My European Poker Oddessy
I just got back from my crazy European adventure, and while I can’t get into the specifics of all the nutty adventures I got into, I can tell you about the 2 poker sessions I had overseas. I can’t even remember any specific hands, but read on anyways for a little taste of poker in Europe.
HOLLAND CASINO - AMSTERDAM
My buddies and I went to Amsterdam for the weekend, to celebrate a good friend’s bachelor party. Basically, I slept about 10 total hours from Friday until Monday, just going crazy in easily the coolest city in the world. By the time Sunday night rolled around, we were on the tail end of a bender that just wanted to keep bending, but I convinced the bachelor that it was customary to gamble on his stag. When we went to Vegas for my stag, I won $700, and then another friend of ours won $400 at the casino in Montreal on his stag, so he couldn’t say no. You can’t mess with the mojo!
The first thing I noticed about this downtown casino was how quiet it was. Maybe because it was near midnight on a Sunday in February, but this place was a real treat for my ears. None of the “ding, ding, dinging†from slots machines all over the place could be heard, which was awesome because I already felt like a zombie. Normally I would never even think about playing cards in that state – but it’s poker in Europe! C’mon!
The design and décor of the casino was also excellent, and I felt a nice vibe from the place. I immediately bought into one of the two tables that were set aside for 10-20 hold em, which was awesome because I am used to waiting at least an hour to get in on a game at Brantford. Minimum buy-in was 200 Euro, so that’s what I did. There was a pretty diverse group of young and old players around the table, including a few ladies, and everyone spoke a mixture of Dutch and English. And holy shit the Amsterdames are all stunning. Even the female dealers were all model-quality babes, which always makes for an enjoyable time at the table, even if you are getting fleeced, which is exactly what happened to me.
I played only about 3 hands in an hour, and was outdrawn each time, just getting nothing remotely playable at all. Then a guy from Indianapolis came to the table and starting being American. He was going on and on about the Daytona 500 and how Jeff Gordon was gay, and I couldn’t believe that I was in Amsterdam playing poker with some dude who wanted to chat me up about NASCAR??? But he turned out to be a nice guy and pretty funny, so I humored him. At single and 53 he was in the Dam by himself, so I knew he couldn’t be all bad.
After taking down only 1 big pot (at least I hit an aces-full tight) I was still down half my stack and seriously considering walking away when my friend sat down beside me. He got upset when I told him I was going to get the hell out of dodge (something like “it was you idea to come here and now you want to quit?â€), so I stuck around. NOTE TO SELF: don’t ever stay in a game you aren’t feeling, just because your friend sits down as well. I won one hand the whole rest of the session, about 2.5 hours, basically folding the night away when my top 2 kept getting back-doored to death. Nothing is worse than playing limit poker and the cards don’t come, and you can’t hit a flop to save your life. I rarely even play cash games anymore and I remembered why – cause I hate them.
My buddy was doing okay, even though he is the worst poker player I know. He won about 150, basically making every poker no-no at the table (betting out of hand, screwing up the antes, showing the table his cards). One guy in particular was furious. He was in a cow-patterned fleece zip up and was being really rude, even though my friend told everyone he was a total poker rookie. Cow-man kept yelling at us in Dutch, so it just goes to show that there are angry poker players all over the planet. So my buddy and I kept making “MOOOOOOOO†noises when it was his time to act, and he got really mad and yelled at us in Dutch some more – which sounded something like this “Rijken Assholen sluubin!†That’s when I figured out how to speak Dutch, you just take an English word like “pajamas†and then you surround it with Dutch words, for example “where are my pajama-sluubins?â€
I ended up just flirting with the hot dealer and some of the other cute girls that were playing – one in particular on the other table was a serious babe, but she also looked like a serious player. I wanted to chat her up because she smiled at me, but didn’t want to seem like a creepy foreign dude going over to her table to say hi, so I just smiled at her back.
In any case, I had a fun night, even though I lost. My bachelor friend won 700 Euro playing roulette. Unreal, the stag mojo cannot be stopped! Actually of the 5 guys there, I was the only one who lost, and we all know what that feels like… You just gotta take it like a man, and not spoil the fun for the rest… On to Paris.
HOLLAND CASINO - AMSTERDAM
My buddies and I went to Amsterdam for the weekend, to celebrate a good friend’s bachelor party. Basically, I slept about 10 total hours from Friday until Monday, just going crazy in easily the coolest city in the world. By the time Sunday night rolled around, we were on the tail end of a bender that just wanted to keep bending, but I convinced the bachelor that it was customary to gamble on his stag. When we went to Vegas for my stag, I won $700, and then another friend of ours won $400 at the casino in Montreal on his stag, so he couldn’t say no. You can’t mess with the mojo!
The first thing I noticed about this downtown casino was how quiet it was. Maybe because it was near midnight on a Sunday in February, but this place was a real treat for my ears. None of the “ding, ding, dinging†from slots machines all over the place could be heard, which was awesome because I already felt like a zombie. Normally I would never even think about playing cards in that state – but it’s poker in Europe! C’mon!
The design and décor of the casino was also excellent, and I felt a nice vibe from the place. I immediately bought into one of the two tables that were set aside for 10-20 hold em, which was awesome because I am used to waiting at least an hour to get in on a game at Brantford. Minimum buy-in was 200 Euro, so that’s what I did. There was a pretty diverse group of young and old players around the table, including a few ladies, and everyone spoke a mixture of Dutch and English. And holy shit the Amsterdames are all stunning. Even the female dealers were all model-quality babes, which always makes for an enjoyable time at the table, even if you are getting fleeced, which is exactly what happened to me.
I played only about 3 hands in an hour, and was outdrawn each time, just getting nothing remotely playable at all. Then a guy from Indianapolis came to the table and starting being American. He was going on and on about the Daytona 500 and how Jeff Gordon was gay, and I couldn’t believe that I was in Amsterdam playing poker with some dude who wanted to chat me up about NASCAR??? But he turned out to be a nice guy and pretty funny, so I humored him. At single and 53 he was in the Dam by himself, so I knew he couldn’t be all bad.
After taking down only 1 big pot (at least I hit an aces-full tight) I was still down half my stack and seriously considering walking away when my friend sat down beside me. He got upset when I told him I was going to get the hell out of dodge (something like “it was you idea to come here and now you want to quit?â€), so I stuck around. NOTE TO SELF: don’t ever stay in a game you aren’t feeling, just because your friend sits down as well. I won one hand the whole rest of the session, about 2.5 hours, basically folding the night away when my top 2 kept getting back-doored to death. Nothing is worse than playing limit poker and the cards don’t come, and you can’t hit a flop to save your life. I rarely even play cash games anymore and I remembered why – cause I hate them.
My buddy was doing okay, even though he is the worst poker player I know. He won about 150, basically making every poker no-no at the table (betting out of hand, screwing up the antes, showing the table his cards). One guy in particular was furious. He was in a cow-patterned fleece zip up and was being really rude, even though my friend told everyone he was a total poker rookie. Cow-man kept yelling at us in Dutch, so it just goes to show that there are angry poker players all over the planet. So my buddy and I kept making “MOOOOOOOO†noises when it was his time to act, and he got really mad and yelled at us in Dutch some more – which sounded something like this “Rijken Assholen sluubin!†That’s when I figured out how to speak Dutch, you just take an English word like “pajamas†and then you surround it with Dutch words, for example “where are my pajama-sluubins?â€
I ended up just flirting with the hot dealer and some of the other cute girls that were playing – one in particular on the other table was a serious babe, but she also looked like a serious player. I wanted to chat her up because she smiled at me, but didn’t want to seem like a creepy foreign dude going over to her table to say hi, so I just smiled at her back.
In any case, I had a fun night, even though I lost. My bachelor friend won 700 Euro playing roulette. Unreal, the stag mojo cannot be stopped! Actually of the 5 guys there, I was the only one who lost, and we all know what that feels like… You just gotta take it like a man, and not spoil the fun for the rest… On to Paris.
Comments
Glad u had fun amsterdam is sweeeeet
After a harrowing drive back from Amsterdam – the worse road-trip drive home in my life – we hooked up with an old high-school friend in Paris for a week, the home of the enlightenment. I love Paris, but the Parisians are all rude assholes. They are just so pretentious, but for really no visible reason. I was warned by an Australian dude in the lobby of the ACF that if you speak English at the tables, they aren’t too pleased. The ACF is spitting distance from the Arc de Triumphe, and is a really classy place. I think its members only, unless you show your passport at the concierge’s desk, where you have to sign in. They also hold on to your papers while you are in the club.
I was also unhappy to find out that the tournament on Thursday night was limit hold em, which I hardly ever play. But as if I was going to sit out, its poker in Paris! 30 Euro buy-in, with un-limited re-buys and one add-on. We sign up and pay, and head over to the other side of the club to get some cocktails. There is a restaurant and bar over there as well as where the casino games are. The club is split into 3 sections, one side for casino games, the middle for backgammon (and there were tons of guys playing backgammon for 10 Euro a point.) and the other side for poker. The tournament was in a side room, and the room on the other side had about 10 tables for cash games.
When we arrive about 5 minutes before the supposed-starting time, the action has already begun. I think my watch must have been slow, but still, I was upset they started without me. The Australian guy is at my table, with the bachelor (who paid for my entry – what a solid guy), and my Parisian friend was on another table. Immediately I noticed that everyone was speaking French, and no English at all, unlike in Amsterdam. The 2nd hand I hit top-two (QJ) on the flop, and slow played them like a chump. When I was predictably rivered by a straight by the guy next to me, I let out a “damn!†and soon realized this was not a good idea. The guy who beat me mimicked my exclamation and then said something in French to the rest of the table, “It’s always the Americans and English who have no class.†Obviously I heard him (go team grade 8 French education!) and I was like “Pardon, je suis Canadien.†He was not impressed, and immediately became my mortal enemy. I vowed to knock him out, and criticize his play at any and every opportunity, because if he is going to be a pretentious ass about one little comment about getting outdrawn then I was going to fulfill his stereotypical view of westerners.
I took down some pots, failed to draw to the nuts in some massive ones, and basically stayed afloat, all while the bastard Frenchman amassed a huge stack of checks. He was obviously a regular and kept really angry at the English guys/outsiders at the table. One hand where the Australian took a long time to make a decision, he got pissed off and folded out of turn (his cards passed the inner ring), but then he changed his mind and grabbed them back. Nobody saw it but me, and you guys know I wasn’t going to let that slide. I was like “hey, so can I do that too? You know, muck my cards, and then pull them back and play them?†And he was all snooty and said in English “the bet is small, it’s no big dealâ€. I just shook my head and said “that’s weakâ€. He lost the hand, but hated me more than ever.
After the re-buy, my buddy was quickly knocked out, but he sat in his seat for a few hands to watch. The dealer mis-dealt to him twice (he had no chips left) and French guy freaked out, yelling at him to leave the table. And then my buddy told me he was going to jump into some cash games, and the guy said “don’t worry, your friend here will be along any minute.†What a bastard! Too bad he was right. I kept missing flops all kinds and with a small stack and at still relatively low levels, it was impossible to steal anything. I ended up all in when I hit an ace on the flop, but was outkicked.
I turned to the guy next to me and told him I would see him again in 5 years on my next trip to Paris, and he was like, “Just wait for me after this tournament and we’ll play a heads-up cash game.†Damn! I was so mad, I went over and bought 200 Euro in chips and sat in a 2-2 pot limit dealer’s choice game, where they played about 14 different games, and I only knew about 8 of them. Sure they had stuff like 7 stud, hold em, Omaha, low ball, and hi-low versions of each. But then they also played some crazy games. One was called double hold em (like pineapple), where you played 2 flops and tried to win one of them. Another was called Courchevel – which was like Omaha, but you get 5 pocket cards, and there is one card flopped before the flop? And then there was another game called Aviation – which was like Omaha, but you had to discard a card every hand. I just folded when someone called these games, and stuck to the stuff I knew. I called stud 3 times in a row, and these old French men got upset, but i didn't mind, because I won each hand.
Also, the guys in the cash game were all very cool, and not at all pretentious. A much better experience for me. I played with them for a few hours, having an excellent time and breaking even. I wanted to wait for my enemy, but he made it to the final table (of course he did…).
Then something unbelievable happened. This cute girl comes into the room and starts staring at me. I was like, either she thinks I’m hot or she knows me from somewhere. It was really strange, but she left so I kept playing. Then later she comes back and sits down at the next table, and I look at her again, and I'm like, “Amsterdam.†It was the cute girl from the casino in Amsterdam that smiled at me. How crazy is that? I said “Are you following me around Europe?†And she smiled and said “are you on a poker tour as well?†What are the odds? If I wasn’t married I would have asked her out for sure, since I had 3 more nights in Paris.
I wanted to stay and find out her story, but my buddies forced me to leave. They met this 32 year-old venture capitalist from Scarborough in the casino, some high roller with ridiculously gaudy diamond cufflinks who was betting 600 Euro a hand, and he wanted to go out partying. My Parisian friend then took us all to a crazy lounge and the Scarborough dude ran up to the club, which had a line-up of like 100 people, and whipped out like 1500 Euro flapping it around in his hand, saying “Je suis Canadien, let me in the bar!†What a moron, I was so embarrassed, but I still let him buy me all my drinks inside. Best night ever.
All in all - lost money playing in Europe, but had an excellent time. Memories well worth the cash. Sometimes its cool to know that poker can be about fun, and not just winning money - but don't get me wrong, I would have been way more happy to knock out the mean frenchman and win that tourney...
Obviously you forgot to remind that guy who won the war. Both of them!
Great post. Thanks for sharing.
I can't wait to here the REAL ending to this story next Monday..
Just like the mailman baby.
...through, snow, rain, sleet.....