Hey,

about me: 32yo, Middle-european dude clicking MTTs in Venezuela. Last 2 Years haven´t been too sucessful at all.


2018 Life/Poker Recap:
After i spent Winter 17/18 in Thailand, i decided Asia is just not my Place.
Language Barrier makes it tough to feel like home, also mentality doesnt really fit me.
Have okayish spanish skills and lots of latinamerica experience , so i decided to move to Venezuela in March 2018. Moved into a Townhouse at Isla Margarita with 2 colombian Grinders. All of us left the country after 3 Months and i decided to return a couple weeks later on my own. Stayed here til Christmas, lived with a bunch of different colombian grinders in the same house again. Went to Germany over Christmas/NYE in order to spend that time of the year with family and friends.
Poker went bad results-wise although i learned a lot and have had some of my biggest scores up to date. I moved up quite a bit and the combination of [still] having a tons of leaks plus the extra variance didn´t work out too well. I am grateful for having a reliable Backer and Coach (abarone68) who is still convinced that my willingness to work hard will convert into Results at some Point.

2019 so far:
In January i arrived again at Isla Margarita. Moved into the same house again as i have quite a friendly Relationship with the landlord and neighbors and the price is affordable even for myself. I decided to not have this running as a pokerhouse anymore and just live here on my own. The living solo part didnt work out too well. I started seeing a Girl again that i dated before. After a short while, she told me about problems with her landlord. So the next day she and her roommate moved into my house.
Total rent for my house is 300$/mth. As these Girls even had trouble scrapping together the 60$ for the House they had before, i decided to not charge them anything and have them running the house instead. I actually dont spend much more as they love cooking, therefore i eat out less frequently . Also , it seems like they even use all of their very limited cash to contribute with groceries, so it feels fair. House is very clean all the time plus they turned out to be quite open-minded, in their early 20s and in good shape. Win/Win Situation. One of them just disappeared for a couple days to visit her fam and meanwhile i started to develop a little romance with the other one. Went to a Posada at some beach for 2 Days with her to get some sun and eat some delicious fish. Overall life isn´t that bad right now.

Poker actually went decent so far this year. Had some actual scores. ( 4th for 7k € at 50 ES 50€ Warmup, 1st Marathon 6.5k, 3rd 55 Turbo Series PKO, 12k$ total ) Slightly worried though, that I already start seeing the same pattern of gigantic swings. I always felt my swings have been bigger than they should be and i am sure theres a Reason for it other than "pure variance". I will be seen more in 180s/On-Demands this year, especially on weekdays. I sport the venezolan flag at the tables and have already been saluted by some venezuelan regs. With the minimum salary at ~10$/month, there seems to be some incentive to grind micro/low SNGs for a living for some. I chose to play these once in a while as having some frequent little success moments could help me to not get too messed up mindset/mood-wise during MTT Downswings.

Actual political Situation: The Situation here changed a bit. Theres 2 Presidents. One Guy whos backed by the western world/USA(Guaído) and the other Guy, who still gets supported by Russia and China(Maduro). It looks like the country is very close to a war-situation vs the USA. Most People i speak with aren´t really worried about that and just want to get rid of the actual regime.
Despite being here for a year already i am not sure if i want to form an opinion. There is no need to mention that Maduro messed up big-time. Theres rumours that politicians and high ranked military guys are involved into smuggling and the level of corruption in this country is ridiculous.
I am still very worried though that the Intentions of the Opposition/USA are not as philanthropic as they claim. I am a huge hater of every kind of antiamericanism in Europe, as US-Interventions are probably the major reason why the continent had more than half a century of economical prosperity. On the other hand i cant recall a scenario in latinamerica where their Interventions were helpful. Colombia might be a positive example. But if you take a closer look at things, its pretty obvious that the stuff they had to deal with during the 80s/90s ( narco-wars) did not disappear but takes place at different countries now (allover central-america + venezuela). I really hope the situation will get better for the country soon, as i start to feel home here and could imagine to spend a good portion of my future here.


Beach w/ Roomies:



evbb 2019 ( 40ish ABI ):



mtts 2019:

Ah boi, i wish i was in your shoes just for one day living the boss life

I am really glad for you choosing this way of life and enjoy as much as you can.

2019 will be a great year, GL and a lot of success bro!

Everyone should do this once in a while. A small win is still a win, keeps you in the winners mindset and way more positive for when things don't go so well.

Hard to feel sorry for you when I saw your first photo!!

Sucks about the situation there. I have a friend there who is in a similar situation to you, it feels like home but he's having to think about the possibility of leaving in case things don't go well.

greeting
how do you organize yourself to transfer money in dollars and be able to change it at an advantageous black market rate?
Do you pay your rent in dollars?
is the internet stable on "isla margarita"? how fast?
Do you live in the city of Porlamar?

Haha, my life is not that bossy actually. I think there is many pokerplayers these days who aren´t that happy about having thrown all their energy into poker at some point, at least from a career perspective. I´d guess you can maybe relate to this sentiment. So, i basically tried to turn a decision that would commonly be viewed as bad (resigning from normal career path) into a situation that might even be advantageous for me in terms of subjective life quality. I do sacrifice a lot of things though: Safety and Stability might be the most important ones from a 1st-World POV.
But Pussy, palms and pleasant weather make up for this imo

GL w your Challenge. Lets crushhhhh this year.


Thanks for coming by man.
Is your mate a pokerplayer ? Whereabouts in Vzla is he ?

I love Questions. If they are about Venezuela keep them coming.

Money ( gonna be a long one) : Theres different ways to change money. Black Market is kind of obsolete for Foreigners atm. As they just increased the official rate to black market level. So since a couple of weeks i can just use my international CC. Big Downside is: Prices increased a lot. If i need to change i usually do it via localbitcoin. Its very common here, even amongst venezuelans, to just borrow bankaccounts & cards to other people. So i have a lots of friends that could help me out with this. At this point its not necessary as i can just store the few bolivares i need once in a while in the account of one of the girls i live with and they do most of the grocery shopping anyway. Going shopping and paying is fun btw: They always ask you for the ID-Number and the PIN of your card. Right, each time you buy stuff you basically shout your PIN over the counter. I kind of got used to this and dont even wonder anymore. Feels super sketchy the first times though.

I pay my rent in whatever currency my landlord needs. I am her only source of income. So she tells me whatever she prefers. When inflation rates are high and she is short on Bolivares , i pay her weekly in BSS. Last month she prefered USD.

Internet is stable enough to grind where i live. Theres 3 connections i can use and very rarely none of them works. Internet def not fast enough for streamers though.

I live close to Porlamar. It´s called Pampatar and its a nice former fishers village with lots of nice Restaurants and def an upscale part of Margarita.

Wow,it's very recent this news about the end of the black market.

I'm afraid Venezuela will become too expensive, too bad, the picture inspired me a lot. I'm talking about the beach ,of course.

thanks for the answers anyways.

If I was single.........wish I could do it all over again and move to some place where $1000 a month let’s me live like a king around South American women.

It’s not all bad. I need about $3500 a month to get by and get to live in Delaware. We have pretty good cheesesteaks.

I don’t think there is a big worrisome dynamic between the US and Venezuela tho. Haven’t read a single thing about it in the news other than we want one guy to win the Presidency down there. No war talk.

Very nice thread rotisseur.

I think that there was not WW3 just because there were atomic bombs just after WW2. So the rich countries do not fight themselves, but fight /robbing/ the poor once.

I grind some micro turbo mttsngs and time zone in Europe /bg/ is not perfect. When I have way more money the now /cant even buy hhc for 2 months / I will move to South East Asia /Thailand/, Mexico or country down from there. If there is ps.eu for only eu countries, perhaps I will stay in eu. I am just curious is there some skinny/slim girls around 1.70m high around there? And is it easy to go out with them if you spoke only English? Is it difficult to move there if I do not know any Spaish and know no one.

GL, HF on the poker and life grind mate

now i also want cheesesteak cant have it all i guess

there is still a black market , as there simply is not enough cash to change. the only thing that changed is that the official rate is higher right now. black market rates will probably catch up very soon though

hahaha love the detailed question about female anatomy. yes theres girls w that size. Regarding spanish i have to say, that i would not move here without spanish skills. Most people dont speak english and in order to feel safe and have an easier life you need to make contacts. You might find some upscale girls on tinder that speak english but thats a guess.

GL too you to man!!!

in, gl Man !

yooooo thx




This Weekend i got completely murdered for 3 consecutive days. Had some connection issues Saturday, so i played a little smaller volume than i wish i had. Graph rather sad. More positive about the monthly graph though



Today gonna do groceries w/ lady. Always fun to do groceries here. Although hunger isnt really a thing over here if youre lucky enough to have dollars, theres usually still some really basic stuff thats missing. Sometimes its milk, next day its egg and sometimes toiletpaper. We´re lucky enough to have these things in stock still. Also, huge variety of Fruits always available.

Around noon time quick HH-Review w stablemates and stablecaptain. Afterwards i´ll be clicking some Tourneys.


Cultural Differences are fun sometimes: So, other roomie still did not return, although we sometimes get msgs saying shes gonna be here at 3pm lol. Appointments and time are just a huge prank over here. I love it, as long as my plans are not affected. Also no ones really worried. It´s moments like these where i notice how european i am mentality-wise. If someone of my beloved ones at home was just out of reach for a couple of days without notifying me, i would be worried/panicking. Here nobody gives a f**k ever. People change plans and in general just act spontaneously driven by emotions. Its this flakiness culture that often gets naive Gringos lost in their relationships here. It might be tough to adapt to at first, but on the other hand if you try to immerse it makes life easier. I guess everyone had the situation of having an appointment and not really wanting to go: Northern Hemisphere Westerners are just used to go because they feel they have to. People here just dont go if they get a better opportunity ( better looking tinder match XD) and the person thats waiting wont care as well, as this is always an option anyway.

Politics:
There was a 2-Day staring contest at the colombian border w/ solidarity concerts on both sides. Guaido tried to take advantage of the hype to get some trucks with humanitary aid into the country. Probably stuff like medicine and food. Also being succesful with this would have helped him to prove he actually has some power. Maduro didnt like the Idea, as he claimed it would be some kind of trojan horse maneuver designed to basically legitimate a military intervention of the USA. Plan didnt work out. Yesterday Guaido met with US-Vicepresident Pence and Lima-Group Presidents to basically beg for military Intervention. At this point this seems like his only chance to push a quick regime-change. Its pretty tough to get a good idea of the look of things here, even for me. Media in- and outside the country seems very biased. I have the impression that the outside media have a slightly more panicking approach in their articles/broadcasts about the situation. My mission at this point is, to make people outside of the country understand that there still is a normal life in this country to some degrees. Also, whenever i get the chance i try to convince Venezuelans that not everything outside is better, although i understand that staying is not an option, as long theres no money to be earned here. Nonetheless, hyperinflation and economical misery arent phenomenons that appeared recently. People found ways to deal with it for ages and the level of solidarity within the society is quite high despite the always existent latinamerican classism.

oi! so glad i found this thread, please keep updating, really enjoying your posts. see u at the tables broski and best of luck

btw where exactly are you from originally?

peace

welcome!having you posting here makes me a really proud man already. love your threads too man

i am half armenian/half german. grew up and lived most of my life somewhere between my hometown osnabrueck (meaningless city close to the dutch border) and berlin until i made the best decision of my life by leaving germany in 2017


quick session resume: got destroyed. top 40 or so in bb33 for 300ish was session climax. will write monthly wrap-up post end of the week, after i most likely won all money available tomorrow and the day after

ayyy viel erfolg bruder, mach sie alle fertig

This did not work out as planned.

Nonetheless i should be okay with my results. Not 100% happy with everything: Missed 2 of the weekly group sessions. Made up for that w frequently exchanging HHs and reviewing a ton myself. At least i ran hot enough in the right spots to book a profitable month. Doesnt get me anywhere close to a profit-chop. At least the graph looks nice.





Enjoyed life a lot this month. Managed to find a really good life/work balance. Having the company of those girls def motivated me making good use of my spare time as its just more enjoyable to do fun stuff with lovely company. It has gotten a bit of a family situation now and its a major source of happiness for me.
I learned a lot about the real-life struggles people have here. That was sort of different before when this was a grindhouse. It was more some kind of bubble where one took advantage of the situation without really getting emotionally attached to the critical economic situation. This changed as i live with non-poker locals. The one of the girls that grew really close to me in a romantic way suffered colics and stomach problems lately and spending the like 30$ in total for doctor and medicine wasn´t even something to be considered on her side. Obv we went to the doctor and pharmacy afterwards but just thinking about the fact that this is a completely impossible thing for maaaany people in the country is really heartbreaking. And if you can afford, the lack of medicine becomes the next problem. 2/4 suggested Drugs not available. At least the health issues were rather harmless and the medication was more to threat symptoms anyway. It really felt good to be able to contribute for someones wellbeing. Dont wanna make this sound all too altruistic as i also got my first-in-a-lifetime opportunity to observe a gynacological check as a first-row-spectator. That was interesting from a learning perspective and i am sure there is a lot of people on this forum who would have been willing to spend the 30 bucks alone for that #clickclickbangbang .
Yesterday night the three of us emptied a bottle of rum and i got some private salsa lessons at like 1am. My dancing talent is very limited but if i could choose what type of dance to learn, it would def be salsa. I love the music and it just looks great.

Havent really followed politics/news over the last days but it looks like the oppositional forces have had some setbacks and a regime-change seems a bit less likely. I said before that i am not sure if thats gonna change much , so i am not gonna classify this observation. Funny side note: a very lovely female taxi driver that basically does all our cab-rides and even some grocery shopping for us here and there turned out to be chavista. She shared some borderline-pathetic revolutional socialist memes and pictures on her whatsapp-status ( thats btw a huge thing in latinamerica. out of my like 500 whatsapp contacts its solely latinamericans that share their statuses frequently. works a bit like stories on instagram). Anyway, the girls were not so amused about that and tbh she is the only person i met so far in the country that seems to be pro-communists. I still like her , shes just too lovely.

Not the biggest fan of doing Goals as it always feels like a loss not to accomplish them and i am not teh goal/itinerary/to-do-list type of personality but i hope to click at least 600 Games, would love to see my evbb at 8 and def dont want to miss a single group coaching opportunity plus review a bunch myself. Also trying to go swimming every morning and wanna keep leaving the house for quality fun family time at least one full day per week.

Btw, really happy that people show interest for this. thx

so confused about the gynocology part, really no idea what i just read

hope ur friend is well again now tho regardless

best of luck in march and post some more pix i m sure beaches food people and just culture around you should be beautiful

Yeah shes better now
Well , we went to that doctor that was specialized into internal medicine and gynocology. Girl asked me to join for the consultation and suddenly i was in the middle of it. The doctor suspected it might have been some gynacological/ovary issues fwiw.

promise to post some more pics asap
best of luck to you too! lets crushhhh

good to hear she is better now and that you are enojying life with private salsa sessions at 1am

swimming in the morning is just great, did that for a while when i was in egypt for couple month and just felt great with it, keep that up.

u could always do a run to colombia to pick up some meds

Definitely don't need these sentences back-to-back

pics of girls tho, they look fine

nice life man, its like adventure, amazing,

im going to learn spanish!!!!!!

Hahaha thought the same

I am very lazy but enjoy swimming as it doesnt feel like working-out. Back in Germany i was a reg at the local indoor-swimming pool ( nettebad, i am sure you know that place) but due to my laziness and the fkn cold temperatures i always ended up in the sauna obv drinking a couple "weizen" each time.
I was such a sauna-reg, when i went there again during my 4 weeks at home around Christmas some people even recognized me despite not having been there for more than a year and told me they thought i was dead.
Anyway, no sauna needed here, big pool right in front of the house, so def doable to swim frequently.

yeah, in worst-case scenario could do that obv. But international flights actually not that cheap over here. Will be in Europe for a month during summer and will def bring a huge stock of antibiotics/painkillers. until then i just hope everyone stays healthy.

hahahaha def no clickback intentions. have to ask for lowered expectations regarding my next post therefore

I personally am not 100% comfortable with posting clear face shots of other people on a forum. i know people do it. feel like i would have to ask , but not 100% sure if i want them to read the thread and getting confused about the poker/money ( not that i have any lol) blabla . Wont hold anything back that i find legit to post though.
Doesnt feel as adventurous anymore , but i see how it looks like that.
And yes, you should learn spanish. Languages are fun, keep the brain trained and open many doors and bras allover the world.

we don't care about they face.

one of saddest things is that loads of people over the world still vote for socialists having seen the outcome out there

gr8 thread but plz more pics pics pics pics pics pics