Nope. Haven't posted them yet. Too much on my mind and solely focusing on the 100k (maybe 200k) for now.
Btw, don't expect too much epicness. The ideas might appear not as huge as the possible outcome/consequences.

Yeah and I feel that goes both ways which is cool but I can't tell for how long. I'm kind of starting to like her.. Damn, that Before Sunrise movie made me all romantic and s**t..
Asking her to come with me to Thailand will be my strategy for an excuse to leave without any hard feelings. I mean, I'm like 90% sure she doesn't just quit her job and leave her family. If she would, I'd just go for it and take my chances.



Yah, it is.


mmmmh

Will keep that in mind when I get crushed this Sunday. People srsly overlook the numerous upsides and the necessity of variance.
(In b4 downer and I go mimimimimi..^^)

Yah, .fr turned out to be a great variance reducer. I especially like all these frequent 800$-1k binks. So refreshing!



I somehow need to prove Pokerstars.it that I'm Italian to play on their site, which would be massive value!!
I have a dual citizenship but never bothered to request documents, ID etc.

Maybe I'm going to shoot them an e-mail at the embassy or just send pokerstars some pictures of me eating Lasagne, wearing an Italian football jersey and a mustache.. leaning on a Ferrari.. smth like that.

didn't have the time to elaborate on my silly little "measures":

1st measure: Spend as little as possible / Save as much as possible

I'm 95% sure I've spent <10.5k in the last 12months. Probably 9-10k,
even though I've cooked precisely 3 times during that timespan and travelled quite a bit.
So that's cool.
I can still do better then that and it's funny but I really want to go into survival-mode and spent less.

So yeah, for the past 6 weeks I've been guesthousing it up! 5-6$ pricerange, no aircon, no hot water but cockroaches and mosquitos.
I'm staying at a place where people crash on the pool table..
Man, I really missed the struggle..

cigarette count: 0

down 2k in underground games in Phnom Penh..
lost a 1.8k pot yesterday where i got (unintentionally?) slowrolled.
hand was: 2/5 7handed. we have ~700$ w/ JTo in the bb and check our option after 5 limps. flop comes JxTs2s. I check, 2nd limper (chinese fun player) in mid position bets 31. cambodian host whos seems capable flats. sb folds. I raise to 110. open limper who is a cambodian fullmetal fun player that dropped about 2k+ in the one hour I've seen him play calls the 31 out of turn and snap coldcalls the 110 as well, very unsurprisingly. chinese fun player 3bets to 330. he was splashing around quite a bit before so fairly confident he would've iso'd w/ 22 most of the time vs the fullmetal fun player. he has the odd combo but still very std gii. anyway fullmetal fun player calls for ~400 total. chinese tank calls. runs out 7x 8x. when the fullmetal fun player tables Td5d for the backdoor boat draw im like 99.95% sure i'll scoop the pot but lost to Js9s after he finally remembers he holds a 9..
wouldnt've minded losing the pot but the min buy-in is 1k and I cant withdraw that much w/ my skrill card so it sucks that I can't stick around..

100$ per cig for life is strong, respect. gl

Another fairly big plan adjustment:
As one of my friends bailed out of the Thailand-trip I am going to fly to the Philippines this week and delay the whole thing until I feel more productive.

I was already 70/30 on choosing the Philippines vs going back to Vietnam but then the Stars changes got announced and it became 85/15.
100 after I just played awefully, awefully bad this month and realized this nomadic lifestyle I have been living for the past 5 months is not sustainable if I want to continue building up the roll (down to 58% after a crushing sunday) and get closer to the goals.
It's been a great time and there's a whole lot of "Life-EV" in Vietnam but instead of doing what I would like to do, I'm going to do what needs to be done. Get a routine, start working out, work on my game, play poker..

Staying at a real cool place in the (what I assume is the) Japanese district of Phnom Penh. It's a 5m² compact room on the top floor of a skyscraper, right next to a lounge and below a sky bar. looks like this:



w/ 17$ per night above my budget and I guess I should rephrase "save as much as possible" into "save as much as you're comfortbale with bro"
but it's close to the live games and there's just so much sushi-bar value..

The last time I've been here I randomly got invited for dinner with a general, a Lt. Col. of the police of Phnom Penh and a businessman. They pretty much didn't speak English at all but we had at least a dozen of these little sake bottles and an absurd amount of sashimi. By the end, I was just laughing my ass of about the Lt. Col. who was just constantly making a fool of himself.
It was quite memorable..
Not the first time random Cambodians demanded I'll get drunk with them.
I'll miss this country...

thx. Should be doable as I already quit for ~7 years. It can easily end up costing me a couple grand but it'd still be worth it factoring in the life/health EV of quitting and after all, I'll be smoking for a good cause

All the best Matteo in the Philippines ; looking forward to hearing about your impressions/insight on it Any ideas on where you want to settle down over there? And yeah, I do suffer from the same nomadic instability as you that takes too often a toll on the results of the grind... Thankfully though, I am in the midst of a massive upswing, which comes just at the right time, considering I will be on the road for the next month or so

I find that it was difficult and tilting to find a combination of place where I desired to live in the Philippines, that also had a solid connection... Bohol was my "go-to" as far as beach town with solid connection, despite the place being tilting at times... I highly recommend Sipalay on Negros for the experience of sleeping in a hut/cabin by the beach with the wind and rain knocking on the rooftop : it is a pure, peaceful delight (bad internet not withstanding...)

November

.com


.fr


+1146 live

5 days in the Philippines. Mixed feelings but my mind is on the game right now, so I'm kind of indifferent at the moment.
Feeling pretty miserable as I just got back from the Poker King Club where I lost a 3k pot shottaking the 200/400 game (8.51$=1bb).
Was my 4th session here and I was starting to really zone in, table was really great. One French reg on my left who seems decent/plays the highstakes games when they run, rest was Korean or weak-tight randoms.

I had a bit of trouble readjusting from those much much looser games in Cambo where by the end, I felt I did quite well strategy wise. Actually tried to reschedule my flight to stay a couple weeks longer because I haven't had so much fun playing in ages. The whole "hustle" around playing live and getting into games in sketchy areas where you don't know anyone, hiding 2k in your socks on your way home in the middle of the night etc. was very enjoyable.
Can't do such things in Manila, that is for sure..

lold

Well, solidly jinxed myself. Just about everytime I plan to go into "fullmetal berserk-mode" and want to fully focus on poker I get absolutely destroyed..
Now I'm sitting here with my last 130 pesos (that's not even treefiddy usd^^) having to skip the 25k deepstack tomorrow.. garbage!
I got this "running joke", where when I lose a big pot/get stacked/rivered I say smth along the lines of "I'm going to go broke in Manila" or "zomg I'm going to lose everything in this city" and that's getting increasingly more popular as I get to say it with an ever increasing frequency. When I rebuy I pretend that money is desperately needed for my plane ticket back home to Germany and that I cannot leave in case I lose it.. lol

Today it was at least a bit of fun: When one of my newly made friends, I call him "Liverpool Eddy" (he's from Liverpool, his name is Eddy) walked over asking how I'm doing, some Filipino tells him that his "fly is open" (had to look up the English terminology). A Thai dude from across the table w/ uber cliché Asian accent goes: "What are doing man? Are you trying to show us your dick?"
I go: "Thats ok man, I asked him to show me his dick!"
He snap replies w/ said cliché accent: "That's not fair man, show one, show all!"

[x] assist for A+ penis/poker-combo joke

read all through in one go

even after the first pages i was sure i am in and follow it....
combination of interesting poker and asia is something i can't miss

but now i am totally in as i am a big fan of "it's more fun in the phillipines"


well not precisely manila...bit crowdy, hehehe
more like parts as bohol mentioned also by another poster...
have been renting a motor bike there and exploring it on my own...
was a great time

good luck at the tables and in reaching your 3 utopian goals, hehe

Drilla in Manila

I didn't want to reply as long as I was biased from my first impression of Manila.

When I left the airport I tried my best to not get ripped off by the taxi-drivers, but then still ended up getting ripped off by the taxi-drivers (18km my ass).
They drop me at the hotel which happened to be.. IN THE HOOD (have to write it in CAPSLOCK) which surprisingly only happens to have 1 room left.. w/ a kingsize bed.. for 100$ a night.. IN THE HOOD..
I don't argue or anything, I just smile, grab my stuff and leave..
So now I'm standing there in the midst of it like a huge dolt looking like a huge spot trying to get a cab at ~3am to find out that poor people don't take cabs, they don't have enough money. They take:



Cycle taxis. I bump into this older Filipino gentleman who has about ~3 teeth but he has one of these, and it's my only option other then the kingsizebed.
The sh***ty thing about the cycle taxi was that it's cover is.. unpractical. You are only able to see the bottom 40% of what is going on in the world outside of the thing, which made me feel reaaallly uneasy. I saw a lot of legs. I assume mostly from prostitutes and thugs and I still remember the atmospherical squeezing sound of the bike..
This district called Malate happens to be one of the sketchiest parts of Manila.. I felt my friggin' heart pounding in my neck^^ but tbh mostly because
I had 2.8k in cash on me as well as everything else that I own, except for my PS3 and the books that I left at my Mom's place (money makes people cautious).
I was stricking up a conversation to figure out if he'd be the type who will just head to a dark ally where some hoodrats are eagerly awaiting me.
A well known scam from cab drivers here is to take a shortcut through the slums where you will "coincidentally" get robbed at knife/gunpoint.
Yadda yadda yadda, it took like 45min to find a random hotel that wasn't fully booked yet I still had to pay ~30 bucks for the 8 hours till checkout.
I think the guy at the reception looked right through me and realized there's absolutely no way I'm going back out there and took advantage of that.

I mean, I knew beforehand what I was getting into. Out of all Asian cities to chose from, this one would be at the very bottom of my list if it weren't for the live-poker scene.
Because all those Spaniards showed up 5 centuries ago, together with their Roman Catholicism along with an era of American governance in the 20th century, there sadly is not much (original) culture left. The food is terrible, the traffic is insane (most densely populated city in the world) and I don't feel like I'm in Asia anymore due to all the western influences.. BUT the people are awesome and I still enjoy being here.

On Christmas Eve I went to a church to see how Filipinos celebrate Christmas and ended up wandering through the slums (obv noone ever commits a crime on Christmas so I'm safe I say to myself). I randomly got called over to have dinner with a group of family and friends on the streets. They shared their cheap wine and spaghettis with me.. It was just heartwarming to spend the evening with them. They were so curious and gorgeous. Easily my best Christmas ever since I got that Lego castle. Also half a dozen of street children had an unexpectedly better Christmas then expected .
I've had so many experiences this past year of people simply being nice & polite & adorable.. without anything to gain from it.. It's so hugely motivating to do the same to others and makes it so much easier to have empathy.
I think it was Schopenhauer who once said, that there's nothing that gives Human kind more dignity then our ability to have empathy, and it is empathy that seperates us from other animals more then anything else.

Will do a poker update when I have some more time on my hands.
Happy new year and stuff!

Great post Matteo, it was quite easy to live vicariously through your impressions/emotions of Manila, having been through similar dynamics myself Manila remains at the hellish bottom of the list of places I have been to, second only to Tijuana - a Mexi-Americano border town which, much like El Paso and the likes, everything is for sale : prostitutes, drugs and of course, your soul

I have spent too much time in the Philippines over the past couple of years (and really don't plan on going back again), enough anyhow to be torn by mix emotions (but mainly bad, really). There are simply too many factors that are disheartening (you mentioned them), yet there are still some untouched Edenic areas in the Philippines which are worth exploring. Anyhow man, all the best in 2016

Manila is pretty crazy city indeed. Especially Malate is one of the 3 red light districts there and certainly not the most cosy area to stay. Can be pretty rough especially at evening/night time. I would feel similar uncomfortable running around there with a 4 digit cash in my pockets.

And yab, you find extremes there. The warm and giving hospitality of lot of people there on the one side. And all this sort of criminal, dangerous and ripping off things on the other side.

Well i will soon see it again, hehehe. I will touch down at Manila airport in 4 days. But only stay 2 nights and then heading to a quite area in the north.

Seems pretty crazy and I would probably be scared ****less. Nice read though and nice to hear that you enjoyed christmas eve.

Cool thread, sounds pretty awesome what you are doing. Hoping to do something similar soon too!. Question, do you mind showing me some photo's of your Cambodian apartment so I know what $250 gets me over there.

January will be a volume-fest!

The WPT starts today, there's an APT and then TCOOP at the end of the month. Games will probably be pretty, pretty good this week!

Also will likely bump into Ivey, Durrrr & Jungle at some point who are here for the 200k SHR. Will be awesome to be on the rail!

pm'd

Nice man, good time to run good You are carrying lots of liquidity on you? How are you managing the money transfers? Keep us dated. GL

I rely on fellow 2+2ers to trade stars for cash and/or not running too bad.

Was a fun session tonight. Turned out that charismatic, cheerful Malaysian fellow is one of the guys that regs the 200k tomorrow.

Took me 109h to get back to even after i lost at 50$/h for the first 60 hours..
Literally lost every big pot vs fun players and made most of it back vs the regs who play so face-up they might as well just show me one of their holecards every hand. live-regs..
As of now 90%+ of the regulars game-select/casino select^^ around me and I find that amusing. If there's only 1 table left they mostly call it a day^^
If they'd only know how ****ty I am at this game compared to some of my online-peers..

Maybe not so coincidentally I started winning when, while being on the waitlist, I went to the reception and asked for 3 pages of paper.
I used one for notes, one for general tendencies and one for adjustments and by the time there was a seat open, all of them were covered with superb GTO knowledge. The next day I went to the store and bought a notebook for 50 pesos and now I carry it with me all the time.
Really great exercise imo.
(I guess if you have one of these iphone thingies you don't need to carry pen&paper with you and look like a weirdo)

Ivey has cl after day 1

Prizepool is going to be huge w/ 49+ entries. >3kk ut
Taking half the day off tmrr to rail!

Just had the illest day pokerwise. Played a 17h session w/ 2? of the Asian highrollers while taking breaks watching the SHR play out right in front of me, witnessing Fedor to bink back2back! <3

Made him laugh pretty hard while he was at the cashier w/ his 3kk check. I go over and ask "Ob er sich das jetzt alles auszahlen lassen kann!" (Is kind of a running joke in the German community i guess? You'd have to put it in Google translate if you care what it means but it's much funnier in German)

Was super starstruck seeing Ivey & Durrrr, not so much by the other sickos, although I have to admit that Tîmex is.. gorgeous!

At some point me and Ivey catch eyes and I look away in a nanosecond. I couldnt take it. He still has this aura around him! Such a legend of the game!

Just such an epic session playing with these guys! We were cracking jokes all the f***ing time about the dealer, who's first name is "Wincherster" and the girl in service who is called "Heidi". Both legit Filipinos, it was too good to be true.
I might ask Heidi out, just because she's so much fun to talk about! ( I totally tipped way out of my bankroll)
The Malaysian guy put on his "Rocky Anthemlike" music on his phone occasionally when he made a huge bet. It was basically a huge tell, giving off that he had it.^^
Kudos to him tho, he was VPIP'ing ~85% but didnt get crushed. He ran absurdly well tbf but he's def smart if he's not busy punting. Ended up in + which was cool, as it looked like I was about to book my biggest losing session ever..

How I became enemys with Mike McDonald



Sure enough when I enter the casino tonight he walks right past me with his luggage and is on his way out. Without any hesitation I shout: Tîmeeeex!
He turns around and with a straight face and pretty seriously I say: "I just wanted to tell you, you're gorgeous, man!.. You're beautiful!"
He replies:"Thank you, I really appreciate it!" with a tone and facial expression that made it obvious that he thought I was just trolling/making fun of him. He wasn't sarcastic I think and neither was I..Maybe he was in a bad mood or it was because he was with an Asian girl and I made him look weird.. I was possibly the 5th guy that day that told him how adorable he is.. that, I cannot know but when he left I felt quite empty and unfulfilled about the whole situation..
so.. I guess I am now officially enemys with Mike McDonald!!
:sadface

Never give up man, I'm sure you'd be great together!

GL for 2016

I introduced Heidi to Philipp Gruissem today, he found it quite funny as well.
She's just so tiny and cute and has this very old silly German name^^
Anyway, hope he binks the 5k today! #noteveryoneistimex

I talked my way into the VIP area on the 2nd floor where the big games are going on.
On my first attempt I told the security that I am the son of the owner of "Solaire".. They asked me what his name is.. well it didn't work.
On my.. fourth attempt I befriended the security guard and eventually he goes: "ok, but only 2 minutes and don't go into the room"!
He never saw me again.^^
Unfortunately the casino is just insanely huge and has a ridiculous amount of privaterooms that are just filled with staff, it's funny.
Spend a good 30 minutes looking for Brian Rast and co. but didn't get there.. I just wanted to take a quick innocent little peak.. Juuuuust to see the line-up..
:sadface

ahahaha that's awesome

Not super happy about my bustout in the 700$ 2nd chance. 5betrip 98s 50bb btn vs hj vs aggro macau grinder and he has the best starting hand in NLHE. (To my defense I am not jamming every combo of 98s there, but I had spades this time^^)

I go and Rail the 500/1000 game (~10/20 usd) a bit while at the waiting list, when Durrrr, Paul Phua and Vivek show up and Durrrr tries to talk them into sitting in just for the lolz, while there's apparently no high stakes action going on this early.
He's standing right next to me and in my head I go: "ZOMG, you need to think about something to say to him asap.. THINK, THINK, THINK, THINK,THINK! COME ON, COME ON, COME ON!!! And the best thing I could come up with is to take a bottle of water, hand it to him and say:
"Do you want some water, Durrrr?"

Well, I didn't do it because.. well... Also we were standing right next to the water... I had to smirk about my creativity.. If they'd ended up playing, I would've literally sprinted out of the casino, dodging the security who would think I was up to somethink, jump into a cab and get the necessary funds out of my appartment to join.. (If you think I am kidding you don't know me well)
Worst case scenario, I grind out the 2k at low stakes with a huge grin on my face thinking about that sick calldown vs Durrrr where I was.. wrong.

Thx mate, hope you crush this year!

Nah man, it's over.
I just hope that ppl will realize that buying his action at 1.1 MU for a SHR is -EV (well this one was really soft tbf).
But mbn to be him and make like 15k-25k? just for showing up...
I couldn't find the HH but Steve O'Dwyer owned him really hard when he bet/called him otr with second pair I believe (T6o). (10% freeroll of my next milly for the person who posts the HH ITT^^)

Also, when I was sweating Dan Colman, he got moved to his right. There was a spot where Tîmex calls his 3bet btn vs sb (and yes he does his awkward staredown all the f***ing time). Calls bet on T75r (or T53r? not sure). calls J (bdfd) turn. Checks back Kx river (iirc) and insta mucks vs Colman's QJs. Good chance hand was std but you could sense that Colman was like: "lol, tournament players"..
I think a TON of people don't really realize what an insane skill gap there is between an Ike, a Colman, a Fedor etc. and him. Yeah he might be a tad better then Ike when effective stacks are 25bb (maybe not) and he'll never make big ICM mistakes but selling at 1.1 is just lol.

As you can see, I take my feud with him very seriously and will from now on measure/compare myself with him!

That being said, here are my goals for 2016:

[ ] Get more people to stop liking Mike McDonald
[ ] Get Mike McDonald to mention me on Twitter
[ ] Bust Mike McDonald out of a tournament (wether it be live/or online)
[x] Be less Canadian then Mike McDonald (already done)
[ ] Get Mike McDonald to apologize for his behaviour/not complimenting back and post in this thread
[ ] Play a hand vs him in a live-tournament and stare him down harder then he stares me down
[ ] Watch Mike McDonald go busto
[ ] Be happier about my life, then Mike McDonald is about his life