things. Come up with a good explanation to what I was experiencing. And the most logical thing I could come to still made me feel like I was going insane. After going through everything I witnessed and experienced, it wasn’t that the world I lived in had changed to look like that, but rather I was somewhere different entirely…
Crazy as it sounded, I was somehow in a completely different world.
One that had wild animals walking, talking and even working like people. If that were true, then it would mean I was the oddity, not them. I was the one who was invading the mundane tranquility they were accustomed to…
I was the one who gave them the break in the monotonous cycle of everyday living…
Why me?
Why me, of all people? Sure, I was a guy who desperately needed something different to happen in his life, but I never expected to be transported to another world! A new girlfriend, a freaking promotion, new coworkers that actually talked to me!
Ding! I heard a familiar elevator reaching the designated floor. The sounds of heavy footsteps following after it.
I was soon face to face with a group of tall people wearing dark black suits; most of them seem to bear the snout of a grey hound or wolf, each of them having their own set of shades covering their eyes.
One of them stepped forward, eyeing me up and down for a few seconds. He turned to the rest of the crowd, nodding. “Right, bring him in” he said nonchalantly.
He pulled out something from inside his coat. A slender and shiny tool, the shape telling me that it was something along the lines of a gun. Before I could react, he pulled the trigger and I felt something sharp pricking my arm.
I cried out. Looking down, I saw a tiny dart now embedded through the sleeve.
Instinctively, I pulled it out. I looked back up and saw three of them walking towards me. I tried to run, but my legs felt numb. I could feel their arms grabbing both of mine, carrying me away while I lost control over my body.
Going in and out of consciousness, I felt myself being lied down on a stretcher.
“…W-what cha gonna do with ‘em?” I heard someone ask.
“I’m afraid that’s classified ma’am”
“Okay…what do we do…“ the voice trailed off.
“We’ll make sure none of this ever happened”
A sudden shock ran through my wrists, jolting me awake with a yelp. From my hazy vision, I could barely comprehend the new room that I found myself in. Boxed in, with flat grey walls, with lights lining the corners and ceiling. I looked down, seeing my hands and feet attached to a chair with metal clamps. I tried forcing them loose, but they wouldn’t budge.
“It’s no use, tried doin’ that for a while now…” a familiar feminine voice said. I looked towards the sound, a blurry figure that soon cleared up, revealing to be the very first face I came across. “Howdy, hehe…” the grey-furred cat lady said nervously. She too was on a chair similar to mine on the other side of the room.
An instinctual feeling of dread came to me, seeing the impossible creature before me. But looking at her closely, her sharp green eyes now taking on a tired and worried expression, I couldn’t help but feel sympathy.
“Not much of a talker, aren’t ya?” she suddenly asked. “It’s all right…I was feelin’ frazzled mahself when I woke up and saw you. I-I mean! No offense er anythin’…” she apologized.
“N-none taken…” I said, ending with a nervous chuckle.
Silence filled the cold unnatural air. Lasting for a few minutes. Something mechanical whirring faintly behind the walls, bringing back the feeling of fear and unease at the lack of context to everything. As scary as it was, knowing that there had been another person with me helped me calm down. Even if that said person was covered in fur.
“Mister, I-I think we got on the wrong foot today” she announced. “I admit, I feel really terrible fer…throwing things at ya…”
“How long have we even been here?” I asked, changing the subject.
“I don’t know…been an hour er so since I woke up, but…I ain’t too sure” she replied. “Listen, I’m really sorry ‘bout earlier…my name’s Isabelle, what’s yours?”
“Max, and it’s okay…guessing you don’t have a lot of people like me, huh?” I asked her. She shook her head. Of course, I already knew that. “Heh, figures…it’s nice to meet you, but I admit, I can hardly call being here a pleasant experience” I joked.
She laughed at that. “Yeah, I-I get what’cha mean…why do you think they’re keeping us here?” she asked.
“I don’t know, probably has something to do with me, that’s for sure…” I said grimly.
We talked for a while. Mostly about who I was and where I came from. It was hard to explain how the mundane in my life worked; even if it was eerily close to what her world considered as normal.
When it came to family, I could see a distinct shift in her mood. She began to tell me about her life back at the farm in the country. Reminiscing on a few memories here and there.
“Haven’t seen ‘em in a while. Oh, just thinkin’ about uncle Jared’s pumpkin pie is makin’ mah mouth water, hehe” she recounted. “…I can’t imagine how worried they must be right now. Ma and pa must be shoutin’ at the fellers at the police station, tellin’ ‘em to go look for me…if they even know that I’m gone”
“…Sorry to hear that” I told her.
“It’s fine, it’s fine…”
Another awkward silence filled the room, this time, it felt like I was the one who needed to say something. “Honestly, where I’m from, it’s…pretty boring,” I started. She asked me why, and I regretted opening up the topic. But I stuck to it, and elaborated…next thing I knew, I was telling her everything.
From the boring routine of wake up, go to work, get back home, sleep and repeat, to the fact that I haven’t made a single move to change things. “Worst part is, I don't really have anyone to blame but myself. I never took any risks, always stayed in my comfort zone, only doing things out of it when I really need to. Because of that, I just kept on waiting, and waiting for my life to get more exciting, going with the flow and crap like that…until I finally realized that I'm still doing the same routine for years now"
“Don’t you have anyone that you care about?” she asked me. “Someone that makes it feel like you ain’t in this darn loop?”
I was going to tell her no, I didn’t have anyone like that…but then, I remembered Tina.
“There’s…there’s this one girl at work, she’s a receptionist too, oddly enough…” I started. “Short hair, cute eyes, likes kicking things…I never really know why she stuck around with me. But she does, practically the only one who talks to me on a daily basis, makes fun of my hair, tells me to get out more…the one person that makes me want to be someone more than just…this”
“…She sounds like a nice person” she said.
I nodded. “Whenever I’m with her…things don’t seem all that bad” I added. “Or m-maybe I’m just being overdramatic about this”
“Mister, I don’t think so” she replied. “From what you told me, you and Tina…What you and this girl have, it ain’t just somethin’ ya get everyday. It’s a lot more special”
I shifted in my seat as best as I could. It was obvious what she was implying for me to do…
“Do you think she’ll go for a loser like me?”
“I think she cares for ya all the same” she told me, without a second thought. “Willin’ to bet that she’s just waitin’ for ya to ask her, hehe”
I felt my lips gave way to a smile. Deep down, there was a part of me that wanted to believe at the thought of that. Only covered by my own self-loathing. Hearing it upfront however, I could see that there was no point in denying it. And never in a million years would I expect to hear that from someone like Isabelle.
“Say, what’s her name anyways?” she asked me.
“Her name’s Tina, and god, do I miss her…”
She let out a short laugh. “Tina, huh?”
“Why? What’s so funny?”
“Sorry, it’s just…that’s my lil’ sister’s name too, ain’t that a funny coincidence?”
I found myself laughing too. It was odd. Despite everything about her appearance spelling the fact that she wasn’t human in any sense of the word, I was able to relate to a lot of the things she had told me, and as did her. I was glad to have met her.
BEEP!! BEEP!! BEEP!!
Out of nowhere, a series of sirens filled the room. A red blinking light keeping in tune with the panic-inducing sound.
“W-what’s goin’ on?!” Isabelle shouted.
“I don’t know! I-I don’t know!!” I shouted back.
To my right, I noticed the wall suddenly parting at the middle, forming a short opening similar to that of a door. A line of tall dark figures came in, clad in ballistic armor. They made their way towards Isabelle. I could hear her, shouting something before she got cut off, one of them injecting something in her arm. Moments later, she was knocked out.
“Isabelle?! Isabelle!!” I shouted. They ignored me, and proceeded to free her from the chair. “What are you doing to her?!” I demanded.
“Put her to sleep,” I heard another feminine voice answer me. I felt a cold brushy hand touch my forearm. “I assure you, she’ll be fine. Can’t say she’ll remember you though” I turned to my left, and saw what looked to be a rabbit dressed in a lab coat.
“Where are you taking her?”
“Back to her life, within the city limits. With all due time, she and the others that had the chance of meeting you shall wake up in their beds. Thinking this was all just some crazy fever dream” she explained to me. “And soon, you’ll be doing the same”
I let out a yelp of pain, feeling the needle in my arm. Almost immediately, I started feeling dizzy.
“Finally, this experiment is over. If it were up to me, I’d have you dissected” I heard her say, before my eyes fell shut.
Crying. She was crying. And she sounded…familiar. It was her, it was her!
I opened my eyes, beside me, there she was. Blurry and hard to make out, but I knew it was her. “Tina…?” I tried to say, but all that came out was a gravelly whisper.
She stopped crying. “Max? Max!” I could hear her say. She stood up and started running across the room. I tried moving my head, my vision soon returning to normal. I soon realized that I was in a hospital, feeling the IV tube in my left hand.
“So, you’re finally awake” a foreign voice asked. It was a tall man, dressed in a black suit, looking to be at his 40’s. My head throbbed in pain as I tried to sit upright. “I suggest you don’t move too much” he told me.
“Who are you…?” I asked him, regaining my voice slowly.
He leaned in close. “Nobody, just someone who’s glad to see you here, that’s all” he said ominously. “Welcome back, mister Howe” after he gave me the strange message, he left. A doctor and a nurse going in afterwards, with Tina in suit.
They asked me a lot of questions, most of them I couldn’t even answer myself. All that I could remember was that I pulled out another all-nighter at work, and the rest was a blur…at least, for now. Oddly enough, the doctors didn’t seem to mind at all. As if they were more relieved that I didn’t remember anything.
As for Tina, she was quite the opposite. I’ve never seen her cry, at least not this much. And I felt bad for her, but I was glad to have her there with me. Telling me everything that she knew before she heard about me being confined at the hospital. A coworker of mine found me apparently, practically lifeless. He called an ambulance, and for half the day, I was asleep. When she first heard of this, she immediately ran out of her house, not caring about her shift coming in a few hours.
She told me she was worried about me, hated me for not listening to her…hated herself for not convincing me to leave. I told her it wasn’t her fault, that I really should’ve just gone home myself. Thankfully, I managed to get her in good spirits in the end.
“I’ll be back tomorrow” Tina promised me, as she needed to get home.
I was confined to the hospital for two more days, most of my problems stemming from me practically working myself to death. After Tina left, things just got quiet. Hours passed by. The TV in my room letting me watch old reruns of the show “Hey-Hey-Harold”.
All the while, there existed a lingering thought at the back of my mind. One that bugged me throughout the night. Like there was something I was forgetting…
“Oh, her name makes me swoon just thinking about it! It practically spells Grace when you hear it!” the lovable oaf Harold exclaims.
“So? What’s her name?” his roommate Ethan asked him.
“I just told you, it’s Grace” the laugh track plays, dragging me along with it. I was a sucker for stupid jokes.
“Grace, huh? Hehe”
“What? What’s so funny?”
“Oh, it’s nothing, just…that’s my little sister’s name too”
“Huh, ain’t that a funny coincidence?”
I felt my heart skipping a beat, my eyes widening at the sound of those two lines. There was no joke, nothing funny to hear or be seen, but it stuck with me for a while…
Until finally, things started to piece back together again.
Isabelle… I muttered to myself.
As time went by, memories started coming back. Thinking about them feeling like I was desperately trying to recreate a dream, one that become clearer and weirder with each passing moment.
Every thought started with either a Why? or a How? Why was I back? Why could remember everything? How was I even here again? If it wasn’t for the vivid images in my head, I would’ve thought that it was all just one crazy acid trip.
Worst part was, who was I going to tell it to? Those people…those animals. Terrifying as they were in my eyes, I couldn’t help but think about Isabelle. I wondered what was happening to her now. I found myself worried for a while, but if what that rabbit woman said was true, she should be back to where she belonged…only question was, did she remember me? As I did her?
My mind drifted back to what she had told me. What you and this girl have, it ain’t just somethin’ ya get everyday. It’s’ a lot more special…
“And that’s how I lost to Catherine at poker that day” Tina concluded. A story that…I honestly can’t remember much. All I remember is that I nodded to that last statement, my mind busy. “You even listening?” she asked, as if she had read my mind. “Something on your mind?”
Normally, I would’ve said that it was nothing, or make up something else entirely. “There’s a new cafe in town, right?” I asked. “The one with the syringe straw thingies?”
She furrowed her brow. “I don’t know, why’d you ask?”
“Well, once I get back home, I was thinking…maybe you wanna go out there sometime?
The confused look she gave me dissolved to a more shocked expression. Her eyes widening as her face grew red. “You…you did not just do what I think you did?” she asked nervously.
I shrugged. “I mean, if you’re up for it”
I felt a warm hand clasp around mine. “Don’t be stupid,” she scolded. “Of course I’m up for it”