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Do not close the Venture X.
The “damage” is done so make sure you at least earn the sign up bonus on that instead.
As for the Ultimate Rewards program, you do need one of the 3 cards to be able to transfer points out to Travel partners.
Those are the CSR, CSP, or CIP.
This is a per-household thing so if you have a spouse that has any you can use those too.
Once you complete the Venture X spending then move on to getting the Chase Sapphire Preferred.
Mostly for other people that will read this next time don’t close a card and instead try for a downgrade instead.
In your instance downgrading to the Chase Freedom with Ultimate Rewards would have kept your points safe, had no anuual fee and provided you with a card that has the 5x rotating quarterly bonus categories.