Another extremely belated update but its been a busy month! Theres been so much going on I'm gunna break it down into sections so that this doesn't become a hideous wall of text.
1) FrankThomas8 and RaisedByJews' Boot Camp
First stop in Barca was back to the No Worries Villa - a really sick place nestled in the mountains just outside Barcelona in Montcada i Reixac. Pretty much a mixture of chilling by the pool in the blazing sunshine, drinking beer and occasionally playing some poker. I was there mainly just to see the guys that I met at the last camp in May but I ended up doing some coaching too which was really cool and is definitely something I'm going to do more of. There were 9 students at the camp ranging from $7 super turbo players to $50 turbo players. There were a couple of really sick nights out and everyone learned a ton which I guess should have been the main thing!
2) HokieGregs Boot Camp
A few days after the first camp was over HokieGreg (high stakes HUsng pro) and his girlfriend Brittney arrived to do another camp this time for higher stakes players. I wasn't actually a student or a coach for this one but it was cool to chill with another group of heads up SNG players and meet people from more new places. Really gives me the travelling bug!
This camp was a lot more poker-focussed which definitely helped me to put in more volume myself and hit my goal for a 10k month
Just thinking back to all the new people I've met in the last 3 weeks, there were people from Holland, France, Spain, Portugal, Estonia, Germany, Morocco, Hungary, Sweden, Finland, Colombia (more on that later), Belgium, Australia, Norway and the US which is pretty ridiculous. Really makes home seem kinda boring where pretty much everyone is from the same place. I won't be short of people and places to visit for a while!
EPT Barcelona was on during this camp - I opted to grind online instead and not make the trek to the casino in the city for any of the events. Ben Martin came over and stayed at the villa though while grinding a ton of EPT events which was pretty fun - haven't seen Ben for a while since he decided to just stay behind in Vegas when everyone else left and did some travelling around the west of the US. A few of the guys from the camp played the 3k euro heads up event but nobody cashed. Soren (valuelol on Stars) swapped 25% with the guy he was against in the quarter final though and his horse went on to win it for a nice 11k euro 25-ball. He also ran godlike at slots while railing the final and spun 40 euros into 1.4k. What a life!
3) Finding a place
I've never been one for making many plans so naturally the way I did the whole Barecelona thing was to book two weeks at the villa, turn up with a suitcase and work out the rest from there. Three weeks later I'm still at the villa and we finally get three of us together to make a decision on finding a place. I'm living with Anthony (FrankThomas8 on Stars, HUsng/Razz(lol)/MTT grinder) and Geoff (Palinca on 2p2, organiser of these HUSNG camps) which is the first time I've properly lived with other poker players but I'm enjoying the balance of a good grinding atmosphere whilst also being sure not to work too hard :)
Finding a place was a really tilting experience, everyone wants agency fees and proof of income (what of what?). Eventually we find a cool place on online and arrange a viewing. The place is ridic nice with a big balcony and its really bright but the landlord decided to be a dick and not accept us. We spun a good story too about being English teachers but it didn't wash without the paperwork. The rep gives us a number of someone she knows that can help us without any paperwork. Nice and shady.
We end up meeting a couple of hours later at an apartment in Diagonal which is not as nice as the first one but since we're kinda in a hurry to get set up and we could move in there the same day we went with it. They gave us a month-to-month deal too so we're not tied down here. In a couple of months we'll be looking to move into somewhere way better for the same price but it'll do for now. Obviously being a massive luckbox I bink the best room with the balcony so it'll do for now.
I've really been hammering the Spanish lessons, I've decided that theres way too much street cred involved to get lessons so i'll just teach myself with a couple of textbooks and a dictionary. I've been good and worked on it every day and I'm getting more confident talking to people in Spanish - still a long way to go though. Defintiely not leaving until I'm sick good at Spanish because by the sounds of it English and Spanish is pretty much the nut two-language combo for travelling.
I've met a ton of new people through Paul, Joey and Thisje (pronounced Tice) who run the No Worries Villa so building up a good circle of friends in Barca already which makes the move a lot more smooth - would definitely suck to move somewhere really vibrant and end up just sitting at home playing poker all day. I still don't really get the culture in the clubs here though - nobody drinks! The drinks are all ridic expensive so most people are just sober which is pretty alien to me. Don't think i'll ever really get used to that!
The apartment itself is a bit of a disaster - so far we're pretty useless at everything. It took us 3 days to find a proper supermarket, only one burner on the hob works, the oven doesn't work, we don't know where to put the bins out, we don't have a key for our postbox and we got the washing machine to work once but can't remember how that happened so can't replicate it! How I've made it to 22 i'll never know. We got internet sorted though! Priorities, yeah?
4) The Big Ass Road Trip
Anthony managed to bink an online sat to LAPT Colombia a few days ago and lildave has been badgering me to come to vegas in October and since the dates coincided perfectly I gave in and agreed to go. Probably gunna pay home a visit too on the way back. The schedule:
October 12th - Fly from Barcelona to Medellin, Colombia via Madrid and Bogota. Play the main there (its only a $1k but the buyin in Colombian Pesos is 1.9 million, ballin) and generally enjoy my first trip to South America. Oh, and try to get out of the country without somebody planting cocaine on me would be pretty cool too.
October 17th its off to Vegas, gunna stay at the Aria on their poker rake which is pretty good value for $79/night, the rooms are really sick. Gunna be there over Haloween which obv Vegas goes nuts for. lildave is already on it having booked the nut table at Surrender, the nightclub at the Encore casino 7 weeks in advance! Theres a $15k prize for the best costume too and while as guys we obv have no shot at winning it should be pretty fun to rail.
November 7th back to London for a few days, home for a bit then back to Barca until the Monte Carlo at DTD on December 19th. Its September and the end of the year seems only just round the corner :(
I also have a prop running with lildave, a race to 10k that started September 6th. lildave has since then put very little volume but managed to book a decent win yesterday to luckbox his way back into contention. As it stands now though he's still pretty crushed with me being +$6k on day 5, I think his profit number is somewhere around $1.5k. He was down nearly 2k so if he comes back and wins this I'm gunna be unimaginably tilted. Hopefully I can run good in the next few days and go in for the kill! Three meals in vegas is all thats at stake, but pride is definitely a factor. A loss for lildave will result in persistant ridcule for the forseeable future - you have been warned!
Congrats if you made it all the way to this point! Next post will hopefully be a prop bet win!
