It is the dream of every poker player: travel the world, visit exotic locations, and play live and online. It is a dream that one of poker’s most notable bloggers and players, Dale “Daleroxxu” Philip, will begin in just a few short weeks.
Philip, a member of Team PokerStars Online, put his name on the map by winning the 2006 World Blogger Championship of Online Poker. Since that time, he has become a master of sit and gos and has been able to make a living off that very difficult discipline of poker. His desire to move away from the computer, however, has led him into an endeavor called the Tour of Cards, which will be sponsored in part by PokerStars.
The Tour of Cards will see Philip travel the world in 2011, visiting 52 different countries, one each week of the year. While he travels, he will try his hand at live poker and also maintain a grueling online playing schedule. Philip will also be blogging about the trip on a dedicated Tour of Cards website, allowing the poker world to monitor his status.
Poker News Daily caught up with Philip as he was making the final preparations for his trip, which begins just before the New Year.
Poker News Daily: For those who aren’t familiar with you, tell us about yourself.
Dale Philip: I grew up in a council estate – what Americans would call the “housing projects” – in a small town in Scotland. It wasn’t particularly nice and my parents were poor and sometimes unemployed, so we only ever went on one overseas vacation when I was a kid.
I moved to Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city, to work, but quit my job to play poker full-time in 2008 and just stayed there. I didn’t know a lot of people in the city and had an infinite amount of free time to grind poker, so that’s what I did when I could pry myself from the XBox 360!
I’ve always been a sit and go player and crushed them on every site I’ve played them on for a consistent profit. But because this was such a profitable, almost guaranteed, income for me, I never played MTTs or ring games seriously; I just stuck to printing money playing sit and gs. But sit and gos are drying up a lot now that everyone knows how to play them, so I’m starting to play some Pot Limit Omaha online and live MTTs. This has actually made poker fun and interesting for me again when it was starting to become somewhat of a dull grind.
PND: Was that the idea behind the Tour of Cards or was there something else that drove you to do it?
Dale Philip: One day, I was thinking to myself how lucky I am to have a career that allows me the flexibility to do whatever I want, whenever I want to do it. Then, I realized how little I take advantage of that freedom. I spend most of my time sitting at a computer in the same boring room in the same old city playing online poker. I thought to myself that I could just as easily be sitting on a laptop in some exotic location doing my job, so what the hell am I still doing here?
I started to research different countries that I might like to relocate to, at least for a year, and the more I learned about other places, the more I wanted to visit all of them. Then, this epic idea came into my head: I’ll visit 52 countries in 52 weeks, play a ton of online and live poker, do a lot of cool stuff, blog the whole adventure, and call it the Tour of Cards.
PND: What sponsorships have you set up to be able to partake in this adventure?
Dale Philip: I recently signed with PokerStars. My sponsorship with PokerStars was announced after I had announced my Tour of Cards project; however, PokerStars had approached me before I had even thought up this project. When I told them about my plans, they loved the idea and gave me a very attractive offer based on that. It’s truly awesome to have the support of the world’s largest and best online poker site; they really understand what I want to achieve.
PND: What are your goals for the Tour of Cards?
Dale Philip: I have so many goals for Tour of Cards. I want to promote poker and the poker lifestyle to people across the world. I want to see and experience a bunch of awesome stuff, meet interesting people, make new friends (and girlfriends), and learn about different cultures. But, of course, my main goal for the project is just to have a bunch of fun because if it’s not fun, it’s not worth doing.
PND: What are the logistics of planning a trip such as the Tour of Cards?
Dale Philip: Although this whole thing is a logistical nightmare and it’s been taking up a lot of my time lately, I’m getting a lot of enjoyment out of planning and making this project happen. I’ve been trying my best to plan the order of countries I visit in a way such that the next country I go to is very close to and has a direct flight from the country I’m leaving in order to make journeys short and inexpensive. However, there are certain poker festivals I want to attend such as the Aussie Millions, PokerStars Macau Cup, and PokerStars EPT Snowfest, so making sure I get to them has made the planning much more complicated.
I’m happy to say that all of my flights for the first three months have been planned, booked, and paid for. The next thing that I have to do is organize accommodations in each location. That’s perhaps tougher than organizing flights because I have to research each location to figure out where the best place to stay is. I really don’t want to be spending a week in a hotel that sucks or is in a terrible location. It’s also usually cheaper to book hotel rooms at the last minute using an online bidding site such as Priceline. That is the opposite of flights, which are cheaper the earlier you book them.
PND: The first three months of your schedule have you in the Asian Rim. Tell us about what you’re expecting there?
Dale Philip: I’m especially looking forward to visiting the Asian countries on my tour, not just because I find Asian chicks extremely hot, but also because their culture is so much different than ours in the Western world. It’s a part of the world, being so far away, that I’ve never visited, so I can’t wait to get there, check it out, and eat their delicious food. Playing live poker in Asia should make for a fun and interesting experience, as poker is really starting to boom there now, especially in Macau. I’m expecting the games to be very lively and fun.
PND: What difficulties could you encounter during the Tour of Cards?
Dale Philip: A guaranteed way to get yourself held up at any country’s immigration border is to tell them that you are a professional poker player, so I’m generally creative with the truth when they ask, “What do you do back home?” It just makes life a lot easier. In general, it’s easy to travel to other countries for U.K. nationals. The only country on my list so far that U.K. nationals can’t enter visa-free or with visa-on-arrival is Vietnam; it has to be arranged in advance of traveling there.
Not all countries will have legal brick-and-mortar casinos or poker rooms, so I’m never going to be able to play a live poker game in all 52 countries. Thankfully, with a laptop and a PokerStars account, I’m always within instant reach of a game wherever I am. I just have to hope that the internet connection of most countries will be fast and stable enough, and I don’t think that’s too much to ask for in 2011, is it?
There is also the fact that, in certain countries, governments have total control over their citizens’ internet access and block all online poker sites. Most of these countries, where online gambling is illegal, are blocking poker sites because the morons in power don’t know the difference between poker – a game of skill – and gambling. But, if PokerStars has no problem with me playing from a specific country and I am able to access the site, directly or otherwise, then I will play. It is likely that I will use a reliable VPN service to bypass restrictions where necessary so I can play poker when I can’t access the site directly.
PND: What hardships outside of poker might you run into during your yearlong journey?
Dale Philip: Language could certainly be a huge obstacle in some countries, as English is the only language that I speak, and I speak it with a Scottish accent. The closest I come to knowing another language is a tiny bit of Russian due to having a couple of Russian girlfriends in the past, but that’s not going to get me far in somewhere like Japan. I guess I will just have to get really good at acting out charades or get a translator app for my phone and just try to remind myself that although foreign languages make life difficult as a traveler, it’s also part of what makes the culture in these places so different.
In addition to having their own languages, countries also, annoyingly, have their own currencies. Changing physical cash at airports and banks would get quite time-consuming and expensive, as they always advertise “Commission Free” and then use their own rigged exchange rate that’s a mile away from the wholesale rate. But, I’ve already got my hands on a prepaid global currency MasterCard with a U.K. bank where I can load it up with Sterling and use it to purchase goods or withdraw from ATMs in any country without getting screwed over on the exchange rate. I’ve tried it out in the USA and Ireland so far and it’s been awesome. Another advantage is that if it gets stolen, it’s replaceable, not gone for good like a pile of money would be.
I reckon the chance that I can go on 52 plane journeys and have them not lose my baggage or cancel/delay my flights to the point of seriously disrupting my plans is quite low. I’ll just have to deal with that nonsense when it happens. I will also look at alternatives to flying between countries accessible by other means. For example, I had booked an ultra cheap one-hour flight from Malaysia to Singapore, but then someone told me that there is a five-hour train journey on a very comfortable modern train with a lot of jungle scenery, lots of little towns, kids waving at the train, etc., which is a really good way to see the country.
PND: How much of an estimated expenditure are you looking at? Will what you win along your journey help finance the trip?
Dale Philip: I’ll certainly want to make more money from poker in 2011 than I spend on this project, but I’m well equipped with comfortable poker and life bankrolls, so if I go on some outrageous downswing or can’t get enough hours of online play in due to poor internet connections, it won’t be a huge disaster.
I originally figured the flights and accommodation would cost around $100,000. I realize I could do it cheaper, but I just don’t stay in bad hotels. Then, there are the expenses of eating out or ordering room service for every single meal and going on tours or doing cool stuff that isn’t cheap.
I’m revising the costs downward a bit after having been offered to stay with some poker players I know from other countries. I’ll be staying with Joel Carr, who is a PokerStars Supernova, in his Thailand villa for a week in February. “Peru,” who people may know from the TwoPlusTwo forums, has offered to let me use his house in Peru as a base to travel to countries in South America.
I’ll also be doing about five weeks of my journey with U.K. poker pro Simon “Amatay” Jones, so we’ll split hotel room costs. In addition to saving money, it’s also great to be able to spend time with other interesting poker pros either in their homes or traveling around with them, which should make my experience and my blogs more interesting too.
The Tour of Cards should prove to be an interesting journey! Visit PokerStars to play with Philip and others.
