Madrid was nice. I wouldn't recommend it as a city to go with a group of friends for a rowdy weekend or with the expectations of huge parties, but as I wasn't really looking for that it was fine. The city itself is very clean, I felt safe all the time, the city is compact so it's easy to get around and the locals are very friendly.
Stayed in Hostal Riesco, which I would recommend to people looking for a place with an amazing location, good wifi, spacious rooms. Far from a 5 star experience, but very comfortable.
People may think it's a bad way to experience a city, but when I go to a new city I always like to do a bus tour on the first day. I don't really hop on and off like advertised but just listen to the guide and find out where everything is situated in the city and then over the next days go and visit the stuff that seems most interesting.
I went with one of my closest friends Arun who I grew up with and then eventually went to university with. He's the guy I brought to Vegas this summer too. One of our problems growing up was perhaps that we weren't incredibly social outside of our social groups and we were very critical of new people. We'd often look for the bad things in people and would frequently politely decline to go on bar crawls with others from university that we cringed at. Our social circle at school and the people we grew up with and are still best friends with now are pretty intelligent, witty, fun guys that we have a lot of common ground with. Almost all of our friends are working in finance in London or something related to. Growing up around 13-16 I was pretty "naughty" in school, I was incredibly lacking in self awareness and I cringe inside a lot about how I made myself look to the people in my classes that were mentally a few years advanced to myself. When I see them in person now I still cringe a little inside at some of the stuff I used to do. I think between 16-18 I matured a lot and for some reason I grew a superiority complex that is a little bit silly.
I definitely think being so closed to new people in university is something we both regret. I think part of growing up from 18-25 is socializing with different kinds of people and socializing outside of your comfort zone. Fortunately we are both very comfortable socially, but our university life could have been enhanced a lot if we had just decided to not be so arrogant and self righteous. So anyway, on the second night we went on a bar crawl that we found on trip advisor.
Bar Crawl was fine, I'm always a little hesitant to open up to people about what I do. With bar crawls in Europe it's generally full of American tourists who are having a gap year from school. Again without trying to go off at a huge tangent, when I was 18 I had planned to take a gap year from education and travel/work a little bit and get some life experience. All of my best friends were leaving Newcastle (my home city) and as I kind of realized that I struggled (was reluctant) to really form new friendship groups I decided to go to the same university/live in the same house as my friends I'd spent the last years with. I regret the decision from an ev/gto point of view because clearly traveling would have been the best option because I was still really immature and had a tonne to learn, but results orientatedly I'm ok with the outcome.
Anyway it becomes tough sometimes speaking about being a poker player and when your options when meeting a certain type of person that really wants to be social with you and find out a lot about you is to either lie or get into a conversation about yourself that is frustrating/annoying it's a tough decision whether to say you're a professional poker player and receive the barrage of idiotic (yet I guess reasonable) questions such as "oh so you try to win like $5000 and then spend it and then try again from $100?" Or "so on an average week how much do you lose? Obviously sometimes you win, but how much do you usually gamble away every week" or to lie and say you're something boring that won't receive much response or questioning. Both are obviously incredibly undesirable, I guess saying I own a bar in Budapest is probably the most truthful yet conversationally engaging answer?
So anyway we tolerated these muggles (not as offensive word as it looks) for a few hours and then by the time we got into the club we made our excuses and went our own way to enjoy the night.
The next day we did a tour of the Real Madrid stadium. The whole of Madrid was on high security because of ISIS repeated attacks on high profile sporting events. The whole stadium tour was pretty peculiar though. Previously when doing stadium tours you get an allocated time and then go and look around with a guy telling you about everything and making sure you don't get up to much trouble. Here though you just went in and then rofled around yourself, walking wherever you wanted with a few guided directional instructions. It was a great stadium though and really happy we went. As an aspiring poker player I used to love going to casinos where big poker events had been. The GUkPT in Newcastle was literally the RIO and WSOP to me when I was 18. Seeing the guys who played the annually £1000 event made me really excited. The first time I was in the empire I almost got chills because this was where the first WSOPE event was. I knew one day I would be playing there and winning there. Perhaps it's delusion, in fact change perhaps for definitely, but walking around the stadium as an aspiring football manager I though, hey I wouldn't be so out of place here
On the subject of ISIS and terrorist troubles. We were really touched on our first day on the bus tour that one of the biggest buildings we saw in the city had a huge sign saying ( REFUGEES WELCOME) we took pictures and thought it was a nice touch. We went back the next day after Hungary and other countries had firmly closed their borders and the sign had been taking down.
On our penultimate day we went shopping, went for a massage, relaxed a little bit and then went out for drinks. It was Friday night and went to the casino. It was a really great casino, absolutely chocker and a good atmosphere. I put my name down for the 2/5 (highest that ran) and we went for drinks for a couple of hours. We came back and I was still on hate bottom half of the list. Lots of what I assume are regs seemed to shake the guys hand and get a seat. I found there was a 5/10 PLO game upstairs with 8 fish lol. I asked very politely if I could take seat 4 (the open and conveniently Jesus seat) I got the seat straight away and say "Ola" to the table.
I won a couple of pots and then got into a pot against a really terrible terrible terrible yet seemingly friendly local. Basically the way it works in Spain is for some reason backwards. The blinds are right of the button instead of the left and the action goes the opposite way. Lots of weird straddling rules that makes things go back and forth. It's like a confusing drinking game. Unfortunately for me I used to skip those drinking games with the kids from Leicster and Essex at university and this time in a 3 way all in pot on the turn I had side action on the river. I value jammed a river queen high flush (we probably both had a straight on the turn) and something happened with how the betting went down that I wasn't allowed to bet. The guy got to showdown for free and I won. He seemed pissed he lost the pot, I'd lost another 1000 equity against him but I took it well and smiled and didn't complain.
The attitude of the locals throughout was really bad. Ok I'm aggressive and play most pots but I'm an action players, giving people lot of action and having fun.
Next pot is open, call, call, call, call, call, punter pots it, I cold call 9966ds, 4 calls and then one back raiser jams for just a tiny bit over a min raise. The potter pots and I decide to get it in. Everybody else folds (repotting here was pretty large) we run it once (didn't want to get an ansky'd) and the board ran out AKQddd (I'm all black) and he seems to hate the board. I assume he has AA and no diamonds. The board runs outs AKQ54 and his 9954 no suits beats me for a pretty big pot
I took it very well, they were all high fiving him. Despite him being closer to 70 than 40 he managed to stand up and do a full fist pump in my direction (I was in seat next to him so it was basically in my face) but I found it very very funny and took it in good humor.
Play another orbit or so and he c/r me on k92r I fold 92xx after a short deliberation and he starts speaking somewhat aggressively really close to me. The whole table is laughing, I have no idea wtf he's talking about so just laugh too.
Next hand I'm one right of the button, there's a lot of limpers and min raises etc and I assume I'm in the cut off at this point (in terms of post flop position and squeeze T988ds, we go 5 way to the flop which is a pretty nice A87ddx (I have diamonds) everybody looks at me and I'm somehow in the small blind positionally now so I just pot. Folds to the guy on my left (the punter who for some reason hates me despite giving him my money with a smile!) and he looks at me says something, they laugh, he calls. Turn is off suit deuce. I pot all in, he takes a few seconds and calls. River is the ugly A8729.
I show my hand straight away and he taps the table, mucks two cards, says puto? (Think it means either motherfucker, bullshit or fuck my life) and flicks both cards aggressively as if he has a set of 77 or two pair or something, dealer starts to push me the pot then he throws down JT for the nuts. The dealer makes him show his other two cards JT62 no suits!!!!! And he stands up, does a victory lap almost, high giving his comrades. I decide not to reload as they didn't deserve my action anymore! I shook his hand and said nice hand, I wished the guys good luck and left the room. He shouted something about Englishman or something. Should have been really tilted by this, it was a little bit absurd but found the whole thing pretty funny. The hands I lost against him were comically bad rather than running into some kind of cooler. My imaginary aiev line looked amazing and I was perfectly fine about it.
Next day (last night) was the big match. The atmosphere was amazing, I've been to a lot of big football matches, FA cup semi finals, finals, champions league matches both home and away but I think this was the best atmosphere I've ever seen. I won't go into detail about the game but it was the best team performance I've ever seen. Was completely in awe at how amazing Barcelona were and the bravery of their manager. At 3-0 up you often see a a manger of a team who has had most of the possession to take off their forward players who don't track back much off and add extra center midfielders to kill the game. Luis Enrique took off Rakatic and Iniesta and put on Munir and Messi (both who didn't come back into the final third once! in the game. He didn't want Madrid to get a goal and get their hopes up, so instead just put his best ball players on the pitch and kept the ball for 30 minutes in the Madrid half and eased all pressure. It's way better to have a central midfielder who will keep the ball and never give it away but who can't tackle than a central midfielder who defends, heads and tackles well but can't keep the ball, as long as the teams approach is in line. I watched the game 50% as a fan and 50% as a student of this Master of Arts work. I throughly enjoyed it.
Got some drinks and food afterwards and now I'm on a RyanAir flight back to Budapest at 6am so I can play a Sunday session.
I go to Prague on December 8th. Before then my goals are really clear, eat well, sleep well, train well. I really want to be more healthier, I've been eating awfully recently, so will be hoping to improve on that straight away.