Merry Christmas all, hope you had a good holiday and hope it's still ongoing! I'm back at work, unfortunately had a couple of unexpected expenses so have been putting in the hours at work and pokers on the back burner a bit until Feb, still got the same plans more or less but adding and removing bits as my plans and interests for the next few years develop. Poker is looking like it's going to play more of a support role as a second job or even maybe a hobby that happens to bring in some money, I'm wanting to invest my time and hard earned cash in something as future proof as possible and I'm trying to take in as many options as possible. If anyone has any ideas about growing markets and industries then post them up please. 👍

It's hard living on the boat in winter, have to have your wits about you to make sure we don't run out of water, all the outdoor taps get turned off to prevent damage when it gets below 0, keeping the fire going because when it goes out the temp drops really quickly and it's harder to restart due to cold air pressure coming down the chimney. One night I climbed on the roof with the Hoover and stuck it down the chimney to get a draw going because the boat was filling with smoke! Worked a treat but quite dangerous I suppose. It's very satisfying when it's all going well and after problems are solved and I love it, hard work though! I'm used to flicking a switch for all my needs and can't anymore...

Fire lighting tip. Light a few loosely crumpled sheets of newspaper on top of your smoldering fire. It will draw in air from the bottom (and consequently through your kindling) and force hot air up the chimney creating a draw.

Thanks! All advice is well appreciated! Usually Mrs Tache has a lovely warm fire waiting for me to warm my feet on when I get home from work so I'm really quite lucky!

What a life you have had, remarkable stuff, but the stand out headline is you mentioned you were in "reinforced concrete & construction".

Your readers need more detail on that. Rebar, shuttering, that sort of thing?

My time in construction was rather boring to me, I wasn't very heavily involved at ground level, I spent most of my time in offices learning about the marketing and plans for building cheap social housing for the future, we were working with 2 products, lite steel which starts off in 3mm sheets and a single machine shapes, stamps rivet holes and cuts it in to all the I bars required for a build and this can be done on site. Typically less than a tonne of steel is required for a 2 bed detached house. The finish was a concrete and expanded polystyrene mixture that is applied to the steel frame with huge spray guns and smoothed before it dries. Quick and cheap to build with and has good insulative properties. I would have much preferred the practical side of construction than sitting in an office with people who really shouldn't have been there and have them routinely ignore my suggestions and then watch the business struggle as a result. The majority of the successful projects were in disaster relief areas like Thailand, Haiti, St Lucia to rebuild whole villages after storms, earthquakes etc.. I would defo go to someone else if you require advice for building your own homes, my knowledge is rather limited. Although I would love to build my own house in the future I am much more likely to use straw bales and lime mortar, that's my idea of luxury!

Merry Christmas all, hope you had a good holiday and hope it's still ongoing! I'm back at work, unfortunately had a couple of unexpected expenses so have been putting in the hours at work and pokers on the back burner a bit until Feb, still got the same plans more or less but adding and removing bits as my plans and interests for the next few years develop. Poker is looking like it's going to play more of a support role as a second job or even maybe a hobby that happens to bring in some money, I'm wanting to invest my time and hard earned cash in something as future proof as possible and I'm trying to take in as many options as possible. If anyone has any ideas about growing markets and industries then post them up please. 👍

It's hard living on the boat in winter, have to have your wits about you to make sure we don't run out of water, all the outdoor taps get turned off to prevent damage when it gets below 0, keeping the fire going because when it goes out the temp drops really quickly and it's harder to restart due to cold air pressure coming down the chimney. One night I climbed on the roof with the Hoover and stuck it down the chimney to get a draw going because the boat was filling with smoke! Worked a treat but quite dangerous I suppose. It's very satisfying when it's all going well and after problems are solved and I love it, hard work though! I'm used to flicking a switch for all my needs and can't anymore...

Amazon do shit ones for £6-20 and decent ones for £60+ designed for filming or taking stills of night time wildlife. Once we know who dunnit then the petty revenge could get very entertaining! Maybe try urinating in his windscreen washer fluid bottle for starters.

2015 part 2 Hongkong

We flew straight from Uruguay to Hongkong, well I say straight, we flew Montevideo-Sao Paulo-Chicago-Hongkong, one of the worst flights Iv ever done, and Iv been on some catastrophic flights! Transferring through Chicago they recommend that you give at least 5 hours to make your next flight and even then people often miss them. We did check and that is the least painful way to fly that far in that direction but I'd be hesitant to do it again unless it was really necessary. Much worse than London-Hongkong-Sydney and that is a notoriously bad journey. Anyway, we landed in exhausted after a month in the South American winter in the countryside in to the stinking heat and humidity of the city. I love this city as my original home but it was still rather a shock. Our small serviced apartment we rented for the month was right over a 24h busy main road and the noise and heat was relentless. Hadn't heard a siren for a month and then didn't go 10 mins without hearing one! I met up with some people I hadn't seen for ages and looked for work and business options. Business was a no go for us, there is just too much competition in every field I have any experience in. There is plenty of work but the ethic there requires very long hours and the reward isn't great because of how expensive rent is. 1500-2000 per month for a tiny studio in the worse areas of town, and lots more if you want deprecate bedrooms or a modern building with clubhouse or a central location. I went to Macau (obv) and had a great time, enjoyed the food more than the poker, the standard has got better since I was last there and the rake is still redic so it's not really a long term option either. Loved my time there but not for work at the moment. Next stop UK...

Jesus yesterday was an absolutely ridiculous grind! Didn't sleep all night, flew to luton. Took 3 hours to drive 15 miles in London lol.

Let's hope for a better day today!

Traffic in London was really bad yesterday, me and a friend both got stuck in separate places for hours too!

[I'm told]

You missed the biggest one bud. In Green Bay the refs allow any Packers player that scores a TD to jump into the crowd and stay there until he decides he has had enough pats in the head/beer dropped on him/ hugs. The officials and visiting team just have to hang around until this ritual known as the 'Lambeau leap' has finished before the game can restart. Given penalties are given for  delaying the game, celebrating too hard and group celebrations everywhere else in the league it is quite ridiculous that they don't apply to Green Bay players that score TD's at Lambeau.

I believe the "Lambeau Leap" is grandfathered into the rules. Because it was so popular before the excessive celebration rule came into being the NFL allows it.

Sort of like I'm told Little Darlings in Las Vegas is allowed to have dancers go totally naked, but all other strip clubs are topless only.

I call that bluff

NBA

A team's star player can't be called for a travel, even if they take 7 steps

Subscribed, GLGLGL!!

Hi, do any of you work in cyber security, pentesting, cryptology, security analyst etc, lmk please id like a quick chat if you don't mind. Not really computer related though, life advice. Thanks in advance!

Julian Thew is your man if he's not too busy.

Ty I'll Facebook him

Hi, do any of you work in cyber security, pentesting, cryptology, security analyst etc, lmk please id like a quick chat if you don't mind. Not really computer related though, life advice. Thanks in advance!

It's my pleasure to tell these stories!

2015 Uruguay
We decided to make decisions based on experiences so spent a month in Uruguay (Mrs tache is from South America) and a month in Hong Kong (where I'm from) to see what work and business options there were for us before comparing them to the UK and choosing how the next few years are going to look. We stayed at a farm around an hour outside Montevideo and it was amazing! Beautiful countryside, very safe, weather was top notch, people were friendly although almost no one spoke any English so I was in at the deep end with my Spanish. Wood fire for heating in the evenings and cooking so the first thing I did was learnt how to say 'I want to buy an axe please' and went to the local hardware store and got one! Several hours of sweating later I wished I'd learnt 'chainsaw' instead! 😉 We got to talking to a couple of people I had been introduced to and looked in to a few business options, vehicle rental, opening a gym, online estate agency, building and selling houses. They all seemed sort of viable but it would have taken so long to set up and would have needed a pa full time to help with translation issues that we would likely have ran out of money by the time we got started so it was kind of a no go. I played a little poker and won the $100 rebuy in the local casino much to the disgust of the locals so that paid for a few great nights out. The food, beer and wine  in Uruguay is second to none, and I have eaten and drank in some great places in my time. All locally produced, all organic (in fact they don't have a word for organic because no form of farming uses chemical fertiliser or pesticide because they just don't need it) to sum it up, beautiful amazing country and we will defo go back but it wasn't right for us to start the kind of business we want so we moved on...

It's fascinating that this topic still causes more replies and a variety of replies than almost any other. It seems that most people are vary wary of offering advice to gamble in case the person who takes that advice can't control it, and rightly so. It also seems that of the person is very good at poker and not very good at studying then it is a good decision to make, if the person is very good at studying and on track for a great career and not so great at poker then it is an awful decision, and if the person is a bit shit at both then the degree will give them the best chance of not being a bum. (Credit goes to Evilpie for most of those statements) The successful pros in the modern game seem to be a bit more open to the possibility that this guy has of success and of the benefits of the lifestyle that go along with it (or lack of drawbacks that have been suggested)

The things you have said are both brave and accurate, and it is a well written article, definitely not bullshit. However I think it is bad advice to give to tell someone to leave uni to gamble full time. Coming from a man who left uni early to gamble full time and was successful at it.

This is because the target group you are talking to is so small and so similar to yourself that they already know what the path is.  Advice to take gambling as a career over completing a university degree can only target people who it is unsuitable for, the ones who are likely to do well probably already know and just need support.

I'm very sceptical of the upsides of the working world, and very focused on the negatives, I know I am biased because of my experiences both my own and my father's, I accept that most people are happy being told what to do and accept a wage for doing so, some are driven to rise to a position where they make some decisions and tell others what to do for a larger wage, some want their own business where they provide a good or a service in exchange for money and thrive off competing with the other businesses in their field for their customers money.

Winning money at poker long term is achievable (caveat 999/1000 due to variance), more so than anyone who doesn't do it will ever know. It doesn't require a super smart brain, it just requires the willingness to accept that most of what you know is wrong. Winning at poker is often counter intuitive e.g. Calling on the river when you are likely to lose in a cash game due to pot odds, folding a set because your opponents range is unusually weighted to strong value, or folding AA on the bubble of a satellite as a mid stack because you are more than 85% to win a seat. These all 'feel' wrong but if you can't accept that they are right then you will never succeed.

The risk of ruin at poker is something most business men are unhappy with, my opinion however is that the risk of being unsuccessful at business is higher and has a more devastating downside than simply running out of money. Spending your whole life aiming for senior management when the whole time you may have had no chance because the boss's nephew is going to join the company 5 years after you and then take the top spot when he finally retires means you have spent your whole life deluded and being used for the profit of someone else and being paid 20% of what you bring in for the shareholders and told to be grateful for it. That doesn't sit well with me at all. For most people it's fine, and that's fine, but occasionally people are unwilling to do that, and some of them find poker a suitable career.

There is a big big difference in the mental makeup of poker pros and degens, the fact that degens and luckboxes who win a big comp early or who run above expectation for a year or two call themselves pros does us no favours at all. The real pros treat gambling as a job, manage their time and bankroll effectively and achieve great success and are happy with themselves for doing it.

Uni and just before or after it the best time to follow your dreams, there are usually few responsibilities at that time, money isn't a problem because you aren't tied in to the routine of having it yet, and if you win enough to buy a house and lose it all again then so what, you are just where you started again and have gained a stern lesson in perspective even if you don't realise it for a while. Money is only important when you need it to get something you need. If you chose to buy that house with 90% of your roll then you are "set for life" and the grind is less of a grind, you have more expendable income out of your 30k than you do  if you pay rent or a mortgage.

There are serious downsides to playing poker professionally, like other careers, but the scary ones like debt and addiction really don't affect this kind of person, they affect the degens and addicts who should never even try to go full time in the first place. They are usually lying to themselves about how good they are or using too small a sample size.

The first time I did this it was piss easy, not because the games were softer, that's relative to the hero's skill anyway, but because the losses, the chance of not earning for a few months and the pig headed, one tracked, time consuming obsessiveness didn't matter, I could do what I liked with few consequences. I'm trying again now and it is a huge mountain to climb, I need to build a roll, build a cushion of living exes, develop my skills, earn a living in the mean time and try to maintain some sort of balance in my life. And all in 16 hours per day.

I say if you have the skills, mental makeup, bankroll and freedom to do it and really want to then go for it, travelling the world with plenty of money and challenging yourself to beat some of the best players in the world at a great and complicated game is a great way to live your youth, after all, playing 5 a side and shagging loads of birds will always be there when you are 30.

Final point is that some of the best paying and highest job satisfaction jobs don't require a degree, and startups defo don't, so unless you are at uni to study rather than just as an entry point for a job then it is overrated, and because so many people go to uni these days it is getting to the point that even with a degree you can't get the job you were hoping for anyway.