October 25, 2007
Barcelona Hates Me, or Vice Versa
OK, so I already talked about how the Barcelona gypsies took my money, and you may have read about how I busted out early in the WPT Spanish Championship – I should have re-raised with Aces instead of calling a raise with them – but what about the rest of the trip?
I’m normally not much of a complainer, but I want the people that aspire to be a professional tournament poker player to get a realistic idea of what that grind can really entail. Winning sure is fun, but traveling 50 hours in total, flight delays, losing your luggage and most all your C-notes is what it’s all about sometimes.
We arrived in Barcelona at noon on Wednesday. Julie got her luggage at 7 p.m. on Thursday. Let’s just say this would have been a good time for an “Angry Julie†segment on Beyond the Table. The good news for her though is that she had packed her very special curling-iron-blow-dryer-brush in my suitcase, so she didn’t have to go without that until I blew it up by plugging it into the wrong electrical converter. I wish I had recorded that. Then she gets into the shower and I hear, “To-oo-mmm!†Oh shit, what now? The shower’s not draining and water’s getting all over the bathroom floor. Just as we unpacked all our clothes we had to switch rooms.
Our new abode had a 4-foot obstruction right across our whole window. Excellent. And it had a similar problem with the plumbing.
Julie and I did play some cash games, and some even stranger things happened at Casino Barcelona.
First off, if you leave a cash table without picking up your chips, you will be blinded off just like in a tournament. This rule seemed to keep people from taking extended walks and leaving games short-handed, however, I don’t believe that the rule encouraged hand washing after relieving oneself – don’t want to take a 30 Euro dump.
