This Bogus Poetry

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...

"Send em all back, that's what I say" "Who?" I replied, somewhat taken aback. "The Muslims, all of them, send them back" Add caption This was my first verbal exchange at the 1/5 Spread Limit Seven Card Stud game at the Mirage in Las Vegas. As an opening salvo, this was somewhat of a statement of intent. "But send them back where?" I asked in response. "HOME" replied the elderly lady, now clearly getting agitated as she discarded her hand on fourth street. There was heavy action of a $2 bet from a man across the table, who from first glance, it was difficult to distinguish whether he was alive or dead. "But most Muslims in the UK were born there" I stated matter of factly, as I brought it in with my three up. "SEND EM' BACK" was the unequivocal response from the lady. Clearly we weren't getting anywhere fast in this debate. The elderly moustached man sitting next to me now chimed in, ...

On Sunday I finished 8th out of 4,394 players in the Sunday Warm-up on PokerStars for a cool $10,985. I don't play tourneys very often and it's my biggest ever tournament cash. It was nice to make it in probably the second most prestigious weekly online tournament. This was only the third time I've ever played the Million or the Warm-up and I enjoyed it a lot, though it was pretty nerve racking near the end. I managed to get hold of some chips early thanks to some kind donations and one or two suck outs and I was 10th in chips at the first break. From then on things got rolling and eventually some nine hours later we were at the final table. In the time in between I played on the same table as some great players (Kenny 'Kenny Rap' Weinstein, Anthony 'D1rtyR1v3r' Nardi and Kevin 'BeL0WaB0Ve' Saul ), as well of course as some complete donkeys. I felt like I learnt a lot from playing such a lengthy high profile tournament - The way things change at dif...