Epicurus spent his life chasing happiness and was led to conclude that it’s a rather tricky issue. He thought that pleasure was the most important thing in life and that one has no reason to feel guilty for chasing pleasure. He was, however, known for getting by on very little often making meals out of water, bread, and a few olives.

His central philosophy was that humans are not very good at understanding what makes us happy and that we can easily and mistakenly conclude that material things are what will make us happy. It’s the “what we want is not what we need” philosophy: we pursue our manic impulses not really understanding what it is that makes us happy.

Epicurus believed he discovered the formula for what we really do need in order to be happy. He believed happiness requires three things:

1. Friends

When Epicurus moved to Athens, he bought a large house in the middle of town and asked a group of friends to move in with him. He did this because he viewed friendship as being something we should seek to have around at all times, not just for the occasional phone call or whatever. He suggested making an effort to never eat alone. “A feeding without a friend is the life of a lion or a wolf,” he said. He determined it more important who you eat with than what you eat.

2. Freedom

Later in life, Epicurus and his friends left Athens and started a commune in a remote part of Greece. “We must free ourselves from the prison of everyday life and politics,” he said. He thought it was better to have a simple life in which one is free than a life in which we are answerable to insufferable bosses, etc. He and his friends at the commune became self-sufficient and gained independence from what other people thought. They no longer felt that they had something to prove to others financially.

3. An Analyzed Life

Epicurus thought it was important to slow down and analyze our worries and troubles. He thought that the key to eliminating our anxieties was to give ourselves time to think them through. In order to do this, we need time and space to allow for quiet contemplation about our lives.

His philosophy was that if one does not have much money but does have these three things, then they will not be denied happiness. Conversely, someone with money who is lacking friends, freedom, and space for an analyzed life will never be happy. You hear this backed up in psychological studies that show money does not significantly contribute to one’s happiness once their basic needs are met.

Epicurus was a strong critic of advertising. He blamed it for clouding our view of the path to happiness. He suggested that the reason advertising works is because it succeeds in convincing us on a subconscious level that the product being sold will provide us with one or more of the three things that we need to be happy.

So an ad like the one above might succeed in selling us Bacardi when it’s really friends and freedom that we’re looking for.

Interestingly, all of the books that Epicurus wrote were eventually lost. His wisdom survived by being passed down as a creed through societies that formed based on his suggestions for living. A wealthy man, Diogenes of Oenoanda, paid to have a summary of Epicurean philosophy carved on the walls of an ancient city in what is now in modern southwest Turkey. Diogenes believed that we needed constant reminders of what makes us happy and that simply studying philosophy once in a while wasn’t enough. Think of it as balancing out the forces of advertising which seek to cloud our true desires. Diogenes’ wall was an advertisement for what we really do need.

The film shows a modern day effort to replicate that type of counter advertising. Unfortunately, as they point out, philosophers aren’t known for having the kind of budget to make major advertising purchases. But one sign they put up in a mall was pretty clever. It depicted a large mansion with a luxury car parked out front. The photo contains an asterisk at the top with a small warning in the corner that says, “Happiness Not Included”. I wonder what effect advertising of this nature might have on a grander scale? If people can be convinced that they need material things, can they be successfully reminded that they in fact do not need them through the same medium?

A few months ago, I finally got around to having a VHS tape with a bunch of footage of jumps I did converted to DVD. Last night, I spent a few hours editing the footage into a YouTube-ready presentation. It worked out perfectly because when I selected all of the footage I wanted to include it amounted to exactly 10 minutes on the dot, the maximum length for a YouTube video.

It’s worth keeping in mind that while 151 jumps might seem like a lot, it’s basically nothing in the world of skydiving. So this is all pretty much n00b donk amateur footage and nothing nearly as cool as stuff like this being performed by guys who have made literally thousands of skydives over the course of several years. I included some commentary below the video. Most of the footage was shot in the air over Goshen, Indiana unless otherwise specified.

0:00 – Exiting a balloon at Rantoul, Illinois from my perspective. It’s a surreal experience since normally you’re exiting to a ton of noise. Leaving a balloon is all quiet until you pick up velocity.

0:19 – A tricky thing about jumping from a balloon is that you’re exiting wherever the wind happens to have blown you rather than safely over the airport. It creates an added challenge and element of danger. Here I’m setting up for a landing in an elementary school playground and it wasn’t the smoothest landing.

0:56 – My 100th jump. Out of a big Russian helicopter in the air over Rantoul, Illinois. Had to oblige the group in front of me’s request to snap a photo of them before they exited. My friend Scott is on video and gets a nice shot of the helicopter when he deploys.

1:40 – What they call a “hop-n-pop” where you exit at low altitude and deploy rather soon after. I did some backflips on the exit.

2:08 – If you look carefully you can see I had line twists on that deployment. That technically falls into the category of a skydiving malfunction but it is generally very benign and happens every so often. You just have to twist your way out of it.

2:50 – A three-way exit that I cut off pretty quickly since the guy on video was pretty heavy and sunk like a stone rendering him unable to keep us in the frame for the rest of the jump.

3:19 – I don’t know what this was. I guess a buddy and I decided to have a little fun on the ride up and make a video pretending it was my first jump. Clearly, I’m not a very good actor. I exited in the classic n00b fetal position, a big no-no for proper skydiving form.

3:55 – This was what is known as a “tracking jump”. When you put your arms down to your side rather than holding them out in front of you, the change in weight distribution propels you horizontally across the sky. It’s as close to flying as a human can get without wearing a wingsuit.

4:27 – Two-way exit again cut off because of heavy cameraman. Seated in the pink shirt is my friend’s girlfriend who rode up to altitude with us to watch us exit. That experience alone is pretty hairy since most people have never ridden in a plane so small let alone be seated 3 inches away from an open door at 10,000 feet.

5:03 – This was a pretty good jump with me on camera filming the heavy dude. He hesitated on exit but managed to fall fast enough to catch up with me for a dock before we had to break off and deploy.

6:30: – This is me on video filming a tandem jump. What you see at the beginning of the jump was the closest I came to any type of serious catastrophe in skydiving.

7:25 – Tandems deploy very high for safety reasons so the videographer can usually take a long enough delay to keep their deployment in the frame before having to deploy himself. I was pretty proud of the effort for it being the first (and only) time I videoed a tandem; staying with them and keeping everything in frame like that is pretty challenging when you have as little experience as I did. The girl doing the tandem opted not to pay to have it videoed so I was videoing it sans-pressure to just practice. After the dropzone owner saw the footage he was mad at me for giving it to her for free since he said it was high-quality enough that they could have charged her for it.

7:30 – So this is a slo-mo replay of the exit on the tandem jump. What you’ll notice happens is that the tandem’s “drogue”, which is designed to slow down the heavy package to a more sane rate of freefall, hits me on deployment. It was an “oh shit” moment at the time that ended up being no big deal. I just made a bad exit since I wasn’t experienced or prepared enough to know how to properly exit a Cessna with a tandem and ended up in a really bad location for the drogue deployment: right above them. Fortunately, I didn’t get tangled in the line or panic and collide with them (which can happen when you’re right above someone due to the dead air their freefall creates above them). Having a guy with only 100-some jumps video a tandem was a pretty “wild west” move that a bigger dropzone would never in a million years allow. But we had fun in Goshen since it was a pretty small crew and sometimes little liberties got taken here or there.

8:26 – Two-way jump with my friend Keri. Poor girl was always getting hit on by everyone since she was decently cute and more or less the only female around. Interesting side note is that she was raised Amish but decided jumping out of planes was a little more fun than practicing the Amish lifestyle.

9:30 – Keri hits a perfect landing on the gravel pit. I opt for my own shadow instead.

A

Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness – I started a blog series breaking down each of the six parts of this film that give lessons from long-ago deceased philosophers on how to live a life of happiness. It was highly enjoyable and I’d encourage anyone to watch it.

A-

Contagion – I really liked this. Basically about the response to a virus wreaking havoc on humanity. Great cast and script.

Resurrecting the Champ – Samuel L. Jackson plays a homeless former boxer that becomes the focus of an up-and-coming journalist’s career piece. I was surprised at how good this was.

Neds – Great Scottish film about Non-Educated Delinquents. Neds exposes the failings of certain social systems like education and family life through the story of one young delinquent. You may want to try this one with the subtitles on though, the English being spoken in the movie was at times inaudible.

End of America – Pretty awesome film pointing out some of the ways the Bush administration paralleled the tactics used by totalitarian governments to undermine the freedom of society. You can watch it here.

The Crash of 1929 – Documentary film about U.S. society leading up to the stock market crash of 1929 and the various factors that caused the crash. Really fascinating. Made me feel bad for the people back then because they were all just such total suckers without a clue. Makes me wonder what will cause people to say that about us in another 80 years. A lot, I’m sure.

B+

Dream House – A poor man’s Shutter Island and I love me some Shutter Island.

Jack and Jill – About as dumb as a movie gets, but it had me laughing quite a bit.

C

War of the Worlds (2005) – Just seemed so one-dimensional. Tom Cruise running from aliens for 120 minutes. That was the whole film.

D+

Killer Elite – Ugh this was just dreadful. I can almost hear the production meetings “let’s get De Niro, Clive, and Stratham and just blow a lot of shit up, it’s like guaranteed $40 mil box office right?” “Yea Jim, sounds great, let’s run with this one!”

D-

Shark Night – I feel dirty having participated in the consumer experience of buying a ticket to see this.

• Drink more water. I’m generally okay about this, but I go for the bottle of fuzzy soda more than I wish I did. I actually went about 5 years without drinking soda once in my life. Then something happened to where I just went back to consuming it like crazy as is typical of many Americans. I’d like to start paying attention to when I feel an urge to reach for a soda and choose water instead.
• Waste less time online. I waste an unbelievable amount of time on the Internet. I find it absolutely fascinating. All of the tantalizing information and entertainment sucks me in like a bug to a light. In any given session at my computer online, there reaches a point where it’s no longer really a positive in my life to still be sitting there. The habit I would like to instill is to notice this and get off the computer immediately rather than click around idly for minutes or hours longer. It’s quite honestly depressing to think about how much time I’ve wasted online in the past several years.
• Read more books. This will be an easier habit to instill thanks to the Kindle my parents got me for Christmas. I’m really loving that thing. What a great little gadget. It satisfies my neurotic need to always be playing with something electronic. I read Slaughterhouse-Five on it in three days. There’s no reason I can’t manage to read an average of an hour a day. I can find that time easily just by cutting out the idle Internet browsing.
• Exercise daily. I was in a great exercise routine before I went back to the U.S. for Christmas. Then, two weeks of traveling and a vacationer’s mindset made me fall off the wagon. Classic tale, really. To me, daily physical exercise is perhaps the most important thing you can be doing for your life. I’m not going to bother with all sorts of firm goals like, “I need to bench x pounds by x date!” That type of an approach seems to arbitrarily pigeon-hole me into an exercise regimen I’ll likely quickly grow tired of. It’s not like I’m trying to train for something in particular that requires a highly specialized workout routine. I just want to exercise each day. So the main priority is finding an exercise that I think to be fun. So maybe squats and deadlifts in the gym one day, yoga the next, whatever. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s something, so I’ll just play it by ear and go with what sounds good on any given day.
• Grind the small details. I can really suck at life when it comes to taking care of menial, tedious tasks. Things like running errands, cleaning, or working on a personal budget just madden me because I get bored with maintenance tasks. Unfortunately, if you neglect these little daily maintenance tidbits, your world can fall out of orbit. I want to do a better job of taking an extra moment to get the details right. For example, take an extra moment to see which bottle of water is the best value rather than grabbing the first one I see (I don’t generally care what brand I’m drinking). Or spending a few minutes in the evening to make a list of things I know I’ll be glad if I remember to do the next day. These boring little details might not be glamorous, but they add up and can lead to increased happiness, I think.
• Be more engaging with others. Going along with the theme of wanting to slow down and not rush through things, I want to do a better job of investing in personal interactions with others. Sometimes I tend to just gloss over this. Like why should I have to bother with having to think of something nice to say to the person behind the coffee counter? But that “just give me my damned latte” attitude is so unfortunate. It’s no way to go through life. I’d like to get better at taking an extra moment to be pleasant with others.
• Less caffeine. I’ve been trying to be really aware lately of how I feel when I consume caffeine. I think I generally don’t particularly care for it. The short-term boost of energy (not to mention the soothing ritual that securing a cup of coffee provides) can be luring, but I ultimately find the drug to be a net negative in my life. Maybe a nice compromise to get the soothing ritual while cutting down on the caffeine consumption would be to drink tea instead. I love tea. A warm cup of tea with a little honey stirred in might just be the greatest thing about being alive. Yea, that’s what I’ll do: less coffee, more tea.
• Be a better dog owner. I have to admit, having a dog can sometimes be a big pain. Maybe you’re tired and ready for bed and the dog is standing by the door like he wants to go out for a walk to pee and all you want to do is just flip his switch to “off” so you don’t have to deal with it. I would actually encourage people to be really thoughtful about these things before they adopt a dog. For many people, as it was with me, my dog was an emotional acquisition. I didn’t really spend much time considering the practical aspects of the dog owner’s lifestyle. It can take a lot of time and energy. Sometimes I get frustrated with my dog for having to spend time dealing with him. But I’ve had him for six years now and he’s a part of the package for better or worse. I might as well figure out how to be more patient with him and budget more of my time to keeping him happy and healthy.

I could probably think of a few more things, but I think that’s a pretty good list for now. What’s on your list?

Happy New Year, everyone.

Today was my last day grinding online poker before I leave for a 12-night stay in the U.S. on Friday. There have been a lot of really great positives for me in Playa, but financial success has not been one of them. I have about half of the liquid net worth that I did when I arrived here over two months ago. I’ve been running decently badly, or to put it a better way, I haven’t been running really hot. Unfortunately, the approach I have to online poker requires that I run really hot in order to show any type of short-term success. It’s not like I’m dutifully grinding cash games 12 hours a day a la Kristen Bickell. I’m playing multi-table tournaments with an average field-size of 4,500 just two days a week. I estimate I’ve played around 400 tournaments in the time that I’ve been here. That might seem like a lot, but as any multi-table tournament player can tell you, it’s nothing. It’s perfectly within the range of expected outcomes that I could have failed to show a profit playing online thus far in Mexico. And unfortunately, that’s been the case.

So as I’m walking Scout on the beach feeling dejected from another disappointing Sunday grind (and it was perhaps the most disappointing one since I’ve been here), I start feeling a little tension in my chest. It wasn’t like a heart attack or anything, more like a sensation of resistance. I take a few more steps, and the feeling gets even stronger. It’s was like someone was pulling on my shirt from behind. But everywhere I looked, there was nothing to see. A couple more steps and I figured it out: I had walked into a fisherman’s line. About twenty feet behind me and positioned further away from the shoreline was a guy fishing. I was so caught up in breaking down the day of poker in my mind that I hadn’t noticed him.

I reversed course to untangle myself from the line and apologize to the man for not seeing him. As seems typical of the Mexican people, he was perfectly polite about it and smiled to let me know it was all good.

As I walked away, I noticed his fishing apparatus was a bit out of the ordinary. He was using just an empty plastic bottle with fishing line wrapped around it. To reel in the line, he was just repeatedly wrapping it around the bottle with his hand. No turn crank. No heavy action spinning reel. Just a plastic bottle and a piece of string.

It’s funny how life will sometimes whack you upside the head with a sense of perspective. Here I am walking along feeling sorry for myself because I lost more money playing a game on my computer from the comfort of my furnished beach condo and this guy is out at midnight with a bottle and a piece of string just hoping to catch some food.

Outside of feeling bad about having disrupted his fishing session, I’m glad I walked into his line. It was just what I needed at that moment. I spent the rest of the walk thinking about how good my life is and how absurdly lucky I am. My biggest problem in life is a dwindling bankroll for an online game I play that has enabled me to live on a tropical beach. Please don’t spare any tears for me.

I’ll be heading back to the U.S. in a few days with quite a bit less money than I had when I got into this country. And yet, the ten-week stint here feels basically like a success. The absence of good fortune in the online poker games can’t take away from the refreshing focus and balance I have cultivated in this beach village.

Part of why I think this film fascinated me so much is that I was pretty estranged with a lot of the ideas presented within. In this fast-paced, technological culture, I’m guilty of never having sat down to read the thoughts of any great philosophers. It’s a shame too because while many of these men lived several centuries ago, their ideas about how we should approach life are timeless and often strikingly simple. I know for myself, and for probably a lot of other people too, there’s sometimes a tendency to shy away from philosophy thinking it will be too complicated and intellectually intimidating. What I’m learning is that the opposite is moreso the case. Philosophy is about cutting through the crap and providing some real answers to the challenges we face as people.

I’m going to dedicate a six-part blog series to breaking down some of the ideas presented by each philosopher in the film, if for no other reason than for my own benefit that I might actually remember some of the lessons I took from this film.

First up is Socrates and his wisdom on self-confidence.

Socrates believed that thinking logically about our lives might help us to be more self-certain and less affected by what other people think. People have a tendency to follow others, especially others that they perceive to be important. We tend to accept that these people must be right. This is precisely the assumption that Socrates encouraged people to question. His viewpoint was that it is more important to think logically about what persons of importance are saying than to accept what they are saying just because we perceive them to be important.

The film offers an easy example of how just because someone important said it doesn’t mean that it’s true: Bill Clinton staring America in the face and proclaiming that he did not have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.

An interesting edge that Socrates had over an average person today is ease of access to influential people in civilization. In 400 B.C. Athens, Socrates was able to mingle with these people at the market. He was known for spending most of his time mingling among shop-keepers in Athens and approaching important people to ask them questions about life. Socrates wanted to see what these people were made of. His discovery was that there were surprising inadequacies surrounding the way these “important” people were choosing to live their lives. Their aura of confidence was not earned on account of having it all figured out.

Socrates did not believe that Athenian society should do everything his way. He was simply motivated to find the truth. He did this by challenging lazy assumptions which sometimes made others perceive him as a trouble-maker. But making trouble was not his objective at all. Unfortunately, he was put to death for his allegiance to the search for truth; he was found guilty of corrupting minds of the youth in Athens and not believing in the gods of the state.

Socrates felt that it was a responsibility of all men (and women) to scrutinize what they believe. He thought that we should all reflect on our lives and that we are all capable of doing so. He encouraged us to overcome laziness and fear in order to figure out what we really believe and then stand by those beliefs. He viewed philosophy as an invitation to intelligent non-conformity.

Socrates devised a test which one can use to determine if their opinions are worth standing up for. He suggested that anyone wishing to come up with a good thought should follow five steps in order to do so:

1. Look for statements that most people would describe as plain ol’ common sense. Like, “marriage is an important part of happiness.”
2. Try to find an exception to this statement. Is it possible to be completely happy without being married? Is there anyone whose life fits as an exception to this?
3. If you can find an exception to the statement, then you know the statement is false or imprecise.
4. Respond to the original statement with an exception you’ve found. “You can be miserable in a marriage if you’ve married the wrong person.”
5. Continue searching for exceptions to the original statement. The truth is found in a statement that seems impossible to disprove.

Socrates believed that through this process we could come to gain confidence in our beliefs. By being able to logically explain our opposition to a statement, we’re less likely to become overwhelmed or intimidated when others disagree with us. This confidence to examine our lives and our beliefs is Socrates’ greatest contribution to mankind. He viewed philosophy as something an ordinary person could participate in. “An unexamined life is not worth living,” he famously said. Socrates brought philosophy out from behind the walls of a university and showed that it can exist on the street corner. He inspired us to live with our minds turned on at all times.

Yet while Socrates believed each person is capable of living an examined life, he knew that not everyone did in practice. To him, this meant that he couldn’t accept that every opinion was equally worth listening to. As such, he was a critic of democracy. Socrates did not believe that just because the majority supported an opinion that it was therefore right. The film suggests that Socrates would find it ridiculous that people of power allow focus groups to determine their course of action. He thought that decisions should be made based on the merits of the arguments in favor of that decision, not solely because a majority of people favor it. Looking back in history, there are of course numerous examples of what were then majority viewpoints that today seem preposterous (i.e. “it’s acceptable to own slaves”).

The painting The Death of Socrates, shown above, is now a famous symbol of someone standing up intelligently against the will of the majority. Even when facing death, Socrates did not lose his nerve. He believed any true philosopher should not fear death. He accepted the death sentence given by his peers believing that the right time had come for him to die. The painting depicts Socrates pointing to the heavens while reaching for the hemlock, delivered by a distraught disciple, he was ordered to drink to stop his heart. Plato is shown grieving at the end of the bed as his friend Crito clutches his leg.

Socrates chose not to flee Athens despite having an opportunity to do so. He was willing to go as far as to die for his beliefs to show the world that people have a capacity to develop their own beliefs and stand behind them confidently.

The nice thing about having very few possessions is that it’s really not a big deal at all for me to move to another furnished vacation rental here. It’s really just a matter of packing up a couple of suitcases, grabbing my dog, and getting in a taxi. I have decided I’ll be doing just that. Things have been going fairly well for me here. It’s kind of ironic that I had to come to a Mexican beach vacation destination to find some stability and discipline in life. But after two months in Playa, I feel that the move has basically been a successful one thus far.

There are ways in which it could be easy for me to say that things haven’t gone well here. Financially, I’m only barely staying afloat. I have had a couple of decent scores in MTTs in the past few weeks to keep my head above water a while longer. My goal here is not to “just” be getting by, I would very much like to have some real, legitimate monetary success here and establish a much greater amount of financial security than I currently have. But accumulating money can be a slow process. Given the relative turmoil I felt like my life was in when I moved here, I can accept that the first couple of months have been “just okay” and not “great” from a financial standpoint.

I feel really good about some adjustments I’ve made to my poker game here and am confident that with a little luck and more work, there are financial breakthroughs that lie ahead for me. Then again, there is also the very real possibility of finding myself stuck in Mexico completely broke. Strangely enough, this daunting possibility does not keep me up at night as much as one might think it would. I almost have a zen-like peace with my situation here and a sense of faith that it will just work itself out somehow. Maybe that disposition is warranted, or maybe it’s just a defense mechanism to shield me from the terrifying prospect of being a broke, late-20s guy isolated in Mexico with no great answers about what to do with his life next.

I attribute my stable disposition amid the unstable nature of my life right now to a couple of things. First, I am doing a really good job of controlling the things I can actually control. I’ve been thinking a lot about how much of our lives are completely out of our control. As a poker player, this is hard to ignore. I can’t control Michael Carroll hitting a 3-outter against me for $500,000 in equity or any other of a number of brutal financial swings delivered by the turn of a playing card. All you can do as a poker player is to make the best decisions possible and accept that the outcome might not always be favorable.

There is so much about everyone’s lives, not just poker players, that are completely out of our control. You can’t control for natural disasters, freak accidents, the economy, or a great number of other things that determine the quality of your life. People don’t even really think about the fact that every single day you and your loved ones go to sleep in one piece is a tiny miracle. Every day, there are hundreds of people around the world who wake up thinking it will be just another day but never live to see the end of it. I’m not trying to be gratuitously morbid or dramatic here, I’m just pointing out the importance of realizing that so much of our highs and lows in life can be attributed to things outside of our abilities to control. The human life span is absurdly high-variance. I think it’s important to feel a sense of humility and gratitude for however good we have things and not fall into the trap of crediting oneself too much from an egotistical standpoint. So much of who we are was determined by random things we had very little control over.

There are really only a couple of things in life that we have more or less complete control over. One is our bodies. Assuming you are an able-bodied person to begin with, you basically have complete control over your weight and fitness level. I have been embracing this power of control and have been on a great diet and exercise routine in the two months since I’ve been here. It has really helped a lot with staying sane at a point in my life where it could be rather easy to “lose it”. I feel like no matter how chaotic or unsavory aspects of my life that are somewhat out of my control are, at the very least I should be able to manage looking good.

I’ve cut back on drinking immensely. I won’t lie, like basically anyone who has ever attended a four-year university, I like to drink. But outside of the temporary highs of imbibing are a lot of horrible downsides. Drinking is just downright terrible for mental and physical health. I think it should be viewed as something to do on a very rare occasion, like a treat to one’s self every once in a while as a reward for working hard and staying disciplined. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, myself included for several years, it gets used far more than this. It’s sort of amazing how much better one can feel when they stop putting bad things into their body and exercise rigorously on a daily basis. I feel like I’m just getting started and am both excited and curious to see how far I can push the machine that is my body. We all have one and it’s exciting to test its capabilities.

Another thing we have some degree of control over is the money we spend. I’ve been living somewhat like a pauper since arriving in Playa. Bad spending habits are almost a cornerstone to the poker player lifestyle. But I’m tired of splurging on an excessive lifestyle. It can be fun for a while, but at the end of the day I would like to eventually find my way to a place of financial stability and security before I get so old that my money-making potential has declined significantly. I think there’s a lot of truth to the saying, “youth is wasted on the young.” I feel like I’ve reached an important stage of my life where I am both old enough to understand that I’m not going to live forever and that energy is a finite resource yet young enough to still have plenty of energy and capability for seeking abundant wealth. I don’t feel like I need tens of millions to be satisfied. That just seems kind of extreme. But a few hundred thousand to take off the pressure of feeling like I must constantly be generating some type of a cash flow would be pretty awesome. Ironically, I think people are much more capable of generating great wealth when they are not burdened with the pressures of needing money.

In the interest of living more frugally, the rent for my next apartment will be about 30% less than my current dwelling. Thankfully, I’m not really giving up a whole lot to make this cut; I’m just getting ripped off a little in my current pad. Since moving here and learning a few things about Playa rent prices, I’ve realized that I’m being charged the premium, retail price for my current unit. I could probably be paying 15-20% less for living in this exact place, and even less when you factor in all of the money I lose on transactions and currency conversions to settle with my landlord. Getting nickel and dimed every time you want to move a dollar in one account to a peso in another is definitely one of the major lackluster aspects of the poker exile lifestyle, but this entry is getting long so I’ll save that whining for another day.

In conclusion, I’ve decided to stay in Playa a while longer, at least into the early part of 2012. I’m not certain what the future holds, but things are going well enough for me here at the present time that I want to stick around until no longer doing so makes more sense.

——

If you’re stuck in the U.S. wishing you could still grind online, pay a visit to DraftDay, a daily fantasy sports website started by the CardRunners people. I might make a buck if you click that link and become a customer of their site, so if you don’t want that to happen, just enter DraftDay.com directly in your browser.

1. Fewer tables

I started registering for fewer events on Sundays. Since I’m also trying to give a pittance of attention to what’s happening with NFL action on Sundays, I have to be careful about registering for too many events. I noticed that when I have 12+ tables running, I start to feel overwhelmed and frustrated. I feel like the action happens so quickly that I have to make really hasty decisions. So what happens is I start folding like a maniac and passing up on marginal +EV situations just so I don’t have to deal with making more complicated decisions while I have a bunch of tables running. Basically, I feel much better off overall just playing 8-10 tables and playing them well than trying to play every tournament under the sun. I stopped registering for the least interesting ~20% or so of tournaments that I had been registering for previously. The adjustment has made the experience of grinding a lot more pleasurable overall, and I don’t think I had to give up much EV to do it. If anything, I might have gained a little EV.

2. Less urgency with 15 bb stack

I used to treat a 15 big blind stack about like I’d treat a 10 big blind stack. In other words, if it would fold to me in the cut-off and I had Queen-Ten offsuit, it didn’t matter if I had 10 or 15 big blinds, I was just going to shove that hand. Now, I’m starting to treat the two stacks a bit differently. I have a greater willingness to raise-fold with a stack of 15 big blinds. Most of the structures in online tournaments are so good these days that you really don’t need the huge sense of urgency with a 15 big blind stack like you used to back in 2005 or whatever. Over the years, open-shoving a 15 big blind stack has gradually become less and less of a +EV move due to players understanding that they can call with more than just the top 5% of hands. I’m adjusting by being a little more patient with this stack and realizing that I don’t need to be jamming it in there with Ace-Six suited in middle position. I can just fold and hope for a better spot. Hopefully this increasing willingness to be patient will lead to more frequent deep runs.

3. Three-betting more

Three-betting is really awesome when the stacks are deep. I feel like I missed out on a lot of EV over the years by being too much of a nit when it comes to three-betting. I now three-bet all the time in the early stages of the tournament with hands where I have that, “uhh… what should I do?!” moment with. Now, my answer is just, “three-bet!” Of course, I’m three-betting the premium hands too for value. A good example would be during like 15/30 in an event where the stacks are 3,000. Say someone in middle position opens to 90 and I have King-Queen suited in the cut-off. Years ago, I would have just flat-called here almost always, but now I’d probably re-raise to something like 240. I’ve been three-betting just as frequently in the later stages of the tournament provided the stacks are like 40 big blinds or higher. I think you need to narrow your three-betting range a lot when the stacks are smaller than this.

4. More patience at final tables

I think I’ve spewed a lot of EV over the years by playing too impatiently at final tables. I used to get this mentality at the final table where I felt like there was some huge urgency to win and that I need to do it rightnow. This lead to trying to do too much and spewing off chips in certain spots. Now, I’m playing much more relaxed at final tables and picking spots more wisely. Again, the structure is so good in most online tournaments now that when you reach the final table you can expect the event to still be another couple of hours away from completion. There’s really no rush. I’ve found that if I just take my time and let the action unfold at its natural pace that I’ll be just fine. There’s no sense in trying to rush things.

5. Fewer cash games

When I moved to Mexico, I envisioned that I would grind cash games for ~20 hours or so per week. In the past three weeks, I think I’ve played a total of about 2 hours of cash games. Basically, I hate cash games. They’re boring and a total grind. I don’t like sitting down for a session without there being a possibility that I can win at least $5k on the day. I’m the first to admit that I’m an action junkie. I can’t handle the boredom of grinding cash games. They’re not for me. I get too impatient and try to force the action which leads to spewing EV. I think the only way I could really be a cash-game grinder is if I had some sick dual-monitor set-up where I could play 16 tables at once and just be a total rakeback whore folding mostly at every table. At least with that many tables going, there’s enough action at all times to cut down on the cash game boredom factor. Another issue here is that I’m just not that good at cash games (read: poker). I think I play as well as anyone on the 95% of decisions that are the easiest, but for those 5% of decisions that are the hardest, I think really strong, experienced players have a pretty big edge over me in a deep-stacked cash game setting. Most online cash games are stacked with experienced grinders nowadays. I guess between feeling like I don’t have a huge edge and generally being bored with them, I’d rather just do something else with my time.

I spent the first few days in Playa del Carmen exploring the area and going through the requirements needed to once again access the game my government took away in April. That mostly involved setting up an account with a Mexican bank and faxing documentation to online poker rooms that proves I have indeed relocated out of the U.S. It wasn’t a completely smooth process, but I got it done and have been back playing online poker for about three weeks now.

My results thus far haven’t done much in the way of reassuring me that I made the right decision in moving to Mexicio. I feel that I’ve been playing okay (not great) and haven’t had enough good fortune to get away with some of the subpar decisions I’ve made.

There’s really very little room for error when trying to succeed as a professional poker player. You have to play great and you have to play great all the time. Those who manage to do this can earn a fantastic income playing a game online from the comfort of their own homes. But for everyone who succeeds, there are dozens who try and fail. Every bad decision you make cancels out one of the good decisions you made. In order to get ahead, you really can’t afford to make a bad decision terribly often. It’s about accumulating the fruits of all of the good decisions without tainting them with poor ones.

Something I need to work on harder is being able to re-evaluate my hand and not being too attached to the thought that I have a good hand. I’ll share a story of how I gave away all of my chips in a $55 buy-in tournament the other day that perfectly captures what I’m talking about.

With a stack of around 5k and blinds at 75/150, I made a standard raise in late position to 375 with Ace-Queen. The player in the big blind, who barely had me covered, called. The flop was Queen-Seven-Three. I love my hand, obviously. He checked and I bet 450. He called. The turn was an Eight. He checked again. This time I bet 950. I was met with a raise to 2,000. Giving the situation little thought, I drug the bar all the way to “all-in” and clicked the button. He immediately called and I was drawing dead versus pocket Eights.

One way in which I need to improve is to realize that when he raises me on the turn there, it’s usually almost never with a hand that I am beating. My bet on the turn showed a lot of strength. He’s almost never committing ~40% of his stack on a pure bluff in the face of apparent strength. When I shoved, I knew he would call, and when he called, I knew he’d show me a set. I need to be more aware of these intuitions and sometimes lay down a hand that I was in love with at a previous point in the hand. You won’t make it very far as a poker player if you can’t allow yourself to change your mind about a hand.

Thankfully, I’ve been having quite a bit of success playing the daily fantasy sports games at DraftDay and also benefitted from running hotter than the sun on a series of sports bets with a friend, so the bleeding I’ve experienced at the poker tables has been somewhat mitigated in other areas. It’s not too late for me to turn things around before being faced with the unsavory task of finding an additional income stream. Becoming a beach bum is not even an option for me as I’d need about $30 a day in sunscreen just to avoid getting skin cancer.

In case losing my girlfriend and a nice chunk of my liquid net worth in 3 weeks wasn’t enough, mother nature decided to send a hurricane towards Playa. As I write this, Scout and I are on a bus to Merida, about a 5 hour drive across the Yucatan, in order to escape the possible carnage that Rina may inflict on the Riveria Maya area.

A few poker players I know made the decision to stay in Playa and ride out the storm even going so far as to cite that it “sounds cool”. Having been through Ike in 2008 while living in Houston, I know that there is little “cool” about a hurricane. Sure, the storm is thrilling for a little while, but when you realize all of the damage the high winds cause and that your first-world ameninties have been striped for as long as it takes the powers that be to repair them, it made more sense to me to get out of dodge for a few days. This is easy to do when you own no property or possessions that need safeguarded. Hopefully the storm turns out to be nothing and I’m just out a few hundred dollars in expenses for checking out a new city for a couple of days.

The news of a hurricane coming to Playa seemed to fit perfectly with the present state of my emotions and finances. But I’m working hard at staying positive and avoiding any self-destructive behavior. I’ve learned that it’s important to have hope and faith that you’ll come out on the other side in tact and better off than you were before. Sometimes hope is all you’ve got.

They say moving and breaking-up are two of the more stressful things you can go through in life, just behind death of a loved one and losing your job. Just in 2011 alone, I’ve gone through a move, having an online game that has enriched my life immeasurably and served as something of a part-time job for me for five years eliminated by my government, another move (this time out of the country), and a break-up.

And now, I find myself in Mexico where I have access to the game again and for the first time in what feels like ever as an adult, am single. Although my girl and I had a lot of really great things going between us, it just didn’t work out for now. We could both probably psychoanalyze a million reasons for why our relationship ended, but I don’t really think it’s too complicated. The past six years for me have gone by pretty fast. I think I just needed some space to catch up with myself, clear my mind, and straighten out my financial picture. And until I get the chance to do that, I don’t think I’m ready for the type of serious, indefinite commitment she wanted.

I can look back on this time from when I graduated college and moved to Houston until now and in a way it all seems like a blur. It all went by pretty fast and I feel like I’ve been one step behind on absorbing it all.

This is the nature of the shot-taking lifestyle. I could have gotten a conventional job after college. But as a kid from a small town in the midwest, I wanted a shot at more. So I took a chance and moved away from home to a city where I only knew two people. I’ve traveled, gambled, and had some pretty good times. I’ve met a lot of intelligent and interesting people. It’s been a very rewarding and eye-opening ride. There’s so much to be said for leaving the safe little bubble you grew up in. It really gives you a greater appreciation for the world and the types of people and cultures it consists of.

I’ve chased the poker, shot-taking lifestyle pretty far. For me, it’s been my only realistic chance at making a huge pile of money at an early age. I was never good enough at sports or well-educated and connected enough to find my way into a high paying career. Poker has kind of been it for me. I don’t have some master plan of exactly what I will do if I have abundant financial security, I just know that I want it. I don’t even care if I spend the rest of my life figuring out what to do once I have it. Short of opening a highly successful business, which appears to be a pretty damn hard thing to do, poker is really my best shot at generating a substantial net worth at a young age.

When Uncle Sam took poker away from all his little nieces and nephews last April, I decided that I’m not quite ready to throw in the towel on it. Maybe poker will prove to be for me what baseball is to Kenny Powers, but even if it is, that’d be okay. It seems better to try and fail than never try at all and spend your whole life wondering what if.

I also seem to be seeking out some time for myself to, pardon the cliche, just be. I look at Mexico as a chance to get away from the high expectations of American culture. You’re never good enough in America. There’s always another hoop that needs to be jumped through. I’ve definitely had way too much stress in the past several years trying to reach some vision of success that was marketed to me somewhere along the way. It’s pretty stupid to spend time trying to be someone you think others will be happy with versus just being yourself. I definitely fall into this trap too often. People should just like themselves more and be okay with who they are. It’s sad how much people have been sold on some sense of inadequacy.

And so I find myself here in Mexico with a chance to clear my head, reconnect with myself, and play a game on the Internet that the residents of the supposed “land of the free” are not free to play. If you had asked me at the start of the year if I’d be living in Mexico by the fall, I would have laughed at you and said, “not a chance.” But here I am. It’s funny how life works out.

Although I haven’t been here long, I feel happier and more relaxed. I’ve awoken most every day in the past six years in the U.S. overwhelmed with a sense of needing to do something to prove my worth in the world. But having that feeling for so long is like beating your head against a wall. You don’t really get anywhere. Since getting to Mexico and becoming single, I’ve woke up each day with a renewed sense of vitality and appreciation for being alive. I wake up and take my dog for a long walk on the beach without the sense of urgency that I need to be living up to some expectation. I work out, eat well, and sit down to do my work with a clear head and sense of stopping point. In the evenings, I unwind with maybe a swim in the ocean, a sporting event on TV, a good book, or all of the above. I’m enjoying each day for what it is and not feeling rushed or allowing a sense of inadequacy to creep in. Life is too short to spend each day panicking about work or the future.

I don’t know how long I’ll be here. Maybe just a couple of months. Maybe several years. And it doesn’t even really matter. For now, I’m just happy to have found my way to a place in life where I can reconnect with myself and honor the need to see this poker thing through to its proper conclusion.