Quote:
Originally Posted by d0zer
good luck with the recovery, could you elaborate a bit on general life in chiang mai ? expenses, air quality, nature access, are locals friendly or hostile towards white gringo tourists etc ? thanks a lot
Didn't mean to ignore this, but only had enough energy for the recap post. Now since it's my last day in CM and I've got an hour to wait until I can check-out of my apartment, seems like the perfect time to reply.
So it's obviously a matter of personal preference, but I find Chiang Mai to be one of my favorite cities in the world and it fits my personality extremely well. For starters, the cost of living remains incredibly low -- it's a tad more expensive than it was 2-3 years ago, but I can still live like a king for ~$1200 USD per month, including rent. And if I was interested in being more cost conscious, I could get buy on $500 total.
The air quality has gotten worse but it's still miles better than Bangkok for 11 months out of the year. Would look to avoid CM in March during the burning season although I've been through it once and still thought the air quality here wasn't as bad as Hong Kong.
CM is very green, in a literal sense. Reminds me a lot of northern California with foliage always within eyesight, except the climate is warmer. It's just another thing that I prefer over Bangkok, which is too industrial for my taste. People/locals in Chiang Mai are super friendly, and globalization/the digital nomad influx has lead to a greater 'acceptance' of foreigners. It's not that the Thais treated foreigners worse before (In fact I've always felt very welcomed, more so here than anywhere in Asia), but now the locals are more likely to be proficient in English, there's an increased number of restaurants specializing in non Thai cuisine, and I get fewer 'OMG he is so white' stares.
All that said, Chiang Mai isn't perfect. When I was previously single and living here, I found that the nightlife wasn't great and dating options were rather limited, but that might have changed -- I wasn't grinding the bar scene/looking for dates this time around. Few other issues aren't really Chiang Mai's fault, they're my own:
For one, the time zone difference (from PST) can be cumbersome, as it's sometimes hard to find a time to talk to my family/GF back home that works for both parties.
But my biggest gripe is my own inability to learn/master the language and without that, I'll always feel like an outsider. I can't pronounce the tones correctly (Same problem with my Vietnamese, which is abysmal) so I'm drawing dead. Admittedly my Spanish isn't incredible but I can butcher my way through most interactions and there's just a feeling of inclusion/personal connection that I get from that which I can't replicate here.
Alright, that's probably enough text/rambling, I'll elaborate even further if you want.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nomalice
I dont know why i wasnt subd.
Good that you're feeling better.
Jesus christ, that volume... I mean how the actual fook is that possible ? How many tables do you play and for how many hours do you register, if you care to elaborate that ?
GL
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scarecrow_
Actually i want to hear the answer to the above as well
Cheers to casually mentioning " was shooting for 1kgames/month but ohhhh well end up doubling that" looool.
Nice to hear u feel better. Glgl in February, enjoy ur day-off!
Well, a handful (300 or so) games are MTT SNGs. Still almost double my original goal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nomalice
Jesus christ, that volume... I mean how the actual fook is that possible ?
It helps that I used to 35-table SNGs, so that allows me to play a higher table count than most regulars.
Fun side note, I used to work for Daniel Negraneu's PokerVT and one time a group of the coaches were invited to his house. We were drinking, hanging out, playing video games and he brought up the fact that I could mass table. Strongly encouraged me to grind a session on his desktop and while I was hesitant, I did eventually agreed. Loaded games, he grabbed a chair and watched over my shoulder. Was super interested for the first five minutes and then he got incredibly bored of me clicking around/not getting to see turns and rivers and left to go back to the party, while I had to sit in the office and for another hour of SNG grind.
Anyways, I'm super long-winded today. Let's get back to the
re: How is it possible to get this much volume.
In addition to the high table count, I definitely played a lot of hours this month. Probably somewhere between 240 and 260. And it wasn't particularly difficult because I had the time (GF is back in Vancouver) and I enjoyed the grind. Being in a massive downer probably isn't the best time to preach to the MTT community, but I do think that most grinders are incredibly lazy and don't treat poker enough like a job. Perhaps it's because the game used to be 'easy money' and people weren't used to actually having to work, but in today's ecosystem of smaller edges, that's no longer the case. January's results weren't good, but I know that if I put in a ton of volume and am able to maintain my edge/winrate, I'm going to be printing money long-term and that drives me to wake up each morning (Or at night, depending on my time-zone) and load a session.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nomalice
How many tables do you play and for how many hours do you register, if you care to elaborate that ?
Try to cap my table count around 20, but will try for even fewer if I'm playing multiple sites. It's admittedly hard sometimes for me to not flick in an extra game because I see them all as value/adding to the hourly but at some point, my focus get stretched too thin and I'll miss spots. Had that happen a handful of times last month, but the culprit was almost always because I had loaded some games on ACR and the software eats up too much of my computer's processing power.
If I'm putting in a full day's work, I'll usually register regular speed games for the first 5-6 hours. It depends a lot on how I feel and how the games are progressing -- if I've got a big stack in a regular/slow speed game with ~200 left, I'm aware that I could easily be playing it for another 3-4 hours so I'll load more regular speeds. But if I don't have a game/stack like that, I'll stop adding regular speed games but continue to add turbos. In total, my peak hour sessions go for about 10-12 hours and the offpeak for about 8-10.