Barcelona - the adventure begins!

So I've moved to Barcelona! I've finally done it. Been homeless since March, so had 4 months of living out of a suitcase going from hotel to hotel, apartment to apartment and now I've finally "settled" somewhere.

I chose Barcelona because it made sense from almost every angle. I love the city. I love the language and always wanted to be fluent. I love the weather. I love the food. And crucially, Victoria loves all those things about it too. It has very good access to everywhere major, especially to England and there is a decent enough live poker scene. 

It's not without it's downsides of course. No major online poker sites can be played there, the Catalunians make it difficult for foreigners to settle, and the language barrier is a short-term obstacle to getting involved fully, making friends etc. 

But when cash games in England are as dead as they are, and I had such a strong desire to make a change, Barcelona just ticked every box. 

A group of us spent 2 weeks there for the Estrella/EPT week.It was an absolutely mental festival, with every event breaking attendence records and the place buzzing every day. Poker went fairly disastrously until the most unlikely get-out occurred and turned into my 2nd biggest ever score! the 5k main went terrible, as did various 2k and 1k sides. And then it came down to a 1k re-entry. It started terribly, I lost half my stack and then blinded out for a few hours, shoved a bowl with A5 and got called by AJ. I got there, made day 2 with 16bbs and my some status on fb about what a sorry state of affairs it was that given all the sick tournaments I'd played that trip and all my hopes were resting on 16bbs in this! And then just ran like absolute god and came 2nd for €80k! What a silly game this is. 

The rail that didn't get kicked out

2013 was such a terrible year for tournaments I don't think I even cashed a £1k+ buyin comp! Whereas this year I've had tons of deep runs, cashes, 10-30th place finishes in huge field £1k+ comps so I feel like I've been knocking on the door of something like this. It felt amazing and I was just so lucky that day, I can't grumble about my luck for a while after that! 

We had a pretty sick night in Opium, Sebastian Ingrosso was playing and there was a good group of us all out till the small hours. Several people misses their flights home as a result! Victoria and I didn't even have a flight home, we just stayed out here! 

We have an apartment 60 seconds walk from the beach in a lovely authentic Catalan street in the Barceloneta region. 

My walk to "work" is a lovely 10-15minute stroll along the beach, with the beach on the right and some of Barca's coolest clubs, bars and restaurants on the left. It's hard to feel bad about life with that commute. 

I'm playing live cash most nights, a mixture of €3/6 holdem and €5/5 PLO! Ive never played much PLO before but decided that most of the money in live cash games is in PLO these days rather than Holdem and I'd like a new challenge. I'm definitely at that stage where we all were once with Holdem - just starting out and running like god so we think we're amazing but we're definitely really shit! Yeh that's me. I'm basically trying to play really tight whilst learning, but applying holdem principles and being aggressive when ranges are capped etc. Also by playing hands that make nut flushes, or nut straights you end up being on the right end of "coolers" much more often that those playing looser pre. That's the idea anyway, and I'm getting some tips from some seasoned plo pros which is very useful indeed. Really enjoying it anyway! 

Coming up: 

I'm currently in the Dordogne, in France on a family holiday, then there's a big night out in Nottingham to celebrate everyones recent success (so many people who've been due binks / heaters have got there lately, esp shout out to Jack and Thigh, both were "due" for so long!) so that'll be awesome to celebrate. Then I'm staying in England for a week because a) can grind WCOOP in England not in Spain, and b) Mitch is getting married! Then back to Barcelona for a few weeks until I guess EPT London. 

Goals:

I rarely make poker goals, but I have some fitness goals at the moment. One is the 100 pressup challenge - where you have 6 weeks to build up and by week 7 the idea is that you can do 100 pressups. October 1st is the date I aim to do the 100!

Good luck everyone!