Exploring the world, one poker room at a time - a wasy8 project

So I ended up staying in Vienna for a week, and of my 3 stops so far I played the least poker in Vienna. I was supposed to meet up with various poker players throughout the week, and it didn't happen. I found myself wanting to hang out way more with the people in my hostel and generally enjoy Vienna - probably the most enjoyable city I've been in to date. It's absolutely the type of city I could find myself settling down in long-term; it just fits my personality so well. Very laid-back, spacious, great food, but not boring in the least and you'll never run out of things to do. It's not the best city for nightlife if you're into that, but I've never been the type of guy to be out at the clubs every weekend anyway.

Concord Card Casino Simmerling - Vienna, Austria

100th casino! Has been a hell of a ride over the last year and a half, but very much worthwhile. The EPT wasn't being held here, but at the Hofburg Palace. However, free shuttles ran every hour to both CCC and Montesino from Hofburg during the EPT. So I spent a bit of time at the EPT (some railing my friend who cashed in the Eureka main) before catching a shuttle to CCC. Too lazy to embed the image properly here, but here's a link to my instagram pic of the front. (here) I was able to get into a game instantly, however I wasn't totally aware of the tipping procedures here. My standard is usually to tip for every pot above 50bb. I won a couple very small pots (like 20eur each?) and didn't tip since the rake is already quite high at both CCC and Montesino, and tipping on every small pot on top of the huge rake is ridiculous. But within that first 25 minutes and failing to tip on two small pots, I was pulled aside by the floorman and told that the dealers live on tips and I need to start tipping. So I figured, alright, I'll compromise and reduce my standard for tipping to about half what it usually is. Was moved to another table, and won two pots. Tipped on the one that was about 100 euros, and didnt on the won that was a bit under 50 euros. Get pulled aside again by the floorman and told I need to start tipping again. So now it's been like 45 minutes, I certainly haven't played any monster pots, and I've already been warned twice by the floorman for not tipping. That is ludicrous. CCC needs to implement a better system for that. Between that, and all the smoking that I'm not used to (like half the population of Vienna smokes like a chimney), I found myself just a bit tilted. However I ran well enough to still finish up about 400 euros before I went back.

Montesino Casino - Vienna, Austria

The next day, I took the other shuttle to Montesino. The casino is located on the top floor of a small shopping mall, and tbh I actually enjoyed Montesino better than CCC. The general atmosphere (less smoking, friendlier crowd, more attentive servers, a slightly more lax tipping enforcement), as well as a 1/2 game with no cap, which is always fun. What wasn't as fun was my results - just constantly had the second best hand, made one pretty bad call off and a few other mistakes I think as well. The game got fairly big, with lots of straddling - and I probably should've quit earlier than I did. I think most online players underestimate how large of a factor short-term image is in a live game. You're going to get called down and played back at more if you're losing, and get more respect if you're winning as a general rule. So if you're running awful in card dist and down a couple buyins, in these smaller games you just have to nit it up incredibly hard. Unfortunately for me, I didn't do that, and I ended up dropping 1.1k euros here. From that point I decided that I was going to take a break from poker for the rest of my stay in Vienna, and continue the hard grind when I got to my next city.

In Budapest now, staying with with another HUSNG reg, Tcarnage. The plan for now is to stay here for about a month, and get some good solid online grinding in before I move on. There are a few live poker options here, but I don't have a set plan as to when I'm going to get to them. Honestly a bit less motivated to play live after finishing my 100th casino. Also met the king of MTT rungood himself, pleno1, yesterday. As expected, he seems like a great dude. There's a pretty good group of poker players here, and it's kind of refreshing to be part of a local grinders community again.

Much love to all you guys who've been reading my thread along the way, and may the next 100 casinos be as enjoyable as the first 100.

It took me over two weeks to go play my first poker room in Budapest, but I'm completely OK with that! Have spent some time eating out and exploring the city, clubbing, playing a ton online and hanging out with some poker players who have definitely had more success than me. The break from live poker was well worth it. That being said, my research says there are 4 poker rooms to visit in my time in Budapest, so I need to get my live grind on.

Cotton Poker Club - Budapest, Hungary

I think this is the first room I've gone to that wasn't a strongly commercialized casino, and felt much more underground. It was definitely more of a challenge to get by in only English, as most of the players and staff only spoke Hungarian (or Magyar, as it is properly known). To get in, you had to walk inside a restaurant on a street corner, and then make your way downstairs with no real signs advertising poker. I was only able to figure it out because of the players walking in and out. Once I managed to register through the lady at the front who didn't speak English, I was directed to a back room where they were running a 100/200 HUF game (roughly .50/1 USD). There were about 6 tournament tables running in the main room, and this one cash game in the back - so it felt much more like I was playing this high stakes underground cash game, not the smallest stakes live game I've ever played before. Wanted to snap a picture, but didn't get a good opportunity to without it being obvious.

As for the game itself, it wasn't the juiciest game ever. Lots of young guys that didn't appear overly terrible, but I did manage to get a seat to the direct left of a whale that appeared to be high on crack or something. Opening every pot to 3k or more, and folding out of turn almost every hand by whipping his cards at the dealer. There's absolutely no way his behavior would be tolerated in any casino I've been to, but he was clearly the spot in the game so no one wanted to say anything. Wasn't able to get his money unfortunately, and he managed to induce a pretty bad misclick from me that cost me my stack with QQ vs AA. Finished down about 35k HUF, which is like $160 USD.

Wish I could've gotten a better looking chip, but this is the best looking small chip I could find...

Will get to Tropicana this weekend for sure. Maybe one of Universum and Euro club as well. Will have to see how the online grind goes.

Universum Poker - Budapest, Hungary

This is easily the biggest poker room in Hungary. Located in Duna Plaza, it's got plenty of games every night of the week ranging from 50/50 to 100/200 HUF and higher. I played a bit of 100/200 and dropped 30k HUF playing likely my C game (albeit very card dead). There's certainly been quite a few differences for me personally playing the Budapest games compared to everywhere I've played. Firstly, the currency. It's very weird doing the math in my head with large numbers, possibly because I'm naturally doing the currency conversion in my head on top of calculating pot sizes and all of the other "poker math". Was certainly a factor in my lolmisclick in the Cotton Club game. The other noticable difference for me is not being able to use English very comfortably at the table. Part of the appeal of live poker for me is the people; chatting up interesting people and hearing all of the fascinating non-poker stories that many have to offer. Not being able to speak anything but English (and usually anything I say ends up being to the dealers) makes it feel more like a job - and if it's just a job my time is better spent online most of the time, at least compared to the small stakes games out here. In my short time here, I've also noticed that Hungarian people aren't the most happy, bubbly people around. They all seem slightly bitter towards life, and at the tables I've been at almost no one seems to be talking about anything but poker. So it doesn't make for a great live atmosphere. That being said, it's still live poker, and it's obviously soft as hell, but the dynamics at play in the small sample size here in Hungary haven't been great.

Tropicana Casino - Budapest, Hungary

Located in a very touristy part of town right next to the Danube, Tropicana has a poker room located on the second floor. Unfortunately, they lack the players for it. I showed up once here earlier in the month on a Thursday, found a tournament running, and was told cash games might run on Friday/Saturday. So I showed up again this past Saturday, went to the poker room, and found it completely empty. I asked the gentleman at the cashier how often cash games ran at Tropicana, and he said "uhhhh, I don't know, maybe once a month?". Sigh.

I'm finally leaving Budapest on Saturday, and have booked two weeks of hostels coming up. The route will be from here - Szeged, Hungary -> Novi Sad, Serbia -> Belgrade, Serbia -> Timisoara, Romania -> Brasov, Romania, -> Bucharest, Romania. Once I arrive in Bucharest I'll set up shop for a couple weeks to get on dat online grind before I hit the road again. Only spending a night in Szeged, since there is another Universum Poker there but doesn't appear to be much else from a tourist standpoint. Booking a bit longer for Novi Sad and Belgrade though.

SERBS - help me out. Where can I play poker in Novi Sad and Belgrade? My research is coming up short on live poker options in those two cities. I found Grand Grasino Beograd but that's about it. Any advice is much appreciated. As always, if I'm passing through your city and you're interested in meeting up for drinks, holla at me.

Another cool update, gl on the next 100!

yo wasy, i dont konw if you remember me, but i had some sng coachings from you a couple of years ago i think ♦ anyhow, im from vrsac, its on your route from belgrade to timisoara, its last town towards romanian border, there are cash games running on mondays, wednesdays and sundays i think, its a pretty trashy casino with one poker table, but if you want to meet up and go for some drinks, just let me know, would be nice to meet you and show you my town a little..

As far as I've heard (I'm not a Serb), live games are too cheap in Serbia (because the population is poor). Say, the BI of the biggest (monthly) tourney in the club 'Bluff' in Novi Sad is 5500 dinars ~ €48 (€1 ~ RSD 115), while biggest weekly ones are the Sunday RSD 1500 freezeout, the Wednesday RSD 1000 re-entry and the Monday RSD 800 1R1A. Also, I've been told several times that Balkan live games are so wild that it's unsafe to go there without a companion.

Thanks for the nice update once again,

GL going East

nice meeting you bro, looking forward to dinner tomorrow.

Originally posted by tonypmm
As far as I've heard (I'm not a Serb), live games are too cheap in Serbia (because the population is poor). Say, the BI of the biggest (monthly) tourney in the club 'Bluff' in Novi Sad is 5500 dinars ~ €48 (€1 ~ RSD 115), while biggest weekly ones are the Sunday RSD 1500 freezeout, the Wednesday RSD 1000 re-entry and the Monday RSD 800 1R1A. Also, I've been told several times that Balkan live games are so wild that it's unsafe to go there without a companion.

Yeah I'm completely fine with going to the equivalent of nl25, nl50 games in this part of the world, it's definitely what I expected. Will look into the Bluff club and try to find out the availability of cash games.

As for safety, in general I always feel like places are safer than most people expect. There are always exceptions of course (for example a couple of casinos in the LA area, no chance I'm going there after dark, and even in the daytime I'll only go with a friend for an hour to collect my chip and gtfo) but I'll be sure to use my best discretion when going to poker rooms. Thanks for the tip!

Thanks for the kind words all, its always appreciated.

Hey wasy, I've been stalking your blog since it started and enjoyed it a lot! I didn't visit it for a while now so I had no idea you were coming to this part of Europe, but now I see that you're coming to Bucharest, which is where I live. If you need any help while being in Bucharest I would be glad to help!

Good luck with your journey! ♠_love:

Originally posted by wasy8
Yeah I'm completely fine with going to the equivalent of nl25, nl50 games in this part of the world, it's definitely what I expected. Will look into the Bluff club and try to find out the availability of cash games.

OK, then try to get in touch with Milan Alorić aka cp6uja007 (having the same SNs at P5s, Stars and Tilt), I've never chatted with this MTT reg but he claims to be living in Novi Sad and playing in that club.

Let's wait for advice from the Serbian SnG beasts Gerovit and IvicaIliev77, though (I'll remind them to have a look at this thread in case they haven't noticed your query).

Hey Eric,

in Belgrade you can play 5e/10e and 10e/20e regularly a bit undergorund-ish though. In Grand you can play up to 5/10 (2/5 every night basically 5/10 not always) - rake will rape you though. Tournies are daily and BI are from 50 eur r/a up to eur300 fo. If you are in Belgrade from 21st to 27th of May you have Danube poker masters with 550e and 1100e tournies and with a lot of juicy cash games (Italians and Greeks are coming)
I'm not sure about Novi Sad.

And yeah about safety, you are right people thinking in stereotypes. Nothing bad happened to anyone that i ever heard of in any poker establishment here (at least nothing severe like getting robbed naked or abducted and thrown in Danube or other shit crazy Serbs do in Hollywood interpretations)
When i said underground-ish i meant not necessarily optimal for financial police to know how much money is being spent, not in terms you get blindfolded and set across Teddy kgb with Grama over your head.

Thanks for the tips!

Actually, Danube Poker Masters are held twice a year (the 2nd time is in early October). Notably, they have a PLO event on the 2nd day (beat: with a BI of merely €140). I hope to be able to attend it in October - I'm afraid I won't be ready to come in May, and of course my Serbian will be yet too poor then

Hey Wasy,

I am in Belgrade now until Monday. If you are here send me a message I can arrange some meeting with local cash game grinders for you.

I don't do live cash games for a while so I am out of that game. Grand Casino has some games but there is also minimum 3 poker clubs in Belgrade that do that also. One of them is Meridian.

When are you arriving ? How soon do you need info on all this?

Tomorrow I will meet up for drinks with some poker buddies, can find out more about all the clubs they know in Belgrade and cash game levels.

Thanks for all the the tips guys, it's much appreciated.

I'm actually in Novi Sad now, will be here until the 29th and then spending 6 days in Belgrade. Really just looking to play mostly low stakes, as I'm constantly in hostels and that sort of thing I'd prefer not to travel with an excessive amount of cash. It's mostly just to play there, experience it and collect a new chip - max profit isn't my main goal when I'm travelling to new rooms.

I had intended on playing in Szeged, but after some wandering around I couldn't find Universum Poker there - so I gave up and left it. Perhaps another time. For now, the plan is to enjoy Serbia and collect a few chips along the way. Going to see if I can find this Bluff club either tonight or tomorrow.

SERBIA

This post might not be as lengthy as I expected when I entered Serbia. I figured I would have a club in Novi Sad to enter, and maybe 2-3 clubs in Belgrade. Turns out, that never happened. I walked in the rain for two hours trying to find the club in Novi Sad and failed. But I didn't even mind, Novi Sad was an incredible city that I thoroughly enjoyed exploring. Petrovaradin Fortress is a must see, and the city center was cool too. But the girls, holy hell the girls. Everywhere I turned there seemed to be an 8+. Stunners everywhere - the best city I've been to in terms of quality of women so far. Mind you, I have a very small sample size, but Novi Sad gets top marks from me. The Serbian people are also awesome - they smile much more than their northern neighbors in Hungary, and are incredibly helpful and friendly to tourists. More than once I found myself impressed at the friendliness of Serbs.

I'm finding very quickly that it's tougher to drag myself out to poker rooms when I'm on the road, particularly in hostels. If I'm in a hotel or on my own in some way, it's not hard at all. But in hostels, I'd absolutely much rather go exploring with fellow travellers during the day and then go out drinking with them at night. I feel like this is even more of the case here in the Balkans, where the travellers here are more of the adventurous, intelligent variety that I have great conversations with - as opposed to more of the rowdy drunken crowd you might find in the more stereotypical touristy European cities. There's also the fact that I've run pretty bad in live games so far this trip, so that has probably helped with my motivation being low. That being said - I still got a couple rooms in.

Grand Casino Beograd - Belgrade, Serbia

This ended up being more of an afterthought really. It was the last night of my stay in Belgrade, and I didn't want to leave Belgrade empty handed. A couple of the guys in my hostel were interested in going with me to the casino, so we split a cab. Unfortunately when we got there, two of us realized that we forgot our passports, which were absolutely necessary to get in. Not the first time I've forgotten my passport before going to a casino! Silly Canadians. On our return to the casino, there was a game running, but I felt really weird going to play in a game and having my two fellow travellers stuck wandering in a place while waiting for me to play a few hands. Ended up buying a few beers and going back, but not before buying a chip of course.

Casino Royal - Vrsac, Serbia

Vrsac was never part of my plans before coming to Europe. However, my friend and PS member pericas1991 convinced me to make a stop in his small little city near the Romanian border on my way to Timisoara. I'm so glad I decided to stop in. We took a walk up to the top of the mountain that looms over the city of approx 40k people, with a breathtaking view and some Serbian beers to go along with it. Pericas booked us a spot in this locals game in a small casino (more of a betting shop really) with one poker table. It was a very small game (slightly less than .25/.50) and the chips weren't distinctive as you can see. The game consisted of a great variety of players as well, with some older folks, some middle-aged whales, some downright odd individuals, and the 'internetskis' that the labels referred to Pericas and myself as. Finished up a bit more than 300bb, so that was a nice perk. Many thanks to Pericas for showing me his hometown, a place that I would never have found without the connections I've managed to make through this crazy game of cards.

I had no idea what to expect when I came to Serbia, but I loved it. Hopefully I'll be back one day. Timisoara recap coming up soonish - I've got some time to get these recaps done as its a pretty wet day here in Brasov.

When I arrived in Amsterdam almost 5 months ago, I expected this Eurotrip to revolve around live poker. The location of different poker rooms would dictate where I'd go next, and I'd come home at the end of the year with over 100 new chips. That has definitely taken a backseat to what this trip really should've been about - the love of travel and seeing firsthand the beauty of all these countries I'd only known as glossed over names on a map. I didn't expect to thoroughly enjoy the company of all my fellow travellers in the hostels - there are so many interesting, intelligent, and fun people travelling around these countries that I'm happy to now call my friends. I've skipped a few casinos that were located on my route through the Balkan countries, but the chips I missed were replaced by awesome experiences that I'm sure I'll remember for a long time. The countries I've been travelling through since my last post - Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Slovenia - are filled with jaw-dropping natural beauty, delicious local food, and some of the kindest and most hospitable people I've met in my life. As a side benefit, I feel like the last few months have given my life a lot more balance than I had previously, and no doubt that will translate to future success at poker and life. Highly recommend all of the above countries to travel through if you get the opportunity.

Anyway, enough of the sentimental BS. I did get to a few casinos, so here's the writeups for them. Some of them were

Jack Poker Club - Timisoara, Romania

Timisoara surprised me with the overall quality of the two casinos I visited - both were beautiful rooms with great service and competent dealers. The Jack Club - fairly new it seemed like - actually ran a 10/20 lei game (~2/4 euro I think) which was a surprisingly big game for a city like Timisoara on a early weekday night. I played a smaller game and ended up down a bit. I do remember that there was a local nit grinder in my game that had two pretty cute girls sitting behind him and railing him for the session. Kinda comical for a 30ish year old grinder in essentially a microstakes live game having not one, but two fangirls on his rail. The plan was to absolutely own him for stacks several times over the course of the session and proceed to steal his two girls for some hot threesome action, but obviously that didn't happen.

Gentlemen's Poker Club - Timisoara, Romania

Took a while for this game to get running, but the floorman here did his best to make up for it. Gave me two beers on the house while he called his list of regulars to come start a game with me. Finally got one girl to start a game HU with me, and she played pretty decent for a small stakes live regular in a HU setting. Just seemed like she managed to have me beat every time at showdown, which was pretty frustrating. Eventually got a full game running and I think I broke even for the rest of the session. One of the better clubs I've played in so far though, including all of my North American exploits so far. If you're in the area, make sure you drop by and check it out.

Mario Grand Poker Club - Constanta, Romania

Yeah, I stayed two weeks in Bucharest and didn't step foot into a poker room. Oops. Guess I'll go back sometime. Did get into this one in Constanta, on the Black Sea Coast. It wasn't quite high season, but they still managed to run a game on an early weekday night. Had the dude on my right introduce himself as a gypsy to me (which is weird because that's a pretty derogatory term) then offered to introduce me to his sister who he described as very beautiful. All around odd situation that I had no idea how to handle, so I just laughed it off. The game broke at about 1am, but I managed to get a whale to play me HU, and then proceeded to have him godmode me HARD to only manage a breakeven session when I was up a few buyins. It's safe to say running pretty terrible in a lot of the casinos here likely contributed to my lack of enthusiasm in hunting out new casinos when I was having so much fun just travelling.

Casino Cezar - Zagreb, Croatia

OK to be fair, there were no opportunities to play in Macedonia, Kosovo, and Albania, and I did collect a couple of chips from casinos in Bulgaria that didn't run poker. Still probably shouldn't have waited so long to get back on that casino grind. Played a .50c/.50c euro game here in Casino Cezar, and I'm happy to report that I booked a 150bb win - maybe a small winning streak will boost the motivation again?

Casino International - Zagreb, Croatia

This game had a real weird vibe to it. Even though even at the table spoke English, no one made any attempt to socialize with me at any point and seemed pretty miserable in general. The one dude that did say a few words to me told me he thought I was a pro, so maybe I was giving off a bad vibe. I still struggle with games where everyone speaks a language other than English - I just end up looking like a stereotypical internet kid and can't talk my way out of that image.

Casino Bled - Bled, Slovenia

In such a picturesque town, I did manage to drag myself into the casino and ask about poker, but it turns out it only really runs after tournaments on a Friday. Such a shame, looked like a nice room too and it would've likely got a decent amount of tourists in the game given its location.

I'm in Ljubljana airport right now, waiting on a flight to London. My plan is to get right back on that casino grind and collect heaps of chips between the UK and Ireland, assuming I can access my Will Hill money from a betting shop there; if not there might be problems. Haven't been able to access my roll there since Skrill banned Canadians from using it for gambling transactions. I was hoping to stay in Europe until Christmas, but a silly Canadian law says I've gotta go back to Canada at the beginning of September. Apparently I can't be gone longer than 6 months from the motherland without filing a bunch of paperwork, or I lose a lot of the benefits of being a Canadian citizen and technically become a refugee. It's ridiculous, but I'll get that all sorted out at home and then fly out somewhere again.

Grosvenor Victoria Casino - London, England, United Kingdom

Yes, this is the renowned Vic poker room. Given that it was less than a 10 min walk from my hostel, how could I not visit this room first? It's a beautiful room, with a very handy self-registration for cash games that I haven't seen anywhere before. Probably looked like an idiot just standing and watching people register with it for a while. I was also introduced to a seemingly British thing of dealers not having their own rack to make change with, which is a pretty annoying inconvenience. Given that I wasn't able to access my Will Hill money, I elected to play a 1/1 game here, which is probably best given that it was a Monday and the 1/2 probably wasn't amazing anyway. Booked a 100 pound profit.

Casino at the Empire - London, England, United Kingdom

And so begins the 1/2 adventures, as the majority of these rooms do not spread 1/1. Without the bigger roll I thought I'd have access to, I'm likely going to be restricted to one bullet in a lot of these games unless I run hot. Fortunately, I did run pretty well, booking a healthy 446 pound profit in a pretty nice room and reasonably good game. From an aesthetics point of view, it's not as nice of a room as the Vic, Hippodrome, or Aspers, but the game was certainly better than Hippodrome just down the road.

The Hippodrome Casino - London, England, United Kingdom

Pokerstars Live is here, and it's a very nice room - but what a terrible game for 1/2. Pretty nitty with young quiet guys that are likely terrible for the health of the game, and several of them seemed pretty competent based on what I saw. Was still able to book a profit of about 150 pounds or so, getting a bit fortunate by shoving AQ the turn of a JT58 board, binking the A river after getting heroed by a 5 lol. I actually don't haaaate the call if I were playing vs myself the way the action went, but without history it seemed pretty bad. Makes my shove pretty bad if he's calling that though lol.

Grosvenor G Casino - London, England, United Kingdom

I showed up earlier in the day because of its proximity to the Hippodrome and Empire, but they had no games running. Not surprising, as it only has 2 tables in a small casino with direct competition from the aforementioned other two rooms. They told me to come back at around 10 and a 1/1 game would probably start. I ended up going out and drinking with a few of my hostel mates, and made the decision at about 3am to play the 1/1 game anyway. I basically never play drunk, but I was aware enough of what was going on that I was still probably a favorite to book a profit in a 1/1 game anyway. Did manage to profit like 20 pounds before the game broke at 5am and I stumbled back to my hostel.

Aspers Casino - London, England, United Kingdom

This is actually my favorite room of all the London rooms. Beautiful room separated from the rest of the casino, and a seemingly softer crowd than all the others. Had a definite lollivepoker situation, where old dude 3bets to like 40, terribad spewy Asian kid just backraise jams 380 in. Old dude tanks for a few minutes, and makes a speech of "I think mathematically I'm supposed to call, but in practice I'm just gambling by calling for all that money." then open folds AA! Thankfully most of the table did not make fun of him, saying things like "I probably would've called, but sometimes you just got to go with your gut." Not even 15 minutes later, he 3bets Asian kid again, hand goes to river and river action goes bet, raise, 3bet allin from Asian, old man calls with AA on QT766sss board for an almost 1000bb pot. Absolutely hilarious sequence of events and it took a lot for me to keep from laughing. Still managed to lose like 165 pounds in this game.

Genting Casino Cromwell Mint - London, England, United Kingdom

Was my last stop in London, and it was a nice small room. Seemed like a friendly enough game, with a somewhat competent Indian-Englishman who had apparently just dropped like 15k playing 10/20 in Italy absolutely crushing the game. He made a good call with top pair vs me where I ran what I thought was a really good bluff line vs competent people, but that was before I found out he was playing 10/20 just a few days earlier lol. No way I would've ran that bluff vs someone who plays that much higher. Ran atrocious from there on and dropped 500 pounds, so not the best end to my London adventures. Reasonably satisfied with my play though.

Grosvenor G Casino - Brighton, England, United Kingdom

Took the train down to Brighton yesterday, and stopped in at this Grosvenor location close to the Pier. There were no cash games running when I arrived, so I stepped into a 20+10+5 knockout tourney of like 29 players. Was actually a decent structure for an event that small, but I managed to bubble it at like 2:30am in 6th. I had like 8bb and was by far the shortest stack of the 6, and they all decided to pay the bubble 40 out of the prizepool. Normally I NEVER agree to pay the bubble, it's silly and makes no sense for good players. But given the situation, and the fact that I'm not likely to ever play there again, I'm obviously snap accepting this deal. Shoved the hand after we made this agreement with KJ, BB called with J4s, binked a 4 and gg me. Collected two KOs as well, so profit booked in only the 2nd live tourney I've ever played in my life lol. I'm now 2/2 for cashing live MTTs - the other one was the first casino I played in during this thread at Grey Eagle. I still hate live MTTs.

I'll be playing at the Rendezvous Casino in Brighton tonight, and from there my British travels tentatively look like Bristol/Bath -> Cardiff -> Birmingham -> Nottingham -> Leeds/York. We will have to see whether time allows me to get Newcastle in, or if I go directly from there to Manchester and Liverpool. Most likely, Scotland will be saved for another trip as I feel it deserves more time than the 3-4 days that I'll only have time for.

Rendezvous Casino - Brighton, England, United Kingdom

If I had to choose between the two Brighton rooms, I'd say Rendezvous is the better one - but it's close. Just like the night before, there were no cash games running when I arrived, and none expected to start until a few hours later. So I hopped in the 30+6 rebuy +15 addon tournament with 28 runners. Felt really comfortable all night, got every single bluff through and only had one small misstep where I heroed a pretty loose young guy on my direct left and was wrong, so I made the final table as the shortest or 2nd shortest stack. Somehow got like 15 open shoves and 3bet shoves through without getting called (lol live tournament regs) and went to heads up with probably my preferred opponent of everyone at the final table. Naturally he just woke up with hand after hand in HU and managed to win after I turned down a chop when we were even chips entering HU play. Cashed for 390 pounds.

Rainbow Casino - Bristol, England, United Kingdom

This is apparently the only casino in town that gets any poker action, and it's a pretty comfortable room. I was a bit surprised that they couldn't get a 1/2 game running while I was there though - it was only 1/1 and it was Hippodrome levels of nittyness. There was a 200 pound buyin tournament the 2nd day I was there, but I opted to leave it and grind online the Saturday night instead. If the games were anything like the night I was there, online was definitely the better option.

Just arrived here in Cardiff, Wales. Two poker rooms to hit up here, and a small chance I'll hop out to Swansea to play in that room too. We'll see how it goes. Pumped to see what Wales has to offer though!