Nope that's the retirement visa, elite is for all ages

When I see pics of thailand I wonder why the **** I always stuck around in expensive hell hole europe

July has been quite a good month for me, especially the last week.
I got my 2nd 5-figure month of the year so far, virtually all of it coming from 5 consecutive winning sessions last week, my biggest scores:

1st $109 Saturday KO $4633
1st $82 TPSKO $2651
1st $82 TPSKO $2332
1st $21 Hyper ACR $1864
1st $16,50 Hpsko $1260

Obviously feels great to run so hot and to go from 7k$ in MU to a 4k$ profit chop in a week. Additionally I also got my best volume month so far, having played a total of 1227 games.



Besides poker life has been going great as well. Been getting in plenty of reading time & going to the gym regularly. Unfortunately I haven't really gone anywhere so there's not too many interesting pictures to share, so here's some pics of what I've been eating (I eat Thai food most of the time, either my gf cooks or I get it from the moo baan across the street).

My default breakfast







I've also seen a ton of snakes around here, they like hanging around the entrance of our gated community.



August Goals

I'm heading to the Netherlands on the 8th until September 2nd so I won't be playing too much poker. The plan is to take tomorrow off and then grind every day until I leave, when I get to the Netherlands I'll be doing very little online grinding, probably just 4-5 sessions during the entire 3 weeks.

My August goals:

[ ] Play 500 games
[ ] Play 6 Live mtt's (3 wsop events & some local tourneys)
[ ] Read at least 4 books.
Not going to set any gym goals while in Europe since I know I'll fail them anyway, hopefully I'll get to play some Tennis.

Kind of looks like a cobra but with the skinny tail maybe it's just a rat snake. Facebook groups Snakes of Hua Hin, Snakes of Pattaya and snakes of Chiang Mai are really good. People always posting pics of snakes they see and you can start to learn to identify which ones are venomous.
About the motobike, you should definitely think about getting one. Makes life so much easier to run to the store or whatever especially in Phuket where transpo is so expensive and once you get confident on it you can take a little longer journey.
Good luck with everything!

Thanks for the snake tip, I joined Snakes in Phuket and it does look like its a rat snake when compared to the others on there yea. I read that there's supposed to be cobras around here as well but for now most snakes I've seen tend to be very small ones.

As for the bike, yea when I come back I'll probably look into buying one. Went to the 7/11 the other day just to find out I left my atm card at home, so frustrating to spend nearly an hour walking for nothing whereas with a bike it'd take me less than 15 minutes.

Thanks!

Hey guys,
It’s been quite a busy month for me, didn’t really get around to playing online all that much, only 2 sessions in my weeks in Holland, but at least I got 2nd in the 109 Saturday KO for 3.3k which still made it a nice winning month for me. Besides that I’ve played several live events in Rotterdam but without any results.


New Direction

One of the reasons I didn’t get around to poker that much is that an opportunity suddenly presented itself to me, in short:

The co-owner of my father’s travel organization/tour operator announced that he will retire next year a couple of weeks ago. This means that there is an opportunity for me to take over a part of his work. Obviously I’d have to start at the bottom and in the short term I get paid a fair bit less than what I expect my EV in poker to be, but with the future earning potential and my dad also being in his late fifties it seems like a no-brainer to me, so I agreed to take up the job this week.
This means I’ll have significantly less time to spend on poker since I’ll have 35-40 hour workweeks. My aim for the rest of the year will be to play 600 games/month (The minimum in my contract), after that I will re-evaluate.
For now most of the work can be done from Thailand since it’s all online anyway so I don’t have to relocate, but in the busy months (the First months of the year) I’ll probably have to spend more time in the Netherlands.
It’s going to be quite a big change going from playing poker 5/6 days a week to doing ‘office work’, but I’m quite excited.
I’ll continue updating my blog as usual, at least for the rest of the year, it’ll just be a fair bit less volume.

Summer school

Besides work and live poker I spent 4 days at the Summer academy of the Forum for Democracy, which was the reason why I came to the Netherlands in the First place. There was 30 of us Total and I met a ton of great people there, we stayed in a beautiful old castle & had a packed schedule filled with lectures and debates about philosophy, history & politics. Outside of sleeping we barely had any time to rest. I came away from it with a lot of gained knowledge and a reading list that will probably last me several years.
Pics of the castle:







September Goals

I’ll start working fulltime as soon as I get back to Thailand, so I’ll have to figure out what hours are best for me to work and what times I need to be near the Phone. As for poker I’ll be choosing 2 days on which I'll grind from 7am – 2pm every week, and I’ll add one extra session every now and then to get to the 600 games.

[ ] Go to the gym or pool 3x/week
[ ] Go running outside once a week
[ ] Play 600 Mtt’s.

Hey guys,
My First month of working full time is over, and it went quite well. It’s been a big change to work 35-40 hours per week instead of playing poker during those hours, but besides it being a bit harder to stay concentrated for long periods of time it’s a lot easier/less stressfull than grinding.

As for poker, my volume goal was 600 goals, which I failed miserably to achieve. I saw it coming early on in the month but I was still a little suprised how hard it is to put in solid sessions when working full time. I’ve been adjusting my schedule during the month however, and currently I should be getting 120-150mtts/week, which would bring me very close to the 600/month, I’ll try to play a lot of mttsng’s as the ev in those is pretty good & they don’t take up a lot of time.
Volume aside, I feel like I’ve been playing a lot better and more focussed now that I play less and shorter sessions, also enjoying the game a lot more again. My evbb for the month is 8, curious to see how it will develop now that I play fewer sessions.

Results-wise I've lost about 3k this month. Had some nice runs including a 10th place in the 162bb & 13th in the 109 wrapup last week, but unfortunately I wasn't able to close any.



As for the goals I set for this month

[x] Go to the gym or pool 3x/week Finally kept up with my gym goal, gf has been tagging along as well which helps me to stay on schedule
[ ] Go running outside once a week it’s been raining the entire month so I’ve only gone once.
[ ] Play 600 Mtt’s. Fail.


October
My dad is visiting this month which I'm looking forward to, and I will have a trip to Bangkok with my gf to visit her family since her brother just had a baby. It seems like it will be a busy month and I won’t be able to go with my regular schedule, so hopefully I can manage to use my time wisely and still get close to those 600 games.

October goals:

[ ] Play 600 mtt’s
[ ] Play tennis 3 times minimum
[ ] Go to the gym 2x/week

Oh and I almost forgot, finally put my desk together last week and moved from the kitchentable to the spare room upstairs so this is what my setup looks like now:

Interesting to see you have changed, wish you all the best!

interesting thread, good luck in October, no doubt I would have taken the same decision as you if I was given that opportunity

probably the right decision long term EV wise to get out of Poker now, were you self taught for mtts or did u learn as part of a stable?

good luck with your new career.

Thanks guys!

I already played low stakes mtt's the few months before I got my contract, and had grinded micro 45/180m's when I started out with some coaching. However clearly the coaching over the last year and a half has been great and took me to a whole new level, I was pretty terrible back then.

Hey guys,

October has been a pretty uneventful month for me poker-wise, I played nearly 500 mtts (488), which is less than I set out for. I still think it’s decent since it’s been quite a busy month with work and exploring the island more, hopefully this month I’ll be able to actually get to 600 as I don’t have anything else going on besides work and poker.
I started the month with a 2.5k profit in my first session, but gradually lost it over the course of the rest of the month, ending at a whopping +77$.




October goals:
[ ] Play 600 mtt’s 112 short
[ ] Play tennis 3 times minimum Didn’t get to this
[x] Go to the gym 2x/week


My dad came to visit so we rented a car and we got to see a lot more of the Island, some pics:





Did some shopping to finally make use of the garden a bit more.



I hired a dog trainer for Bailey as she would bark at every stranger whenever we took her somewhere, after a streetdog charged her because of her barking at strangers at the beach I decided we should probably get someone to help us out a bit. Very happy with the decision as she’s very calm now, mostly, which makes taking her somewhere less of a pain in the ass.
I do however still have to deal with a ton of chinese tourists who love her and want to take pictures with the dog, I guess maybe they’re bored of Thai food.





I’m keeping the goals for November very simple:

[ ] Play 600 games
[ ] Hit the gym at least 2x/week

Did you meet your gf in Thailand or somewhere else? And are you and your gf both Thai?

I'm actually heading to Bangkok soon for a holiday with my gf (she's Thai but I'm not). But I'm going to give up poker/gambling for the duration of my stay and just focus on sightseeing and nightlife. I heard you can get $2 beers there which is a plus.

Unlucky month, but awesome dog, GL

Great thread and Good Luck with everything. Great attitude.

Thanks guys!


Yea I did meet her in Thailand, she's Thai but I'm Dutch.

Enjoy your holiday!

Really interesting challenge over here
I'm 18 as well and made the same as you, dropout the school and move to another place
REALLY GL !!!

Nice thread man, I'm considering moving abroad next year to grind too. Mostly for the life experience and all that, already been to Thailand before so would be easy for me to stay there again. GL

Hello,
Any online poker players in Bangkok or Pattaya area? I'll be vacation December 2017 Thailand! Thanks Dave

Thanks! Sounds exciting, good luck next year if you do decide to make the move. I don't think you'll regret it

Haha nice Gl man! Hope it works out for you.

Been running pretty good so far this month, just closed this one:


My MtD:



Feels good to win again for the first time since I started working. Obviously haven't put in a lot of volume lately so breakeven stretches feel a lot longer than they actually are, but this has definitely lifted my confidence again.

Gonna be close on the 600 games but I'll at least get over 500. Pretty motivated now to play an extra session or two and try to reach my volume goal.

Just a quick update this month as nothing much happened.
I had a pretty sweet month resultswise, won roughly $5800 over the course of 500 games. Obviously that's 100 games under my set goal of 600, no special reason for not making the volume, I just struggle to get in the 600 games while working full time. I play 5/6 mornings per week for several hours, but without regging regspeed for more than 2-3 hours it's really tough to get good volume, even with the adding of mttsngs.



November Goals

[ ] Play 600 games 500
[x] Hit the gym at least 2x/week

December
I'm not going to post any goals for this month as my parents are coming to visit for the holidays. I'll be heading to Bangkok for a couple of days and after that I'll show them around in Phuket. Got 2.5 weeks off of work and I probably won't have much time to grind either, altho maybe I'll squeeze in a session or two. Until then I'll be grinding and working everyday for the next 7 days or so.

I'll probably post a longer recap of 2017 like I did last year reviewing my yearly goals later on, at which point I'll also have to consider what I'll be doing in 2018 regarding poker.

Do you only play on Pokerstar?

December recap

Poker-wise I don't have much to report for the month, I took nearly 3 weeks off of poker and work as my parents were visiting. I realised I haven't taken this long off of poker since I started playing full time a couple of years ago, so I guess I was due for a holiday. I played a little under 200 games and won roughly 600$.

Despite barely having played any poker and having worked very few hours it was still my 2nd best month of 2017 profit-wise thanks to cryptos. I started buying some altcoins last month and two of them really took off (4000% in XRB & 3000% in XVG). I'm far from an expert on this stuff but with the current craziness the potential gains are huge, especially now that I'm already freerolling and have locked up some decent profits I intend to try and take advantage of it for as long as it lasts.
So in the end with everything combined I ended up nearly 10k in december, making it a great ending to 2017.

The highlight of the month however was when my girlfriend found a snake in our trash, which turned out to be a Black Cobra. The nearby security guards called in some kind of snake rescue team which managed to catch the cobra in a bottle after struggling with it for 10 minutes.



I've seen several snakes around my neighborhood but I never quite realised some of them are potentially deadly


2017 Recap

2017 Has been a bit of an odd year for me with the switch to a 'regular' job halfway through. It's not a possible outcome that I had even imagined at the start of the year, but so far I'm still very content about it. I'm still not very used to 'work' meaning anything else than playing poker, but I'm getting there and it's a journey in itself.
Ofcourse having moved away from playing poker fulltime it doesn't make sense to look at my initial goals for the year too much, but here's a quick look at them anyway:

[ ] Play 12.000 games Obviously didn't get to this. Ended up with 8600,
which I'm content with
[ ] Have an average ROI of 33%+ Just 8.5% for the year
[ ] Have an 8+ evBB total for the year, regardless the stakes I play
[ ] Go to the gym at least 3 times a week when at home in Bangkok, no excuses. Did this for the most part when I include swimming, but definitely skipped a few too many sessions
[x] Eat healthier, cut down massively on sweets, chocolate, sugar in general. My diet has definitely improved a lot, especially since moving to Phuket.
I still eat way too much trash but it's improved a lot. I don't seem to be able to get fat no matter how much I eat, which sucks for my motivation. But compared to my diet pre-2017 I consider this one a success.
[x] Read 25 books minimum Nailed this one

My year to date graph:


2018
My current MTT contract runs until the 15th of february, at which point I'll be on my own assuming I don't have any makeup.
With my current situation it's no longer possible to play 4/5 MTT sessions per week given the time constraints it puts me in. I'll have to move to a variant that allows me to get up whenever I want, so I'll probably give husng's another go.

I probably won't be updating this blog anymore either as there simply won't be enough for me to update on. I'll be doing a ton of travelling and be occupied with work for the most part, and I don't really know what to expect from poker in 2018. I hope I can manage to keep it as a fun hobby that earns me some decent cash on the side.

Thanks to everyone who has helped me out and/or followed me for the last couple of years, hope you all have a great year!

I currently play 95% there yea. It's just way easier with the software and frankly the games on other sites just aren't that appealing during my hours. Acr is the only other site that offers decent games off-peak, but those take ages and I simply can't afford to play 8 to 12 hour sessions right now.

$21k profit from an 8.5% ROI yeah?

Cool thread btw just read it all, wp.