So decided to bomb out to Rio for the PP millions thingymajiggy, haven't played a lot of poker, or poker tournaments in the past years but fancied this one, and had a business contact who lives in Rio I was anxious to meet in person so felt great about the trip, Rio been somewhere I always fancied going.
Had an absolutely amazing time, really really good. Didn't do too much poker, had a few bullets in the $1k "Rio Open" finished 7 or 8 off the money, on reflection my bust out hand was probably a little bit out of line but heh man's gotta follow his instincts in the poker tournaments
played the $10k and busted very quickly into day 2, I did a Hellmuth and tried to induce someone to lose their head against me, which I think they did (I'm not really to know lol) and get sent to the beach
I actually enjoyed playing, Brazil poker player seem to have rep for just being terrible but I didn't think they were terrible at all, just a little prone to wrecklessness perhaps but they certainly don't make it easy on you!!! I liked the overall pace of play too, fast game, competitive game, friendly game - just how it should be.
One thing I will say though, which I think is utterly unbearable, is the stare-downs, i mean just absolutely WHAT THE FUCK are those about, didn't see any of it in the $1k (not sure if it's a stakes thing?) but then in the $10k I found a few people doing this ridiculous stare-down stuff every hand, I've seen it a bit on TV didn't realise loads of people did it, I had one guy (one of Pad's horses) giving me this creepy stare-down every hand, I actually felt quite embarrassed for him, what on earth is he hoping to see, my throat starts gulping when I have a good hand? I played a LOT of live poker games over the years, I'm not about to start cracking under some kid starring me down, but if I was a less experienced player I might find it very intimidating and surely that's just terrible for the game. Seems to me the chances of these guys actually knowing a) what they are looking for, or b) being able to interpret it in any productive way whatsoever should they find it is incredibley slim and it's basically just wasting everyone's time and possibly irratating very casual players. Who want to come play poker and get starred down, if you get starred at for 2 minutes then called and lose you'll probably feel like a real mug and truth is it's just pot luck that the guy has picked right.
"live tells" are not people's eyes twitching or leg shaking, I think a few poker "pros" need to grow up a bit. Assume it's not a strategy Pads is inviting his players to use!
Anyway I didn't really care people can stare all they like at me, I thought the tournament was good fun and would play again, didn't cash but felt like I played competitively, sometimes feel really out of my depth in tournaments and couldn't have imagined playing 1 every yr or so will have helped much, guess the fact that busting was just going to = going to the beach or pool and drink cocktails helped.
There was however a final table performance from the camp, and that came from Laura (!) my fiance, who having never played poker before this week, to the point where she didn't know what the big blind was etc, watched some youtube videos, played a few micro stakes tourneys on party to practice and entered the Ladies event at Rio ($200 buyin) and amazingly came 6th (out of 22) with 4 getting paid, she got unlucky too, losing with KK vs 55 to bust
was actually really proud and even turned down drinking to stay and rail!!!
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(with the cap!)
She wasn't really too sure what to do post-flop (folded a few times when she could have checked etc) but played really disciplined/patient game preflop and just goes to show solid patient poker will always give you a chance! Well done Laura - 6th best Lady player in Rio!!!
Had tons of fun messing about, drinking, went to the Redeemer Jesus (very big) Trigg took us to the races where he had incredibly (INCREDIBLE) managed to get us some hot info on the Rio racetrack - the Rio Tote takes a healthy 40% juice but max bet is £50, so I persuaded (took a lot of persuading...) a friend of mine to cross-book us on the tickets and naturally fighting a 40% tote we did our bollocks, (took some carefully selected peruvian football to repair the damage
) the race-track itself was delightful though one of the most pleasant tracks I've ever been too. It had a bar right on the finish line, water features, even a kids club so you can take the kids and go punting!! Shame it was basically empty, guess the 40% juice and gambley nature of Brazilians has killed off the horse punters
Outside of a bit of work and a bit of poker I just chilled out with Laura and had a great time catching up with the DTD/PP guys and the lineup of characters (middy, ludo, firaldo, flushy, etc) was pretty stellar. Had an extremely positive experience of party poker live.
South American jolly's aside (which was much needed after 6 weeks in thailand!) the year has been going very pleasantly so far, business in good shape, just about to move to a new house in Swiss Cottage (solid upgrade form Bermondsey) we are actually starting to plan some sort of wedding (heading to south of france in a couple of weeks to check out some venues) got a couple of weddings over the summer (Sweden and Barcelona) got a couple of stag do's over the summer (Vegas!) already got half an eye on ext years winter escape, enjoying the golf - summer coming so i'm thinking there'll be no shortage of people to play hoping to maybe get out for a game and a lesson every week! Golf already turning into a massive dust, ad for some reason it makes me want to be insanely spewy, if someone told me there was a iten you could buy for £x that will add 5% to my golf ability I'd probably scare myself at how high that X could go until I dont snap it off
Move House/Golf/Master/Game of Thrones/Plan Wedding/Work
Nice quiet April ahead.