Cool thread, will be following.

Spent a bunch of time in Colombia + Argentina. In Peru for the timebeing. Venezuela has always been on the (fantasy) bucket-list. Whenever the crisis is resolved would like to come through for a visit.

OP you are insane. I escaped Venezuela 3 years ago and do not want to be back at all, and it is even worse right now than when I left. I hope things continue to go well for you, but if you face a life threatening situation over there, your outlook will definitely change.

By the way I have some really good friends living in Margarita (locals) who are grinders themselves. They could help you out with anything poker and non poker related. If you are interested, send the a PM and I'll share their contacts with you.

yay, we found the leak

the crisis wont be completely resolved in the near future i guess

just monitor the situation and come by. maybe pick a moment when there is no nationwide powercut and even better if you have some friend living here already that can help you out understanding some stuff (money related most importantly)

Yo, thanks I will get back to that if in need.

First of all: I understand every single person that had the opportunity and therefore left the country. The economy is simply to fkd to earn a living here for most. But you make it seem like "life threatening situations" would be way more common here than in other places on the continent. Thats not true. Theres places in Venezuela, that are perfectly fine to visit for tourists ( f.e margarita) and i dont understand why so many venezuelans conceal this. If theres anything that can help the country longterm its fresh money and ideas from the outside world plus some hope and confidence of the population. Anyway, thanks for sharing your worries/opinion and best wishes to wherever you are right now. Mind telling me where life took you?

Hey, you seem like a cool guy from the blog.. Just read the story about the birthday cake, I think you should do yourself a favor and get rid off that girl from your life. You deserve better people than that. Good luck with grinding and keep posting photos!

Yo thanks. Dont worry. Shes just a roomie/friend and it didnt stung me personally much after all. Just a great example for the cultural differences of concepts like time and appointments.


IRL Update:
Over the last couple of days in most of the country the electricity situation is very unstable, so i moved to a different part of the Island which is called "El Yaque". This beach area is a famous wind/kitesurfing spot but most importantly its very close to the islands airport, so they basically always have electricity here. Internet is slightly worse than in the part where i am usually, but at least i could grind the last 2 days. So far, Yay! Couldnt get much going though. Boo!




Managed to shoot some pics of the posada where i spent the recent days. Its owned by another german and his venezuelan wife and he usually gives me some friendly discount. Where the only guests right now. Even the owner and wife are in Germany. So its really chilled:






me w/ lady at beach (got her ok to post this. i wear jersey of the armenian national football team if anyone wonders):

I really enjoyed reading this PGC, OP. That girl is hot!

I wish you the best.

u cuties

why armenia?

how much u spend for the posada

Venezuela has more refugees than Syria. A higher inflation rate than Zimbabwe, and the avg murder rate is more than twice that of Mexico. Margarita is no exception, but of course you'd know more than everyone else. Good luck anyway, and hope you don't get killed.

Thank you!


dad is armenian and while i have never been there myself ( like 80% of all armenians that live spread out allover the world) its probably the tragic past of my ancestors (genocide) that makes me wanna maintain that part of my identity. And the greatest way to do so is wearing the football shirt i believe .

its usually between 15 and 20usd for a night. might move there actually.

Hey, as i said i understand all of your sentiments and also i understand its tough to understand having someone moving to venezuela despite all of this. Dont wanna make this too biographical, but my past times havent been flawless at all and for some reason murder-rates are just not a criteria. Maybe my own imperfection makes a place thats also far from perfect feel like home for me. Inflation admittedly worked out to be advantageous for me in 2018 , although with the recent disappearence of the 2 different exchange-rates prices arent much different from other parts of the world. Nonetheless, irrational sentiments made me like this place. I appreciate you crossing fingers for me not getting killed though. Maybe i can dodge bullets(baby).

Life:
The past week was a disaster. Constant power cuts made it very tough to grind for me. I missed all my monthly goals also and it looks like the electricity situation isnt going to get better in the near future. GFs Dad is will visit us in an hour our so, to check my power requirements and i plan to buy a small electricity generator that at least lets me grind during times w/o electricty.

Monthly Graph sucks:

Props to you for hanging in there. When I played I used to have a huge UPS for when the power went out. But for extended periods of blackouts like what is happening at the moment, you would need a generator.

What do you know about the travel situation, eg flights in and out of the country?

BTW, this is a good article about Poker in Venezuela, they interview my friends from there as well.

https://www.codigopoker.com/noticias...r-en-venezuela

They generally share the same sentiment as you.

GL

Hope all it is going ok Godspeed1.
But still how you are doing in Venezuala right now?
Btw this girl is a beauty, congrats for that.

Enjoyed reading this, hopefully you can keep updating

Also have 2 UPS stations that actually worked well. Now i dont need them as the building where i live has constant electricity. ( living in a "edificio con luz constante" is a really sick brag in venezuela, as you probably know)

Many Airlines canceled flights. Still direct flights to Paris ( Air France), Madrid ( AirEuropa) and Lisboa ( TAP). Also direct flights to Panama ( COPA), Peru, Brazil and Colombia ( Avior).

Thanks. Life here isnt easy. Would not recommend anyone to come unfortunately. Shes the only reason why i am still here, to be honest.

Welcome! Glad you enjoy it.

Ok, so its been a while and i feel i need to update this:

Life/Stress:
The daily struggle of living in Venezuela keeps me as busy as it gets. My responsibility grows as relationship seems to get more and more serious. Having to feed one mouth more is quite a task, especially as i am grinding MTTs and cant really show any notable results lately. It would be way easier to live in a place, where the girl would actually be able work a couple hours per week in order to contribute a bit or even enter the paths of higher education. But as this is Venezuela its actually quite tough to find a job that pays more than 20$/month.
All of this recently makes us think it might be better to leave the country together. Easier said than done: Girl doesnt own a passport (as many people here dont) and getting one is more complicated than one would guess. Corruption is a big thing in these offices and i am not willing, neither able to pay much for that at this point.
Supply of Electricity is still not great. 95% of the Island still suffer frequent power shortages. I am not affected anymore as i managed to find an apartment that is connected with the power system of a private clinic. Monthly rent is the same as before and building is way nicer than the one before. Internet is worse somehow but i have a better signal of mobile internet, so the backup works better than at the place before.
Political Situation overall seems to be frozen somehow. No protests, no progress in any direction, just the normal lethargic mindset that people have for years here hoping that something changes. Its def not a healthy situation to be in and it starts to hurt me mentally more and more, seeing this lack of perspective. Especially when thinking about my girl. Doesnt help to whine about it. Gonna fly to Germany in about 2 Weeks and if theres no miracle happening, regarding girls passport situation i will probably have to fly back here in october. At this point this is nothing i am really looking forward to, but its not unlikely i change my mind after 6 weeks in europe.


Pokerz:
I already indicated that i did not do well lately. So the list of 4fig scores since my last posts is very unimpressive taking into account that this is over a stretch of 1600 games of ~30-40 ABI. Meh if i shipped that Sun Marathon where i got 7th or one of the 109 builders i would probably be up but who cares about whining:



I dont even wanna look at that Graph.

This month i am also down quite a bit. At least doing fine ev-wise:



Also participated in some 150usd live-tourney in a casino here. Structure was okay. Field was lolsoft and i even got instagram coverage from some venezuelan instagram poker thing. I made final 2 tables and cashed 650 + 300 i got for being chipleader of one of the day 1s. My facial impression on that picture pretty much reflects my overall mood and also proves that i am actually working a lot and dont hang around all day at beaches XD :

Damn it's sucks for your girlfriend's passport. How much do you think it would cost to get her a passport? If she was able to get her passport, after where would you relocate? Update more often man. Best of luck for the future

Definitely a lot of progress in the EV, if I'm not mistaken it's double what it was more than a year ago. Is that right? Sad it hasn't translated into results but at the very least you're accumulating chips considerably better at the earlier/mid stages. That should in theory lead to more deeps and more shots at binks.

Note: This is how I felt when I saw the double digit EV BB.

Just read your whole thread. Interesting. I’ve been in Colombia for 4.5 years. Why don’t you guys go there? They are letting the Venezuelans in easily it seems. They are everywhere. At least gives you guys some time to be together and buy some time on next move. And it’s great here anyways. Keep us updated man. Good luck!

The going rate for a passport in the black market (e.g. the bribe that the government officials ask) is around $1500 USD. There is no way to get it through the legal channels like in the past.

Keep in mind that the average salary is under $20 a month. It would take a working person around 75 months of not spending a dime to be able to afford it.

There are about 4,000,000 Venezuelans who have fled the crisis, so being a corrupt government official is a booming business. The communists sure know how to profit from misery.

Might be a dumb question, but at least considering travelling to other south american countries, can´t she travel with a valid DNI?

But yeah, if the plan is to leave to Europe, then I guess there´s no other way around.

GL, hope all goes well!

bro what isp do you use?

Super interesting thread still.

Also yo @pepeman, did you retire from poker when you moved away? I remember you used to be one of my most hated regs Major respect now though, never quite twigged where you lived and what you were going through, it was much more than just a game for you I guess at the time.

More updates please and gl!

Hey mate, thanks and for sure I remember our battles. I retired from poker after moving to Australia, figured going on a proper career/job here would pay more than grinding online poker, and it sure did.

Now I'm working in IT and I find it a lot less stressful than grinding online poker for a living, plus there is the option to work remotely, which is the one aspect of poker that I missed the most. I'm currently waiting on my PR, so I won't have to worry about having to go back to Venezuela again.

Yooo,
quite happy this thread gets a decent amount of love. Will just quickly answer questions and write a longer update soonish. In Germany now for 2 months total and gonna be back in Venezuela in about 3 weeks. Mixed feelings regarding that, obv gonna be super happy to be with my girl again but also i know theres going to be a lot of trouble/stress caused by the situation mixed with the feeling of being completely handcuffed regarding certain issues.



Problem with colombia is that theres very few sites you can play these days. Otherwise would probably be there already. I love colombia and its just very sad they have this damn legislation.

This basically. Also theres a risk it gets even more expensive if ppl find out that theres a european involved plus obv getting involved with corruption is sth i would want to avoid anyway from a vulnerability standpoint.

Thanks! Its not a dumb question at all as i dont have plans to live in europe longterm at any point soon, so moving to a different country would work. Still having a passport would be just way more convenient as we probably at least would want to visit europe, also it would increase the number of possible countries. The venezuelan passport (if you are lucky enough to be able to obtain it :P) is actually more valuable than you would think. At least like 80ish countries they can travel to w/o visa. No need to get schengen-visa for example, they get 90 Days on entry. Colombians need visa fwiw.
At this point i consider ecuador an option if she doesnt get the passport soon and Mexico might be my #1 choice if she had one.

Main internet is provided by cantv, as backup i use movistar mobile internet.



Thank You!