Does it cost extra for these classes?

Obviously. I think I payed around 20k baht for 180 hours of classes, mostly private or with 1 or 2 others. But visa should be included and you don't have to pay for visa runs, flights etc so it should largely offset the costs of the classes.

And you obviously learn the language. The gf will be impressed

Vang Vieng is hectic or it was a couple of years ago. If you get a chance hit up luang prabang (sp?) The waterfall there is one of the coolest places I have ever been.

Gl op I have been enjoying this thread

yea thanks for the tip. Was definitely planning to get an ed visa as I really want to learn the language anyway, however it's like 1k$ up front & wanted to check out Laos anyway, so I'll get the edu visa in 3 or 6 months.

@myles yea we really wanted to go to LP but it's just too far away from Vientiane, maybe next time.

Yea makes sense if you're going to make a trip out of it anyway. Have fun there

Thanks!

Had a massive headache today so decided not to play.
Been dropping one too many sessions lately so when I come back I'll stick to a tighter schedule. Fact of the matter is that it's really hard with the timezone. Talked with a fellow Thailand grinder who pointed out that my schedule is a mess (changing it every day). Really great how many leaks have been pointed out just through just blog alone, definitely a great help.
So I'll make a schedule and stick with that for the whole month between coming back & scoop (during which i'll grind the night, sleep during the day for the whole period).

Will look something like this (regging times):

sunday: 23:00-04:00
monday: 19:00-24:00
tuesday: 15:00-21:00 (h33)
wednesday: 07:00 - 15:00
Thursday: 22:00 - 03:00
Friday: 15:00 - 21:00

& then give myself the option to drop max. 1 session per week (only good reason not to play is a physical one like today). I'll flesh it out a bit over the next couple of days and then probably do some freerolls when I get started so that I don't keep changing it up like I've been doing up till now.

how is this not "changing it everyday"?

Sunday 23-4
tuesday 15-21
wednesday 7-15

couldn't be more different.

Yea i shouldve said every week. I mean I want a set time for every day that I play, feel like playing the same times every day isn't optimal due to either social life/sleeping patterns/volume so instead my schedule will be made for the whole week.

yeah but stick to it. Over time you will have a sense of what happens in every day. Like you say it's monday you automatically know, which games have how much late reg left, at which blind level it is still worth regging etc. You actually look forward to this or that tournament because you know it's your standard "schedule start mtt"

Yea agreed. Right now I have to figure it out every day because I change it up so much, this way it'll be second nature over time.

really weird how can you grind mtt's from thailand the timezone is by far the worst. checkout Mauritius the time zone is slightly better than thailand and living cost is comparatively the same.

Yea i agree on it being the nutworst timezone, however like I said before the pros just far outweigh the cons.
I really love Asia which is the main reason I moved here, appreciate the advice but mauritius would therefore be a bad choice for me, if I left asia I'd probably go for south america/carribean, or maybe back to Malta

Anyway talking about it with multiple people and trying to find the best schedule. One thing I realised is that back in holland/malta I never went to bed before 5/6am(last months on malta a bit earlier since my roomies went to the gym around 12) because spins are way softer at night (if i still played those hellish thailands timezone would be the nuts lol), so what's the big deal?
Will probably be more night-oriented, aiming to go to bed around 4-6. I have some time to figure it out.

Will get up at 4 tomorrow to get in one final big grind before the holiday

Pretty good read. Good luck OP.
From another Dutch guy on the other side of the world.

Haha thanks man!

So not an interesting final session, breakeven bb, bricked everything but the 22bb where I got deep but then some gross hands and bricked as well.
Still stuck with a bad headache so focus wasnt too great, decided to cut down to 6 tables quickly and stopped regging a bit earlier.

Will do some more studying after a nap, then off to the break. When I come back my schedule will most likely look like this:

Sunday: 23:00 - 04:00
Monday: 18:00 - 23:00
Tuesday: 22:00 - 03:00
Wednesday: 22:00 - 03:00
Thursday: 22:00 - 03:00
Friday: 17:00 - 22:00

Excited to try out the new schedule for a month but even more excited to get a little break from poker and get a chance to reset.

Biggest cause for headaches is dehydration - get drinking a bunch of water man, hopefully you feel better soon!

Any pictures to show ?

Yea drinking plenty, that cant be the issue

Just got back to Vientiane after 2 days in vang vieng, will probably do a little trip report with pictures once I have time or am back home in Bangkok

Sounds interesting have you lived ther yourself? Is it still fun place after more then one month?

hi op, subbed gl.

ps. lazy to go through 27 pages, what did you profit for jan, feb, mar and what stakes/games do u mostly play?

Not entirely sure, I was up around 4k by the time I joined the stable (around feb 14th) and back to around breakeven for the year now.

So got back from Khon Kaen last night, had a great trip and my mind feels a lot calmer when I think about poker right now. Also extremely excited to play again since I haven't played a hand for more than a week.
Like I said before I'll do a TR once I find the time to upload pics from my phone/camera, could be today could be next week depending on when I feel like doing it.

So I've had some time to reflect on everything and I've scribbled down some thoughts. It's quite a long post but I feel that it's really important for me:

What went good?

Studying. The amount of things I've learned/improved in the last 2 month is insane. Even tho at the time I joined the stable I felt like my game was better than ever, the progress I made since then is bigger than any progress I've made thus far over that period of time. This is probably the most important thing for me at this moment in my 'career' so I'm happy to say that I'm doing well in this field. I'll try to just keep the pace of study going since I don't feel like I have to increase the amount of studying.

What went bad?

In two words: Mental game.
When I say that I don't mean tilting over some hand or throwing my mouse against the wall when bubbling a ft. I mean the broader sense of keeping a good state of mind, a balanced lifestyle & sticking to my schedule.

Improvement goals - mental game

All goals are about the period between now and scoop.

Mindset

Something I've struggled with and changed from day to day. I went from putting in massive volume to playing 4 tables and back and forth, depending on my state of mind (when I wanted to win $$ played tons of tables, when I cared 'too much' about improving or felt too tired to play I played too little etc.).
In order to fix this I'll reintroduce meditation into my life to try and get the same mindset before every grind. A lot of great poker players that I look up to talk about how much it helps their game and how important it can be, so it would be stupid for me not to listen to this. So mindset goals:

- I should be focused on improving while still getting a good hourly. Hovering between 6-10 tables seems fine for me depending on runs/action/focus. Every session isn't about $/results/ego/winrates, it's about me crushing the games as hard as I can.

- Meditate before and after every session. Before to get in a good state of mind and after to forget good/bad runs and be able to fall asleep easily. I'll use headspace.com again for now, since I like having a voice/program that instructs me and guides me through the process.

Balanced lifestyle

Some weeks I did nothing but eat, sleep and grind whereas other weeks I did everything but play. The things that I'll do to improve this are the following:

- Schedule:

Sunday: 22:00 - 04:00
Monday: 18:00 - 23:00
Tuesday: 22:00 - 03:00
Wednesday: 22:00 - 03:00
Thursday: 22:00 - 03:00
Friday: 17:00 - 22:00

- Every week I give myself the freedom to eliminate 1 session, but only if I go out to do something else that night (Go clubbing/drinking/movies/etc.). Besides that if I miss a day due to being ill then that'll count as my one day off.

Freeroll

So there's 3 weeks until scoop, just reply with the week you want and whoever comes first gets it. If I fail my schedule goal I'll ship 50$ to whoever has that week, If I fail twice I'll send an additionial 100$ to a charity of choice of whomever has the 2nd week I failed.
Fwiw: being too tired is not an excuse to miss a session since it means I failed getting normal sleep.

- Workout 3 times a week, don't care how or when, but I want to spend at least 45 minutes 3x every week being physically active.

- No poker on saturday. Saturday is my day off so between getting up in the morning and going to bed in the evening there will be nothing poker related. No studying/2+2/pokertalk/hh reviews etc. Just do life-things and hit the reset button for poker.

Poker Goals

- Get an ev/bb of 8+ overall between april 1st and the kickoff of SCOOP (currently at 9)

- Get to add some higher bi's. So in order to be allowed to move up I need volume, a good ev/bb and some actual results. I'll make it my goal to achieve the results to be allowed adding higher bi's (44s, 55s) before scoop kicks off.

- Study wise: Have managed to open up my ranges a lot before my break, now I'll focus more on post-flop aggression (x/raising & barreling mainly).

For now off to the movies and then getting a little nap before my first session tonight, let's kick it off with a sunday-bink.

I'll take week 2 for the freeroll.
Really cool blog. Keep up the good work!

Last week!

Week 1

Just shipped the revolution on winamax, only got 250e directly, however:
Get a ticket to a 500e husng, everytime I win I can play again the next day. Basically just free-rolling some 500$ husng's with some added streak-bonuses.
Should be fun.

You will confront the current Emperor tomorow, the 18/04/2016. If you defeat him, you will win both his throne and his title! For each day you hold onto the throne, you will win €500

nice concept. promo love