Not much to do these days as we are in day 3 of the curfew which is in effect from 8:00 PM to 5:00 AM. My #2 spent the night due to the curfew and so we met up with some friends after waking up for lunch. At least Phnom Penh has some great restaurants otherwise I wouldn't quite know what to do with myself. Not much going on tonight so basically grinding $100 PLO5 most of the night.

Le Deli Bistro Gourmet:
https://g.page/ledelibistrogourmet?share

I'm having the #2 come over for the night today for some dinner and ... I've spent most of the day working and running errands for the family so I'm definitely ready to relax a bit. I've been burnt out a bit and really wanting to take a holiday somewhere. But with the curfew and travel restrictions that's not really looking possible right now. Fortunate that I saw an ad on Facebook for one of the premier hotels here in town offering staycation deals so I booked a room for this Friday for $75 per. I'll probably just stay the one night but if it's really nice I may extend. My condo is fine but the pool is closed and there isn't much to do. I figured it would be nice to go somewhere to enjoy an open pool and restaurants that are open past the curfew time of 8:00 PM. I'm trying to convince some friends to go as well, but regardless I've already booked my #3 to accompany me for the trip. With everything going on I haven't seen her all that much since I took her to the islands over a month ago so it should be a nice reunion.

The situation here in Cambodia has worsened as we are almost in full lockdown mode. I was happy to get out of my own 20 day quarantine, only to find a world that is completely closed. So they instituted a curfew about a week ago from 8:00 PM to 5:00 AM nightly and just a few days ago they banned all alcohol sales and ordered restaurants to only do take out and delivery. Basically every reason for going out has been removed as they want everyone to stay home. So I have to bring whatever entertainment I can find back home with me and the #2 has been spending a lot of time in my condo as she has been spending 3-4 nights here per week. I barely have enough stamina for so many nights but I'm finding out that I don't do the whole alone thing so well anymore. I suppose being in complete solitude for 3 weeks during quarantine has made me want someone around now that I can. Still being home every night by 8:00 PM and having no choice but to do so is not something I enjoy. I was looking for a bit of a workaround without having to defy the curfew when I realized that the nicer hotels in town have restaurants, bars and pools within their own compound and that such may stay open for their customers. I was glad to discover that this was indeed the case so I rented a room at a premier spot in one of the nicer areas of town and took my #2 for a quick staycation. I was able to use their pool and enjoy dinner at their rooftop bar/restaurant. As luck would have it, two of my friends were also staying at the hotel and we were able to enjoy drinks and food until 11:00 PM when they closed. Not exactly like life before, but probably just enough to keep me sane. I'm likely to come back this week and make this a temporary tradition until things open back up.

Latest session stream is now uploaded to YouTube:



Can also catch these live around midnight UTC +7 on Twitch:

https://www.twitch.tv/poker_triad


+$198 in a series of micro sessions, as I call them. It seems that is the only kind of volume I can put in these days. One would think with the whole curfew I would have more time to play, but family responsibilities and work for the agency seem to be expanding like some sort of inert gas. It's fine as I'm in full blown bum hunting mode these days anyway and not trying to put in grindtastic sessions.

So Phnom Penh just extended the curfew for another two weeks, to run through the 28th of April. Seeing as how they just banned alcohol and all dine in service at restaurants, things look to get a whole lot worse before it gets any better. I still have multiple people texting me throughout the world asking me when I think we'll be back open and I tell all of them it doesn't look good. Still I rather be living here than back home in the States. I had a good enough time at the resort last week that I will be returning this week and already booked a room for Thursday. I haven't seen my #3 in over a month so I'll be taking her this time. Her English isn't so great but she's young, drama free and really fun to fu*k. And she's actually a good girl, which is a rarity these days as every girl looks to scam every single man that ever bought her a drink. She hasn't asked me for a dime since the last time I took her home and she doesn't flood my inbox with screenshots of her empty bank account. Such goodness should be rewarded, don't you think.

+$105 in another series of "micro" sessions today. It's amazing how fast the day goes by when you're busy. Tuesdays are especially hard to play as it's rakeback day and all my players get paid.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/986146296

I've had many interesting conversations with my regular girls about how they are jealous of working ladyboys in the country. And I have to admit that when I troll female tik tok accounts I cannot tell who the hell is what anymore. This is all of course because of the Chinese because they can't get enough of them. Ladyboys used to hide in alleys and get paid what they could, but now they're the preferred choice of the biggest money movers in the country and actual girls are now jealous of them as they easily fetch $100 per night. I was going to post this on Facebook but now I have to worry about every woke person or female getting all up in my a*s about transphobia or whatever else. What a world!

Why are ladyboys preferred?

This is all speculation of course as I've never asked anyone directly. But the common wisdom is that when they get all their work done they end up looking more like the women the Chinese prefer than actual Cambodian girls, namely white skin. Or they're all just a bunch of poofters.

It's an interesting dynamic in my 10+ years in SEA I've never been able to figure out but I put more brain power into what I'm going to eat for breakfast than this subject but it is a curiosity.

As an agent of poker clubs/unions, do you find yourself having to guarantee large sums of money in case things go to ****?

Yes but only because of the people I work with. As an agent I have people above me and in the 26 of 29 clubs I have I basically work with two people. These are people I know personally and have worked with for a long time so I have no doubt that they would cover me and my players should things go tits up. In turn, most of the players that I have under me are also those that I know personally as having worked in poker rooms here in Cambodia I have had the chance to meet a lot of players. But with an agency of 135+ players I have at least a few random players, those that I have never met before. But even they usually come referred by an existing player. There is some trepidation of course, but as soon as they get their first large cash out they start feeling better about things. In most cases I do not hold the cash as the clubs do as I am on what is called a prepay system. This means that anytime I need chips for players, I literally have to buy them. I personally think this is a better system as the alternative is a credit system where the agent works on credit with the clubs and holds all the cash. I have a few clubs on credit, but for the most part I am prepaid. For small cash outs I just pay the player out of pocket and wait for the club to get me back later. But in most cases the cash outs come directly from the club and I act basically as the go between. It takes a bit longer but I prefer this method and feel this is safer. This is probably the most honest answer you'll get from an agent on how things work and the assurances I describe here are just about the best that anyone is going to be able to give any player. At the end of the day it does come to how much you trust the agent you are working with. I can discuss here and elsewhere ad nauseum about how everything is guaranteed, but if you don't believe or trust me none of that really amounts to much.

+$315 in the latest session as I am having a decent start to the week.

I discussed this in my latest Twitch stream, but there has been a development in the covid situation here in Phnom Penh. So we've been living under an 8:00 PM to 5:00 AM curfew for the past two weeks, that was recently extended for another two weeks along with an alcohol and dining in ban for restaurants. But they have extended that curfew as of last night to a 24 hour one, basically making it a full lockdown of the city. We are allowed to take 2 trips per week to get groceries and restaurants are allowed to stay open for deliveries. But the curfew has not slowed anything down as we've had nearly 1,000 new cases in the past 2 days and I doubt that the full lockdown will change things. I went out today to grocery shop both for myself and my wife at both residences and did not have any issue with the police who are stationed out at most street corners. My staycation at the hotel is definitely postponed but I'm going to try and have the #2 come over tomorrow during the day as some movement is being allowed.

chinese men don't view it as gay, it's kinda funny, it's very much a conservative society and yet thailand will come up in a office setting and some guy will casually mention going there and banging a ladyboy and general reaction would be no different from his saying he had some really spicy pad thai

i've also asked gay men and they are always like "ew we like dudes and don't find women attractive, this is like a straight guy being into really into a woman specifically because she looks like a dude and can pee standing up"

like triad said, once they have the work done that the average ladyboy is easily 2x more attractive than the average cis female, one thing that made traveling in SEA difficult is my 5'10" chinese girlfriend who's pretty attractive with a nice figure imo would constantly be confused for a ladyboy among tourists (locals wouldn't make this mistake, i think mostly cause they can tell she's Chinese based on looks) "i'd sometimes overhear comments about that rickroll guy having gone local even traveling with one" and she would hear it all the time because people wouldn't assume she's fluent in english - it was sometimes a fun novelty but definitely stays in your subconscious but then again going around proclaiming your gf is a female is even weirder imo

while i definitely agree they are way hotter, i also personally don't get the appeal of taking off their panties and finding a penis, i can't imagine it being an out of sight out of mind thing in bed the way it can be visually and don't get it - remember asking some ladyboy connosieurs in the thailand thread about a year ago what the appeal was and they definitely said they're not there for the dick, but it's not something they just ignore as they'll order everything on the menu so to speak

i think it's just people who are bi-curious or more adventurous, where it's either a safe zone to experiment without feeling gay guilt or for others it's the price to pay to be with a woman 10x sexier than any cis females they've consentually slept with i've genuinely never really understood it though, maybe it's like a bucket list thing for some people?

cause then again, the ugly ones and pre-work ones seem to do just fine as well so there's clearly a demand for it beyond simple aesthetics

glad i found this thread pt, always loved your tr in the cambodia thread

bro your stuff is legit gold. I respect the hustle and outlook to life. who is there really to judge you when life is short. Also appreciate your honesty and how you man up to your responsibilities in life compared to these younger generations of these days.

Would love to meet you one day if i ever travel to southeast asia after pandemic, and would love to buy you a beer.

Do you have twitch or youtube stream that we can follow?

Thanks man. I still try to post there when I can.

Thanks for the kind words. Would love to grab a beer one day and hopefully things will open back up soon for us to do that. For YouTube just type Poker App Central in the search box in the app and you'll find my channel. The twitch link is below:

https://www.twitch.tv/poker_triad

Latest blog post is up on the website:

https://www.pokerappcentral.com/poke...-love-cambodia

I had to try and focus on the positives of why I love living here as things are absolutely crazy right now with the lock down. I admit that thoughts of leaving and going back to the States did cross my mind, but I don't want to leave my family and what the fu*k am I going to do back home? I'm too damn old to be scamming on chicks at clubs and I really don't want to start fuc*ing girls my own age.

Latest blog post is uploaded to my site:

https://www.pokerappcentral.com/poke...imperfect-hero

Phnom Penh continues to be under complete lock down and when the 2 week period ends next week, most expect it to be extended. Although our numbers remain low relative to other countries, people are freaked out over the dramatic increase in positive cases and deaths over the last 2 months. I was able to get out with the wife for her final doctor's visit before the birth of our son. I'm back at the condo now to work and play online but we will head to the hospital together on May 12th at which time my wife is scheduled for a c-section. The difference in price from a natural birth will be from a few hundred dollars to a couple of thousand. But the last birth of our daughter was really rough on her and she doesn't want to go through that again. I don't blame her so I happily booked the room for her at the hospital where she will stay and recover for 6 days. Things look to be very hectic over the next month. Hopefully my son will be born into a world that resembles some sort of normalcy.

Finished off a decent week which should be $2K+ with rakeback. I don't like to set short term goals in poker usually but I had it in my mind this week that I wanted to try and win the amount it's going to cost for the birth of my son. My wife wants to have a c-section as the last birth of our daughter was a bit rough on her. We found out during the last doctor's visit that it will be a bit shy of $2K so mission accomplished. I spent a few days at home this week since my wife and I managed to get together at the hospital. If you have a pregnant woman in the car the police will generally leave you alone and let you pass. Not much else to report on this week other than that I've had to send food to my #2 a couple of times as access is no longer what it once was. The 2 week lockdown is supposed to end this week so fingers crossed.

So they have extended the lockdown of Phnom Penh for another week until May 5th. As my wife is set to deliver our baby on the 12th, we should get another break just in case it is extended a fourth week. Not much else to do except poker and just messing around on the computer. Last week was good poker wise and this weeks starts off decently as well. UTG made it $6 and after MP called I 3-bet to $27 from the button with AA9764 double suited. I flopped the nuts and bet 1/2 pot after two checks, but then the original opener re-pots all in. I can probably get away from this sort of situation on the river as in 6-card it's always a straight flush, but felt like I had to call on the flop. Although I will admit that even in this spot seeing him show up with top set was a bit surprising. We ran it twice and my hand held both run outs. I took down the $516 pot and after an up and down day ended things up $275.

I made a fairly big mistake while playing today as I switched seats mid session to get on the whale's left after a seat opened up. As I was already playing the whale noticed, called me out for it in the chat and then left the table due to my behavior. I was looking to gain an edge as I was down at the time and suppose I wasn't thinking. Although I do think he was about to leave anyway as he was up about $500 after stacking two regs. Still I probably should not have done that, something that Big Bananas pointed out as well during a later conversation.

Read the whole thing. Great post. I hope you get things squared away with your family since family is so important. But I understand the divide you have between you and your mother and father.