Hi guys

I'm moving to Barcelona in about a month, and could use some inputs to finding an apartment/a room to rent, places to go or just advise to make to stay as awesome as possible!

I was in Barcelona in june and played the Unibet Open at Gran Casino and lived in the "mar area" (dno what its really called). It down by the sea/beach and there is a TON of nice hotels, apartments etc.

There was some huge banners with www.renttopapartments.com at a couple of the buildings and every building looked really nice and was close to a really nice shopping mall with everything from McDonalds, Stake House to sushi places.

I'm in Barcelona right now actually. As for where to live, I'd definitely recommend finding an apartment in Gracia which is probably 5 min north of the very center with metro. It's an old hippie neighbourhood, which doesn't show that much anymore. The atmosphere is really good and you'll find the plazas filling with people, just sitting and drinking all days of the week. This is basically where all the locals go out while if you go out in the center, it'll be filled with tourists but that might be nice sometimes.
As for apartments, it seems really easy just to google it as there are a lot avaible. I think a room is like 300-400 but then you'll have roomate, don't know if you want that. I don't know if getting an apartment yourself is as easy. There you are probably looking at 1000 euro or more pr. month if you don't want to live in the suburbs. I'm not at all sure of that.
As for places to see, you'll probably figure it out if you're going to live there. I went to the Picasso and Miró museum and was not impressed with either of them. Going to the top of the mountain to the north offers an excelent view over the city and lets you know how big Barcelona really is and how far the suburbs stretches.

If you're going to learn Spanish, I'd definitely recommend getting a Spanish roomate and hope that they want to talk to you, as this is really the best way to learn. Besides that I'd recommend going to a language school or get private teaching if you can afford that. It's my impression that a lot of the schools aren't that good so do some resarch here. I'm current going to Speak Easy and it's ok, but nothing special at all. You can get by with English in Barcelona but it's definitely an advantage speaking Spanish.

http://www.loquo.com/en_us

this is a good site to look for appartement to rent .. or look for roommates

good advice: go to Macba in the evenings to get drunk

its a square near the Museum .. every day there are many people there getting drunk.. nice atmosphere ..

How good are the No limit games at the casino this days?

Also interested by the point.

Where can we play NLHE and PLO live there ?

Heard there was a huge rake ?

I would be interested in knowing this too. Would love to get a game going.

Hello all

I'm also in Barcelona right now. I'd agree with Rasmus' advice.

You don't say how long you're planning to be here, or what your price bracket is. However, if you're planning on staying for a while, I'd recommend lodging for the first week or two whilst you get used to the city, and work out where you'd like to be based, price range, room requirements etc. I lodged through this company

http://www.bcnrooms.com/estudiantes.php

who were great. Just email them in English (or Spanish if you prefer) and they'll sort something out for you. At €350-450 per month, it's much cheaper than a hotel. One thing I'd add is to ask for accommodation without young children – for the first couple of months here I played in the casino, so would get back at 3-4am, and then be woken by noisy children at 7am getting ready for school. I hastily bought some ear-plugs the next day! Once you've got an idea of where you might want to live in BCN, then you can start looking for somewhere on a more permanent basis. For me, so long as I was near to a metro station I didn't mind too much where I lived, so I now live in Mundet (near the north of the city) in a quiet residential area. As Sid275 also references, I used www.loquo.com/es_es (this link is the Spanish site, but there are several posts every day in English too, which is how I found my current place).

Rasmus is spot-on with the Spanish: I go to language school every weekday, so I know the grammar of Spanish fairly well, but my speaking/listening abilities are pretty poor because I don't really get the practice whilst playing poker online! To really improve you need to spend time in the company of native speakers. I go to www.olelanguages.com studying their semi-intensive course (2 hours a day) and I've found it pretty decent. You can get by with English, but you feel pretty dirty when you go around expecting people to speak to you in their third language (native language here is Catalan, although everyone is bilingual in Spanish). Will write about the casino in my next post...

Feel free to pm me or reply in this post if you have any further questions.

@IIIII, @Psychonication, @tuckercat

I played live in the Barcelona Casino five days a week from the middle of October to the middle of December last year (2011). Assuming it hasn't changed much in 5 months, their standard is:

• Four live tables NLHE, (€1/2 max buy-in €200, €2/4 max buy-in €400, €5/10 max buy-in unlimited). Sun-Thu inclusive there will be two tables €1/2, one table €2/4, one table €5/10. Fri/Sat they do not have any €1/2 tables, and the lowest limit is €2/4 (higher limit unchanged)
• Two live tables PLO (from memory €1/2 and €5/10, but I don't play PLO so cannot be completely sure on this: the higher limit is definitively correct)
• One poker machine €1/2 max buy-in €200, available every day. The poker machine is essentially the same as playing on-line – there is no dealer

The mix of limits does change a little depending on demand, but very rarely. All tables are nine-handed, but when you get down to about 4 players they'll start to merge tables.

The advertised rake on live tables is 5% upto €2/4 and 2.5% on €5/10. I think there is a maximum rake but I cannot remember what it is, for the lower limits you (almost) never hit it, so it doesn't come into play too much. In practice the rake is a little less than 5% because they only take 1€ for every €20 put in the pot. So, as an example, if the pot is €20-€39 the rake is still €1. Having written that, the effective rake is conversely inflated in large pots because there is a custom that when you win a big pot you tip the dealer a couple of euros.

The rake on the poker machine is 4%, and this is applied to the whole pot so long as a flop is seen (mimicking the online experience).

One caveat with the poker machine – when I was playing there the poker machine was new and being trialled: the rake started off at 3%. I haven't been there for a few months so they may have changed it again (or they may have introduced more machines, or removed the one they had – I don't know).

You will need your passport to enter the casino. It's free to enter the section where the slots and automated roulette machines are. To enter where the card games are (including poker), a day pass is about €5, a month pass ~€40, and there is an annual pass too. No dress code within reason (so, for example, trainers are OK, but swimming trunks are not).

I was going to write about how you actually get onto a live table, but this post is getting rather long. If interested, request it in this thread and I'll write about it. Expect about an hour wait though, rising to two hours or more if you are unlucky.

I played €1/2, €2/4 and the games were incredibly weak. There are some Spanish regs, about half of whom are solid and half of whom are very bad. The rest is made up of drifters from the roulette, black jack, and punto blanco tables; youngish guys who have seen poker on TV and want to have a go (lots of these on Thu, Fri, Sat nights buying-in for the minimum, waiting for a decent hand for about 30mins, getting bored and shoving with KJo); plus the odd foreign reg like me.

Before I played live, I had been playing NL100 online successfully, having worked up from NL4. I found the transition difficult. Bluffs that work at NL100 were called down at live NL200. For example, I'd be called down over 3 streets by villain with 99 on board of KKJT3, including him calling a 3bet pre . I would say that live NL200 is even worse than online NL4. If you are in a pot HU with a reg who also knows you are a reg, then you might want to venture a bluff. However NEVER BLUFF AN UNKNOWN: instead we're value-betting 3 streets with TPTK. I lost several stacks this way because every now and then I'd slip back into online NL100 habits. Eventually I found I could not play online NL100 and live NL200+ successfully because the standards were so antithetical. My online NL100 habits were bad for my live NL200+ habits, and vice-versa. So for about 8 weeks I played live exclusively and that was very profitable. I'd have played at €5/10 in a heartbeat if I had the bankroll for it.

Sorry for length of post, pm/reply in thread if any questions.

swimrun,

Thank you for the update, this is very useful information

I'd like to know more about how to get on a table. Was everything spoken in Catalan? I would assume the dealers would also speak English fairly well. Did you have any language/communication issues at the tables?

Perhaps I will see you at the tables.

On a side note, I've got plenty of very good Moroccan hash, would be quite happy to share some with a fellow 2p2er. Thanks again for the update.

All the staff in the casino, except some of the waiters, can speak fairly good English. The language at the tables is Spanish, and all the dealers can speak English (and do so in a helpful way when it's obvious you're a foreigner). I always found the dealers good, pleasant and professional.

I don't play live at the moment, so we won't meet in the casino. Would be good to meet up with someone who can follow poker talk though. If you fancy a beer or some food somewhere pm me.

Right: how to get onto the tables in the casino. Once you've done it once you'll be fine, but I've yet to see a first-timer get it right first time! The poker tables are in the basement. To get there you'll have to show your pass (daily, monthly or annual) to the attendant who will scan it and let you in. Descend the stairs and find the poker tables in the corner. The waiting list is electronic: there is a large plasma screen on the wall by the poker tables showing the current waiting lists for each table. To get on the list scan your pass on the machine below the plasma screen and select which tables you want to play at. For me, in two months, only once was there not a waiting list. Within a few seconds of making your selection, you should see your name on the list (unless there are more than 20 people on the list, in which case your name will be on the list, but will be off the bottom of the screen).

Don't worry about this bit too much – if you get confused just go right up and ask one of the pit bosses to show you what to do. They all speak English.

The next bit is the important bit. There's no knowing how long the wait will be. Typically the list will move in fits and jolts: no movement for 45mins, and then the list will whizz through 5+ people in one go. This happens because there is a vacant seat and all those waiting have got bored and wondered off. MAKE SURE YOU ARE NOT ONE OF THEM, because if you are, you have to go back to the electronic sign-up and join the bottom of the queue again.

There are two ways to avoid this scenario:

1. Wait around the area where the pit bosses are: when a seat becomes vacant they will verbally call out (not very loudly) the next name on the list, wait around 30 seconds, and if there is no reply, move onto the next name. You need to be there in that 30 second window: if not you are removed from the waiting list
2. Ask one of the pit bosses for a beeper or buzzer (it clearly has no agreed name, since I've heard it called several names: all synonyms for beeper). It's a cylindrical grey plastic thing, similar in shape and size to a small aerosol can. You'll have to give them €50 deposit, but you get that back as soon as you return it.

The beeper solution is by far the better choice: the pit boss will assign it to your name, and as soon as your name gets to the top of the list, they'll set off the beeper. Then you can wonder all over the casino, safe in the knowledge that when a seat is available your beeper's going to start flashing and beeping. Then you can just head over to the poker tables and take your seat.

One final thing: unless you like the other games at the casino (roulette, punto blanco etc.) take something to occupy your time. A couple of magazines, a tablet, music (radio waves don't penetrate into the basement unless you sit near the smoking area), anything. Otherwise you're going to be sitting around for a hour or more with not much to do. They do have big screens which are always showing sport, which can pass some of the time.

Good luck!

Whats the best option, if i need a SIM card with internet for only 3 months ?

If moving to Barca is Spanish what you should learn? I have spent a fair amount of time there and when attempting to speak Spanish to people (my Spanish is awful) they were very condescending and just spoke English, some going as far as telling me they refuse to speak Spanish full stop

I'm going to be a nit but Barça is the name of the football club, never the city.
You can say Barna if you want.