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Mike “Timex” McDonald Retiring From Poker

There are very few careers where you can realistically retire at 20. Poker happens, for a lucky few, to be one of them.

Last year the big name dropping out of poker was Shaun Deeb. Deeb, apparently finally ground down from the sick volume he’d been putting in online for years, announced he was done with the game in November 09.

This year the biggest name to publicly call it quits is Mike “Timex” McDonald. The 20-year-old Canadian tournament specialist and CardRunners instructor posted the news on his CR blog this week, where he echoed a refrain that will certainly resonate with more than a few poker players: Poker was making it tough, if not impossible, for him to live a balanced life. Excerpt:

I think in all honesty I should be a fairly interesting person given the amount of time, resources, experience and opportunities I have but to someone outside of the poker world I appear quite one-dimensional and although I think I am definitely appreciated once I get to know people, getting to know people is often tough since my world is so different from their world. This leads to tons of people in the poker world having literally 0 non-poker friends, but I don’t aspire to one day be completely engrossed in the poker world and after watching the “busto to robusto” movies and looking at the lives of older players it got me thinking about my future. Zeebo and Good2cu are both very accomplished people who have achieved great success in the poker world and whose lives at this point(assuming the video is accurate) are almost completely related to the poker world. I’m sure both of them are very happy with their lives I just think that I am trending towards a combination of the 2 of them and I think the goals I wish to accomplish are very different from what most people wish to accomplish.

Read the whole blog here.

Of course, it’s a bit easier to walk away from the game when you’re ninth all time on the EPT money list and have accumulated 2.6 million or so in live cashes since 2006. Plus, it sounds like Mike has more of a semi-retirement planned than an absolute exit from the game. From a post on 2+2 where McDonald clarified his intentions:

Hey, prob not as dramatic of a quit as Deeb… I’ll be in San Remo and Monte Carlo since I’ve already made plans for them, and will still play poker if I feel like playing, I just kinda view it more as a hobby now I suppose

You’d also expect that McDonald would want to give at least one WSOP a shot, as he’s been to young to play the World Series of Poker until this point.

As it stands, it appears that Mike will continue his relationship with both Cardrunners and Full Tilt Poker, but we’ll keep you posted.

And as for Deeb? He had a small burst of activity online for a brief window in February, but has been quiet since. He did pop into the Timex thread to offer the following thought’s on McDonald’s departure:

congrats timex this is the sickest brag you’ve ever had and that’s saying something. I know school your gf and such will be a lot more fun its great everyday you wakeup not being stressed out in a few months those closest to you will def notice a difference but still come travel in europe and **** when you want so worth it to go places not during tourneys. Think you should try one wsop though you’re too good at live and its def a month experience any poker pro should have once.

Also as for $ we dont need x to retire we can make money other ways theres a reason some of us excelled at poker those skill sets will translate well in life esp the reading people and understanding equity on levels most brokers don’t even understand.

More info and updates as events warrant.

You can watch McDonald’s videos on CardRunners. PTP and CR have teamed up to offer you free CardRunners memberships – get all the details on how to get CardRunners for free here.

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