The title of this post is in German because that’s where I am right now. My girlfriend and I have just embarked on a three-month Europe trip. My inability to play online poker has become a convenient excuse to travel the world, spending several months first in Canada and now in Europe. As far as occupational hazards go, these aren’t so bad.

In a sequel to my Gray Friday article entitled Three Days in Madrid, I described meeting two new friends after a last-minute decision to play the Grand Final of the European Poker Tour. Appropriately, both Soeren and Nico are also coming to Berlin for the EPT, and I hope to see both of them today. Nico and I traveled to Cannes for the WSOP-Europe a few months ago, but this will be the first time I’ve seen Soeren since Madrid.

In the last year, Nico’s home country of Spain has adopted legislation restricting its citizens to playing on Spanish-only sites, and Soeren’s home country of Germany threatens to enact similar legislation. Back in the United States, the patchwork of pending legislation at the state and federal levels is too complex for me to keep up with it. Although the holy grail would be legislation welcoming PokerStars back into the US market so that US players could compete against the rest of the world, at this point even the creation of a US-only market would be a vast improvement over the status quo.

For now, though, I remain a poker nomad. I play the EPT Berlin on Monday and hopefully the rest of the week as well. Last night a former student who lives in Berlin picked us up at the train station and took us to dinner. Soon we’ll be on to Amsterdam, where I hope to meet another former student and also spend some time with Richard “tzen1” Veenman, a member of PokerStars Team Online whom I first met in the Bahamas earlier this year.

A long-time blog reader offered us a couch to crash on in his Paris apartment, so that’s where we’ll be after the SCOOP. Then there’s hiking in the Swiss alps, hopefully meeting a student in Switzerland while we’re there, and then on to a small town in Germany for the wedding of one of my closest friends, who asked me to be his best man on this date in 2011.

I still haven’t answered any of those big questions, but I’ve managed to orient myself and muddle my way through a messy situation by focusing on what’s important to me: relationships with family, friends, and my girlfriend; traveling, meeting new people, and having new experiences; and making the best of any situation in which I find myself, doing my best not to look to the past with resentment or longing nor towards the future with fear or anticipation.

How did Black Friday affect you? What has your life been like for the past year? How do you feel on this important anniversary?

Loose-aggressive play has become so common among the best players that many of them tend to assume that anyone who doesn’t open 50% of hands from the CO can’t be all that good. No American in the tournament is going to be bad, since we all had to travel quite a ways to play, but I think that playing the way I did gave the impression that I was merely competent and perhaps uncomfortable in deep-stacked spots. That’s a fine image to have as long as you know how to exploit it by stealing in spots they don’t expect.

As always, please let me know what you think!

Busted third to last hand of the night, been going back and forth a lot for the last half hour about whether I like my call, but we´ll get to that in a second. Table draw was OK but my seat was rough, had the only two truly good players at the table both on my immediate left. One of them busted the other, which I was happy about until that seat was filled by Scott Seiver. Even in position, that guy is tough to play against.

I played what I think was a very good TAG game for most of the day and hovered between 90-120% of the average. With about half an hour to go, my table broke and I moved to a much softer table which unfortunately was next on the break order.

Third table was tougher than the second but softer than the first, though again my seat wasn´t great. To my left was a kid who exuded competence and was sitting on more than twice the average. I could tell from the way the table was responding to him and talking about him that he´d been very difficult to play against.

Blinds 250/500/50, I raise to 1250 with KJo UTG+2, Rousso calls, BB who does not seem very good calls. Flop AQ8r, BB checks, I bet 2600, they both call. Turn 6 completes the rainbow and this seems like a good spot to barrel, as I think it´s very tough for anyone to call with less than two pair. I bet 8800 leaving about pot behind in my stack. Rousso tanks and calls, BB folds. River K and I check not because I think I´m good but because I think she made her commitment decision on the turn and isn´t folding. She says, ¨Please don´t have Ace-King¨ as though I´d check that.

“AQ is good,¨ I tell her.

She shakes her head and looks nervous, so even though I´m sure I´m beat I show. She has 86o, so essentially she hit a 5-outer on the turn.

Next hand I have KJo again and raise to 1250 again. I think choosing to make a marginal raise immediately after a frustrating loss was probably the biggest mistake I made in this hand. Tough player on my left calls, someone else calls, BB calls. Flop Kc Qh 6c, I check, guy on my left bets like 2/3 pot, the other two fold, I call. Turn 4h, I check planning to check-raise all-in but he makes a suspicious face and checks behind. I put him on a straight or flush draw.

River 9h completes JT and backdoor hearts, which aren´t entirely impossible for him if he has like Ah Th. I don´t think he bluffs much if I check, so my options are either check-fold or bet. I bet 4500, which was less than half-pot. I had it in the back of my head that this might be a better way to induce a bluff than checking, but I wish I´d thought more about what I would do if raised before I bet.

Villain thought for a bit and shoved, it was about 13K more for me to call to win like 33K. Obviously JT got there so the question is how often he shoves busted draws. Like I said before, I had the impression that the whole table was intimidated by him, which leads me to think that he would bluff pretty often vs. a blocking bet. The guy on my right actually called the clock on me, which I don´t know where that came from because we were playing a fixed number of hands before stopping for the night anyway so it really didn´t affect him at all for me to take my time. Anyway I obviously ended up calling and was shown Jc Tc, so I´m still not sure what to think about that one.

I´ll post more of a trip report soon, but wanted to get the results up there now. Thanks to everyone who was following along and especially those of you who bought action, sorry I couldn´t bring you a better result.

Our journey began at the tobacco shop, where naturally my continental companion needed to stock up on rolling papers, tobacco, and filters. Then we were on the road, zooming past revelers preparing to celebrate Fiesta Virgen del Pilar. The land surrounding Madrid is dry and brown, scorched by an eternal sun burning through a cloudless sky. Occasionally a crumbling stone cathedral set into the countryside would break up the monotony, but overall it was a dreary landscape, and I told Nico as much. He assured me it would get better.

It did. The brown hills turned green as we pressed northward. Mountains rose up out of the arid brush, and a dense fog clung to the horizon. We were in Basque Country.

We stopped in Bilbao to see Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum and drank cervezas on an expansive patio. A river ran through the city, and the view from the numerous ornate bridges that spanned it would have been even more impressive without the close-hanging fog.

A short drive brought us to San Sebastian, our stopping place for the night. At an internet cafe we compared last-minute hotel discounts and found a 250 euro room going for 79 euros. After settling in, we found a place to eat dinner that looked to be a relatively straight-forward, 15-minute walk from the hotel. We promptly got lost and ended up taking a cab to the very pleasant Basque pintxos restaurant.

Overwhelmed by the task of selecting 4-6 small plates in a foreign language, I chose a grilled monkfish with a fried langostino as my only concession to local custom. I first ordered agua, but after hearing Nico request a cerveza, I told the waiter, “Dos cervesas” and he chuckled and nodded. Me, I was just proud to have figured that much from their Spanish conversation. The food was very good, and we passed a pleasant evening out on the terrace with a second round of cervesas.

We found our way back to the hotel without difficulty and agreed to leave at 9AM, as we had a long day of driving ahead of us. I’m glad we visited Bilbao and San Sebastian, but it meant that we’d covered only about four of the twelve hours of driving that lay between Madrid and Cannes.

I woke and was surprised to see that it was 10AM. “Nico,” I said. A grunt from his bed indicated some level of awakeness. “It’s 10:00.”

He grunted again. “I guess we can’t leave at 9 then.”

“It would be difficult.”

“Unless we leave at 9PM,” he muttered and rolled over. I showered, and he was up by the time I got out, but we still didn’t get on the road until after 11.

The first few hours passed slowly. A heavy fog still obscured what might otherwise have been a beautiful view, and I was tired and hungry. In less than an hour, we passed into France and noticed an immediate improvement in the quality of the roads. I soon learned that France assesses steep tolls for use of its highways, but you could at least see where the money was going. We encountered neither a crack nor a pothole our entire time in the country.

The weather improved, and after lunch at a roadside cafeteria, we lingered on a sunny hillside inventing games to play with acorns. Nico is a former member of the Spanish national ski team and twelve times the athlete I am, but I proved more adept at both acorn baseball and a game where you toss one acorn into the air and then attempt to throw another acorn to hit it in mid-air before it falls.

It was another two hours or so before I saw the sign: “Carcossone”. Perhaps you’ve heard of the famous board game, in which players vie for control of a medieval city. I told Nico that is a favorite of my girlfriend and me, and he asked if I wanted to stop.

“I suppose it would be cool to take a picture,” I said, and so we exited and followed signs for Carcossone. The road narrowed and passed some old-looking buildings. “I guess this is it? Maybe we can walk in a little further?”

We parked and set off on foot through the narrow, one-lane streets. “It’s old, but it’s not medieval,” Nico said.

“I don’t know. It seems like this is all there is to it.”

“I think that if leave now and later we google ‘Carcossone’, we are going to see something we are not seeing right now,” he argued We agreed to check at the office of tourism, and sure enough that was an entirely separate Old City on the other side of a bridge.

When we first caught sight of it, we could not have felt more foolish. Towers and ramparts stretched for hundreds of feet across the top of a broad hill. It was a magnificent sight. We followed a road that traced the outside edge of the fortified walls, finally choosing a parking spot near the main entrance.

Nico spotted an aperture in the wall, and sure enough it led to a steep flight of crumbling stone stairs. When we reached the top, we were up near the battlements. We looked out at the countryside through narrow slits that once would have enabled archers to fire from a covered position on an attacking army.

A second, higher wall still stood between us and the Old City, but we wandered the ramparts for a while before going in. Though beautiful, the interior was a little more disappointing because it was full of tourist shops, restaurants, and hotels. The streets were still stone and the buildings mostly looked original, which was impressive, but they now sold postcards and plastic swords. We were too late to enter the castle proper, but we got some fine views of it from elsewhere inside of the walled city.

As made our way to the exit, the sun was setting, casting rich light upon the fortifications and intricate shadows on the ground. Back in the car, Nico took out a CD called “Trancenation” that he told me he’d been saving for dark. “It’s really good music to just get into a zone and drive,” he promised as he prepared his next few hours’ worth of cigarettes.

“Roll me one of those?” I asked. I don’t smoke, but I figured that if I’m going to drive through the French countryside in a Volkswagon listening to techno music I might as well smoke a hand-rolled cigarette while I’m at it. Nico turned up the music until the baseline hummed in the back of our necks, and we exhaled out of the open windows with wind whipping through our hair.

The sun set and sky grew darker. Neither of us had said anything for half an hour, each in a trance of his own. I thought of a college road trip in California and then further back to my first-year roommate, a Cypriot who loved loud techno music and also rolled his own cigarettes.

We turned a corner and each of us turned toward other in unison, hands pointing straight ahead. The moon had appeared suddenly, fully formed and hanging huge and round, bright orange and perfect just above the horizon. We both grinned broadly and nodded our heads in time with each other and the music, the perfection of the moment passing unspoken between us.

The next four hours flew by and we were in Cannes, greeted by palm trees and beautiful old buildings. At the small duplex we’d rented, the heavily perfumed landlady seemed convinced that we were gay, taking our insistence on figuring out how to work the fold-out sofa as mere pretense. Our place is just two blocks from the beach, and even at night the beauty of the place is evident. Pinpoints of light dotted the horizon in every direction save one, and behind us the dramatically lit facades of casinos and hotels were a glamorous sight.

After a moment of confusion, everything went smoothly at the tournament area. Jack Effel personally accompanied me to verify that my wire had been received, and as unhelpful as he and the staff were online in the preceding days, he mostly made up for it in person.

After a late-night dinner of beer and kebab, we made our way back home. The streets, now filled with fall-down drunk French youth and aggressive prostitutes, seemed somewhat less glamorous, but it was still a great evening.

They say that every cigarette you smoke takes 11 minutes off of your life. I’d gladly trade 11 minutes for another day like this one.

Edit: Supplemented the narrative with a few pictures.

Wiring money to the casino in Cannes was almost comically complicated and slow. The casino’s website listed an address to e-mail for more info, but I never got a response from them. I asked Jack Effel on Twitter and he gave me a different e-mail address which also went unanswered. Finally I found a third e-mail address buried in a 2+2 thread, and that person responded in broken English with some vague instructions that seemed to suggest I needed to e-mail a fourth person. I responded asking for clarification, concluding with “do I need to do X or do I need to do Y?” He wrote back a one-word answer: “Exactly”. I finally got the info I needed and submitted the wire transfer, but I haven’t gotten confirmation that it’s been received yet, so fingers crossed!

I drove from Vancouver to Seattle yesterday and am now getting ready to return the rental car we’ve had for the last two months and then on to the airport (flights are much cheaper and more frequent from Seattle than from Vancouver). I just got changed to a later connecting flight in Paris, but that’s only costing me a few hours.

The trip’s been a huge hassle so far but that’s mostly behind me now, and I’m really looking forward to what’s coming next! I actually fly into Madrid to meet my friend Nico (see Three Days in Madrid for our backstory), then I’ll spend a day with him in Madrid before we drive to Cannes. We’ll have a week in Cannes and then drive back to Madrid via Barcelona. Finally I’ll have two more days in Madrid before I fly back to Seattle and take a train to Vancouver (won’t need a car in the city). Sounds tiring just writing about it but I think it will be a lot of fun and hopefully profitable as well.

Almost immediately after moving to Vancouver, I’ll be heading to Cannes for the World Series of Poker Europe, most likely just the main event. Although I never considered this event worth traveling for in the past, I expect that the relocation to France is going to make it a very good tournament. I’m looking to sell up to 2/3 of my action at 150% markup. In other words, the buyin is 10K euros or about $13,563 US. With markup, shares will go for

1% = $203.45
5% = 1017.25
10% = 2034.50
67% = $13563

I’ve played nearly 1000 tournaments since January 1, 2008 with 149% ROI. Notable scores include 1st in an FTOPS $2K, 3rd in a WCOOP $500 1R1A, 5th in a SCOOP $300 4-Max, and five cashes in six years in the WSOP Main Event, including three finishes in the top 100.

Preferred methods of payment are PokerStars, Bank of America, ING, or Interac. If none of those are options for you, let me know and we’ll work something out.

Please e-mail me at andrew (at) thinkingpoker.net if you’re interested. Do NOT send money or assume that you have  a piece until I’ve written back to confirm, which may take a day or two.

Should I cash, payouts to shareholders will be based on a dollar:euro exchange rate of 1:1.3563 (ie the same rate you bought at), regardless of what the exchange rate is at that time.

Like I say, I’m embarrassed I hadn’t heard of him, because it’s clear to me that he’s soon going to be recognized as a top-tier player. He final tabled the most recent WSOP Europe and now has won his second bracelet in a huge field $1500 NLHE tournament. I’m looking forward to seeing more of Praz, but hopefully not at my tables.