Slept through it. Literally slept entirely through Friday I went to bed around 5am and woke up around 5am today. I usually get pretty upset when I miss days due to sleep but really I just needed this one to catch up and have energy for the tournament. At breakfast around 7:30 am I met three Italian poker players who had yet to sleep and had a lot of questions for me. We managed to break through the language barrier for the most part and it was pretty interesting hearing their stories. The guy who translated, Nica, mentioned his family-owned factory and how he is studying economics while pursuing a career in poker and had tons of questions for me about balancing school and poker. LOL. Talk about a dead end. I laughed and when they looked confused I changed the subject. I ended up getting Nica's number he said to call him if me and my friends were ever looking for something to do. This encounter really changed my opinion on Italian poker players, having previously dealt with a lot of jerks who just didn't have time for some American kid who couldn't speak the language. Most likely this attitude stemmed from a reversed situation where an American brushed off the Italian for not being able to speak English (many people here don't speak more than a few words of English).
After breakfast I did some wandering and happened upon this giant market that apparently only opens Tuesday and Saturday. This place was awesome. There's a big church and then just hundreds of vendors selling clothes, meat, fish, bread (lots of bread), vegetables, etc. I grabbed myself a mini loaf of bread because it's that freaking good and just checked the place out for about an hour. Obviously I got lost trying to find my way back but I'm getting a lot better at recovering, this time just finding the ocean and walking towards it. Will post pics when I figure that whole thing out.
So now it's about 11am and Day 2 of the main event starts in about an hour. Feeling well rested, focused, etc, so obviously I'll be out within about 20 minutes! My friend Kevin is also still in with about 160k chips and I have 5% of him so hopefully we both go deep and get some moneys. Will be tweeting, later.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
On being a live pro
So yesterday kicked off the first day of being a "live pro." After a really sketchy encounter with some of the "higher ups" at Casino San Remo including the Casino Director (if that's even a position), I got a bunch of USD converted into casino chips without paying any premium exchange rate or anything. That took about an hour of running around the casino finding certain people that a) spoke at LEAST broken english and b) could actually help me. This was at around 11am which is already earlier than I'm used to waking up so it certainly wasn't an easy morning. I ended up having to follow these two guys into some back office room where they told me the exchange rate (which I checked out on xe.com) and then proceeded to light up their cigars while counting the money on the old wooden desk with me sitting there watching. Remember that scene in Scarface where they're in the tiny room with piles of cash on the table and an old school calculator thing with old guys counting the money and the spy-hole in the clock on the wall? Then the cops bust in the room and arrest Tony for money laundering. At least I didn't get arrested!
So I finally set up my account with the casino and late registered in a $550 euro satellite to the $5300 main event on the 15th which I already have a seat to so I would just get the $5300 cash. Since live poker is my new jam, I spent the day trying to pick up as much info as I could on players and also look for future spots to do so in other tournaments. Previous to this trip I had played live poker kind of like a joke and it definitely showed in my results or lack of. The tournament ended up lasting WAY too long as 88 beat QQ twice on the bubble prolonging the tourney for an extra hour. I ended up winning the seat after about 8 hours of play, 5300 euros so roughly 7k USD? Pretty good first day I'd say.
It's a very strange experience playing poker or even being in Italy. Interactions between me and the other players at the table go something like this:
Italian player: Che cosa avete Oh hanno quella mano? Avete Ace high beat? Buona scommessa. Poker. Bluff. All in.
Me: Yeah...
It always ends up with me agreeing with them after hearing like three poker terms mixed into the sentence. Also, late in the satellite I found myself trying to make a lot of small talk with the players at my table only because we all basically won the seat. It's a pretty hilarious situation to be in where you are the ONLY person in a room of about 400 people that can have a conversation in english. Many of the players know a few words but cannot formulate sentences. I think I need to be learning a few key phrases in some of my downtime here so that I'm not in the dark as much at the tables, and also so I don't lose my MIND sitting there for 8 hours basically listening to jibberish (my headphone batteries where dead FML).
That reminds me I need to stop at an electronics store to get some converters and triple A's. I doubt I'll be playing much poker today, the cash games sucked last night with 8/10 players at a table rat holing and them raking 5% up to $50. Pretty sweet scam they got goin.
Trip totals:
Live: +7000 USD (won some $ at chinese)
Online: 0
So I finally set up my account with the casino and late registered in a $550 euro satellite to the $5300 main event on the 15th which I already have a seat to so I would just get the $5300 cash. Since live poker is my new jam, I spent the day trying to pick up as much info as I could on players and also look for future spots to do so in other tournaments. Previous to this trip I had played live poker kind of like a joke and it definitely showed in my results or lack of. The tournament ended up lasting WAY too long as 88 beat QQ twice on the bubble prolonging the tourney for an extra hour. I ended up winning the seat after about 8 hours of play, 5300 euros so roughly 7k USD? Pretty good first day I'd say.
It's a very strange experience playing poker or even being in Italy. Interactions between me and the other players at the table go something like this:
Italian player: Che cosa avete Oh hanno quella mano? Avete Ace high beat? Buona scommessa. Poker. Bluff. All in.
Me: Yeah...
It always ends up with me agreeing with them after hearing like three poker terms mixed into the sentence. Also, late in the satellite I found myself trying to make a lot of small talk with the players at my table only because we all basically won the seat. It's a pretty hilarious situation to be in where you are the ONLY person in a room of about 400 people that can have a conversation in english. Many of the players know a few words but cannot formulate sentences. I think I need to be learning a few key phrases in some of my downtime here so that I'm not in the dark as much at the tables, and also so I don't lose my MIND sitting there for 8 hours basically listening to jibberish (my headphone batteries where dead FML).
That reminds me I need to stop at an electronics store to get some converters and triple A's. I doubt I'll be playing much poker today, the cash games sucked last night with 8/10 players at a table rat holing and them raking 5% up to $50. Pretty sweet scam they got goin.
Trip totals:
Live: +7000 USD (won some $ at chinese)
Online: 0
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Welcome to my Blogerooski
Hey what's up it's Harry. I thought I'd start a blog so that friends/family/railbird fans (sup? need $5?), can sort of follow my life and see what it is I really am doing these days. I'm pretty horrible about keeping in touch with people whether it be best friends or new acquaintances, so maybe this will be one way to keep a bit of a connection. Let's actually call it more of a "Life Journal" than a blog because your average poker BLOG will be something like "Ok so this week I played 8,000 hands and ran $40k under EV man I run bad have to focus, play less, have more fun, be cool, etc." Thats pretty much garbage and nobody cares. Not saying I won't include poker info because that's obviously the entire reason I'm on these crazy euro-trips in the first place, but I'm gonna do my best to balance it out with some normal person stuff.
WARNING: Do not expect great or even good writing, I haven't written anything in over a year. Also, If you don't have anything nice to say then sort of don't say anything. It's not going to succeed in tilting me at the tables therefore it is entirely pointless to antagonize.
On to recent news, earlier today I landed in Nice, France and then headed over to San Remo, Italy for the European Poker Tour that will be held here this week. Had a pretty crazy long day and I'm actually so tired I think I'll just go to bed now and give a full update in the morning. As wrecked as I feel I made money AND saw the sun today so I get an A+ from the life fairy I think. That's all for now, tootles.
WARNING: Do not expect great or even good writing, I haven't written anything in over a year. Also, If you don't have anything nice to say then sort of don't say anything. It's not going to succeed in tilting me at the tables therefore it is entirely pointless to antagonize.
On to recent news, earlier today I landed in Nice, France and then headed over to San Remo, Italy for the European Poker Tour that will be held here this week. Had a pretty crazy long day and I'm actually so tired I think I'll just go to bed now and give a full update in the morning. As wrecked as I feel I made money AND saw the sun today so I get an A+ from the life fairy I think. That's all for now, tootles.
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