Poker Pro Andrew Feldman And Dealing With Gambling Addiction

UK poker pro Andrew Feldman recently appeared on an episode of reality TV series The Secret Millionaire, in which incognito millionaires go and live in impoverished communities before giving away thousands of pounds to the needy.
The show also provided a rare insight into the world of a poker professional, albeit it one with a self-proclaimed gambling addiction, whose family helped set his feet on solid ground.
At 24, Andrew Feldman is said to be now worth around £6 million having racked up his first £100,000 by the age of 18 playing online poker. However, Feldman soon realized he had a gambling problem after watching 9 months of online grinding, as well as his £100,000 bankroll, disappear in the space of just one night. As Feldman explains:
“One night, I was coming home from the casino where’d I’d lost quite a bit of money..so I was a bit steamed up. I thought yeah, whatever, I’ll go and get it back from poker..It took just one bad beat and then I started playing bad and by the end of the night I’d done half the roll..within the next few hours all that had been wiped out.”
Determined to avoid such a painful experience again, Feldman said he subsequently started safeguarding his winnings by transferring them from his poker account and into his bank account where they were then invested. A big part of that decision was influenced by his parents, and as he explains; “Without my parents, I would have been just another poker player who gambled it all away.”
Instead, Andrew Feldman is set for life, providing of course, he remains free from the gambling addiction which nearly wrecked his poker career before it even got going. Nevertheless, Feldman says he is now in control of his addiction, not least as a big part of his infatuation at the time involved making vast amounts of money online. That is something he says has become a lot harder over the past few years with the increasing tide of savvy young internet pros, and as he explains:
“When I was making money it was an addiction. But the online poker industry is really a hard place to make any cash now. I don’t have the same enthusiasm I had then.”