I love the people here, they are so friendly are helpful. I also love the climate. The air is just so so cool, like not hot and sweaty, but warm, you can be in a shorts and a tee shirt all day and be comfortable. Or be in jeans and not too hot. I love it. It's also so nice just walking around and doing nothing. Medellin is a really cool city. Think I've had my quota though, have been kind of bored last couple of days BUT, today had a great day.
Met up with John Tabatabatabatai (runner up to Annette in WSOPE main event) who's been out here about a month. He showed me some cool places and we had a great dinner on this revolving restaurant. He brought a mate with him too, it was like a gazillion floors high and rotated around so you could see the whole city throughout the meal. Pretty cool.
Obviously we got into some bets. The first of which was about WHAT was actually revolving. John was convinced it was just the windows! Which makes no sense because that wouldn't even give the illusion of being revolving. We were on a raised surface clearly rotating around the main floor. What more, I remembered that at the start of the meal the grand piano was right next to us, and now it was nowhere to be seen! Easy money right!? He refused to believe it, I had to prove him wrong by placing a napkin carefully on the floor and telling him that in 10 minutes, that napkin would no longer be there (I had the get-out clause that in 10 minutes surely a waiter will have picked it up lol
). The manager of the restaurant came up to me and told me if I put anymore napkins on the floor we would be thrown out. LOL. Anyway, a few minutes later it was 10 degrees further 'along' and he conceded. Sucks I didn't bet more on that.
Then it got interesting. We threw about a few ideas about what to bet on. Some random things came up, then John threw out something about knowing lots of capitals....This reminded me of my fairly useless talent of being able to name almost every country in the world. I had to suggest it, but not give away that I'm a lock vs almost anyone for this bet. He needed no encouragement. Snap telling me about his "international law degree" and the telling me exactly how many countries there are. Whether he could name them all I wasn't sure, but I was sure he was trying to hustle me when he said he could probably name 80 or 90 (there's 192-196 depending on your definitions).
I was careful to play my cards close to my chest and not reveal how much I knew (despite being 4 beers in (I'm a lightweight) I was pretty sure I'd get over 150, probably closer to 180). No map of course, just pen and paper. More difficult than the sporcle quiz in which I got 195/196 a few months back.
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So I was hustling him, but I knew he was hustling me back so I didn't feel bad, but I was quietly confident I would win. When talking about defintions, I threw in a really dumb question about whether you count Singapore as a country that'd hopefully make him over confident and keen to play big. We settled on 10k a point (about £4) so for every country I get more than him he pays me £4. It doesn't sound like much, but if he sucked, I'd crush and probably win by more than 50 points.
To my delight (but also got me a bit worried they were team hustling me!) his mate said he'd crossbook so that I was betting against both of them. So for me it was £8 a country.
So off we went, no real time limit, just until we got the bill or something. So we sat in silence, both pretty drunk, writing down country after country, whilst his mate sat there on the rail. Pretty random scene! I was very worried when I got to 39 countries in Europe and was stuck, there's 47 total and that's the easiest continent, so to miss out 8 did not bode well for the rest of the task. I moved on and got through the others, and got to 160ish and slowed right down. I thought it good tactics now to reveal how well I was doing, since I was sure he was only on about 90 or 100 so I thought it'd get him really stressed if I said how many I was on, also messes with his mind if I make it out like I might be lieing. "I have 162". He's like "yeh right", I stay silent. "You don't have more than 100 he said".
I rack my brains for a few more, get a couple then he says he thinks he's stuck and we've paid the bill by this point so we call it a day.
Time to compare notes. I finished on 169, but I repeated Armenia (meant Albania the 2nd time sigh) so 168 was my final score. He got 141. I inspected his sheet, and found 19 incorrect answers. I was sure they were incorrect (some ridiculous ones like Caribbean and Isle of Wight!) So we checked on the official UN list we'd agreed to go by, and despite his assurances to me that they were real countries, NONE of them were, so he finished on 122. One of my countries (Kosovo) was proved not to be a country recoginised by the UN so I lost a point there.
So I won by 45 points, and collected 450k off his and his mate (£313), pretty hilarious and a fun after dinner bet.
Ethically do you think I should've revealed that I had sick tekkers before we made the bet? If I didn't think he was playing the same game then I wouldn't have hustled so hard. When he was so confident but then gave the "I'll only get 80 or 90" speech, I knew he was hustling too, so I thought it fair game to undersell my self. In fact, I never even said how many I'd think I'd get, I just suggested the countries idea, and went along with it. It felt like at the poker table when you don't tell your opponents how good you are you just sit there quietly and go about your business.
Anyway, he took it very well and we had a good laugh about it. Sorel Mizzi was here for the last couple of weeks, him and John are good mates, but he just left. Probably a good thing, don't think I would've come off too well had we been prop betting together
So had a fun night, and before than came 2nd in a 300euro "hiroller" for like 3.2euros that I've played like 10 times and bubbled 2 or 3 and never cashed in before, so I was pretty happy to get that monkey off my back, and I THINK it gets me winning for the month now, which is great news, since I was set for my first losing month of 2012, and my MTT downswing was more that $12k before so it wasn't much fun.
Back in 8 days. No plans for the rest of the trip, probably going to spend my prop bet winnings on going back to that sick hotel by the lake and treating myself for the last 3/4 days
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