Where in the world could you play poker?

Von nzvr4poker, 19.01.2009, 4361 Aufrufe, 29 Kommentare | Kommentar hinzufügen

Hey folks,

It’s time for another blog  First of all thanks for the many kind comments that you have written about the first two blogs. It’s nice to have so many well-wishers and I look forward to bringing you all a weekly insight into my poker life. This week I thought I would write an article for the blog on my favourite places to play poker when I am playing online and live at casinos.

Since December 2006 I have travelled to many awesome places around the globe to play the game I love which is poker. This begs the question – Out of the places I have been to where would the best place to live be? For the sake of being fair to a point I will select my favourite city that I have been to from each continent and will discuss my desires to live in each destination.

For starters we have my European poker choice which is Barcelona, Spain.

Barcelona is an art-decorey type city with a lot of Mexican looking buildings. Being on the east coast of Spain with views to the Mediterranean Sea and basking in a lot of sun this is an ideal place to live if you are a poker player. The lucrative European Poker Tour (EPT) has an event here in autumn (Northern Hemisphere) every year and the thought of playing Internet poker on the deck of an apartment in this environment is very desirable. Recently, Spain has introduced a poker tour of their own increasing the tournament options that a poker player has in the country. Also worth mentioning is Barcelona’s close proximity to many of my favourite cities and countries including Germany and Poland. In my opinion Barcelona has a lot of very beautiful women and has one of the greatest soccer teams in the world – F.C. Barcelona to follow in one’s leisure time. On the downside petty crime is somewhat prevalent and if English is not your first language then your Spanish will need to be worked on.

Next, we move onto Asia. Since I have only been to South Korea and Philippines so far my obvious choice is Seoul, South Korea. This may change after I visit Macau later this month.

Seoul is a technologically advanced city with a very high population density. South Korea is known as the computer gaming capital of the world and this obsessive culture now seems to be embracing poker at an ever increasing rate. Because of this, more and more casinos in South Korea are offering cash games and the odd tournament to boot to cope with this demand. The most prominent tournament held here is the pokerstars.net APPT Seoul event which has so far being held in the autumn time. Korea’s advanced transport systems, sound Internet connections and easy-going lifestyle can make it an attractive option to poker players who value good infrastructure in their every-day life. A big downside to living in Korea and playing poker is that the country falls in a time zone that is not very conducive to the major tournaments that are available to play online.

Oceania is the third continent that I examined when it comes to poker living arrangements.

Melbourne easily wins here in my opinion.  Melbourne and is host to the first unofficial grand slam poker event of each year – the Aussie Millions tournament. Melbourne is the shopping, sporting and cultural capital of Australia with no shortage of activities for even the poker player to see and do. Watching sports events at the hallowed MCG and Melbourne Park (hosts the grand slam tennis event – the Australian Open) sports complexes and being able to shop at a full array of boutique shops on both sides of the Yarra river make this a very vibrant poker city to live in. In terms of poker, Melbourne has a very strong live poker scene with five major poker festivals a year featuring several main events and regular weekly tournaments with decent prize pools, as well as a wide variety of cash game options. A big downside to being a poker player who lives in Melbourne is the inconsistent and sometimes erratic weather and for Internet players the time zone that Melbourne is in can mean some very early wake-up calls.

Well the obvious choice for North America is sin city itself – Las Vegas, USA.

Las Vegas is the Mecca of poker and for good reason. In terms of poker there is the World Series of Poker Main Event (WSOP) which every poker player wants to be a part of and you can get a game of poker literally any time you want it. Every casino on the strip and in downtown Vegas now offers a poker room for budding poker pros and degenerates alike to try their hand at. The online scene is very big of course with many young pros choosing to set up their operations in Vegas, dotting the inner city and surrounding suburbs with a mixture of mansions, houses and flats dedicated to Internet poker. With many of the main poker sites starting their major tournaments at suitable times for US players, Las Vegas which is three hours behind US Eastern Time is very attractive to online players. Throw in the never-ending nightlife and a considerable amount of good looking women as well as the reasonably close proximity to other US poker cities and you can see why Vegas is an attractive option for poker players.  However, a major issue when considering whether or not to make Vegas home whilst playing poker is tax. Depending on your circumstances around 1/3 of your poker earnings can be taxable. This is a serious downside to playing poker professionally in Las Vegas and indeed the USA.

Lastly, we fly down to South America with my choice of city being Punta del Este, Uruguay.

Punta del Este is a very new destination on the poker map.  Located slightly north of the capital city Montevideo, Punta del Este is a small resort town with a casino in the Mantra Resort which plays host to the local Latin American Poker Tour (LAPT) event. As Punta is very much still developing it does not have a large population base and therefore the live game action suffers because of this. This is an obvious major downside to being a professional poker player wanting to live in Uruguay.  If it is girls that you are interested in then you will not be disappointed here as Uruguay has its fair share of babes.  However, before packing your bags for this exotic destination consider that Spanish is the official language of Uruguay (and indeed a majority of the South American continent). In some cases little or no English is spoken. One of the biggest upsides for Punta is the geographical location is very favourable as it is in a similar time zone to North America – being one hour ahead of American Eastern Time. This makes it an ideal destination for players that play predominantly online.

When considering my five continental poker city options I believe the best destinations for live poker and online poker are as follows:

Live poker: Barcelona, Spain
Online poker: Punta del Este, Uruguay

On a positive note to end I would like to share some success with you all. A couple of days ago I won a satellite to the first event on the new ANZPT (Australia New Zealand Poker Tour) in Adelaide, due to be played at the start of February. It seems that poker players like to work on the weekends as well – including Saturday                                 

This week is a busy week for me as I am moving some of my stuff to Australia at the start of this week. I’m going to live there for the remainder of this year with my lovely girlfriend Gaylene. On Friday I have a weekend series of tournaments in New Zealand’s biggest city Auckland. I will let you all know how I did in the next blog. Hope to have some pictures for all of you of my travels soon.

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