Wales Wrap-Up

Since I last posted I played my Texas Holdem heat in the Poker Lounge in Wales. Things pretty much went exactly as I expected, as the structure wasn't great. I fully intended on getting all the money in on a flip, and I did just that when my AT fell to Annette Obrestad's QJss 3 handed for 70% of the tournament chips.

I enjoyed the experience and look forward to seeing how the broadcast turns out. Wales was also a pretty cool country. The people were very nice and it was definitely a quaint little place. I would've liked to see a little more of the country but didn't quite have time.

The last week I've been in Birmingham. My lease ended in Tuscaloosa and I've been looking for a place to live in Alabama's largest city. Basically, my quality of life is better when I'm in the south as compared to the time I've spent in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and I could see myself living here the rest of my life, really.

I kind of wanted to make sure of that though, so I spent the week looking at condos that were open to the idea of me leasing for 6 months with the option to buy at the end of the lease period. I struck what I think is a very good deal and found some very good value by locking in a purchase price at a bad ass place called Hallman Hill in Homewood's (a suburb of Birmingham) SoHo district. I look forward to getting into the place this weekend and seeing if condo living is the way I wanna go.

Aside from that, its just nice being back in Birmingham. I went out with friends a couple of times this week and enjoyed myself. I've also played online the last 2 Sundays. Last Sunday was just miserable as I got blanked in online poker tournaments, but last night I found a 5th place finish in the $100 rebuy on Stars for $24,000 or so, which was enough to turn a decent winner over the two combined weeks.

As I type this I'm sitting in the terminal in the Birmingham airport headed up to Williamsburg, VA.

My mom is moving back to Birmingham, which is awesome, so I'm gonna head up there and help her pack and then drive the Uhaul truck back down here. Once I get back later this week, I'll get to relax in town for 2 weeks or so before traveling to Los Angeles for WPT Legends of Poker on August 20.

SS


Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Poker In Wales...
As I type this entry I'm sitting on my balcony at Celtic Manor Resort in Newport, Wales overlooking the golf course on which the Ryder Cup is played. I traveled 17.5 hours to get here, arrived yesterday at 10 am local time, and promptly slept 8 hours. Later tonight I'll play a $20,000 6 player winner take all sit-n-go tournament 40 minutes down the road in Cardiff. I'm actually still unsure with whom I'll be playing.

I've been told that as the online qualifier I'll be playing with 3 Full Tilt red pros and 2 other people who will buy in. The structure won't be great, and I fully anticipate having to flip it all off at some point. The tournament will be filmed and shown on British television's channel 4. I'll also make the youtube link available when it comes out in a couple months. Truth be told, I won this satellite on Full Tilt quite accidentally.

I bought into the $600 satellite a couple months ago thinking it was their standard WSOP satellite, and realized an hour into the tournament that it was a package to this sit-n-go. Hopefully I can win tonight and be $120,000 richer. Last night I had a great seafood dinner consisting of Fish Soup and a Swordfish entree at a place called Priory here in town. I did a little walking around then headed down to the more "posh" (as the Brits call it) Cardiff Bay area for some drinks.Some observations:Everything is expensive here. Honestly it makes Vegas seem cheap.

I've been getting vigged hard on the exchange fees. Last night I converted $500 at the front desk and only got 275£. The spot rate indicated I should've gotten 330£.The most average looking woman in Wales is probably only half as attractive as the most average looking woman in The States. Still, there's something to be said about how subtly attractive many of the British girls are. Several people have asked if my accent is Australian, wtf.

The currency is tilting me hard. Anything up to 2£ is a coin, and I'm too lazy to reach in my pocket and sort through them. As a result I came home last night with a pocketful of coins since I kept breaking the paper bills. I would for sure lose a ton of money here if I misplaced/lost coins at the same frequency as I do in the US.