U.S. Legislation

Several days ago Congress past a bill that will essentially make on-line poker illegal in the U.S. I won't go into details about the legislation but you can find more information on it by following this link: http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_news/news_story/1424?class=PokerNews

This will basically change the face of on-line poker forever. None of the on-line sites will shut down, but several of the major ones (Party, Stars, Pacific) have indicated that they will shut down the accounts of all U.S. citizens. This will dry up A LOT of the action from most of the losing players in the games, as most of the biggest fish are Americans. It will essentially dilute the pool of players so that the ratio of winning players to losing players will be much higher. This means that even if an on-line professional were to move outside of the U.S. to play they would still have a much harder time making a successful living.

I don't believe in coincidences, and I think that I am meant to view this as a sign in my life. The life of a professional poker player is not as glamorous as I imagined. It has been great to travel and meet all the exceptionally interesting people that I have in the past three years. The money is better than any other occupation and the freedom it allows me is second to none. Still I seem to wake up every morning feeling empty and un-fulfilled. I feel like my life right now has little bearing on anything not directly related to me. I don't feel like I am helping anyone besides myself and consequently I feel selfish and immature.

I have had a nagging feeling over the last several weeks that I need to change the direction of my life. I scares me to think that I may wake up one day 10 years from now and realize that I wasted all the talents I have on myself. There are only a few things in my life that I am truly passionate about, and becoming a teacher is by far the biggest. Becoming a great teacher and coach is something that I have wanted for a long time, and I think it's about time that I stopped shoving it to the back of my mind.

Basically, I think I am going to go back to school for another semester and get my teaching degree. I need to meet with an advisor and see just exactly what classes I need to finish up in order to get my teaching certificate. I was fairly close to graduating with a degree in education, so I would be very surprised if I needed to take more than one semester's worth of classes.

I'm not sure what will come to pass for the future of Poker in the weeks and months to come, but I plan on continuing to play if some of the sites stay up. I have basically gotten all my student loans paid off in the last month, and it would be nice to be able to pay off my last semester's worth before I start at school in January.