Doesn't Wiesbaden have 1 of the friendliest rake in Europe as well?

yeah, I've commented on it on a few occasions in the poker rooms in europe thread. it's capped at €2 but they do expect a tip of €20 once in a while of pots that are €800-€1000.

And I'm pretty sure if you are a random tourist they won't drag you to the side every 30m like in Vienna. They might do it once if you absolutely don't tip and then you still don't tip big and they leave you alone. Still better than the absurd rake of €20 per pot most places have.

Across the river is the Casino in Mainz, which has a soft 5-10 game going on Mondays, rake is capped at €2 as well and I played there for a week every day and tipped the same as in the US and sometimes would tip more if the dealer is doing a good job and no one cared.

In Mainz and Wiesbaden, the tip is collected from all the games, pit games included and then distributed by senority. So usually dealers care less about how much you tip (as they are junior) and floor people are more concerned as it affects their bottom line. But poker tips is like between 1-5% of the overall pool so no one cares that much.

Great posts and congratulations - color me very envious! Also, thanks for the great chip porn!

Thanks for the tips on German casinos. I do want to hit them up at some point, but the thing is, I'm actually quite close to Black Member status on Pokerstrategy, and when I hit BM status they give me a free suit. So after I get my free suit I'll be taking it to Germany to play poker in style.

Hey man, cool thread, Dubnjoy000 linked me to it as I am moving to Calgary next month and I asked him if he had any info on the cash games over there.

I haven't had a chance to read it all yet but from what I gather you said on the first page that Cowboys Casino is your favourite one in Calgary I assume its been re named now to the Stampede Casino ?

I see you made that post over just over a year ago now so is that still the best place to play in Calgary or have things changed in the past year ? Anyways I will be subd and having a good read though all the info here before I move next month so thanks in advance for the info.

Its called cowboys casino and its located in the new Stampede Casino...

Great place 2 play after Calgary Flames games/ During stampede/ And weekends since there is a bar in the casino..

Yeah TC pretty much nailed it. It used to be called Stampede and was renamed to Cowboys like two years ago I think? Awesome place for 1/2 and 2/5. It was my favorite, but partly because it was by far the closest to me. Grey Eagle and Deerfoot are comparable depending on where in Calgary you're living. I'd say the 2/5 is best at Grey Eagle, but 1/2 is best at Cowboys, and Deerfoot falls somewhere in the middle for both. I haven't been in Calgary since September but I doubt things have changed much, if at all.

GL in Calgary, its a great city and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.

Thanks very much for the replies guys, sounds like there is decent enough action in all 3 casino's so will check them out for myself when I land next month.

Also very nice chip collection rockchucker, was doing something similar a few years ago when I was in Australia and New Zealand but somewhere along the way I lost them all

If you ever end up in that part of the world be sure to check out the games in Perth. Its a similar situation to Calgary by the sound of things with lots of drunken mine workers in at the weekends with money to burn so good times indeed.

It took me over two weeks to go play my first poker room in Budapest, but I'm completely OK with that! Have spent some time eating out and exploring the city, clubbing, playing a ton online and hanging out with some poker players who have definitely had more success than me. The break from live poker was well worth it. That being said, my research says there are 4 poker rooms to visit in my time in Budapest, so I need to get my live grind on.

Cotton Poker Club - Budapest, Hungary

I think this is the first room I've gone to that wasn't a strongly commercialized casino, and felt much more underground. It was definitely more of a challenge to get by in only English, as most of the players and staff only spoke Hungarian (or Magyar, as it is properly known). To get in, you had to walk inside a restaurant on a street corner, and then make your way downstairs with no real signs advertising poker. I was only able to figure it out because of the players walking in and out. Once I managed to register through the lady at the front who didn't speak English, I was directed to a back room where they were running a 100/200 HUF game (roughly .50/1 USD). There were about 6 tournament tables running in the main room, and this one cash game in the back - so it felt much more like I was playing this high stakes underground cash game, not the smallest stakes live game I've ever played before. Wanted to snap a picture, but didn't get a good opportunity to without it being obvious.

As for the game itself, it wasn't the juiciest game ever. Lots of young guys that didn't appear overly terrible, but I did manage to get a seat to the direct left of a whale that appeared to be high on crack or something. Opening every pot to 3k or more, and folding out of turn almost every hand by whipping his cards at the dealer. There's absolutely no way his behavior would be tolerated in any casino I've been to, but he was clearly the spot in the game so no one wanted to say anything. Wasn't able to get his money unfortunately, and he managed to induce a pretty bad misclick from me that cost me my stack with QQ vs AA. Finished down about 35k HUF, which is like $160 USD.

Wish I could've gotten a better looking chip, but this is the best looking small chip I could find...



Will get to Tropicana this weekend for sure. Maybe one of Universum and Euro club as well. Will have to see how the online grind goes.

Late to the party, but thanks for posting!
I've wondered what poker games spread at casinos across Canada were like and this was a great read all in one place.

Universum Poker - Budapest, Hungary

This is easily the biggest poker room in Hungary. Located in Duna Plaza, it's got plenty of games every night of the week ranging from 50/50 to 100/200 HUF and higher. I played a bit of 100/200 and dropped 30k HUF playing likely my C game (albeit very card dead). There's certainly been quite a few differences for me personally playing the Budapest games compared to everywhere I've played. Firstly, the currency. It's very weird doing the math in my head with large numbers, possibly because I'm naturally doing the currency conversion in my head on top of calculating pot sizes and all of the other "poker math". Was certainly a factor in my lolmisclick in the Cotton Club game. The other noticable difference for me is not being able to use English very comfortably at the table. Part of the appeal of live poker for me is the people; chatting up interesting people and hearing all of the fascinating non-poker stories that many have to offer. Not being able to speak anything but English (and usually anything I say ends up being to the dealers) makes it feel more like a job - and if it's just a job my time is better spent online most of the time, at least compared to the small stakes games out here. In my short time here, I've also noticed that Hungarian people aren't the most happy, bubbly people around. They all seem slightly bitter towards life, and at the tables I've been at almost no one seems to be talking about anything but poker. So it doesn't make for a great live atmosphere. That being said, it's still live poker, and it's obviously soft as hell, but the dynamics at play in the small sample size here in Hungary haven't been great.



Tropicana Casino - Budapest, Hungary

Located in a very touristy part of town right next to the Danube, Tropicana has a poker room located on the second floor. Unfortunately, they lack the players for it. I showed up once here earlier in the month on a Thursday, found a tournament running, and was told cash games might run on Friday/Saturday. So I showed up again this past Saturday, went to the poker room, and found it completely empty. I asked the gentleman at the cashier how often cash games ran at Tropicana, and he said "uhhhh, I don't know, maybe once a month?". Sigh.



I'm finally leaving Budapest on Saturday, and have booked two weeks of hostels coming up. The route will be from here - Szeged, Hungary -> Novi Sad, Serbia -> Belgrade, Serbia -> Timisoara, Romania -> Brasov, Romania, -> Bucharest, Romania. Once I arrive in Bucharest I'll set up shop for a couple weeks to get on dat online grind before I hit the road again. Only spending a night in Szeged, since there is another Universum Poker there but doesn't appear to be much else from a tourist standpoint. Booking a bit longer for Novi Sad and Belgrade though.

SERBS - help me out. Where can I play poker in Novi Sad and Belgrade? My research is coming up short on live poker options in those two cities. I found Grand Grasino Beograd but that's about it. Any advice is much appreciated. As always, if I'm passing through your city and you're interested in meeting up for drinks, holla at me.

Cheers, glad you've enjoyed it! The Canada grind was a blast last year, looking forward to finishing it at some point. I certainly wish I was able to get through the BC interior and Dawson City in particular. Soon enough, hopefully.

Awesome thread.

I was in Budapest a few years back and agree with you. People seemed a little on edge but maybe it was the language barrier. Looking forward to the report on Serbia and Romania.

Yeah I'm not convinced its the language barrier, but it probably doesn't help. People seemed friendlier in the other cities I had been in before coming here, and not just at the poker tables. It's such a beautiful city otherwise though, particularly at night.

SERBIA

This post might not be as lengthy as I expected when I entered Serbia. I figured I would have a club in Novi Sad to enter, and maybe 2-3 clubs in Belgrade. Turns out, that never happened. I walked in the rain for two hours trying to find the club in Novi Sad and failed. But I didn't even mind, Novi Sad was an incredible city that I thoroughly enjoyed exploring. Petrovaradin Fortress is a must see, and the city center was cool too. But the girls, holy hell the girls. Everywhere I turned there seemed to be an 8+. Stunners everywhere - the best city I've been to in terms of quality of women so far. Mind you, I have a very small sample size, but Novi Sad gets top marks from me. The Serbian people are also awesome - they smile much more than their northern neighbors in Hungary, and are incredibly helpful and friendly to tourists. More than once I found myself impressed at the friendliness of Serbs.

I'm finding very quickly that it's tougher to drag myself out to poker rooms when I'm on the road, particularly in hostels. If I'm in a hotel or on my own in some way, it's not hard at all. But in hostels, I'd absolutely much rather go exploring with fellow travellers during the day and then go out drinking with them at night. I feel like this is even more of the case here in the Balkans, where the travellers here are more of the adventurous, intelligent variety that I have great conversations with - as opposed to more of the rowdy drunken crowd you might find in the more stereotypical touristy European cities. There's also the fact that I've run pretty bad in live games so far this trip, so that has probably helped with my motivation being low. That being said - I still got a couple rooms in.

Grand Casino Beograd - Belgrade, Serbia

This ended up being more of an afterthought really. It was the last night of my stay in Belgrade, and I didn't want to leave Belgrade empty handed. A couple of the guys in my hostel were interested in going with me to the casino, so we split a cab. Unfortunately when we got there, two of us realized that we forgot our passports, which were absolutely necessary to get in. Not the first time I've forgotten my passport before going to a casino! Silly Canadians. On our return to the casino, there was a game running, but I felt really weird going to play in a game and having my two fellow travellers stuck wandering in a place while waiting for me to play a few hands. Ended up buying a few beers and going back, but not before buying a chip of course.



Casino Royal - Vrsac, Serbia

Vrsac was never part of my plans before coming to Europe. However, my friend and PS member pericas1991 convinced me to make a stop in his small little city near the Romanian border on my way to Timisoara. I'm so glad I decided to stop in. We took a walk up to the top of the mountain that looms over the city of approx 40k people, with a breathtaking view and some Serbian beers to go along with it. Pericas booked us a spot in this locals game in a small casino (more of a betting shop really) with one poker table. It was a very small game (slightly less than .25/.50) and the chips weren't distinctive as you can see. The game consisted of a great variety of players as well, with some older folks, some middle-aged whales, some downright odd individuals, and the 'internetskis' that the labels referred to Pericas and myself as. Finished up a bit more than 300bb, so that was a nice perk. Many thanks to Pericas for showing me his hometown, a place that I would never have found without the connections I've managed to make through this crazy game of cards.



I had no idea what to expect when I came to Serbia, but I loved it. Hopefully I'll be back one day. Timisoara recap coming up soonish - I've got some time to get these recaps done as its a pretty wet day here in Brasov.

When I arrived in Amsterdam almost 5 months ago, I expected this Eurotrip to revolve around live poker. The location of different poker rooms would dictate where I'd go next, and I'd come home at the end of the year with over 100 new chips. That has definitely taken a backseat to what this trip really should've been about - the love of travel and seeing firsthand the beauty of all these countries I'd only known as I glossed over names on a map. I didn't expect to thoroughly enjoy the company of all my fellow travellers in the hostels - there are so many interesting, intelligent, and fun people travelling around these countries that I'm happy to now call my friends. I've skipped a few casinos that were located on my route through the Balkan countries, but the chips I missed were replaced by awesome experiences that I'm sure I'll remember for a long time. The countries I've been travelling through since my last post - Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Slovenia - are filled with jaw-dropping natural beauty, delicious local food, and some of the kindest and most hospitable people I've met in my life. As a side benefit, I feel like the last few months have given my life a lot more balance than I had previously, and no doubt that will translate to future success at poker and life. Highly recommend all of the above countries to travel through if you get the opportunity.

Anyway, enough of the sentimental BS. I did get to a few casinos, so here's the writeups for them. Some of them were

Jack Poker Club - Timisoara, Romania

Timisoara surprised me with the overall quality of the two casinos I visited - both were beautiful rooms with great service and competent dealers. The Jack Club - fairly new it seemed like - actually ran a 10/20 lei game (~2/4 euro I think) which was a surprisingly big game for a city like Timisoara on a early weekday night. I played a smaller game and ended up down a bit. I do remember that there was a local nit grinder in my game that had two pretty cute girls sitting behind him and railing him for the session. Kinda comical for a 30ish year old grinder in essentially a microstakes live game having not one, but two fangirls on his rail. The plan was to absolutely own him for stacks several times over the course of the session and proceed to steal his two girls for some hot threesome action, but obviously that didn't happen.



Gentlemen's Poker Club - Timisoara, Romania

Took a while for this game to get running, but the floorman here did his best to make up for it. Gave me two beers on the house while he called his list of regulars to come start a game with me. Finally got one girl to start a game HU with me, and she played pretty decent for a small stakes live regular in a HU setting. Just seemed like she managed to have me beat every time at showdown, which was pretty frustrating. Eventually got a full game running and I think I broke even for the rest of the session. One of the better clubs I've played in so far though, including all of my North American exploits so far. If you're in the area, make sure you drop by and check it out.



Mario Grand Poker Club - Constanta, Romania

Yeah, I stayed two weeks in Bucharest and didn't step foot into a poker room. Oops. Guess I'll go back sometime. Did get into this one in Constanta, on the Black Sea Coast. It wasn't quite high season, but they still managed to run a game on an early weekday night. Had the dude on my right introduce himself as a gypsy to me (which is weird because that's a pretty derogatory term) then offered to introduce me to his sister who he described as very beautiful. All around odd situation that I had no idea how to handle, so I just laughed it off. The game broke at about 1am, but I managed to get a whale to play me HU, and then proceeded to have him godmode me HARD to only manage a breakeven session when I was up a few buyins. It's safe to say running pretty terrible in a lot of the casinos here likely contributed to my lack of enthusiasm in hunting out new casinos when I was having so much fun just travelling.



Casino Cezar - Zagreb, Croatia

OK to be fair, there were no opportunities to play in Macedonia, Kosovo, and Albania, and I did collect a couple of chips from casinos in Bulgaria that didn't run poker. Still probably shouldn't have waited so long to get back on that casino grind. Played a .50c/.50c euro game here in Casino Cezar, and I'm happy to report that I booked a 150bb win - maybe a small winning streak will boost the motivation again?



Casino International - Zagreb, Croatia

This game had a real weird vibe to it. Even though even at the table spoke English, no one made any attempt to socialize with me at any point and seemed pretty miserable in general. The one dude that did say a few words to me told me he thought I was a pro, so maybe I was giving off a bad vibe. I still struggle with games where everyone speaks a language other than English - I just end up looking like a stereotypical internet kid and can't talk my way out of that image.



Casino Bled - Bled, Slovenia

In such a picturesque town, I did manage to drag myself into the casino and ask about poker, but it turns out it only really runs after tournaments on a Friday. Such a shame, looked like a nice room too and it would've likely got a decent amount of tourists in the game given its location.



I'm in Ljubljana airport right now, waiting on a flight to London. My plan is to get right back on that casino grind and collect heaps of chips between the UK and Ireland, assuming I can access my Will Hill money from a betting shop there; if not there might be problems. Haven't been able to access my roll there since Skrill banned Canadians from using it for gambling transactions. I was hoping to stay in Europe until Christmas, but a silly Canadian law says I've gotta go back to Canada at the beginning of September. Apparently I can't be gone longer than 6 months from the motherland without filing a bunch of paperwork, or I lose a lot of the benefits of being a Canadian citizen and technically become a refugee. It's ridiculous, but I'll get that all sorted out at home and then fly out somewhere again.

The collection keeps growing I bet you are having a blast on your travels and meeting people from all over and all walks of life. The best way to learn about the world is to travel and be immersed in it. Have a good time in the UK!

Hey man, this is an incredible goal! Also from Winnipeg here. Keep up the fun travels!!!

Sweet thread bro and goals, subbed, saw this thread in the Skype chat

Seems like you are having a blast friend! I am quite envious of your previous visits, for the former Yugoslavian countries are high on my bucket list...

peace

Thanks for the support guys, always appreciated

Seems I can't access my Will Hill money (sighhhh) so stuck with low withdrawal limits from my bank and not a lot of cash on me. Will try to find some .50/1 quid games around. The venerable Victoria casino is not even a 10 minute walk from my hostel, so I'll find my way into there tomorrow most likely.

If anyone trustworthy can swap cash for stars in London (ideally like $1000-1500 pounds) get at me.

Sucks about WH, they locked me out of my account because it was registered out of Thailand and it jacked me up.

Good luck!

Grosvenor Victoria Casino - London, England, United Kingdom

Yes, this is the renowned Vic poker room. Given that it was less than a 10 min walk from my hostel, how could I not visit this room first? It's a beautiful room, with a very handy self-registration for cash games that I haven't seen anywhere before. Probably looked like an idiot just standing and watching people register with it for a while. I was also introduced to a seemingly British thing of dealers not having their own rack to make change with, which is a pretty annoying inconvenience. Given that I wasn't able to access my Will Hill money, I elected to play a 1/1 game here, which is probably best given that it was a Monday and the 1/2 probably wasn't amazing anyway. Booked a 100 pound profit.



Casino at the Empire - London, England, United Kingdom

And so begins the 1/2 adventures, as the majority of these rooms do not spread 1/1. Without the bigger roll I thought I'd have access to, I'm likely going to be restricted to one bullet in a lot of these games unless I run hot. Fortunately, I did run pretty well, booking a healthy 446 pound profit in a pretty nice room and reasonably good game. From an aesthetics point of view, it's not as nice of a room as the Vic, Hippodrome, or Aspers, but the game was certainly better than Hippodrome just down the road.



The Hippodrome Casino - London, England, United Kingdom

Pokerstars Live is here, and it's a very nice room - but what a terrible game for 1/2. Pretty nitty with young quiet guys that are likely terrible for the health of the game, and several of them seemed pretty competent based on what I saw. Was still able to book a profit of about 150 pounds or so, getting a bit fortunate by shoving AQ the turn of a JT58 board, binking the A river after getting heroed by a 5 lol. I actually don't haaaate the call if I were playing vs myself the way the action went, but without history it seemed pretty bad. Makes my shove pretty bad if he's calling that though lol.



Grosvenor G Casino - London, England, United Kingdom

I showed up earlier in the day because of its proximity to the Hippodrome and Empire, but they had no games running. Not surprising, as it only has 2 tables in a small casino with direct competition from the aforementioned other two rooms. They told me to come back at around 10 and a 1/1 game would probably start. I ended up going out and drinking with a few of my hostel mates, and made the decision at about 3am to play the 1/1 game anyway. I basically never play drunk, but I was aware enough of what was going on that I was still probably a favorite to book a profit in a 1/1 game anyway. Did manage to profit like 20 pounds before the game broke at 5am and I stumbled back to my hostel.



Aspers Casino - London, England, United Kingdom

This is actually my favorite room of all the London rooms. Beautiful room separated from the rest of the casino, and a seemingly softer crowd than all the others. Had a definite lollivepoker situation, where old dude 3bets to like 40, terribad spewy Asian kid just backraise jams 380 in. Old dude tanks for a few minutes, and makes a speech of "I think mathematically I'm supposed to call, but in practice I'm just gambling by calling for all that money." then open folds AA! Thankfully most of the table did not make fun of him, saying things like "I probably would've called, but sometimes you just got to go with your gut." Not even 15 minutes later, he 3bets Asian kid again, hand goes to river and river action goes bet, raise, 3bet allin from Asian, old man calls with AA on QT766sss board for an almost 1000bb pot. Absolutely hilarious sequence of events and it took a lot for me to keep from laughing. Still managed to lose like 165 pounds in this game.



Genting Casino Cromwell Mint - London, England, United Kingdom

Was my last stop in London, and it was a nice small room. Seemed like a friendly enough game, with a somewhat competent Indian-Englishman who had apparently just dropped like 15k playing 10/20 in Italy absolutely crushing the game. He made a good call with top pair vs me where I ran what I thought was a really good bluff line vs competent people, but that was before I found out he was playing 10/20 just a few days earlier lol. No way I would've ran that bluff vs someone who plays that much higher. Ran atrocious from there on and dropped 500 pounds, so not the best end to my London adventures. Reasonably satisfied with my play though.



Grosvenor G Casino - Brighton, England, United Kingdom

Took the train down to Brighton yesterday, and stopped in at this Grosvenor location close to the Pier. There were no cash games running when I arrived, so I stepped into a 20+10+5 knockout tourney of like 29 players. Was actually a decent structure for an event that small, but I managed to bubble it at like 2:30am in 6th. I had like 8bb and was by far the shortest stack of the 6, and they all decided to pay the bubble 40 out of the prizepool. Normally I NEVER agree to pay the bubble, it's silly and makes no sense for good players. But given the situation, and the fact that I'm not likely to ever play there again, I'm obviously snap accepting this deal. Shoved the hand after we made this agreement with KJ, BB called with J4s, binked a 4 and gg me. Collected two KOs as well, so profit booked in only the 2nd live tourney I've ever played in my life lol. I'm now 2/2 for cashing live MTTs - the other one was the first casino I played in during this thread at Grey Eagle. I still hate live MTTs.



I'll be playing at the Rendezvous Casino in Brighton tonight, and from there my British travels tentatively look like Bristol/Bath -> Cardiff -> Birmingham -> Nottingham -> Leeds/York. We will have to see whether time allows me to get Newcastle in, or if I go directly from there to Manchester and Liverpool. Most likely, Scotland will be saved for another trip as I feel it deserves more time than the 3-4 days that I'll only have time for.

wasy im in the skype travel chat if your ever in cardiff il come grab a beer with you play abit of live aswel!

Ah sweet, yeah I'm in Bristol now, going to Cardiff tomorrow and will be there for 3 days. Will send you a PM.