seoul appt…

So of course I ended up going to Seoul even though I swore never to play another tournament again. My oaths are not worth much obv.

After racing through Manila traffic to get to the airport on time after totally pwning traheho in Russian online, I find my plane is delayed by an hour. Standard. I go to the Emirates lounge to jump online, lose 1500 in half hour to traheho, tilt. In this really tricky hand, the bus boy clearing the tables stops to chat with me, even though I’m obv busy. I always try to be polite (especially on JokerNetwork) but I was concentrating hard on the hand, running out of time, and I ignored him to concentrate. I realise its rude to ignore people talking to you, but I think its rude to harass someone who is working on something, and two rudes make a polite. The bus boy read my ignoring him as saying “hey why don’t we have a chat about really boring generic questions” like “Where are you flying to today Sir?” and “What’s your name?” and “What are you doing on your computer?” Bad read bus boy, bad read. He then touched me to get my attention which I hate, can’t stand random touchy people - wtf? I will never understand why people touch people they don’t know. I screwed the hand bad as a result, costing myself $600 and maybe I was a bit harsh after, but I think he learned a valuable lesson that day - wipe tables, stay quiet, don’t touch and disturb random strangers especially if they’re tilting. Not unreasonable I think. I can’t stand retarded unnecessary boring small talk, it tilts me bad. I felt bad though cause he looked like he was about to cry so I tipped him his weekly salary when I left. When I worked in a cocktail bar, so long as people tipped big, they could basically say and do whatever they liked.

Manila airport is the most retarded airport ever. I would wager dirt airstrips in the Congo are more efficient than Manila airport. If you consider yourself a Zen master, I suggest you test yourself with Ninoy Aquino airport in Manila, its ridiculous. The airport in KL is the greatest airport I’ve ever seen, its amazing. People think Changi in Singapore is a good airport but those people haven’t been to KL. KL airport pwns Changi. We walk past a massage place in KL aiport named “Stress-Free Massage” and Jethro says “That’s the most redundant store in the world.” We were so relaxed by the awesome efficiency we almost missed our plane.

I arrived in Seoul and discovered it might be the most expensive city in the world. Very few people speak English which results in some tilting situations for a dumb foreigner like me who can’t communicate. I decided I was not baller enough to pay the $140 cab fare from airport to city, so went off in search of a bus. Quite the adventure at 6am in the morning after a red-eye flight.

I arrived 2 hours later at the Sheraton, which is really a great hotel, but everything is joke expensive. I tried to check-in 4 hours early and was told I would need to pay a full day’s rate to do so. I stormed off to the casino next door on principle, knowing I would lose a lot more than it would cost me to check in 4 hours early and sleep.

No poker games going, lost 2k riggd blackjack, returned to hotel 2 hours before check in to kill time in lobby. Bought a coffee, got the bill: $20 usd. Awesome. Wireless didn’t work so I went to business centre, jumped online. After 20 min, I heard an American guy complain about the size of his net bill, and I thought I’d better log off JokerNetwork. 20 min net: $35 usd. Awesome. You’d have to be a millionaire to live in this city.

——–

Slept and woke up for the PokerStars party which was suprisingly good, as far as these things go. They had these $30 Kobe one-inch mini burgers there for free, so I ate 8 of them. Thank you PokerStars. They were the most sexy burgers I’ve ever eaten.

Got pretty drunk, main event the next day so I decided to get some more sleep but got into a Russian game online with my mate Scotty and peddled him for 4k which was hot, I run good in Russian now.

——-

Got to bed very late but woke up feeling healthy for the tourney for a change. Got a really easy table straight up, peddled my way to about 20k when I maybe made a big mistake but it worked out great for me. This fish got moved to our table and open limped every single hand. He limpcalled my raise when I had AQ and the flop came As-2s-6d. I bet, he minraised, I looked at his stack which looked pretty small so 3bet allin. He insta-calls and drags out a stack of 1k chips hidden behind his greens. I felt sick, I’ve just put in something like 200bb with TP2K and he insta-called my 3bet. Turns out he just had flush draw, blank-blank and I go to chip leader in the tourney.

Our table goes down to 6 players for awhile and I was able to play a bit more comfortably - full ring is really hard, I am donkey in FR. I get up over 55k about half way through the day when things start getting tougher when people start playing back at me which is never good.

I lose a bit back, go to dinner with the PokerNews guys ($200 mains - good food but ridiculous expensive, fancy food is wasted on me, I am a Philistine - thanks Gaz for dinner anyway), get back to my awesome soft table to find we’re breaking. I move to my new table with 40k where a young shaggy-haired, bearded guy is playing super laggy but I can tell very quickly he’s got a bit of something going on which is disconcerting for me as I suck bad against good lags.

I tell myself not to tangle with him as he is very smooth, very aggressive, impossible to read. I’ve busted out of some many tournaments trying to play back at good lags, its sick. As luck would have it, this guy turns out to be 2+2 legend Rekrul who won a wsop HU bracelet this year. Of course when I find that out, I get all giddy like a schoolgirl, but I try to be James Cox baller cool cause I want him to like me. Usually, this means I try not to say much, so I just mostly stayed quiet as he pummeled the table. He smashed our table to bits, opening 50% of hands pre but always seeming to have the goods when people make a stand, and managing to get people to stack off in massive pots with air against him, usually a sign of a pretty good player and something I can almost never achieve.

Of course I get endless rags whenever facing good lags, and not wanting to be another of his victims I mostly stayed out of his way, playing really embarassingly nitty and pulling only the very rare 3bet and a couple squeeze plays, desperating trying to hold on to my 40k stack. With 2 min left in the day, he opened the button into my BB and I 3bet to 11k with air thinking he would assume I would not make a move with so little time before the day ends, but he insta-pushes on me and I feel stupid and fold. I would bet a lot he had rags that hand as he seems to like to call 3bets a lot in position, so the 4bet push didn’t really make sense to me, but I had 7 high and good players like that just read your soul and punish you, its freaky. He might be an alien but I have no hard evidence either way.

So I head into day 2 a bit shortstacked with 25k (avg 35k I think). I’m not on Rekrul’s table tomorrow so I have an outside chance.

———-

Rekrul was telling me they have these clubs here called “booking clubs” which sound pretty fun. I don’t fully understand the concept but apparently normal girls (ie not working girls) go there knowing they will be dragged into random guys’ booths where I guess they get free drinks. I’ll investigate further and report….

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