Gran Casino trip report

Oh my god live poker is boring.

I wound up losing about €300 ($440) after buying in for €1k (it was a 2/5 uncapped game), so results were a little meh but nothing crazy. It was definitely a pretty frustrating experience. It was a 9-handed table for most of the night (I played for about 3hrs or so), with pretty much the exact mix of players I was expecting – a few old nits and a few complete stations. Overall I think I had a really good table – these guys really had no idea what they were doing, and I had position on two of the looser ones.

Unfortunately I had to just sit there folding for the most part, since I picked up almost no playable hands the entire time. I think the best hand I was dealt in late position was 78hh, and that was facing an 8bb isolation raise from a half-stack. Lame. I got AKo once in the SB, but I got limp-reraised by one of the old nits and had to fold.

The only interesting hand of the night was the big one I lost. I made a loose (read: bored) open with A9hh in MP and got called in LP by the same old nit who had limp-reraised me earlier. Absolutely atrocious young guy with tons of money called from the blinds. There may have been a limper in front of me but I can’t really remember.

Flop came 947cc, and the crazy young guy led out for about the pot. He was the type to always lead with top pair, no matter what. I decided to call – if the old nit weren’t still behind me I would have raised for sure, and I think that may have been the correct play regardless, but I got a little confused. Anyways, old nit thinks for a few seconds and calls as well, and the three of us see the turn.

Blank falls and crazy young guy leads out for €100 into a pot of about €300 or so (reading stack and pot sizes was a definite problem – haven’t really developed that skill yet). I had seen the old guy call a couple double barrels before only to fold the river, so I thought he could very well be on a draw, so I called, expecting him to come along.

River was another blank, putting up a backdoor flush. Crazy dude bets €50, I’m thinking wtf is he doing and just call. Old dude thinks for about five seconds and calls too. Crazy dude confidently flips over 59o for TP no kicker. I flip over my TPTK thinking I’m probably ahead… until the old nit shows up with KK!

I was like, wait, what? You had kings? Lol live poker. I think I had some excuses for my goofy play (honestly, reading stack/pot sizes is tough – I should practice that a bit before I go out for any more live shenanigans), but this guy seemed like a regular. I can’t tell you how nonsensical his play is – the crazy young guy had only played at the table for maybe ten hands but it was already completely obvious he was terrible and a complete spewtard. For the old guy to not raise once during the entire hand… jesus, it’s just so bad.

But yeah, that was about it as far as hands went. I bluffed one guy after he opened from the CO to 6bbs and I called OTB with 77. He checked behind on a 69Tr flop, I bet about €50 into €70, he called. Turn was an K and he led pretty quickly for €150. He was semi-competent at least and a little aggro, so I figured he’d be bluffing here quite a lot. I thought for a bit and made a smallish raise to €350 I think and he folded pretty quickly.

Other than that, I kind of just leaked chips since my hands all sucked. I had to leave out of sheer frustration after the crazy young guy gifted away the rest of his 200bbs with TP no kicker to some other goofy young guy with TP slightly higher kicker. Man, getting to play some pots with that guy would have been really fun, but I just couldn’t get anything playable.

Oh well, not the end of the world. The family and I are back in Zaragoza now, and we’re flying back to New York tomorrow afternoon. It’s been a fun trip but I think I’m ready to be back in the States.

Wish me luck!

My dad and I are gonna catch a cab to the Gran Casino in a little bit, so I’ll put up a full trip report later tonight or tomorrow morning.

I’m pretty excited – this’ll be my very first time playing poker in a casino, and more or less my first time playing live. I hope it goes well – poker’s been pretty lame lately so I’d appreciate a little post-Christmas heater. But I won’t be too annoyed if things don’t go my way, since I’m taking a shot and can completely afford to lose the money. I’ve been meaning to get some live experience and this is a pretty damn cool way to get it.

Barcelona

First impression: Barcelona seems like a very, very cool city.

We’re staying in a place called Hotel Soho, which as you might have guessed is not so much a hotel as a gay club. It’s got a very “artsy” metallic theme, there’s goofy electro-pop/techno music playing in the lobby, and it’s just really really gay, basically. No idea how my mom found it. I kind of like it though – I’d go totally crazy if I had to stay here for more than a week, but in limited doses it’s pretty pleasant.

This is our second night in the city. Our bus from Zaragoza got in around 5pm so we didn’t have much time to explore, but the concierge showed us a really cool cerveceria/tapas bar for dinner, which was fun. The food was awesome, and the bar had some cool beers, including (bottled) Chimay. I’ve had Chimay before, and I’m still a fan.

We did a bunch of wandering today, first down towards the beach and then east towards the Gran Casino. I don’t know, I was expecting the casino to be a lot cooler – it’s pretty small, with one large room/floor for slot machines and another room/floor for table games. They probably have 8-10 tables reserved for poker, although when we were there only one game was running. According to the floor guy the only no-limit game they run is a €2/5 uncapped game with a minimum buyin of €200. That’s a much better structure than I was expecting, although the game’s a little bigger than I’d like… if I’ll play I’ll sit with at least €500, maybe €1k, which is a good bit larger than I’m used to playing with. Heh, and the only other time I’ve played live was in a $5nl game with some friends.

Today’s Christmas so no poker until Wednesday night at least – depending on how I feel I’ll probably play again Thursday night. I think we’re heading back to Zaragoza on Friday, so what the heck, might as well take a shot 🙂

Estoy en España!

The old Spanish skills are coming back to me 🙂

At the moment I’m chilling in my hotel room, using the outrageously expensive wi-fi (pronounced wee-fee here, which cracks me up for some reason). The family and I are in Zaragoza, which is where my little sister’s year abroad program is based. I haven’t gotten to explore much yet but it seems like a pretty cool town.

Last night we ate dinner with my sister’s host family, which was a lot of fun – I did a summer abroad program in Spain after my freshman year of high school, and studied a fair amount of Spanish afterwards, so it’s been fun trying to converse a bit. The state of my Spanish is kind of funny though – I’ve always been really good with accents, so I sound waaay better than I actually am. During my summer abroad program I got some funny looks at our final group celebration dinner because some of the Spanish host families couldn’t figure out if I was from Spain or not – as long as I didn’t say too much I could pass for a native speaker, but my goofy grammar would eventually give me away. This time around I’ve also been getting tripped up because I studied a bit of German in college, so I’ve thrown out a lot of pretty mangled, bilingual sentences lately. At any rate, my sister’s host family found me wildly impressive, so I’m feeling okay 🙂

Sometime tomorrow we’re catching a bus to Barcelona, where we’ll be staying for about a week. I’m pretty excited – it sounds like a sweet city, plus I’m gonna check out the city casino for sure. It’ll be my first time playing poker in a casino (and my first time playing live for non-negligible stakes), so I’ll be sure to include a full trip report.

Mkay, gonna go read for a bit.

No more gloom :)

So, I’ve decided to stop being a little cry baby. Poker has definitely been less fun than I’d like it to be lately, but one, that’s part of the game and I need to be more mature about it, and two, I won’t need to worry about rent money for another five months or so, so who the fuck cares?

Some time tomorrow night I’m catching a train to New York, and then on Wednesday the family and I are flying out to Spain for the holidays. I’m planning on playing very little poker (if any) in Europe, so hopefully I’ll be recharged come January when I get back to Boston. I am planning on doing a lot of poker reading and studying though, so if I can muster up any discipline this could be a productive couple weeks.

The past few days have been pretty fun (well, when I haven’t been playing poker). My roommate Bert didn’t get to see Juno with the rest of us on Saturday night, so Bert, Sam and I went again Sunday night. I’m glad I saw it again – it’s not just cute and hysterical, there’s also quite a lot of interesting stuff in there. We had some good discussion on the cab ride home.

I’ve also been slowly accumulating some of the music that’s been stranded on my old laptop – for some reason I still haven’t transferred all of it to the new one. Part of the problem is that I use a windows xp partition for poker, so I have to have two separate iTunes libraries, and my hard drive isn’t huge. Anyways, been listening to a lot of old favorites like ratatat, the national, and the band, among others. Ratatat in particular is one of my favorite bands ever, I can’t believe I went five months without listening to them.

Anyways that’s about it. Happy holidays everyone, Alan

Well that was disappointing

Just finished playing a session on UB (probably 2 hours or so, I’ve given up on UB and pokertracker so I don’t have any hand histories etc.). I started off running a little badly, then ran pretty well, and then ran pretty badly again, and figured I was about even or up a buyin or so. Nope, I was down almost exactly two buyins. Not a great feeling given that I was on some super soft tables. I’m not really sure what I think about my play to be honest – I knew I made some really poor calldowns (eh, they were marginal anyway – when totally unknown players take really bizarre lines, it’s hard to give them much credit) but I guess I didn’t realize just how many chips I was bleeding. Hrm. Not gonna lie, I’m feeling pretty disappointed right now – which is exactly why I shouldn’t be playing just yet, since the losing sessions kill me way more than they should.

Anyways, tonight my roommates and I went out to see Juno, and it’s a really, really good movie. You should all definitely see it.

Snooooowwww

Had our first big snow dump today in Charlestown – I’m guessing we got about 5-6 inches over the course of the day. Very pretty looking but not too much fun to go outside in. I was planning on running a bunch of errands but I decided to just wait until tomorrow and hang out in the house instead. So yeah, pretty normal day 🙂

I did have a little extra entertainment though, because my iPod touch arrived in the mail just before it started to really snow hard. I figured It’d come in hand in Europe, since we’ll be on planes and trains quite a bit. The thing is pretty damn gorgeous – my roommate has had an iPhone for about a month now, so I kind of knew what to expect, but it’s still a lot of fun just to look at. It’s about half as thin as an iPhone and maybe a teensy bit wider, and the screen is obviously spectacular.

Software-wise it’s not that great though out of the box – the wily marketing guys at Apple apparently figured that if the iPod touch were too sweet, then it’d cut into iPhone sales too much. So it doesn’t come with a bunch of the apps that are standard on iPhones, like google maps – you have to use Apple’s shitty webapp depository instead, and run everything through safari. Although the webapps are pretty impressive given that they’re webapps, they suck ass by any other standards.

Easy fix though, as it’s pretty simple to hack an iPod touch and get all those nice iPhone apps installed on it. It took about an hour of watching silly youtube instructional videos. I’ve now got Mail, Notes, Weather and the google Maps application all running smoothly – I decided against the Stocks app since I don’t really have any. I installed some games but they all suck unfortunately – I even had a game boy advance emulator running on it but it was too slow to be any fun.

Other than playing around on my new toy, I’ve mostly just been reading my new book, The Terror, by Dan Simmons. It’s kind of like one part Shackleton and one part Beowulf, lol. I’m about a third of the way done and so far it’s been a lot of fun – nothing groundbreaking I guess but pretty creepy. Also a fun book to read when it’s cold out.

Horrible day

Might have to quit playing poker for a week or so, this is getting ridiculous. I’m down about $900 or so today in like 300 hands at 1/2. $400 at UB, the rest at FTP. I got owned by a complete fish at 1/2 hu (hu is fucking hard when you never hit anything and they hit every flop), and made some very tilty plays at 6 max.

So far December has been absolutely disgusting. I’m down almost $3k in like 12k hands. I’m playing very badly and it’s really starting to depress me. I don’t know what to do to turn things around though, so I might have to just take a long break. Which never seems to do anything for me, so we’ll see. At any rate something is horribly wrong with my poker game, and I just don’t know what to do about it – I’m on about a 25k hand losing streak, and it’s driving me insane. I know that’s not a particularly large sample size but it’s pretty obvious I’m playing like shit – I just seem to alway be on tilt, and I keep making these calldowns that make no sense whatsoever.

Ugh this frustration is burning me up.

Gonna give UB a shot

I didn’t really feel like playing much today so instead I just fiddled around with Ultimate Bet. I deposited $750 and played a little 1/2. I like the software, although there are a couple irritating bugs, foremost of which is that I can’t get the tables to tile on my monitor. They tile just fine on my laptop screen, but on the big monitor everything goes crazy. I’ll have to work on that I guess. But for the most part I’m enjoying the site and it’s a much better backup to FTP than Bodog. And so far so good, I’m up about $700 in 250 hands.

The other glitch is I can’t really tell if UB is working correctly with pokertracker… it sort of works, but PT says I’m only up $560, when my account balance is $1450. And there’s no way I earned $140 of my bonus 3-tabling 1/2nl for an hour.

Anyways I need to get up pretty early tomorrow (still a bunch of errands to run before I go to Spain next week), so no more poker tonight. I’ll probably watch a couple of episodes of Buffy and call it a night.

Bodog is INFURIATING

I need to stop playing there. The software is unbelievably shitty and puts me on insta-tilt, and then I get raped by people who probably have about half my IQ. I only dropped $400 or so there today but ughhghhgh I can’t take it any more.

This is especially exasperating because part of the point of playing on Bodog is to get exposed to different game conditions (FTP games are totally different), and learn how to adapt my play accordingly. I know exactly what I should be doing differently on Bodog (mostly I need to tone down the aggression – I spew like crazy there), but I get SO FUCKING TILTED that I can’t implement any tactical changes.

Anyways, poker’s not going real well at the moment. Really, really frustrated about it. This sustained mediocrity is unbelievably disappointing 😦