1. So, Montreal.

This is my third day here. Every day I've had the same routine - wake up around noon, take a shower, try to operate the coffee maker, realize that at 29 years of age I still don't know how to operate a coffee maker, head out to get a large coffee from the bagel place a couple blocks down. Every day when I open the door it's blindingly bright - my apartment is sort of halfway between basement and street level, and I keep curtains in the windows so people can't see me - and every day when I step out from the dungeon the brightness of Montreal in late March takes me by surprise. Every day, the first glimpse of daylight is like five hundred Japanese tourists taking photos of you with flash in a dark room.

I start walking down the street and it smells good, so good. It looks and smells outside like it does in May in my native Finland, my favourite month of the year. I do realize that the smell that I associate in my head with spring is actually the smell of all the dog poo unfreezing that the dog owners have been too lazy to pick up from the sidewalks over the winter. Piles and piles of half-frozen dog poo sending their aroma into the streets, a little bit stronger in your nostrils every day until one day it's summer and the smell is gone (where it goes is still a mystery to me).

It looks and smells like my favourite time of the year, but something is still out of place. It's cold. Really, really cold, below zero celcius. So I have to wear a pile of winter clothes, which is not what you're supposed to wear when it otherwise feels like May, and for that reason I don't like Montreal one bit so far. Every step I take outside, I feel like my senses are playing tricks on me, like eating cake with bacon hidden inside.

I don't like this apartment, either. I hate ground level apartments, and the only thing I hate more than ground level apartments is basement apartments. It feels like a dungeon. I feel a constant pressure to get out, as if I was locked in a jail cell, but when I get out there's the cold and the confusing brightness and the smell. So let's just say so far I'm not very happy with my decision to come to Montreal, which was a very random decision in the first place.

Last autumn I spent in Malta, before and during which lots of strange things I'd rather not discuss went down, partially as a result of which I left the island prematurely. I then spent some time in Finland to finally get my first book out, and that process left me so exhausted that I headed to Cuba with a friend for a holiday. From Cuba we went to Toronto, and from there to New York, because I really, really love New York. But New York is expensive and you can't play online poker there, so after a few days in my favourite city in the world I came to Montreal so that I can get some actual **** done.

I had a really cool Airbnb booked from the tallest building in Montreal, but my host made a last minute cancellation, and I ended up booking this instead on a Cuban internet connection that was too slow to show any pictures. As a result, I'm now tied to this dungeon at least until the end of April. Come May, I again have no idea what I'll be doing with my life. For the last five years or so this has been a recurring theme. Every few months I'm packing my bags and going somewhere new without a real clue why. Receive the keys, drop the keys. Buy a monitor, pack a monitor in your suitcase, have it wrecked during a flight, buy another monitor. This Asus 27-incher I bought yesterday is roughly my 20th monitor since I started playing poker, and at least the 7th time I've owned this specific model. I could unpack it with my eyes closed.

So, poker. Yet another thing that is an inherent part of my life, but which makes less and less sense every day to have around. Yet there it is, inescapable, because it's one of the two things in life I can do somewhat well. The other is writing, and these two things currently live in a weird symbiosis. Poker pays the bills and allows me to take time off trying to launch my writing career, and the enormous amount of time I spend trying to make it as a writer constantly lands me so broke that it gives me motivation to put in volume at poker, motivation that I otherwise wouldn't have. Both of my professions make me try harder at the other - I play with more care and determination so that I could maximize my income and thus maximize the time I can afford to spend writing, and without my constant two-month periods where I don't play a hand because I'm too busy creating things I have no doubt I'd float around pointlessly in the poker world without a real plan just because it's the only thing I know to do. Yet paradoxically I feel like I'd do much better at either if I was able to drop the other completely. My thoughts while playing are often a blur, because a random sentence or an idea for a scene or a short story enters my mind, and I have to write it down while I'm 25-tabling and trying to figure out a good 4bet/fold sizing with 5 seconds left in the timebank. And when I write, I often get the urge to play poker, the urge I always get when it hasn't been that long since I last played poker. It's like trying to quit smoking, you crave it uncontrollably until one day, supposedly, you crave it significantly less. (I wouldn't know, I haven't ever tried to quit smoking.)

This year I have barely played poker at all. I have put in, I don't know, maybe 3-4 weeks worth of "normal" volume. And now I have to put in some more. But the truth is I don't feel like putting in volume at all, because I feel really inspired, inspired by Cuba, inspired by New York, inspired by all the people I met in 8AM afterparties in Williamsburg, inspired by a novel recommendation by a cool bartender chick in Bushwick, a novel I won't have time to finish until May. Every day since I came here I've told myself that this is the day I'll start playing, but then I've never started playing, but started writing instead. Yet my writing hasn't been that great either, because I've been distracted by the guilt of not playing. As a result, I haven't got **** done of all the aforementioned **** I was planning to get done here. And that's got to change.

I have a fairly obsessive personality, and with me things always go in periods. In poker, there's usually an obsessive build-up period where I play all day, every day for a few weeks, and study a fair bit. Then at one point I realize I'm up to date and the tune-up period is over, and then I (hopefully) win enough so that I can quit playing for a while. Rinse and repeat. But every year, every month, after every repeat of the full cycle poker feels a tad more pointless. I guess you could say I've lost the fire. When you read certain blogs, you can see that many guys have that fire, and I just don't anymore. I'm too competitive to enjoy competing at levels other than the highest, but at the same time even trying to be able to compete with these guys would take too much away from the things in life that are of more importance to the 2016 me.

Don't get me wrong, I still love playing poker, but largely just in a recreational way. The way I'd like to live my life at this point would be to live in New York, write something twenty-five days (or more likely, nights) a month, and play poker here and there when I feel like it. But sadly it's not an option, and instead of living in Williamsburg with three roommates from three different ethnic backgrounds and eating bagels from the corner deli I'm here in Ville-Emard, Montreal, eating takeaway sushi and trying to get my Holdem Manager to work for the 97th time.

But still, I love poker, and I especially love playing poker. I know that when I've played a couple of sessions I will be sucked in again, and I'll get to that state where I CAN'T WAIT to play the next session, and my life becomes a cycle of playing poker, studying poker, talking poker and very little else. It's a bubble I enjoy tremendously (often to my own surprise) once I get settled comfortably inside of it, and it requires a near complete burnout from 12-hour daily sessions for me to want to break that bubble. Typically this takes 3-5 weeks. (Rinse. Repeat.)

And poker also pays well, better than anything else I could possibly do. Even that I've long fallen off the bandwagon, and there are new, hungry regs coming left and right, I still somehow hold my own. I don't know how, because these days I study and play less than ever before. Either people are still really terrible, or then it's just good game selection. I strongly suspect it's the latter:



That's roughly my last 12 months. It's not very bragworthy, but it's roughly what I've deserved. I think realistically with this half-assed effort and my mind focused mostly on writing making $5k/month is not only realistic but what seems to happen more or less every month. It's not like I set myself a goal of making $5k a month, it just happens every month, inevitably. But just as inevitably that's where my profits seem to stop - not that I wouldn't want to make more, but typically when I reach $5k and have thus reached what staying alive costs me each month and a bit more (did I mention that writing is expensive in many ways you couldn't imagine until you've actually started publishing your own stuff?), I tend to slip away from poker, start taking days off, start getting blackout drunk, and so on. So $5k a month it is, and I suspect will be for some time. In a way it feels incredibly lame, because it hasn't been that long since the days when I'd wager that on a single Sunday and would occasionally be rewarded with five-figure scores. But then again, this $5k is about as close to a steady paycheck as one could possibly attain as a poker player. I've had exactly one losing week in the last one and a half years (I played only three days that week), and I don't know if I could have a losing full week in these games if I tried. It's a rare gift that I have, the gift of really loving every plebby $20 buy-in with $800 for the winner. Show up, print $200-$300 per day. (Rinse. Repeat.)

While here in Montreal, I also have to put out book #2. It's more or less finished, at least to the point where it doesn't occupy my thoughts anymore. There's some fine-tuning to do - comma here, comma there. But the creative process for that one is over, and the work left to do is of the tedious kind that's mostly taken care of by my editor (which I'm thankful for). But it'll still take some of my energy, and will keep me from playing as much as I'd like to, because when I am in the playing mode I generally do want to grind like a madman. And then there's the marketing stuff that also occupies me - again, stuff that I hate, stuff that I want nothing to do with, but stuff that I have to do. The kind of stuff that follows when your first publication is a 650-page autobiography of yourself, a relatively unknown poker player.

I'm also working on several other things - final edits of book #3 that finishes the trilogy, trying to organize everything regarding the print version of the book, a screenplay that I've worked on for about six months now, a fiction novel, a poker life advice book, some articles. And I have multiple unpaid side projects that I write for just for the love of writing - including this one now, I guess. It's weird, as much as I love writing, I often get burnt out by writing, and then I fix that by writing pages and pages of something completely different.

I'm not sure why I opened this thing - in many ways it's completely pointless, since I basically already know what I'll be making each month, and I'm not even striving for higher. I know my limits, and in the current climate they are so low that I only compete in the featherweight tournaments, and that's alright. I'm past trying to be something that I'll never be, and a nosebleed professional is one of those things. I don't even want to play $100 ABI for a living. But I'd like to get a little more organized, track my process a little bit more, work just a little bit harder, maybe make just a tiny bit more. In some way I'd like to get a little bit more out of myself, because there are too many days when I stare at an empty screen not doing either poker or writing. Like a writer's block and a poker block at the same time, because I can't decide which one I should do. Come to think of it, I really need to get more organized. And maybe, just maybe, having this thread will help me do that.

And then there's the writing aspect. God damn I really love writing.

I really enjoyed reading your BBV thread years ago. Best of luck with the poker/writing grind, will be following.

In, just for the awesomness before it stops getting updated and leaves us all with the sads.

Hello, what's your abi now? Nice read

Great writing, I enjoyed reading it. The thing that stuck with me most is what you said about the fire in us poker players. How crucial it is indeed, to have that fire in you. It burns strong in me but every now and then I feel it flickering. It's either after a bad session or when I start doubting myself regarding poker long term. To keep that fire from burning out I think poker has to be balanced with another passion/aspiration, otherwise it consumes you.

I am trying to find a counter balance but I can't seem to get away from the tables that much lately. I am hungry to learn, to put in volume etc.
Your passion towards writing can be the perfect counter balance for poker and the other way around. Hope you can get it figured out.

I will pick up your book at one point, I am definitely interested in reading it.

Have a productive time in Montreal!

This has been our warmest winter in like.. 20+ years. I bitched today too tho. =D

I read your BBV post many moons ago - Something tells me you will go from not liking MTL very much to loving it within the next 2 months. Might even be willing to place a bet.

MTL is kind of like a hipper version of gotham. Existentially speaking ofcourse =). PM me if you want some suggestions. I got you covered.

2. On Losing

Today I almost started playing, but then I didn't. The games I mainly wish to play in start at around 10 A.M. here, and the latest it makes any sense for me to start a session is at about 3 P.M. I set my alarm for 10 A.M., then decided that I want to sleep some more, and next woke up at 1:30 P.M. Then I realized I don't have any food in the apartment, and there was a crazy blizzard outside, and [insert more excuses here]. The truth is that every time I come back from a break, which these days happens about 10 times a year, I feel self-conscious, like I've somehow mysteriously forgotten the rules of poker during the couple of weeks I've taken off. I always feel out of shape, almost scared to register a tournament, even a $11 buy-in feels like I'm up against dragons armed only with a wooden stick. I don't know why that is, it just is. So typically I always waste a day or two, opening the clients and then not registering a single tournament anwyway, staring at the lobbies. I make excuses just because I'm too scared to get back on the grind, which doesn't make the tiniest bit of sense because in my tune-in day I usually buy in for ~$300, while I'm up $500k lifetime in this game. It's not like anything could go extremely wrong. But it's not about money, it's about performing, and when I worry my performance might be subpar (which also doesn't make any sense, since in the games I play in my A-game and D-game net me almost the same amount of money), I can't get anything done. Perfectionism isn't that great of a quality in a person with this many imperfections.

If I would've managed to get up a 10 A.M., I know I would've played today. If I woke up at 10 A.M., there would've been no reason not to play as all the good stuff would've been ahead of me, but now when I opened the computer at around two the day was already about to reach the twilight hours of my poker regime, and it was much easier to convince myself that it's better to start clean tomorrow with a proper session. I also convinced myself that it would be a good idea to study before my first session back, which is very true, but it's 10:30 P.M. now and the only studying I've done is watching a RunItOnce video for a whole five minutes. Then I remembered that I need to get tickets to a Father John Misty gig next month and spent the next 90 minutes seeking those for a sold out show. Procrastination is another thing I'm very talented at, but sadly it's a talent that's pretty hard to monetize.

My relationship with studying poker is, like most things, somewhat strange and obsessive. In general I don't enjoy it very much, as I'm sure most of us don't. There are some guys who really seem to enjoy number-crunching, who get kicks out solving equilibriums (I don't really even know the meaning of the word "equilibrium"), and breaking hands down to bits and pieces using programs like PioSolver. I'm not one of those people. I'm an old-fashioned button clicker, and simply through years of experience I know what to do in 99% of situations I'm presented with naturally. As long as I don't play over my head, I can navigate my way through the sea of zombies and make a decent living. But I don't believe there's a large upside to spending enormous amounts of time studying, because I don't think I'd have the talent to consistently beat high-stakes games in 2016 no matter how hard I tried, and as stated it's not a career path I have much interest in anyway. So studying for me is more like keeping up with the times, maybe picking a new thing here and there, but mainly just reminding myself of how to play poker after a break. The only exception to this is when I lose, even just for one session (which happens on maybe 15-20% of the days I play), because god damnit I hate losing. Comparatively, losing $20 feels about ten times worse to me than winning $2000 does on the opposite side of the spectrum. No matter how much I win, I forget about it in an hour or so. But if I have a losing day I can't sleep, I'm not hungry, I don't want to talk to anyone, I dodge Facebook and Skype chats, and the only thing I'm capable of doing is studying poker. This is obviously very illogical, since I know that having losing sessions is an inherent part of the game, and even if I was the best player in the world I would still lose quite regularly. But it doesn't matter. When I lose, I go on all-night studying benders leaving no stone unturned. I suspect this plays quite a big part in that someone with this many personality flaws can make a living of any kind at all playing online poker these days. Even that I don't manage to study when it would actually make sense, I still get my hours in, and when I do go on these studying benders I am putting in all the effort in me, as if it's going to stop me from ever having a losing session again.

The thing is though, that I really need to get myself in shape faster than I'm accustomed to. I noticed that there's a WSeries in a couple of weeks (I thought it was in May), pretty much the only series that really gets me excited at all these days. SCOOP, WCOOP and all that stuff I couldn't care less about. I probably won't be registering a single SCOOP event. But WSeries holds a special place in my heart, my feelings towards it are almost of romantic nature, and even that I don't care about winning an event all that much, I just want to participate. I have so many good memories of WSeries events, not just money-wise but because somehow they've often been connected to many key events in my life. Somehow something good always happens when a WSeries is on, and I love locking myself in for its duration just to play every event, shutting out the outside world. So, to be able to compete in this series at all, I might have to speed things up a little, put the hours in. And since I know that if I tried to study now I wouldn't really concentrate, I guess I just need to really get on the grind and embrace the inevitable losing session, so that I can go over all the hundreds of marked hands since my last losing session I haven't checked yet. All those push-fold spots and folding equity calculations and range analyses seem like a tedious grind, but I know when I get in that state, I'm going to push through with the determination of a steam engine.

I did get something done today, though. I worked on my screenplay for a while, and finally found the headspace to channel certain ideas into paper that entered my consciousness drunk on whiskey in Brooklyn last week. I don't know if it's ever going to go anywhere, and as a poker player I acknowledge that the chances of it ever becoming anything are of the runner-runner variety, but I'm really starting to like this thing. It's not like with my book that I have a love/hate relationship with (possibly because it deals so directly with myself, with whom I have a relationship of the same nature), but something that I've embraced from the beginning. After writing about yourself for two and a half years it's very refreshing to work on characters that don't stare back at you in the mirror every morning. Basically, I think I have a great idea for a script, and I've written tons of great dialogue. The only problem is that, six months into working on this, I don't have a story. At all. I have no idea where any of the storylines are going, it's just scattered dialogues revolving around a background idea, and I keep changing my characters' background stories and attributes and even genders and names regularly. But I prefer this to the opposite, because typically I think it's much harder to write the little things than it is creating a storyline. Anyone can come up with a sheet's worth of ideas for a show, but writing 50 pages of scenes where the characters more or less just conversate is much harder. Or so I think, obviously I have zero experience in working on scripts so it's not like I have any idea what I'm actually doing. But it's been a fun and revitalizing experience regardless.

Something that I've thought about a lot lately is my limitations and talents as a writer. I've come to realize that more or less my only real talent (as in, something that makes me stand out from the pack) is that I'm insanely productive and fast. I'm very good at creating pages and pages of relatively good content. If there was a x$/page rate I'd get paid to write, I'd be a rich man. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, the sad truth is that I'm not great at most things that make a great novelist. I think I've unconsciously grown a bit of a signature style, more or less the style you're reading right now, I don't know what to call it. Slightly dark, subtly humorous easy-to-read self-reflectiveness? But the point is that the thing I'm good at is mostly making entertaining, easy to read stuff. Virtually every person I know who's read my book keeps telling me they finished it in a day or two. "Impossible to put down", "I missed work because I just had to finish it", stuff like that. While it sounds great on the surface, and naturally I do very much appreciate these comments, I deep down hate only being able to come up with stuff that's so easy to chew. And I'm having constant existential debates with myself about whether I need to stop dreaming about reinventing myself as a great novelist, and just pursue the kind of stuff that I'm good at. I mean, I could publish twenty books of the "I couldn't put it down" quality every year, but it would take me years and years to even dream of writing a novel that's both great and not easy to digest, and even then I'd probably fail at it. I had this same debate with myself about poker for many years - I spent so much time wanting to be the best, wanting to beat the highest buy-ins, wanting to win an EPT and a WSOP and whatnot, and it was a very, very (very) expensive lesson to learn about my limitations. And now that I'm aware of them, I make five grand a month working ~12 days a month, and it seems obvious this is what I should've done the whole time. What if I'm doing the same thing again, trying to come up with scripts and novels, only to find out five years later that I'm simply incapable of succeeding at writing besides this one specific area that I'm already good at, and all my attempts to be something else have turned to ****?

That really sounded a lot more negative than it was supposed to. Honestly, I'm really happy with my writing now, and I realize that many of my shortcomings and failures as a poker player stemmed from denial, stubborness, delusion and simply refusing to give up the dream. It's in many ways different with writing. In poker, the people who've complimented my play over the least near-decade, everyone who's said they idolize me or whatever over the years, have always had a biased outlook. You only see the headlines on news sites, the graphs and selected hand histories, but there's only one person in the world who knows the whole picture. But with writing it's different because everything I've ever put out has been presented to the world raw, and so many people have liked my writing over the years that I don't really have a reason to feel self-conscious about it. And I will keep working on the script, and the novel, and whatever else crazy I'll come up with in the future, because I feel obliged to at least try. If I lose another five years of my life and fail miserably, at least it'll make for a good story.


P.S. During my procrastination hours today I came up with the idea of going somewhere north, like crazy ****house north, in Canada. Inuits and polar bears and eating raw seal type of north. Does anyone have an idea what's the best way to do this (from Montreal)? I've been googling a lot of stuff, but nearly everywhere seems a little bit too hard to access (I read about a national park that has polar bears, but according to Wikitravel you have to "pack at least a week's worth of extra food, since on most days the weather is too bad for the prop plane to pick you up"). I'd be up for some other strange adventure in Canada too, preferably somewhere with lots of nature and not very many people, but that also isn't a huge time commitment.


Comments: Thanks guys.

Lin Baba, My ABI is probably around $25 these days. I think I'm only now, 1,5 years into playing that ABI, getting to the point where I'm not embarrassed by it anymore. It is what it is, easy money. I play a bunch on untracked sites so it's hard to figure out exactly, but around that ballpark. 78% ROI according to sharkscope.

ac3play, Yeah, the fire is interesting and can be quite a bitch. I see so many new guys who have too much of that fire, guys who can't help themselves and would be so much better off if they could control their poker fire even just a bit. I know, because I was wallowing in that fire as if I'd ignited myself with gasoline for many years. We have a saying in Finland that I've always really liked, roughly translated it goes "Fire is a great slave but a terrible master". I think it applies to poker pretty well - too much fire and you'll get into ego fights and you start approaching the game in an unhealthy way. Too little fire and you don't care enough. I think my personal fire towards poker has more or less flamed out already, but the ashes of the campfire are still warm and I'm enjoying warming my hands on it just a little bit longer. Eventually there will be a new guy lighting another fire and I'll be completely without a place to exist in the poker world, but I hope it won't happen for a year or two. I'll even reach out for a lighter to ensure that doesn't happen, because as much as playing poker hurts my writing, I'm not ready to give up the freedom and the lifestyle and the traveling around just yet. (I've said this every year for quite a long time now.)

Barry Champlain, Yeah, I think that's entirely possible. I walked through some artsy neighbourhood (I don't know what it was called) the other day and I really liked it. There's some great indoor climbing here too, which is pretty much my biggest passion besides those already mentioned these days. But so far I don't feel at home, and if the situation doesn't improve on its own I don't see myself staying past the expiration of this Airbnb lease. We'll see.

Really enjoy your writing and excited to follow your updates , i remember reading most of your massive bbv thread which was also awesome.

"good luck" more so in the motivation and writing as it seems you are consistent and at a level of internal content with your results

I have been here most of my life so there is a part of me that is extremely jaded (mostly due to my other career) towards this city. The winters here are brutal but the summers are the nuts. One can find pretty much anything they desire here with relative ease.

If you are stuck in a burb then It prob seems pretty pitz - What area is your air BNB ?

It's odd because as locals myself and others are always bitching bout the city - But for an outsider It's usually paradise.

I suppose deep down I'm a proud Montrealer and don't want to see you or anyone walking away without at least a proper experience here. Iv'e been there done that but to those who have not there is a tonne to see / experience although I may be thinking / skewing bout' things that go on post midnight lol ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Again if you need any advice hmu. glgl

p.s The one thing that does tilt me bout 514 is the too cool for school attitude you can run into constantly but again...Depends where you are at in the city.

Amazing seeing you blogging. Will definitely follow!

Laziness breeds procrastinating and it sounds to me like you are a lazy self indulgent prick that is full of talent but you only want to do enough to just get by. This is your life man, get off your @ss and make it happen if you want it. Poker is not in the way of writing and writing is not in the way of poker. You and your laziness are in the way of both. I can't stand people who go through life wasting supreme talent, and just make excuse after excuse. Get over yourself dude, have some discipline and work ethic or stfu!!!

3. Cuba, part I

I've been wanting to go to Cuba for quite some time, but it's always ended up narrowly losing to someplace else trying to decide my next holiday destination. Since I've already been on the road for a large portion of the last decade, there's only so much time I can take off for actual holidays. Especially as my holidays are virtually never of the resting type. In fact, quite the opposite - I always come home from a holiday more tired than I was when I left home, and thus I usually need another holiday in my bed just to recover from the "holiday". And when I really choose to go somewhere non-poker related, I want to live with locals and immerse myself in their culture, the kind of stuff that doesn't happen when you go into the #1 bar recommendation on Lonely Planet. And because experiencing things as authentically as possible doesn't happen overnight, I typically need to take at least three weeks off for a holiday, which again limits the amount of times per year I can go on these trips. And for this reason I still hadn't been to Cuba a few months ago, despite wanting to go for as long as I can remember. I didn't want to waste it, I didn't want to make a half-assed effort and just visit Havana. I wanted to go and spend at least a month wandering around the country, renting an old car or maybe a motorcycle. But the time had never been right.

Then, a few months ago, I was at an airport somewhere, I can't remember where. Prague, maybe? I was waiting for my flight to depart, watching the news on my iPhone. The talking head of Barack Obama popped up on my screen, and the head said that he wants to rekindle the diplomatic ties between the United States and Cuba. The head also said that he wants to work towards ending the embargo against Cuba as soon as possible. This, in turn, would (to me) mean the country losing most of its charm, as the reasons why I wanted to go to Cuba were all tied to the embargo - the old cars, the lack of Apple and McDonald's and Facebook, the stuck-in-the-1950's feel. I felt a rush of panic take over my body, as if I was on the verge of losing something forever, and all of a sudden Cuba became top priority. I didn't want to risk this strange teleport to a time long lost ceasing to exist. So, me and my friend Yusef (yes, the same Yusef from Once A Gambler) had to put our forthcoming Iran trip on hold and make a hasty purchase to go to Cuba instead.

Since Yusef has a real-life job, and uncharacteristically I, too, was busy working 80 hours a week trying to publish a book and get some butter on that bread playing poker, we could only find a sixteen-day window for our trip. This was much less than either of us would've liked, especially as we also needed to go to Toronto and New York on the same trip (more on this later), but it was the best we could do. Since the Cuba portion of our trip was limited to only nine measly days, for the first time in our lives we felt the need to actually plan a little bit in advance. Typically we don't plan anything at all (when we went to Kyrgyzstan, I only learned about 12 hours before boarding our Aeroflot red-eye flight from Moscow that the Finnish ministry of foreign affairs was not only warning us not to travel to Kyrgyzstan, but that there would be land mines, we would get mugged by policemen, and so on*), and I suspect it's for that exact reason why our trips have always ended up being awesome. Too much planning typically ruins things for me in most areas of life.

So, we decided to plan a little bit, and even went on to book our accommodations in advance (something we didn't do for half of the aforementioned Kyrgyzstan trip, for example, where we eventually found a sweet muslim family to stay with in the mountains). I felt very lame googling things, booking three-star hotels, as if it's only a matter of time before I'd find myself in an American-owned resort with all the other red-faced tourists sipping American beer and eating American food by the pool, too lazy to even walk two blocks into the ocean. When our accommodations were booked, which included a long-distance call to Cuba Yusef had to make because the place didn't have internet, started the process of finding out what we'd actually like to do in Cuba. But because my January and February ended up being significantly more hectic than I could ever have imagined, I told Yusef to take care of all this. We've traveled together since 2005, think alike about most things related to travel, and I trust Yusef's options like my own.

It's strange, all this time I've wanted to go to Cuba, but there have never been any specific things about Cuba that would've attracted my attention. I've never had any idea what their most famous building or tallest mountain or best beach is. The reason I've wanted to go to Cuba is the vibe, which is even stranger, because you can't experience vibes without being present. In other words, I didn't know **** all about Cuba, just that I wanted to go to Cuba for reasons I couldn't put into words.



When Yusef asked me if there was anything specific I wanted to do in Cuba, I answered: "Mojitos, like really authentic mojitos, far away from resorts and hotels. Oh, and I want to go to that place where Hemingway went. And I want do some, I don't know, nature ****."

For someone who doesn't know me as well as Yusef does, that answer might have sounded ambiguous, but Yusef knows that I like hiking and riding horses and scuba diving and snorkeling and waterfalls and rainforests, so he got right onto it. I went on with my life, working like a madman to the point where I was still 1-tabling the final table bubble of a PowerFest tournament on PartyPoker's mobile software at the airport security check, and when the first leg of my flight combination landed in Amsterdam I still didn't even know what cities in Cuba we'd be going to. But I was somewhat sure that Yusef would know. Probably. Just in case, I purchased the dreaded Lonely Planet Cuba from the Amsterdam airport during my stopover, and boarded my next flight to Toronto.

I came to Toronto a day before Yusef, who had a work commitment. Then we'd spend another night in the city, watching the UFC and getting drunk, probably going straight to the airport in the morning. This is more or less exactly what happened, and we landed in Varadero airport in Cuba in early afternoon on a Sunday.

I'd read from Lonely Planet during my flight from Amsterdam to Toronto that Varadero is Cuba's number one beach holiday destination and Caribbean's spring break capital. This sounded miserable to me, and as much as I had faith in Yusef's traveling sense, I still had to make sure and ask him on the plane if we were actually going to be staying in Varadero.

"No, we're getting the **** out of there immediately. A bus to Havana should be leaving soon after we land."

I nodded in a barely detactable fashion, as if to underscore that a decision as obvious as not staying in Varadero doesn't warrant a deeper nod.

Explaining what we're doing there, going over the visa papers, stamping the passport, receiving our luggages, customs, you know the drill. The only unusual thing was that we needed to exchange money at the airport (usually you want to avoid exchanging money at airports at all costs because of the vigs), because it was impossible to get a hold of either of Cuba's two currencies in advance, and we needed to pay the bus driver. Since there was only one tiny exchange booth at the aiport and hundreds of tourists wanting to do the same thing, it took us an hour to get our hands on Cuban convertible pesos, but we managed to get some just in time to make the bus.



A couple of bumpy hours later we were in Havana. According to Lonely Planet, the taxi drivers try to charge tourists obnoxious amounts, and you always need to haggle the price in advance. We stepped out a couple of stops before the main bus station, without any clue where we were (we assumed it was Havana, since it looked kind of big), and waved a cab. We gave him the hotel address, which was apparently on the exact opposite side of Havana.

"$20?", offered the middle-aged driver wearing a fedora.
"$5?", Yusef counter-offered. The driver accepted the offer in a heartbeat, which made me think we still should've got away with paying less.



A part of Cuba's intrigue that I could put into words beforehands were the postcard pictures of classic cars everywhere, since the country's had limited access to new vehicles for over half a century now because of the embargo. Our first car, the taxi, was a green 1950's American family-sized car with a closed roof, benches so soft I worried my ass would be touching the road, no glasses in the windows, and naturally no seatbelts (in all my time in Cuba, I didn't come across one car with seatbelts). It sounded like a drag race car, and it seemed to only operate in the smallest gears. It reminded me of my old, 20-year old Volvo that I had when I was 18, that sounded like a dragon whenever you tried to push it past its limits of 120 kilometres per hour. For this car the limit seemed to be more like 40, but it was alright. We were not in a rush.

Our hotel didn't look as much like a hotel, but a communist apartment house. Next to it were a few other hotels of the exact same variety. The street reminded me of a certain neighbourhood in Almaty, Kazakhstan, although the temperature was significantly warmer.

The first person in our hotel lobby that I saw was a drag queen. I didn't know much about religion in Cuba, but for some reason I had imagined Cuba to be a deeply catholic country, the kind where homosexuality and drag queens don't exist, yet there were not one, but three drag queens wandering around our hotel lobby, as if they were waiting for something or someone. They paid no attention to us, but it was impossible not to pay attention to them, since their dresses shone like neon peacocks. The lobby itself was fine and spacious, the kind that looks exactly like most low-budget chain hotel lobbies in the world, like that place where you went with your family in Torremolinos 20 years ago because you have four siblings and your parents couldn't afford a nicer hotel. The only difference was that in Cuba there's only one hotel chain. The Republic of Cuba. Every hotel is government-owned.

When we got to our room, I wanted to find out about religion in Cuba as well as why there were drag queens in our hotel lobby, only to realize that there's no internet connection. Not as in the internet was down, but as in there was no internet in the hotel, or the part of town, or possibly anywhere in this whole city. I'd forgotten about this entirely. I was slightly annoyed by not being able to do a simple google search, and then significantly more annoyed at myself for realizing that the first thing I wanted to do in Cuba, the country that got stuck in time, was committing a google search. I sat on the bed and started browsing Lonely Planet instead.

"Yusef, why isn't out hotel listed here? There are literally 500 hotels from one star hotels to five star hotels in this book, and all the other hotels on our street are here. Where did you even find this place?"

Yusef said he doesn't remember.

We unpacked our stuff - we'd spend the next five days in Havana - and started getting ready for the night. The street below our window was a party street. Not as in a touristic party street - we were very far from all the tourist spots, on the complete opposite side of Havana - but a party street for locals. It was 5 P.M. on a Sunday, and when I looked out of the window, there were suddenly thousands of people dancing in the streets. Sounds of drums and instruments I couldn't recognize filled our room from nine storeys below. People were stomping the ground, someone was carrying a torch, car horns were honking. The street where our taxi came from, a busy road just an hour earlier, had now been turned into a walking street by the masses. There were a couple of policemen observing the chaos, but it remained unclear whether they were happy with the suddenly changed traffic arrangement. The few car drivers trapped amidst the masses certainly weren't, but their honking got blended helplessly in the other sounds, making their horns sound like instruments in the 1000-person impromptu salsa show.

"I wonder what's going on down there?", I asked Yusef, to no answer. (We are Finns, and thus don't talk unless talking is required and sometimes not even then, and true to our culture Yusef didn't bother to respond, since we both knew the response to be obvious: I guess we'd better find out.)

When Yusef was getting ready (my best friend is a man who doesn't have a problem wearing the same clothes for two days in a row, doesn't do his hair when he goes out, doesn't shave more than once a week, but spends a ridiculous amount of time using dental floss), I browsed through the Havana nightlife section of Lonely Planet. That's where I spotted the name of our hotel - not in the list of hotels, but in the list of night clubs. It turned out that our hotel is Havana's prime gay landmark, where homosexuals had secret meetings under Fidel's regime, and it now serves as a public hotspot for all things LGBT. The hotel night club two storeys above us is known for its drag shows, and the ladies I had encountered downstairs were probably getting ready for the night. This explained a lot of things, including why the receptionist asked us three times if we were sure we wanted separate beds.


TO BE CONTINUED


*Kyrgyzstan was one of my favourite places ever, and a completely safe destination to travel to in my opinion. Although we did get tear gassed once, but even that was kind of for a reason. Here is a picture from Bishkek, their capital:


I miss Kyrgyzstan.

I'll continue on this later, and I'll get back to the comments whenever I have time too. I'm currently under the weather with a really annoying fever, and I started writing this because I couldn't sleep. I'm more tired now, and I have to host something for a Finnish poker news site in about ten hours and my throat feels like I've swallowed a cactus, so I'm going to crawl under the blankets and return to this at some point. Sorry!

tldr fu ead

OP, any chance your book will be coming out in an ink-on-paper format in the future? Not to derail this thread, but maybe you could answer in the Books and Publications thread?

Literally loled at this:

Just getting to the comments today. Still feeling incredibly ill, and had to cancel the hosting gig tonight. It was pretty annoying since a lot of people were going to be watching, but my voice is basically gone so there was no chance I could've spoken for six hours straight (or even six minutes). I did manage to get some studying done, did some tedious preflop stuff for 2,5 hours while sporting a 39,2c fever. I wish I was this productive when I'm not sick.

I've managed to play a couple of short sessions too, won a bit both times, played poorly mainly due to being out of touch. I'd expect things to get better somewhat quickly once I recover, but I still don't know if it's going to be quickly enough for Wseries and a couple of other things I'm looking forward to, all starting in a week. It looks like that in all likelyhood I'm going to be peaking when the serieses are already over. Then again that's usually a great time to grind, the hell I care where my money comes from as long as it comes from somewhere. So maybe I'll treat these serieses as practice and go on an epic bowlcomp grind right after winning the Party $22/2000 GTD five days in a row.





Yeah, I didn't mean to insult Montreal at all - the reasons why I haven't been feeling particularly great here have nothing to do with the city. I don't even know if I'm geographically in Montreal, I'm in Ville-Emard. Is that in Montreal? Like I said, when I was making the Airbnb booking I was on a computer that had Windows95 and the internet took 15 minutes to load the Airbnb frontpage, and I just had to book something. So I took the first place that was about the same price as the place that got cancelled, aka slightly on the pricey side. The headline said something like "great location", and I had one picture load that showed a nice looking bedroom (which is nice in real life, too). I figured that was enough, and since I paid what I'd pay for a semi-upscale place in the city, I assumed (along with the headline) that I'd be within a walking distance from everything. I really hate being so far from the city, because I don't fit in this neighbourhood one bit, and I was hoping to see skyscrapers every day when I wake up (I have a thing for skyscrapers). This sleepy family neighbourhood is not really my cup of tea. On the plus side, apparently Mario Lemieux's childhood home and the rink where he practiced are both almost next door. I'm a pretty big hockey buff, so I like that. But living in this residential area with basically just families with kids is not really ideal, especially as it's a bit of a commute to the city. Again I don't mean to bitch at all, I realize I've been very lucky in life and if my biggest problem is living 15 minutes outside Montreal's city centre then my life must be going pretty well. But since I was expecting one thing and got the exact opposite, I've been underwhelmed, which really isn't Montreal's fault at all. The little that I've had time to spend in the more central areas I've enjoyed a lot, I just wish that I lived there myself (now my nearest proper gym is 4,8km away for example).

I can feel you on the brutal winters/awesome summers front - that's exactly how Finland is. I typically pretty much only spend the summers there, and it's so beautiful and awesome every time. We spend so much time trapped in the cold darkness that when the summer finally comes, there's a certain lively vibe going on that just doesn't exist outside places like these. A sense of urgency, because you know the summer will soon end and another nine months of darkness will follow, so you really go out there and embrace every day. This is one of the reasons why I never end up going to the WSOP, the last time I participated was in 2010. I just don't want to waste precious northern summer time in Vegas, since WSOP takes like 50% of the entire Finnish summer.

I also think that as a European I may naturally appreciate the things that make Montreal special a bit less than, say, Americans. This is simply because Montreal is so very European, and I tend to spend as much time as possible away from Europe. I do think this whole French Canadian thing is very cool and I love the cultural stuff, but I think I'd appreciate it more if I hadn't already been to France 15 times. I like how every second building is a 200-year old fortress, but they don't do it for me the way they (I assume, based on the amount of people taking photographs of these buildings every day) do for most people, because I come from the old continent. Does that make sense?

I will say that two things in particular have impressed me during my first week, though. One: The girls here are hot, like mind-blowingly hot. I suspect it's the French Canadian thing. Two: There's super cheap, great quality kebab everywhere. I didn't expect that. I love me a good kebab, and every single one of the 7-8 places I've tried in my first week () have been so good they'd be the best kebab place in all of Finland.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to finding time to go out there more, hit the nightlife, go to hockey games and so on. I'm a bit short on contacts here, so if you want to go for a few beers or whatever once I've recovered, I'd be up for that. I did buy tickets to Godspeed You! Black Emperor which should be really cool to see here since they are from Montreal. And then I'm going to see Father John Misty which should be fun, too. The third gig is Rihanna, which is going to be very weird, but I found a ticket for $22 that was originally $199 from Stubhub and just couldn't resist. But anyway, the Montreal music scene is something that I also very much appreciate, so much good stuff hails from here.

While you didn't exactly present this in the nicest manner, there is certainly a lot of truth in what you said here. I didn't mean to give out an image like I didn't work hard - the first six weeks of this year I was working 80 hours a week trying to put out the book and play poker - and honestly I think I've always had a pretty reasonable work ethic for a poker player. My issues are all of the mental kind, and always have been. I've been thinking for some time about seeing a psychologist for them (I don't think it's urgent and I wouldn't expect any shattering revelations, but you know, it'd be nice to get some answers for why I am like this). Basically, I'm a perfectionist and very competitive by nature. I'm not a perfectionist about everything, but I typically am about most things when it comes to myself. I can't stand losing, and as a result I fear losing, which in turn leads to losing. I wrote about this a bit in the book, but in a nutshell the problem is that I have this fear of failing, fear of giving a subpar performance, and it's like I have an inner voice that often tells me that this and this venture will fail, which leads to me giving that subpar performance. Especially when I used to play higher, there were so many times when I got demoralized before or during the session, because I'd get owned by someone and sense my own mortality. It's extra hard with poker, because I *know* that I'm not and never will be the best the game has ever seen, but all my instincts keep telling me that no less will ever do, because what's the point in competing if you don't even try to be the best? And the more I fail at trying to be something I'm not built to be, the more of a burden it becomes, and the more I start fearing to start a session sometimes because I'm afraid of losing. That's basically why I'm enjoying these low variance, low stakes super easy games, at the same time it's so far from competing at any meaningful level that my brain doesn't even consider it a competition, and my opponents are typically so bad that there's not really much question whether I'm usually the best player at the table (not a brag, if I couldn't beat $20 MTTs 8 years into my career it'd be pretty sad). So while I'm not the best player in the world, I can be the best in this little world I've built for myself, and I can play without stress or pressure, the stakes are so low that no one's railing these games, I play mostly on hidden aliases on euro sites, and for these reasons I very rarely lose. It basically just feels like playing a video game, and I make decent money doing it. But if I tried playing bigger, I know I'd get stressed out, and I don't want to get stressed out. I'm too old for that. Life is good the way it is right now, and as long as I don't get tired regging the same $20 bowlcomps every day, then what's wrong with that? As I said in the OP, I'm looking forward to getting a bit more organized, trying to sneak in some extra volume, work a bit harder, but I have to be careful about overdoing it because if I all of a sudden strived to make, say, $20k a month, I'd be a wreck and I know it.

With writing it's a bit different, because for some reason I have a lot more confidence in myself when it comes to my writing, even though as a writer all I have to my credit is some blogs, articles and one book, whereas as a poker player I've still won a boatload of majors, a world championship, the biggest live tournament in my home country, and have pretty decent overall career statistics. But still, in poker I've always felt out of place in one way or another, and it doesn't matter how much I've won, I've always deep down lacked self-confidence and battled with a lot of emotional problems that I suspect most players don't suffer from. With writing I don't have most of these problems, I'm very content with nearly everything I write, and I'm somewhat convinced that I'll end up having a succesful career in writing. But because I spent so many years of my poker career striving to be something that I never had a chance to become (at least without an unimaginable stretch of luck), the fears sometimes take over me as a writer, too, because I worry about wasting time again striving to write things greater than I'm ultimately capable of.

I'm not sure if that was the response you were looking for, probably not, like I said I'm feeling really ill today and I'm just rambling here pretty much. I guess what I was trying to say is that I didn't mean to sound like someone who takes things for granted, or the kind of guy who can't get over himself and throws his talent away. It's more the opposite, I often don't feel mentally equipped to put my talents to use in most areas in life, and this leads to procrastination and bad career choices. Imagine having overwhelming ambition, perfectionism and a mind that chronically lacks faith in your own skills, and you're pretty close to the mess that is my consciousness.

GFY

I answered in the thread, and thanks for creating it. It's always kinda hard to get the word out - I didn't want to spam the book in people's faces, and seeing threads like this make me so happy, since it means the word is finally getting out a bit in natural fashion (same goes for seeing GoodReads reviews etc).

Anyway, this is what I answered:

Parts 1-3 (you read part 1) are coming out separately as e-books only, all this spring. The main reason is that I wanted the price to be low, because I wanted everyone to be able to read the story and get some resolution for the BBV thread in case they felt robbed after finishing it. I feel pretty good about putting it out there for the price of a pint, but if I were to publish the parts separately as printed books the price would be much higher because of all the printing/shipping costs. All parts will come out as one book in a few months in printed form, though, as it costs basically the same to print a 600-page book than it does to print a 200-page book, and that magnum opus I can naturally price higher (print book should end up being ~$16). I realize this is a bit of a strange approach, but as I said I really cared more about just getting people to read it than money per se, and wanted to ensure there was an option for people to get their hands on my text as cheaply as possible.

Also, no worries about derailing, there's nothing to derail as I have absolutely framework for what this thread is even about. It's just a brain dump, more or less, only existing as another platform to feed my ever-increasing hunger for writing.

Will follow, great success to you sir!

Just bought the book! Can't wait to read it!
GL GL

Look, if you want to settle for mediocrity then that is your choice. But I say strike while the iron is hot. You are not old, I wish I could go back to 29. I just don't see the problem with taking bigger shots as long as you use quality bankroll management. If your so competitive then put yourself in a competitive environment with other grinders. Set up some challenges to see who can play x amount of hands first or a win rate challenge. There are always things you can do to motivate yourself.
Michael Jordan used to talk a lot of trash before and during the game to other players to motivate his self. He would say something like who's guarding me tonight so I'll know who I'm gonna drop 40 on?
He would look for stuff in the media that players, coaches, or analyst said about him. He would do anything for that extra drive and motivation.
Truth is, he was probably tired of the game just like you so he did what he had to do to have an edge. If you are as competitive as you say you are it shouldn't be to hard for you to do the same. Never stop dreaming. A few lucky breaks and who knows wher you might end up. Among the best? Doubtful, but at least you will know you gave it your all while you were young and ambitious. Very important: You are not old!!!!

I would gather the main reason is because he has lost his passion for poker and now just mainly use it as a source of income. Right mikka?

What a ****ty spot to be in......

Always enjoyed your writing style. GL with this!

Can't. Stop. Reading. Book. So. Much. Relating.

Hey Chuck I'm really impressed by your maturity. I still remember reading the Seabeast thread and reading all your old stories of just firing a ton of huge buyins and swinging in a bunch of HSMTT. Wishing you the best with the writing and with the poker man. Still gotta meet up one of these days :P

A+

sounds like you are doing just fine. out cheer grindin'

thread i boring without moar readable updates, step ur game up op