TRAVEL

Top Tips When Traveling For Poker.  

  The poker world is growing. More and more tournament series are expanding their schedules and stopping in new locations. The games can be good but the experiences can be even better. Getting out of your comfort zone and traveling to somewhere new creates lifelong memories. To mix travel and poker, well that’s like mixing milk and cookies. Its an amazing combo I find hard to beat. 

I have had some very good experiences traveling for poker tournaments and I have had some very bad ones. I always come back feeling I wish I had known a bit more before the journey. I have compiled my top poker travel tips. In no particular order,

· Visas

· Documents

· Accommodations 

· Money

· Record Keeping

VISAS

Whenever you plan to cross an international border, you need to consider the visa requirements regarding your nations travel agreements with the country you will be visiting. When looking at visa requirements for tourism it is best to stick to information coming from an official government website. Searching for a local embassy or consulate for the place you plan to visit can provide the most up to date information. Check online forums and groups to find tips like weather or not a tourist visa can easily be extended? Consider Visas for nearby countries now as well if you have a possibility of extending your trip to include other locations. Give yourself at least 4 weeks to apply for visas and book your trip. If you are able, get an international drivers permit beforehand. 

DOCUMENTS

International travel can require some paperwork. I’m a big believer in having a back up copy of all the documents related to my trip. I typically make a new file on my computer for each trip I take and I make sure all my documents are saved. I will take photos of paper documents and save copies of them as well.  I will print or photocopy everything and I will have a set for embassies/customs/immigration and then I will print a second set for backup. This can be the arriving and departing plane tickets, Initial hotel bookings, directions from the airport to the hotel, insurance documents, copies of your passport and visa, copies of an international drivers permit, and more. There can be a time when you have to show your forms to an airline at check-in and you may not get them all back. By mistake or whatever the reason may be. Having a backup set easily available for the next inspection point can save you a lot of stress. A few extra papers don’t weigh much and don’t take up a lot of space in your luggage. Return on investment on that one can be quite high. I also recommend sending your flight information and hotel booking to a close loved one at home. Include your health insurance information as well. If they don’t need it great, if they ever do then you want it to be easy for them to find. 

ACCOMMODATIONS

When it comes to choosing where to stay budget will be the first factor to consider. Different parts of the world will provide different levels of value. In South East Asia $100/night is quite extravagant where as in Las Vegas, Nevada $100/night is slim pickings. Consider the distance of the hotel to the poker room. If the distance is short and you can walk or use public transportation to get to the poker room perhaps consider adding the funds you would spend on taxi or ride share services into you nightly room budget.  I typically spend some time in a map browsing the area around the main poker room I plan to visit. Zooming into small side streets to reveal some hotels and service apartments that don’t pop up when you search travel booking sites. If I do find a property on a booking site, I usually will still try to contact the place directly to inquire about the room and to check there lowest price against what I can find online. In a lot of big cities in the world you can usually find many places willing to book you a room on the same day without any added costs involved. Keeping this in mind, when staying longer than one week I recommend getting a room for the first few nights somewhere convenient. You can then take a day or two deciding or not if you like that neighborhood. If so, you can likely extend your current booking or find something else nearby. If not, you can move to a different location. 

MONEY

Traveling with large sums of money can be quite worrisome. I don’t have advise to give regarding large scores overseas and how to get it all back to your home country. I do have some tips I can share about general money practices when it comes to travel. Most poker rooms will accept their local currency and nothing else. Some are starting to take credit or debit cards. That can be convenient but it usually involves a service fee for the house and you may be susceptible to conversion fees from your card provider. ATMs can be a good option for people that have an account that will reimburse their ATM fees. ATMs in casinos are notorious for high fees and some locations have much higher fees generally applied then you may be used to. There can be a case where your withdrawal limit may not even cover your buy in. For example in Ho Chi Minh City most local bank ATMs limit users to less then $100 per transaction. I recommend calling you bank before your trip to let them know the card may be used overseas and to ask them to increase your daily withdrawal limit. Try to use machines from large international banks to have the best chance of having higher limits. When getting local currency from an ATM it will usually give you the global exchange rate for that card issuer. Those will not be the most competitive exchange rates but they will not be far off. Some machines will ask you to select their own conversion rate. It is best to not use the machines conversion and instead use the rate from your card issuer. Avoid currency exchanges in airports. Its good to have enough local currency to get a taxi from the airport to your hotel, your first night’s hotel booking, one or two meals, and a sim card from a local vendor.  I try to keep a collection of foreign currency on hand for these things. If I don’t, I will use an ATM at the airport to get me covered or an exchange if I don’t get reimbursed ATM fees. That gets me settled in and gives me time to get more money without any bug rush. From there I can find an exchange with a competitive rate to change out the rest of my money. 

RECORD KEEPING

Having travel documents stored in a file on your computer will help to keep you organized. If you need to file taxes or prove anything to customs its helpful to have things easily available. Proving something to customs is typically done in the airport as your already trying to hurry to make your flight. Being ready can save you a lot of time and stress. I recommend to save all your receipts. If paper starts to pile up, Just take photos of them and log them into your file on your computer. You can use these to confirm trip ROI, file taxes, or plan expenses for the next trip. Mabey you need a copy of your pervious airline booking to create a club membership and start earing rewards. If you don’t need them down the road its easy to just delete them all. 

These things may not apply to everyone but take some time to consider some of the best possible scenarios and also consider some of the worst possible scenarios and plan accordingly. Hopefully you run hot and things go great. But if ever they don’t, it can be reassuring that you have at least considered some simulations from a similar game tree. No matter what, when you do arrive back home to your normal grind station you will have some everlasting memories.