We bring you an absolute shocker today, dear Melted Felt readers, as we sadly resount the tale of the devastating effect that online poker can have on previously warm and loving family relationship.

Yes, when David Hoff enrolled at Yale his family were overjoyed, when he passed the first year with distinctions they were extastic, and when he continued the A-grades through the next 5 semesters they were in family-pride-heaven.

David then discovered that his even temperament and analytical mind were perfectly suited to online poker. After dabbling in lower level SNGs, MTTs and Limit Games, David settled on No-Limit Holdem as his focus area - buying a subscription to Cardrunners and the latest poker tracking software and playing short and focused sessions, he managed to bring his win rate to 3 PTBBs / 100 playing the 5c / 10c game.

When Patricia and Randy Hoff, Davids parents, caught wind of their son's new hobby they immediately looked up all the information available online. Concluding that David should move up to at least 50c / $1, learn to multi-table and would then be able to earn wayyyy more than he could in any shitty office job, and have the freedom to manage his own time too.

This is where the trouble began, David rejecting their urgings to quit college with just 2 semesters to go and become a small-stakes pro - pointing out that his parents comparisons were based only on his initial earnings and not future possibilities.

We spoke to his mom Pat, who was still very angry that her only son has rejected the only sensible path in life to go down the 9 to 5 route. "After all the love, compassion and hard cash we have given him" She started, "this is our reward", drying a tear from her eye she continuted, "he could have earned $50k in his first year, and then maybe moved up levels - with rakeback that could easily be a $100k per year just from grinding in a darkened room 10 hours a day and being a social recluse with no girlfriend and a vitamin D deficiency"

With David 100% determined to get a degree and lead a balanced and healthy life we really do not see how this dispute can be easily resolved... while David did point out that his sample of 7000 hands at 5c / 10c was far from statistically water-tight his Dad absolutely insists that if David just had 'average luck' he would be crushing the games and could then move up the levels to where people respect his raises.

As a polite and well brought-up poker satire blog, we thought it only right to let the lady of the house have the last word, wiping away more tears Patricia told us, "snffffffm, he could have been, snffffff, so 'balla' in the eyes of all the members of our favorite forum, snffff"