Yesterday, a former FT reg makes a thread titled "Almost Busto" and explains his situation...

So, I was never really a huge winner to begin with...you know, made a couple of gs here and there, lost a couple, etc. But I swear, no one ****ing runs worse than I do. I was a pretty decent winner pre blackfriday; I took a break for maybe 4 months after, and ever since then have been running worse than I ever thought possible (I guarantee no one has ever run this bad, ever...no one).

Anyway, I need some advice. I currently have a little under 1,000 left to my name. What should I do? I've tried moving out of the country to play...that didn't work. I've tried playing live poker....and that has been meh as well. I just want to win again but it's so hard when my KK always runs into AA, when fishes stack off with JJ against me bvb and hit vs my QQ, etc....basically, run worse than any of you could even comprehend.

I don't want to be one of those people that just disappears from the poker community and everyone forgets about. I want to be a winner. I guess I'm just desperate for any advice.

Next post:

Well, I have a wife and a baby on the way...so no family yet but soon. I really want to make it as a poker player though, should I try to look for a stake? 

My response was this:

SC, a few comments for you:
* if poker's been tough for you so far, I have bad news - it's probably going to get worse. the games get tougher every year. I realize you ran bad, but a lot of times, "run bad" isn't "all" run bad.
* you should try to get a job, if at all possible. are you qualified to do anything?
* I hope you guys have some kind of health insurance that will cover maternity (not all do). if not you need to get a job with benefits ASAP. you can always retry poker in your spare time, but you need to take care of your family first.
* can you post a graph since BF? with ev line (yeah - this only scratches the surface of types of runbad, but I'm just curious what we're talking about here).

GL. 

And then it occurred to me that a lot of you guys may be in a similar situation, since most of you are in your twenties or early thirties, and that's around the time you may be thinking about starting a family.  *IF* you are thinking of starting a family, I can not stress enough the importance of having health insurance.  As a single, young and healthy person, you probably got by okay without it.  After all, your demographic is somewhat unlikely to develop a major illness.  And at the end of the day, health insurance is not "cheap," and you may have more pressing monetary needs.

But when you start becoming responsible for a family, things will be different.  The medical costs of giving birth to a child are just astronomically high.  I wish we had some kind of malpractice and administrative reform, because there is just an absurd amount of unnecessary overhead in the structure of medical costs. You will not be able to afford the costs of having a baby without insurance.

But it's not just about the delivery.  We know *A LOT* of "healthy" people.  And more people than you would think have problems with their kid.  Not sure if it's all the cell phone towers, genetic engineering of foods, the Mayan 2012, whatever.  But we probably know almost two dozen kids who have some kind of medical issue, from mental retardation, to various speech issues, to autism, to various food allergies (some bordering on lethal) to milder issues like ADD.  As the HEAD of your family, you are not going to want this burden of not being able to give them the proper medical care.

FWIW, we know someone who works as a manager at a local department store chain 1 day a week (Sundays) at zero salary, just to get their generous health insurance package.  If you can't give up poker, think about getting at least a part-time job to make sure you have insurance.  So plan ahead and do what you need to do to take care of your family - it's not just about *you* any more.

You can act like a man! [slap] What's the matter with you?