What's up guys? This weekend I headed up to Windsor, Canada to set up my residence for the summer. I was a little bit nervous about the whole thing after reading the stories of other poker players who have attempted with varying degrees of success to visit Canada for extended periods. I'm pretty psyched for the summer, it is going to be sweet.

I had already lined up a summer sublet off of Craigslist and I had arranged to finish the deal on Monday and also set up a bank account in Canada. It should be cool - it's from May to August and I'm going to have a few roommates around my age. I thought since I was just going to be in Canada for a day I wouldn't have much hassle at the border, but it ended up being a little bit of a hassle.

Any American who has crossed the Canadian border knows that the dudes who you talk to at the border are giant douches, and I think they are intentionally supposed to be confrontational. Here's pretty much how the conversation went after I gave him my passport:

"What are you going to be doing in Canada?" "I have a meeting with a landlord about a summer sublet."
"Why do you want to be in Canada this summer?" "I want to visit Canada and vacation for most of the summer."
"What do you do for a living?" "I get most of my money from poker."
"So you are coming to Canada so that you can play online poker legally?" "I'm planning to play poker but I also want to vacation in Canada."
"You make my head hurt. Go see immigration."

Then I went to talk to these ladies at the immigration counter. I guess one of them was in training and she was the one talking to me. They seemed more friendly but asked me tons of questions. They wanted to see my bank statement and I pulled it up on my phone, then they were asking me how they know I'm planning to return the US and I just said that I had my family and girlfriend in the US. I showed them the lease and stuff. They deliberated a little bit and then stamped my passport. They gave me a paper to show the border to make travel between US and Canada less of a hassle during my stay. The only thing that didn't go the way I planned is they only approved me for 4 months, whereas I was planning to stay at the house for 4 months then possibly find a temporary place to live for another two.

Overall it was a big success. Most importantly I got my bank account set up in Canada which is going to allow me to cash out my $4k from Everleaf eventually. Hopefully I'll be set to start playing online the day after I arrive there.

My plan as far as poker goes is tentatively to play on Party Poker, possibly on other sites to chase bonuses as well. Party Poker seems to have the best rewards structure for me because they operate on a quarterly basis, which will allow me to reach a decent rakeback during my brief stay. Also I found a good affiliate deal that will offer me coaching for free based on my volume. As much as I want to play Zoom poker, it looks like Party is my best bet.

I'm going to have a very aggressive bankroll strategy for the summer. Since I have most of the money I need for expenses banked away, I am going to have a good tolerance for risk. My plan is to start with somewhere between $4k-5k in my bankroll. I'm going to play 100 NL until I build my bankroll up to something like $6k, then play 200 NL whenever my bankroll exceeds 6k and play 100NL whenever it's less than 6K. It's possible that I'll have enough success over the summer to start taking shots at 400NL, which I'll consider once I have at least 10k in my bankroll.

After this summer I'm not sure what I'm going to do; I guess it depends how much money I have available to me. Living in the US and playing poker is not looking like a great option at the moment, so I might be looking to live in another country temporarily.

Let me know if you live in the Windsor area. I'm definitely going to be interested in meeting some poker players in the area to hang out with. Thanks for checking out my blog!