Future Plans (29/03/14)

In life, you have to play the long game.

I am someone who thinks about the future a lot but at the same time I generally take each day as it comes. I set myself rough goals, often without a set time to attain them, knowing myself enough to know that I will eventually reach them but not necessarily in an ideal or efficient way. Of course I hope to improve this over the course of my life. It is probably something that gets better with age, considering it has improved for me in my 20s quite a bit. Anyway I would like to discuss those goals.

There are certain things I want in life. I do not want to have children and I'd rather avoid getting married. This saddens my girlfriend who wants both, but me, I want to avoid responsibilities and cumbersome commitments wherever possible. I will take them on when I am ready. What I do want is to be well-travelled, experience the world and learn different cultures and languages. I want to be comfortable financially, but perhaps too much money would be better in the pockets of those who need it more, so if I ever got too much, I'd probably give it away till I had only slightly more than enough to keep me and mine well nurtured for this lifetime. Nevertheless I will pursue this wealth constantly. One of the ways I want to pursue this wealth is by playing poker. It is one of my favourite things to do. For the past few years I have thought about how I want to go about it, and I know that for my niche, playing mixed games and fixed limit, my best play is to go to America. There is nowhere else in the world that I know about that has my games so well spread in a live setting, played at such a wide variety in stakes and I believe the games over there are far more plentiful than those on the Internet.

Obviously this is a poker blog in the main, so I have to talk about this specific goal more than any other. It's the intended key topic in this post anyway. I don't know where I would live or whether I would live there permanently. Maybe I would go for a set period for a long holiday every year and come back to England. There are a number of stumbling blocks which get in my way or things with which I take issue and deter action. I will address those.

Firstly there is the problem of money. I just got paid, so right now I have £1500 in the wages account, £1k in the poker current account, and £610 in the poker savings account. And of course, only 50% of the profit on the poker money is currently truly mine, so £555. My bills+rent are only about £350 a month, which has been great because it's allowed me to grow money slowly over time. My girlfriend and I are looking to move house and increase what we're spending a month as a result in exchange for larger accommodation and things like a dishwasher and better furniture. I have got out the calculator and seen that my average increase in balance over the 10 months I've been working at Grosvenor is +£87.83. I think this will increase as long as I maintain my spending discipline. But to cut to the chase, these gains at that rate aren't going to cut it by any stretch if I want to go to America. So I am hoping that I can make enough money in this DC game at Alea  to have something with which I can work. From there, I will have to think about it. I know I might have to play higher stakes or find another game, even move city.

Another stumbling block is my feelings on the political situation over there. I make no secret of the fact that I am of a libertarian persuasion. I don't like the government getting involved in anything beyond the realm of national defence (not galavanting around the world showing people that apparently freedom comes from airstrikes and the barrel of tanks and machine guns) and upholding private contracts through the rule of law. I hate socialism. In England I feel the government is involved in way too much stuff, particularly the economy. There are some things that happen today that we've read in Orwell's 1984. But compared to America, this place is heaven in that regard. They have checkpoints at state borders, warrantless searches, high taxation, NSA spying on everyone, Guantanamo Bay, the death penalty, mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession/distribution, militarized police, police brutality, the clampdown on guns, ObamaCare, SOPA, NDAA, they consistently disregard their constitution, and of course, they just love themselves a bit of war so much they spend a $600 billion every year on it (higher than any other country and six times that of China). It goes on. For me as a poker player, the things which particularly affect me are the taxation of winnings, the raiding of home poker games, the confiscation of money when crossing state/national borders (Viffer has a story about that) and the fact that you are not allowed to play online poker in the US outside some states who have intrastate poker like Bovada. I know that people over there do not like where their government is taking their country, but the political system they have greatly inhibits significant change and they are resigned to vote Republican until a better system comes along (pro tip: unless there's some sort of violent revolution, it won't) which unfortunately means more war... somewhere. They wish they could vote Libertarian and have their votes mean anything, but apparently voters as a whole suck at game theory and will generally only choose what everyone else is choosing who are also choosing what everyone else is choosing because everyone else is choosing it. Republican or Democrat. Giant Douche or Turd Sandwich. Those are the options. It's very much the same over here, but government interference over here is more reasonable and softer, like a creeping vine that hopes you don't notice.

Another issue is finding the right people to go with me. I know one person I would definitely go with who is interested, but unfortunately the kind of poker players with whom I'd prefer to team up with on this venture are few and far between. That's because, as someone pointed out to me recently, there are very few people will take my proposal seriously enough to think ahead and save money and make every effort for this thing to go ahead. Think of me as Knish. I'm not looking for gamblers, fritterers, bad beat monologuers or people who play the game recreationally with no higher objective. I want positively minded people who'd do this as a job and not go broke because the have the discipline to manage money, their emotions, and the commitment to identify and relentlessly and unwaveringly pursue their dreams and ambitions and see poker as the way to do it. There are plenty of people who would love to jump on the plane with me and visit the American poker hotspots. Every poker player loves the idea of a blinged up grind house with all his/her poker mates from which he/she can go forth and adventure and have the time of his/her life and bring home stacks of green paper and entourages of the opposite sex lusting after them. But so few of them have the discipline or current ability to succeed. I believe any player can improve and has the potential to have what it takes, perhaps more some than others, but the potential is there. But a great many don't have the ambition to go after it, or are simply arrogant and believe their game is utterly insurmountable. 

Finally something else which prevents me going is my relationship with Emma. I do love her and don't believe we will break up because of my ambitions but at the same time we both know that she cannot come with me to America in 2/3 years' time because she has to pursue her studies and become a super accountant. I talked to her tonight and said that I would wait for her. She was worried that I'd leave her if I got myself in a position to do so, with the £35k+ I'd need to to across the pond and stay permanently because I mentioned in my proposal it could be a permanent move. My original proposal was 2 or 3 years time being enough to get there. But I don't really know what the future holds or whether I would stay permanently. As Emma and I discussed, I might only go as a holiday and decide whether I like it. One thing's for sure though; beyond everything else she does for me and is to me, I need her because she is a professional and marrying her is my ticket into the US. I've told her. US immigration policy is quite strict and there are limited ways to gain permanent residence, and none of them are easy for an unskilled unwealthy individual such as myself.

The overall plan is to get rich and live comfortably and not die unsatisfied. I'm sure it will happen at some point. That's the long game.