A fantastic piece written by Bluff Magazine’s Lance Bradley showed some light on the difficulties Erick Lindgren had been experiencing in the past year, culminating in a stint at Morningside Recovery rehab facility in Newport Beach, California where the man known as one of the best poker players in the world tried to work through his gambling issues.
According to the Bluff article, Lindgren decided to check himself in late last year in large part to address an issue that he wanted to get a hold of. “I’ve had a gambling problem for a long time and I’ve finally got the opportunity to address it,” Lindgren told Bluff. “They told me that there was a place like Morningside that was doing this and that if I wanted to get things right and do things the right way, I could check myself in and after some long thought and checking my ego at the door, I came here,” he added.
Lindgren checked himself in, not because of his troubles in poker, but ironically, because of pro football. See, while the man struggled through a year where he only won around $50,000 in winnings, Lindgren was neck deep in debt stemming from massive losses betting on football and fantasy football. It got so bad that Lindgren, normally one who was good to pay his debts, began piling up losses in an alarming rate that resulted in him not being able to pay back all the money he owed.
I lost way too much money in football last year and couldn’t pay some fantasy football bets at the end of the year,” Lindgren said. “I owed people a bunch of money, and it’s something that I’ve been working on for a long time, but I definitely slipped up, made some really bad mistakes and I needed to address that.”
It’s good to see Erick Lindgren come to grips with his problems. It’s never a good thing to be piling up debts and not having the finances to pay for them. Hopefully, his stint at the Mornigside rehab center gives him a better perspective on how to handle his finances. We wish him all the best and hope that he can bounce back to being one of the best poker players in the world.
Jake Cody signs with Team PokerStars Pro
A few months after online poker outfit PKR and British poker player Jake Cody mutually parted ways, the latter was announced as the latest member of Team PokerStars Pro. Considered as one of the brightest young stars of poker, Cody holds the distinction of being the youngest winner of poker’s triple crown, an achievement he earned after winning the $25k NLHE heads-up bracelet at the 2011 World Series of Poker, the World Poker Tour London, and the European Poker Tour Deauville. Cody’s time with PKR ended last November after his sponsorship deal with the poker company had run its course. Well, PKR’s loss is PokerStars’ gain.
The announcement was made by fellow Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas and as expected, the young hotshot was understandably thrilled to be joining the world’s biggest online poker company with a post from his Twitter account that read: “Very very proud and excited to announce I’m the new Pokerstars Team Pro!!!!”
We’re interested to see how Jake Cody can handle the heat of being a Team PokerStars Pro. But from what he’s shown everyone, the kid sure knows what he’s doing in the felt, and we wouldn’t be surprised if we see and hear a whole lot more from here.
