Moving to Malta and Making Poker a Priority

Since making it a goal to play 30+ hours per week, I’ve found out how bad I have become at organizing my time. I’ve also realized that poker has never been my number one priority, even after I quit my job to go pro.
I’m always talking about how I don’t play enough hours of poker, and a big reason for this is that I don’t make it a priority.
I’ve always believed that one of the best things about playing marked cards poker for a living is the freedom it provides. Gone are the days of waking up earlier than you want to and turning down invitations because you have to work a certain night.
You simply get to do what you want when you want.
I took this concept a little too far the last couple of years, though. Being able to play whenever I wanted meant getting up too late every day and missing peak playing hours.
Being able to make my own schedule meant missing the best poker days of the week because people wanted to hang out on the weekends.
Living this way would have been fine if I had worked hard the times I wasn’t sleeping in and hanging out with friends, but I didn’t. I wanted it to be easy.
Working 40 hours per week was for suckers with full time jobs. I wanted to play 15 hours per week, win some MTTs, and have a relaxing life.
Looking back at this, I feel disgusted. I wasted almost two entire years doing nothing. I barely made any money, and I barely improved as a player.
Games are getting more difficult to win every year, and instead of winning as much money as I could while the opportunity was there, I pressed snooze eight times every morning and spent more time on my couch than in my computer chair.

Making Up for Lost Time

I don’t want to waste another year, so I’m finally making poker a priority. It was tough to play lots of hours at the start of the year thanks to issues in my personal life, but the last two weeks have been very good and this week is shaping up to be a good one as well.
I’m reviewing every day and playing trick cards more games than ever before. I just need to keep it up.
Another reason to play as much poker as possible is that I am trying to save for a trip.
Besides going to LAPT Peru last year, I haven’t done much traveling the past few years. Since the opportunity for travel is arguably one of the best things about playing poker for a living, I figured I better do it while I still can.
The plan is to put everything in storage and go to Malta for 3 months. If I like it, I will probably come back to Canada, stay home for 3 months, and then go back to Europe again.
The idea is to have a home base in another country so that I can travel to as many places nearby as possible. I have only been overseas once and it was to the UK, so there are plenty of places I haven’t seen.
I would like to leave in May so that I can be back home by August, so I need to make money as soon as possible. In order to leave for Europe in May I have to give notice to my landlords at the start of April, so the pressure is actually on to make as much money as possible this month.
Wish me luck! Hopefully my next entry here is filled with plans for Malta. If you want to follow my day-to-day poker progress in the meantime, please follow my other blog.