Here’s my story. As you know, I am a hobbyist player – I work full time and get in maybe 15 hours a week – say 2-3 hours two or three times a weeknight, then the rest spread out over a weekend. This has roughly been the case since I got hooked 18 months ago.

Problems started arising for a number of reasons:

1. I went from not even understanding the game to becoming a poker bore – I would bang on constantly about my new hobby to the gf, to my friends, to people we met at parties.
2. My gf is very short on cash – a debt-laden student with only a part-time job – whereas I own my own place (in which she lives, admittedly) and have an acceptable paying job. Basically, dropping $500 on a hobby wouldn’t be a problem for me. So in the early days I would regale her with tales of my poker adventure – “hehe, I lost $37 tonight” – and she would be really resentful that I could lose $$$ gambling – and not care – while she’s scrimping for every penny.
3. My computer was in my bedroom, but our telly (in front of which she spent most evenings) was in the sitting room. So, at 10pm every night, I would trot upstairs and play poker for 2 hours, often nto even stopping when she went to bed. Not only did she consider this inconsiderate, but she felt it put a distance between us.
4. She has the incredibly common fundamental, low-level disapproval of gambling. Certainly it’s been incredibly difficult for me to explain to her how losing a buyin on a hand where I was 65% favourite isn’t a bad thing, or explaining that the comment “I won $100 tonight!” does not need to be followed by “yeah, but how much did you LOSE?”

So, clearly, things had to change. We eventually had A Serious Talk about it, where she expressed her views and I did my best to respond. The constant poker chat was easy enough to cut out; talking about my losses was clearly a no-no (though I also no longer talk about my wins unless asked, as the two are intrinsically intertwined – she does accept that I have consistently MADE money in the long term, though).

As for poker separating us physically, I was able to solve this by buying a laptop (nominally, with my poker winnings, although I didn’t actually withdraw anything from my roll) and playing on the sofa next to her. With this came reducing the regularity of my play – no longer playing every night (it’s more like one in two these days), though I could also play for longer without the guilt, and playing more tables has actually meant the number of hands I play has gone up quite a lot.

I know she is aware of my playing less (though I still take advantage of the evenings and weekends when she’s out – she doesn’t have to know how much poker I cram in then!) and she appreciates it. We can also chat and cuddle pretty much as normal when I am playing next to her – and because I mostly play ring, if I need to stop for any reason all I have to do is sit out, so I don’t have to keep her waiting or inconvenience her.

She hasn’t moaned about my habit in a long time – which is lucky because to this day I still have a gut worry that she disapproves, and indeed I’m sure she does on some level – she’s just learned to tolerate it and accept that I’m not going to give up, but I’m also not going to throw away our money or develop a problem habit. I have also been able to buy her a computer of her own, as well as a ticket to visit her mum in the US – although she has never been one of these partners to say “well if you’re winning and I can spend the $$$ then I love poker, honey!”, I can see how others might appreciate the fact!

I still wish she liked the game, or was even interested in it because I like it, but I have come to accept that it’s just one of those individual hobbies everyone has (and should have) within a relationship. And we seem to have achieved an equilibrium where I can play more or less as much as I want without sacrificing our relationship.

It’s taken a lot of work and heartache to get to this point, but I don’t think there’s any way around it – a couple HAS to express their feelings and then both work to come to an understanding, even if it’s ideal for neither. If you’re not willing to do that, then you’ll have to be prepared to lose one or the other for good.

biondino is an overrolled hobby poker player who is too much of a wuss to move up to $100NL.