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:
Last edited by rotisseur; 02-21-2019 at 10:16 AM.