Preparing for the EPT Barcelona

Barcelona rocks man. If you’ve never been… go. Come to the EPT Barcelona next year and I guarantee you will love it and come back again and again. Beach, restaurants, night life, architecture, and great golf too if you have time. I got in on the 3rd, vegged for a while then hit the PokerStars welcome party at Shoko. At the party, somehow, there was some wagering going on (whaddya know!), me having a small wager with Roland de Wolfe in rock, scissors, paper, and then William and Elky in a drinking competition. I played Roland a race to five for $5000 with me getting a spot, having to put up only $4500 of it. He won the first two throws, and then BOO YA it ended 5-2 for me. He called me a total fish and said I made so many crucial errors… um, me thinks some people take rock, scissors a little too seriously. William offered Elky 3-1 odds on $5000 that he could out drink him. Elky agreed, and the bartender poured five of the biggest vodka drinks I’ve ever seen. Three with vodka red bull, and two with vodka cranberry. The rules were simple- don’t spill first one to finish all five wins. I got to be the judge and watched, firsthand, William literally inhale his first drink with Elky struggling a bit to get it down. Rather quickly William was more than a drink ahead and started trash talking him and ‘giving him a chance” by resting. In the end, William gobbled down drink #5 and then I never saw either of them the rest of the night? Puking perhaps? I hung out there for a while, then went to dinner, and walked around for a bit after. Got to get at around 4:00am and woke up at 9:30am excited that my sleep schedule seemed to be set for play. I went to the gym and worked out, hit the grocery store to get some essentials, and then vegged mostly. I’m getting the hang of these overseas trips in terms of routine and I think that will help me do better. 1. Welcome Party (don’t drink like William or Elky)
2. Workout if I feel up to it
3. Get interviews done.
4. Get essentials from the grocery store, soy milk, etc. The only place I don’t need to do that is London. London has the absolute, uncontested, best food options for a vegetarian/vegan in the world. It’s just amazing!
5. Veg in my room and try to get to bed at an appropriate time. So today I did good on all fronts. Found a grocery store nearby that had a few things. Oh, one thing you need to know if you walk the streets in Europe. Cars don’t really stop for you. Seriously, lol. Watch out when you walk, it appears automobiles have the right of way and they’ll let you know about it! Everything seemed to be going as planned until… uh oh, I fell asleep at 8:00pm! Ugh, I woke up at 1:30am and it’s now 7:00am and I play at 12:30pm. After this blog I’m going to lay down and try to get a few hours of sleep before play. So when I woke up, I logged onto PokerStars to checkout what’s happening in the WCOOP. By the way, if you want to follow along there are two sites you should know about: 1) www.wcoop.com where you’ll find all kinds of stats, results, etc. and 2) www.pokerstarsblog.com where you can follow the events here in Barcelona as well as more WCOOP news. I checked out how some of the Team Pros were doing. First Andre Akaari who seemed to be killing it, then made my way down the list to say hi to some friends. I was jonzing to play in the 8-game mix and some of the other WCOOP’s, but that will have to wait until after the Barcelona event. So since then I’ve been surfing the net. I listened to Andre’s interview on WCOOP radio and was kinda shocked that he built a bankroll playing freerolls on PokerStars! That’s so sick. Anyway, he claims his English sucks, but I’m sure it’s a lot better than my Portuguese 🙂 After that, I perused the fantasy hockey news and did some research. Then I decided to watch the lasted episode of “Inside Deal” on espn.com. If you haven’t watched, or heard if it, think SportsCenter meets poker. This week they had Victor Ramdin on the show, their 5th episode. I’m looking forward to the tournament. I really got into the swing of things over at the Bike and feel like Iif I’m rested enough I should do well on day one, having faith in the “small ball” system that I use for big buy in NL events. I do best when I have faith in the fact that “my way” is the right way. It’s only when I venture out and explore some of the other approaches to the game where I get in trouble. I’ve been playing tournament poker for over 15 years now, and with all of the changes to the game and the influx of new players, one thing has stood the test of time and held true: small ball works. It’s still the absolute best way to go in big buy in no limit hold’em tournaments. ]]>