Freezing My Ass Off at the Bottom of the World
Posted by admin on Aug 8, 2008
If you’d told me on any day this year except this one that on the 7th of August, I’d be wearing a toque and a sweater, drinking my coffee black and still be freezing my ass off, I’d have laughed in your face. I’m a proud Canadian. As such, I should be impervious to the rigors of cold, especially at a time of year where over-ambitious air conditioning should be the only means through which frigid temperatures might be applied, am I right?
Incorrect.
Funny things happen to those pre-formed notions when you’re sitting at the bottom of the world. I’m a ten minute drive from Punta del Este, a small Ocean-side city in Uruguay. That’s Uruguay, as in ‘Uruguay is south of the equator’, covering a Latin American Poker Tour for PokerStars and ESPN. If it didn’t occur to you that it’s wintertime south of the equator, I wouldn’t be too ashamed. I forgot myself until I received an e-mail a few hours before departure advising ‘bring a sweater.’ It’s apparent now that long johns, scarf, mittens, snow shoes, electric blanket, turtlenecks and marshmallows for the open flame that I’m aspiring to find now would have been in order.
That’s right. You just read two paragraphs dedicated to my freezing my ass off. If Reinaldo Venegas –editor of Bluff en Espanol– hadn’t given me a hat to maintain some kind of body heat, I might not have managed even that much.
This is an unusual situation I’m in here. Punta del Este is one of South America’s most popular vacation spots from December to March, those months in which you couldn’t freeze magma here. In the off months, the city is more or less deserted, just one of the reasons Uruguay was so pleased to have Stars contribute to their August travel and tourism industry. Aside from the 400 poker players, ‘Stars staff and assembled media, the place is more or less deserted. We’re running amuck.
With the locals abandoning the area for warmer climes, there isn’t too much to do here. There’s a small casino, but playing poker there isn’t much of an option. The rake is 5% with no maximum, a fact that really hits you between the eyes when you see $120 raked from a single pot. The caliber of play in those games is low enough that it’s almost worth the fight against the house, except that the folks dealing the cards don’t know the game and watching them pass pots to the wrong player or take ten minutes to take that three-figure rake or deal 15 hands an hour is entirely tilt-inducing. I figured that out while getting rivered on a $2,500 pot last night*. For the players, the state of the cash games are extra incentive to dominate in the tournament.
* OK, let me say here that I’m very good at taking my beats. In this particular hand, I got all-in on the turn with the board A-5-10 Q while holding A-5 to my opponent’s A-K (and an all-in player’s K-10) only to get rivered by a king. I’m pretty sure I’d have been fine if the dealer didn’t literally take seven minutes to deal that river card, then try to pass me the pot after doing so. Throw in the ironic habit they have of yelling “professionalis!” after every tip. Even I have my limits…I got up.**
** Special thanks to uber-blogger Joe Posnanski, whose work inspired my use of the asterisk here.
The LAPT itself is proving a great success. The room was filled to capacity and then some to start the day. All manner of Latin American celebrities are here along with Humberto Brenes, Barry Greenstein, Greg Raymer, Brandon Cantu and a host of others. These folks are friends of mine, or at least friendlies (write enoug nice things about someone and they’re bound to like you on some level), but it’s nice to get a chance to see them outside the chaos of a WSOP or WPT. For them, a little $2,500 tournament is a nice excuse for a getaway and good times. It has a humanizing effect. Many good meals are bound to come.
The correlation between the pot size and the tournament entry definitely got me thinking. It’s been a good few weeks, with my poker profits somewhere in the $7,000 range, enough to show me that I’ve been learning through watching admidst my absence from the tables. I felt like a superior player in that game last night, yet here i sit on the sidelines while the faces from around that table play poker with the pros. Of course, in a couple of weeks, I’ll have hit a cold streak and will realize it was a ridiculous notion in the first place. Right?
![[del.icio.us]](http://wisehandpoker.net/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://wisehandpoker.net/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Google]](http://wisehandpoker.net/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[LinkedIn]](http://wisehandpoker.net/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/linkedin.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://wisehandpoker.net/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Windows Live]](http://wisehandpoker.net/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/windowslive.png)
![[Yahoo!]](http://wisehandpoker.net/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/yahoo.png)
![[Email]](http://wisehandpoker.net/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)