This Bogus Poetry

Swedish poker players are the amongst the most fearsome opponents in the world. It seems that in the realm of apartment hunting, they are also not to be messed with. My search for an apartment has taken me all over the city of Berlin. From the working class district of Wedding, where I wanted to rent a studio where the shower was in the kitchen, but was passed over in favour of a Brazilian lesbian couple. To the quiet streets of Kreuzkoelln, where I was very much into an apartment next door to a sex shop, belonging to an Irish roller derby girl - but sadly she chose to rent it to her friend. One recent sojourn took me to the south side of Neukoelln - Berlin's Turkish district. The renter this time was an abrasive Irishman called Niall, who was going travelling and then moving to a different area of Berlin. The bonus for me with this one, was that he said he would make an introduction to his landlord, so that when his lease ends in June it can be taken over. I was into that id...

“Go back home Englander” I am sitting in a 2/2 no limit hold’em game in a Berlin casino and am not getting a warm welcome from a few of my hosts. The guy on my left is the businessman type, he’s drinking one of those overly large German glasses of beer and generally being an idiot. Being a dick is clearly something that transcends international boundaries. So he’s insulting me in German, mocking me for being unable to speak the language and deliberately using oversized chips to bet -saying the number in German. A couple of players laugh along with him – I notice they have both had to rebuy in the hour I’ve been at the table. Clearly my businessman friend wants to be ‘the man’. He tries to taunt me by repeatedly asking me what the score was in the Bayern Munich v Manchester United match that took place earlier in the week. Eventually respond by telling him the game is delicately poised for the second leg, as United have the away goal and although the Bavarians are now favourites as Roon...

I start day two with a healthy stack of 91,700. I’m in third position at the table in chips and with a table of complete unknowns, save for German pro Florian Langmann who has a big stack. Elsewhere at the table we have big glasses wearing Rasmus Vogt (who actually turns out to be a very good player), Slobodan Bjelbork (who sounds like a character from Star Trek) and the other big stack Simon Boss (who looks like classical conductor Simon Rattle with a shock of unkempt grey hair and plays like this is his first ever poker tournament) Day two is a struggle for me. I never manage to increase my stack and it hovers between 60,000 and 90,000 for most of the day. If day one was one of the best days of poker of my life, then day two was one of the hardest. Seated on table 31 out of 50, I knew my table wouldn’t break for several hours as they split the tables in reverse order, so I dig in and try and get some reads as I know I will be playing with these people for a while. However, the table ...

The European Poker Tour recently visited the city of Berlin. As the city has become my de facto second home, I felt duty bound to enter. I took some money from my previous winnings, won about 1,000 euros in satellites and sold 30% of the rest of my action to get together the 5,300 euro entry fee for the tournament. It was by far the biggest tournament I’ve ever played, but I thought there would be value. A million euros for first would surely gather a large field. The clash with the end of the Los Angeles Poker Classic and the NBC Heads Up Championships in Las Vegas would also ensure that some of the top players in the world would not be playing. My friend Nick bought 5% of my action and I also stayed at his apartment. Nick had promised that if I busted on the first day I would be subjected to his copy of UB40’s greatest hits. It was quite an incentive to perform. Nick is a true poker player and on the way to the Hyatt in Potsdamer Platz we discussed the pot odds of buying a train tic...

Sundays in Berlin have now settled into something of a routine. It is the big day for poker tournaments and generally I play around 15 of them in the evening, beginning at 6:45CET and often going on until four or five in the morning depending on how I do. There is generally a lot of money in play and it can be quite stressful. The day is usually one for a big win or a big loss, or most likely - scrambling to break even. In contrast, Sunday daytimes in Berlin are a very laid back affair. Many shops and business are in Germany are closed, so the city has quite a sleepy vibe. People go out to have a big Sunday breakfast, read the papers and wander around. I am currently living in the Prenzlauer Berg area of the city. It's a nice, if somewhat gentrified area - not as edgy and hip as Kreuzberg or Friedrichshain, but certainly a very interesting part of the city to live in. Our current apartment is on the fourth floor (no lift!) and is about 100 yards east from where the Berlin Wall use...

Well I guess I'm officially a professional online poker player now. Things have been going really well and I've been grinding online tournaments 2-4 nights a week. At the time of writing, I'm up to #27 in the Pocket Fives UK rankings. I've won a few tournaments and a couple of weeks ago just missed out on a triple crown for winning three tournaments with a prize pool of over $10,000, on three different sites within a week. But one night recently things did not go to plan. A couple of hours into a session whilst playing around 7 or 8 tournaments and with around $1,000 in play, my apartment where I'm staying in Berlin had a power cut. It's pretty much a nightmare scenario and I knew that every minute that the power was out was costing me money, as my equity in each tournament slowly diminished. After lighting some candles and waiting for about five minutes, I decided I had to make a run for it. I quickly packed a bag and jogged 500 metres or so down darkened stre...