Requested you

I'd really suggest not signing a long-term lease until you've been in the country at least a month or two and are sure you want to stay. Almost everyone ends up playing far less poker than they planned for their first few months so budget accordingly. Good luck, you should have yourself a hell of a time.

Yeah I'll probably end up staying in hotels for the first month or two till I get myself settled in, then might see if there are any "poker houses" or anything like that. I definitely understand what you're saying, which is why I've budgeted less than I could afford on accommodation as I'm sure i'll be pre-occupied with other stuff for atleast the first month or so. Cheers for the advice

Living very close to where you'll be training would be at the top of my priorities list. Phuket is big.

+1 for somewhere close to the gym.

somewhere with good convenience too, e.g. Maid, Laundry service, supermarket, restaurants near by etc.

Most of these are fairly standard in Thailand even in modest accomodation and will leave you free to concerntrate on poker/MMA.

Lots of hotels offer monthly rates, so it shouldnt be too hard to find something suitable to stay in for the first month or 2.

Dont worry too much about scams, youll probably end up over paying taxis a couple of times but as long as you dont rent a jet ski or try to buy cheap diamonds or a time share you should be ok. If its too good to be true, it always is. They arent really aggressive so you dont have to worry about getting shanked in the back after you turn down the guy selling hammocks.

Don't kid yourself man, this will never work out. You don't put in the volume now at home, and then all the sudden you think you will put in 4 hours training and 8 hours grinding, as you occasionally look out the window at the beach and easy girls?

There isn't that many hours in the day to do all this when you count transportation, eating, home chores, and the slow inefficient way things get done in Thailand, etc.

Plus, do you even know that you are a winning player girding 8 hours/day? (I know I am not and most people are not... as sessions get longer, you just don't think the same, lose concentration, and win rate plummets.)

Certainly, giving this a try is not a bad idea, but you better make sure you have a backup plan... and a backup to the backup plan.

MMA wise i am very dedicated - I train 4 hours a day here so I know that won't be a problem. I see your point regarding poker and perhaps it is slightly ambitious but I know if I play 2x 4 or 5 hour sessions a day I am a winning player over a 300,000 sample size

Training for 4 hours in this climate can NOT be compared to training 4 hours in England.

Luckily the training facility is indoors with A/C which will hopefully take some of the edge off - I know it's going to be more difficult then over here, but after 2 x 2 hour sessions in England I'm not dead on my feet so my body should adapt to the heat after 3 - 4 weeks I'd imagine.

Oh yeah I should have probably asked this question straight away :/ - how is getting money off pokerstars through neteller over in Thailand? I've heard people have trouble with MB so not sure if Neteller is the same? I'm not planning to get a Thai bank account, so was just going to use my English one and my Neteller mastercard - is this possible?

You need to contact Neteller and let them know that you are staying in Thailand. they probably want to know for how long. They should then grant you acess to be able to log in, and check balance etc.
You can use the mastercard in the ATM´s, but the fees are pretty steep.

Using MB and getting a bank account is much cheaper.

what trouble is there with MB?

just can't deposit from thai IP. otherwise business as usual

I just read a post from someone who said he had 1.4k and needed to trade it so assumed something was up. So I can withdraw from pokerstars onto MB as normal and deposit into my bank account? I just cant deposit onto it?

How how many years/months have you actually trained for 4 hours/day? Lots of people train 4 hours/day... for 4 months, and then quit. Of course this is moot since that will only save you money...

But I still don't see how you can fit in 4 hours of training + two 4 or 5 hour sessions per day. I think you lost count of just how much time that is, and you're not even including eating out, or anything really.

You might as well lock yourself up in a cheap place in UK as that will be cheaper and easier and you won't do anything Thailand related with this unrealisitc schedule anyway (unless you count buying some streetfood on your run home to your mega poker session as Thailand experience). Not to mention that it's not that easy to find good clean food and supplements in Thailand - when you do, you will be paying Western prices or very close to it.

sure. theres a group that organizes free hikes once or twice a week, i also started going with a friend whcih was mostly just me trying to remember some paths going back and forth.

were going to have our chiang mai dinner this wednesday 8:30pm at sahara bar, which is on nimmenheimen 59/9( www.saharathai.com ). everyone welcome! even though this isnt the very first dinner but the second, your still gonna have the bragging rights that you were there from the very beginning. also thanks to everyone for showing up last time!

ah, i don't know that situation but maybe he didn't have thai bank account or was too lazy to set one up?

and just to confirm you can do everything else with MB but just can't deposit money to gaming sites. you need VPN/teamviewer session with a friend/etc for that

uninformed,ignorant,dumb.....unbearable

would they ever ban someones MB account for doing something like that? Do you have friends that do this regularly? Just wondering as I'm a bit scared to do it so I normally try to trade with someone instead but this would obviously be much easier.

I've been training 4 hours a day for close to three years (one of the reasons I decided to play poker for my sole income as it gave me the flexibility to be able to do this) and training MMA as a whole for close to 6. I'm going to be training with a team who expect you to fight and I'm more than looking forward to being pushed like this. I don't have any worries about my ability to train in Thailand at all.

Perhaps I have over-estimated the time I'll have available to play poker but I certainly know that pretty much all my free time will be spent playing...and you get a lot of free time between training, plus all day Sunday free. I'm not sure if you've ever been to England but there's not really such a thing as a cheap place here - with council tax, gas, electric, tv license, rent and water im paying close to $1400 and my place is a pretty plain 1 bedroom apartment, then on top of that I eat 8 times a day and food is far from cheap my cost of living is around about $2200 (with training included) I know in Thailand i could live VERY comfortably for $1500 a month which includes all my training and food so why wouldn't I want to go and experience a new culture, training with some of the best trainers in the world and save myself money while I'm doing it? I'm at the age where partying doesn't really interest me and it's counter - productive to my training anyway, all i want to do is eat, sleep, train and play poker. I've lived in England all my life and I'm more than ready for a change.

As for "Not to mention that it's not that easy to find good clean food and supplements in Thailand" - you're certainly correct about supplements, I'll be bringing a huge amount over (which I've been told will be fine as long as they are sealed) as it's like $90 for a tub or something stupid like that so I've heard? But I think you are way off the mark on not being able to fine good clean food - like anywhere I'm sure there's bad places but I know lots of people who've been over to train and they all have recommended various places to eat that are excellent and cheap.

maybe, but they would warn you first like they did me

i used VPN for like 2 years depositing randomly. then one time i got my account locked. emailed them and they opened it and said i shouldn't use "IP masking software". since then i have just used my computer back home with teamviewer to deposit.

obv trading works too but it has its own risks too

or if you are a non-US you can obv use your cards to deposit too

Lmao

my goal was 40 hours a week playing but of course working my way up to it.
I know from about 2 years experiance you can't just say your gonna grind X amount or hours if you don't grind anywhere close. What's ur average now?

Also I'm thinking prop bet justforfunds?

In all honesty right now it's 4 - 5 hours a day 5 or 6 times a week so usually around the 25 - 30 hour mark.

What terms you thinking for prop bet?

I really don't want to come across too negative in my replies. All in all, maybe you do have the discipline to do this, judging by your further posts. If you stuck to MMA for that long at that pace, then it bodes well for your character and therefore your commitment to grind more and work hard when you come here. This is not the case for most people.

And of course, if things don't work as expected, or you simply get sick of it, just keep a rainy day fund to get back to UK so you're not one of the sob stories of which there are plenty in Thailand.

Keep in mind that in Thailand you will have additional costs. Maintaining your visa is not that cheap. You probably want to have health insurance that you get for free in UK.

Also, a long time ago before i got lazy and fat, I used to me into MMA. I will have to look up your gym. They have a web page, presumably. How much do they charge/month?

I take back what I said about supplements since my info is really based on other people who complained about lack of selection, and prices and not my personal experience. Maybe they didn't know what they were doing. Though I have to say... in my experience... anything western quality and niche products are way pricey in Thailand. I guess this is not the case with supplements?