2 weeks down now in Thailand and it's been pretty awesome so far. Have met up with lots of the other guys that live here - theres probably around 30-40 at least. Theres sports going on 4-5 times a week (football, volleyball, basketball), I've found a decent gym thats not too far from me and also found an awesome market which sells fresh chicken breast at $4/kilo. unfortunately I've also found a nice pizza place run by some italian dude which is really close to my house, so healthy eating hasn't really been going as planned so far...



anyways, 1st thing i did in phuket was go spear fishing. i totally sucked at it mainly because i couldnt load the gun properly - it works on a rubber tension band which is really hard to pull back to where you need to get it. heres a few pics of the day though:

jonathon, one of the guys who organised it all with a spear gun in hand:



one of the islands that we went to for fishing (most of the fishing was in the reefs around islands):



what our driver caught in prob like 45mins of fishing:



the biggest single fish caught that day i think:



watching the sunset on the way back to shore:



was a really fun day even though i did suck (didnt manage to catch anything ) and i actually got sick too because it was quite choppy out on the boat. cost of the day was like 750 baht, or about £15/ $25 which was really good value imo considering we left at about 11am and got back at around 7.30pm



Managed to get a bike sorted quite quickly - definitely need it because phuket is a big place and lots of things that you want to do are quite far apart from each other. here is my little honda click, cost was 9k baht for 3months which is like £180/$300:



Every day I've been out driving on it, fuel costs are so cheap - it only takes £2 to fill up the tank and that will last me a good few hours of driving around at relatively high speed.

some of the places I've been too/ things I've seen whilst riding around:

Beach around by Nai harn, (you can see some of the road on the left which was a fun drive)





view over Karon, Kata, and Patong (I believe).



Loving the sign:





the big buddha, which is basically just a huge statue on top of a hill





the view wasn't quite as good as i hoped but it could have been due to the weather as i went up there just before sunset








I have been grinding a decent amount, its quite easy to put in hands actually because the guys I live with are mtter's so when they put in a session they have to be at the PC for a long time. Unfortunately poker hasnt gone great at all since being here. I suffered quite a lot from tilting during the 1st few days due to the heat - I didnt have any fans or whatever set up, and so I was playing and getting quite aggrovated/ annoyed easily. I guess I should have just quit but obviously once you start getting down a little its only natural to want to grind it out. heres my graph anyway, pretty obvious when I was spewing!



I'm supposed to be going to koh phi phi next weekend, which is a beautiful island a couple of hours boat trip away from phuket. theres 16 of us going atm, all poker players from phuket, so it should be really good fun. will post a bunch of pics and stuff after i get back from that!

Have been here for a few days now and its been pretty awesome so far. My sleep pattern has been really messed up so haven't gone out partying yet and actually missed what was supposed to have been a sweet house party a couple nights ago because jetlag (and maybe being a bit of a pussy) caused me to pass out early evening.

I'm enjoying the house a lot, its really sick and quite secluded - takes at least half hour to walk to any kind of decent sized supermarket or corner store, and we are the only house on our street. Here are some pics of the place:









the whole top floor is open plan, although it's bigger than it looks, so the living area extends to our grind area, which extends round to the kitchen/ diner, and the doors you see open out into the pool:





then you can walk around the side, up some stairs and you're on the roof:





We are practically in the jungle which is really cool - you can see the stars pretty clearly at night (certainly a lot more clearly than back home) and you can hear all the bugs/ birds chirping away. May sound a little gay, but I really like that and find it very relaxing.

I'm living with 3 other guys, 1 cash player and 2 mtter's although one of them seems to be playing cash a lot so far. We have a cleaner who seems to be coming every day so far which is cool but obviously unnecessary, hopefully she won't end up costing too much. The house is costing me just under $600 + bills which I assume will be very cheap.

The only downside so far has been the internet - it's cut out a couple of times on my laptop but not on the other guys. I think it might be due to the fact my laptop is a piece of garbage, its about 5 years old, and doesn't even work unless its plugged in. I tried to defrag it yesterday for the 1st time ever, let it run for 8 hours and it still hadnt finished :S

There's a massive community of apparently 40+ players here apparently, but so far I haven't done many of the group activities. I went spear fishing on Tuesday but that was kind of a fail since a) I sucked at it, and b) I got sick really early in the day through being tired + choppy waters rocking the boat. Wednesday we were supposed to be playing basketball but it started raining about 15 minutes beforehand. Yesterday would have been volleyballing it up but I came off my scooter and sliced my foot a little bit.

Will post some pics when I have a few more interesting activities to post about!

So after 2 years of deliberating moving to Thailand, I have decided to go ahead and do it. I will be flying on saturday 14th January from London via Abu Dhabi and Kuala Lumpur, to Phuket and moving into a grind house with 3 other players.

The house is pretty ballin' from the pics I've seen - Pool on the 1st floor terrace, Rooftop Terrace with sea views/ bar/ bbq, and maid service a few times a week to do cooking/cleaning. I have joined the facebook group for 2p2er's in Phuket (has 90+ members, didnt realise there was such a big community), and they seem to organise tons of stuff from boat trips out to other islands, to soccer/volleyball games on the beach.

I am really hoping this will be an awesome experience that leads to me making a ton of money from poker again. No one here will know me under this name, but I post on 2p2 as jackwilcox, and I played on Full Tilt as hoodlincs. 2011 was a pretty horrible year for me as my 1st calender year being pro - I had a shocking poker/life balance which resulted in a lack of exercise, bad diet, and putting in quantity over quality when it came to volume. I never reviewed sessions or put effort in to learn more, I was just a huge grinder - something I thought I would never become, and something I never want to be again.

My aim this year is to have a ton of fun, and move back up the stakes to be a reg at 2/4+ (hopefully be a winning reg at 5/10), by increasing my winrate as opposed to increasing my volume. I think that it will be very easy to not feel like I 'have' to play when there is so much other stuff going on around me, which will mean I only play when I am in the zone.

I have never really bothered with the whole blogging thing, but I think that this will be a pretty awesome time to start. I know that a decent amount of people are probably considering moving abroad for poker, and hopefully I will be able to create something quite informative/ fun/ useful with regards to living in a foreign country as a poker pro.

Thanks for reading - here's to hoping this is going to be an amazing and rich adventure!

Jack.