Quote:
Originally Posted by Chuck Bass
Damn I'd love to visit this region. Nice thread!
Glad you liked it my Finnish friend, and you should absolutely come.
TL;DR warning:
I think this thread would be nothing if I didn't offer my opinion on the poker here. Having spent many hours playing in Vegas for instance, or some other smaller casinos around Europe, I would say there are 3 major things that stand out down here. And let me be emphasize that this is MHO about the games in Natal, not Brazil in general, even though I think we could generalize to some extent in this matter.
1. Everybody is super friendly. I mean, really really friendly. Even if it's your first visit everybody will be very welcoming towards you. This in turn means that they are very upset if one goes on epic tilting or is rude at the table. In fact, I have seen on a couple of occasions that tables break because of episodes of rage. There will be an awkward silence and then mass cash out.
Even the internet kids with headphones and introverted personalities don't berate other players. This is a definite no-no. They will often have discussions among themselves about how they played a certain hand/spot, but it's never berating/offensive.
In my time here I've seen some truly horrible beats in huge pots. Never have I seen a player go ape over this. I can go off the reservation if it happens to me and I can tell that they are hesitant to talk to me the day after. That's the feeling I get when I step out of line.
2. The ebb and flow of the games, whether it's donkaments or cash games, is very different. Bet sizing, positional play and play in relation to stack sizes for instance is not much considered. I would say around 85-90% of the player pool does not pay attention to this. This makes it very difficult to make moves, however all you basically need is ABC poker to go deep. This also makes so much more fun to play, especially since the BIs are very cheap.
When it comes to bet sizing things get weird. I had a coaching session with kerwinty a few weeks ago and he basically had to ask twice if it's correct that they make it 10x with pocket nines for instance (he was reading my HHs). One of the top winners here in cash games does this, profitably. I guess his logic is that; "ok, if I make it 4x with my nines here I get 6 callers. Let's make it 10x and get 2 callers, then c-bet 400". It works for him.
This also goes for tournaments. It's very difficult to play a TAG game here, because you must make big bets pre to narrow down the field.
I must add that this is due to the low buy ins we have here. I was watching the stream from BSOP this weekend and was impressed by the level of play there, where the buy in is BRL 2.200 (about 1k USD).
3. Most importantly; it's like a brand new boom. They have like a 10 year delay or something here. I really don't know why, it's probably a number of reasons, but poker here is really exploding. It recently got approved as an official sport by some ruling in both the courts and by the ministry of sports in Brazil. They have Ronaldo as a posterboy for Stars, clubs are opening all over, the BSOP is constantly getting better etc, they have LAPTs and stuff. Internet poker is open and easy to play/transfer++. For me, who used to play online before, this is fun to part of again. Even though I don't play online anymore (because I'm old) I really enjoy the live scene here.
Sorry for the TL;DR. It's 05:30 in the morning and I just came back from a game of PLO. I'm sure I've left something out, but it doesn't matter.