Reflection on the Road to Merida
It’s been one month since I put all of my belongings, including my dog, on a plane to Mexico. It’s been an up and down few weeks since getting here.
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.
An Improbable Home
It’s been a pretty wild past few months for me. Nearly three weeks after arriving in Playa del Carmen, I feel like I’m only just now starting to have clear thoughts about my life and situation and what brought me here.
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.
Movie Grades 3Q 2011
With relocating to Playa, posting the films I saw in the last quarter kind of slipped off my radar. Between being in Vegas for the WSOP Main Event, traveling to NYC and LA, and moving from Texas to Mexico, I watched fewer films this quarter than normal. Still saw some good ones though.
A
The End of Suburbia – If you’ve never seen any films on peak oil and its consequences for American lifestyle, you should. This would be a good place to start as would Collapse or A Crude Awakening. The gist is that the typical American lifestyle is unsustainable from an energy standpoint. One guy interviewed in this film predicts the suburbs will one day be the slums of the U.S. with multiple families sharing McMansions and using the lawn to grow produce. It’s not hard to picture suburban society basically unraveling when gas reaches $6, $7… $9 a gallon (Europe is already basically paying these prices which is why they drive more fuel efficient vehicles and generally live in cities where they can walk or take mass transit, not drive). One final point is how the American Dream at some point along the way started to mean having your own house, car, wife, kids, etc, when all it ever meant to begin with was that anyone could “make it” in this country. The post-war oil boom marketing succeeded in defining “making it” as moving out to the ‘burbs and living the good life. But it’s not really a sustainable reality. Anyway, this is a great film, check it out.
Escape from Suburbia: Beyond the American Dream – This is the follow-up to End of Suburbia. It focuses on the stories of a few people and communities who have taken action on creating a life that will be sustainable when we run out of oil.
Trading on Thin Air – Really solid doomsday documentary on how the seemingly environmental-friendly Cap and Trade policy is really just a way to create money out of thin air for the big players. One thing it briefly touched on that I found interesting is how easy it is to game environmentalists. You can get away with basically owning them by getting them to believe that whatever you’re doing is “good for the environment”.
Maxed Out – Documentary film about credit card debt in the U.S. It’s pretty disgusting. Makes me want to climb into a hole. Our economy is in deep, deep crap long-term. Lucky for me, I’m young enough that I get to watch it all go down.
The Change Up – Laughed hard and a lot which is all you can really ask of a movie like this.
A-
Carlito’s Way – Solid Pacino gangster flic. Can’t believe I didn’t see it before now. Coulda done without all of the romance storyline though which felt contrived.
How to Train Your Dragon – Not quite my favorite of the animated genre, but still very good. Movies like these are the best things coming out of Hollywood right now.
Deadline – Pretty awesome film about former Illinois governor George Ryan’s decision to commute all of the death sentences of state inmates. Said Ryan in his speech announcing his decision, “If the exercise of my power becomes my burden, I’ll bear it.”
A Time to Kill – Never quite got all the general hate on Matthew McConaughey. In this 1996 courtroom genre, he was great as a promising young lawyer who bets his reputation on defending a black man on trial for murdering two white men who raped his daughter.
Drive – A couple of the character relationships seemed underdeveloped but overall this film was great and felt timeless.
B+
The Human Experience – I kept waiting for it to go into overdrive and get really awesome, but before it did, it ended.
A Night at the Roxbury – Not sure why it took me so long to see this, but I liked it. Pretty hilarious.
B
Unknown – This was subpar for the Liam Neeson vs. The World genre, but still worth watching.
C-
Captain America – This had a hard time holding my attention. These comic book movies are so formulaic; they all seem the same after a while. Geeky white kid flukes his way into super powers, explores his newfound powers, then saves the world and gets the personality-less broad he’s had his eye on. The end. (Exceptions: Batman Begins and The Dark Knight were both a cut above the typical comic book genre crap).
Limitless – I like the idea of a drug that allows you to harness all of the power of your brain, but this movie sucked.
Settled in Playa
I got to Playa del Carmen yesterday around noon.
I spent most of the afternoon in the waiting room of an cargo company in Cancun that I hired to process the importation of my dog, Scout, who rode in the undercarriage on the same flight as myself. Once the dog was put on the plane, he was considered a piece of cargo as far as the Mexican government is concerned. With that being the case, I needed a broker to handle the importation of the cargo. I was paying them extra (about $300 extra to be precise) for expedited service so that I could get Scout back from customs the same day I arrived. I was unsettled at the notion of him being stored in a non-air conditioned warehouse in his crate overnight presumably without food or water. Unfortunately, that possibility turned to reality when an error with the custom’s computer network prohibited them from processing Scout’s same-day release.
Discouraged, and feeling generally upset at the uncertainty of the dog’s fate and situation, I took the 45 minute cab ride to Playa and met with my realtor and landlord who gave me the keys to the condo I’m staying in here. There’s an issue with one of the air conditioner units here, so it’s been rather hot in the living room and kitchen area, but otherwise I like the place a lot. There’s a huge, spacious balcony and the location seems great.
I crashed pretty hard last night after having been awake for 36 hours; I was unable to sleep after a long day of clearing out my apartment in Austin and had to leave ridiculously early to catch a flight from Houston to Cancun.
I slept like I was dead for 11 hours. After waking up, I made the 5 minute walk to the beach. It’ll be hard, but somehow I feel like I’ll figure out a way to survive living a stone’s throw from this:
I took a taxi back to Cancun where I was told to arrive around noon when hopefully Scout would be processed through customs and released to me. I was pretty nervous to start the day; another long day of waiting and being told they’re unable to release the dog would have been exponentially worse than it was on the day I arrived. I could accept one night of him being stored in a Mexican warehouse if I had to, but multiple nights and I probably would have been panicking and trying to figure out a way to get him out of there even if it meant having to fly back to the U.S.
Upon arriving at the customs broker’s office, I was told that the dog was being delivered within the next five minutes. I can’t even describe how relieved and happy I was for that to be the first thing I heard when I walked into the office.
Sure enough, Scout was delivered in a cargo truck about five minutes later. He had been in his crate for 30 hours (as evidenced by the plastic ties still being in place that were put on in Houston to hold the door locked). When I let him out, he ran back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the broker’s office about 5-6 times smiling from ear to ear. I think he was just so happy to be out of that crate that all he wanted to do was run. I was so happy for him and relieved to get him back; having him fly here with me and processing him through customs has been the most stressful part of this move. When I offered him some water, he drank about 20 ounces without pause. That was by far the most water I’ve ever seen him drink which leads me to believe he went without through the night. Not an ideal situation, but he seems no worse for the wear and is settling in to the new place nicely.
I spent the remainder of the afternoon napping and picking up some necessities from a nearby store called “Mega”. It’s somewhat similar to a Wal-Mart only with lots of peculiar differences. For example, chicken is just stored on ice out in the open rather than being encased in packaging behind a meat counter. I already miss my nice, yuppy organic grocery stores in the U.S., but I’ll learn to make do here.
This evening, I went with my realtor to a really good Venezuelan restaurant just three blocks from my place. One pleasant surprise of Playa so far has been the restaurant selection. I guess I had assumed it’d be mostly just Mexican cuisine, but Playa is a very international city. Many people from all over the world have relocated here which is evident from the dining choices; in what little time I’ve spent walking around the city, I’ve seen a steak and lobster place, a Mediterranean place, the Venezuelan place I ate at tonight, and a Spanish tapas place. A lot of the restaurants and cafes are open-air with outdoor seating. In this way, it reminds me a little of Paris.
I think I’m really going to enjoy living here. So far, I have almost no complaints and, like most poker players, I’m usually pretty good at finding things to complain about.
Tomorrow, I am going to start the process of getting back up-and-running online by opening a bank account. I’m hoping to be back on Stars by a week from this Sunday, but I’m also not too panicked about it; I’ll get back on in due time I’m sure. In the meantime, I want to enjoy the area and maybe soak in some sun. But not too much. Sun is ginger kryptonite.
——
If you haven’t heard by now, CardRunners founders Taylor Caby and Andrew Wiggins recently launched a new, legal daily fantasy sports website called DraftDay where you can test your fantasy sports skills for real-money prizes. I was excited when Taylor asked me to contribute to the site as a blogger since real-money fantasy sports is pretty much right up my alley. I had a good weekend last weekend taking 3rd and 4th in their multi-entry $5 NFL league that had ~100 entrants. I’m looking forward to sweating more short-term fantasy sports line-ups as the site’s player volume continues to grow. Here is the first blog I wrote for Draft Day, A Poker Player’s Take on Daily Fantasy Sports. If you have even the slightest interest in fantasy sports, check out that blog and read the part about the ‘Perfect Lineup’ promotion they’re doing which is a really cool, free way to take a shot at winning $1,000,000 by predicting the highest scoring players at every position in any given week during the NFL season.
