I think you'd be surprised at the % of Americans who couldn't do the math to correctly answer in the last post.

Congrats on the win.

Is it still like 7 hkd = 1 usd? Also which "spa" did you guys head to afterwards?

Good questions, Mixgame. The actual conversion of HKD to USD is 7.75 to 1 though the best I've managed to get was 7.6 without having to pay a fee. A 2% markup isn't so bad, whereas I saw places that sold at 7.0 hkd to a dollar which is a 10% markup. Both signs had the same "currency exchange" sign but were in different parts of the city. I'm glad I decided to shop around with my hundos before cashing them in. Note that many of the banks required you to be a member of their bank otherwise they'd charge a fee of 100HKD to exchange, and I didn't bother getting the exchange rate though I assume it's pretty good.

There was lots of talk about celebrating at a spa but for all the talk we were actually just too exhausted to go anywhere. The boys are discussing Ruth's Chris tonight but with my recent weight gain I'm not going to celebrate with a big ol' steak till I lose 10-15 lbs first.

Anyways winning at poker is my job, unlike these guys, so I'm not allowed to celebrate. It's what I'm supposed to do. A maid doesn't pop the champagne every time she cleans a house nor does a pilot buy himself a celebratory steak when he lands a plane. These guys deserve to celebrate, they went out, had fun and won. To me, twas a day at the office.

Though I am going to go buy some new threads and go clubbing tonight but was gonna do that regardless.

PS - we went to Macau at 1930 and took the 0600 ferry back the next morning. I was awake the entire previous day, as were the other two guys. We weren't in great shape by the morning, though at least I'm used to all nighters like that from my Vegas days where their internal clocks are probably used to a more regular schedule.

what games/stakes you play in macau? deep stacked games? soft?


why do you have to take a ferry? total time from hotel to casino?

how much more expensive are things there than the recent places youve been?

i would be interested in macau cash games :[]

be surprised how many Thais can't do 9x8 in their head without using a calculator..

I played 25-50 NL (3-6$US). Waited approximately 1.5 hours when I got there after putting my name on that list and 50-100 nl. Game played somewhat deep, and was soft at all times.

You have to take a ferry because it's a different island. Poker is illegal in HK. You also need your passport. Total travel time from my hotel to the casino was...maybe 2 hours? You take a free bus from the ferry station to the casinos, just so happens Venetian is probably the farthest away. Galaxy looks like an awesome casino...too bad I hear they don't have poker. Wynn was running PLO which is why I regret not going there instead. Wynn is also more conveniently located.

Things are much more expensive, though it doesn't seem unreasonable by any means. Taking the Subway (MTR here) costs 5$ HK or less than 1$ US. I bought a 32 gig USB drive for 100 HKD (13 US). It's shaped like darth vader. Food has been excellent so far. Soups with beef brisket has been flavorful, as have all the other meals I've gotten.

so like 3.5 hours from leaving hotel to actually playing, that is pretty brutal

would there be anywhere reasonably cheap to live on the island? or is that like asking if there is anywhere reasonably cheap to live on the strip in vegas?

were there a lot of games running?


jessica has a pretty hot cousin named sylvia who you may wanna try and find while you are over there, i asked her if she would give me an introduction and she said no

Dante - There were maybe 7 games running at the V, but even with a decent sized waiting list they refused to open more tables. They couldn't communicate why though.

I haven't found inexpensive accommodations in Macau, though I haven't searched extensively.

Sorry to hear about Jessica's cousin Sylvia not working out for you. I remember you telling me you were smitten with her photo.

PS - I miss J-dawg.

me to, but im also jealous of her considering she is with my one true love

What's your background with poker if you don't mind me asking?

I think they have a legal cap on the number of tables they can run.

only with long term rentral contracts and you'll have visa issues, most bustos sleep in the saunas which is the cheapest short term accommodation (costs about $25 to use the facilities for a night + you can sleep in a cubicle / long chair)

unlike vegas hotels there are pretty expensive (~$65 a night for something reasonable)

I originally got into poker in 03 while watching the now classic coverage of Moneymaker's WSOP run. Played 5 dollar tourneys with my college friends until 6 in the morning. Soon we were playing 20 dollar tourney's, then 60$ buyin cash games. Then some of us found underground card rooms in the city, others started playing online. We'd make trips to AC.

Eventually I'd get into Pot Limit Omaha and make some serious money online. It also gave me the chance to travel the world in '06. I had time to spend at the gym, read books, generally to do what I wanted. I owe a lot to the concept of poker rather than a real job, and that's why I'm so passionate about it. I don't take for granted the that I don't have to work 8-10 hours a day.

At this point I took a job in Korea as a teacher because I wanted to. Unfortunately at the time there were serious crackdowns on poker in Korea. All the websites were blocked. I found underground poker rooms there, but all those running it were arrested almost as soon as we found them. Korea is a very conservative country when it comes to social issues like this I think. Drug laws are very strict, and it's very difficult to find weed, while strangely alcohol is not only encouraged but is a matter of pride. How many bottles of soju you can drink is a badge of honor if it's high or a mark of shame if it's low.

I got through my one year contract without poker (and developed a bad blackjack habit, perhaps as a result). On the post-Korea vacation in Costa Rica (which had live poker, thank god!) and Panama, I was offered a job at the poker room at the Marriott casino. I'd be a prop for 20$ an hour, play with my own money, keep my own winnings. Yes please.

It was good while it lasted, but the casino shut down the poker rooms after I was there for 6 months. The classic case of poker being profitable, but there was the opportunity cost of not having more pai gow or slots or whatever bull**** they eventually filled it with that made more money per square foot.

I helped produce a commercial for their poker room. I can't find it on youtube though...it's sort of cheesy. And didn't save the poker room so, that's too bad.

Oh, here it is http://www.metacafe.com/watch/357027...a_city_panama/

Then I played exclusively online in Panama. Then I moved to LA for a year and played exclusively live. Then I moved to Las Vegas and played exclusively live for a year. Now I'm in Asia. Hope that answers your question.

Being lazy. Don't feel like writing. My hotel has a badass pool and hot babes...can't give the fans a long post on Dalat yet. Here's some pictures though.











Gotta Get that HONEY!

Also, this happened in Hong Kong. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiC1-...&feature=g-upl The people there were pretty angry. All the children were wearing "death for muhammad" masks. Which was an appalling display of child abuse to me.

Interesting life, I'm sure you have plenty of good degen/party stories to tell. (Would like to hear some). Nice trip pics too, your accomodation looks 'interesting', was it recommended?

The third pic down of the stairs leading up into a tree/building? Wtf is that?

Wow, I just watched that youtube clip, crazy, that must have felt really strange.

What were you thinking at the time and afterwards?

That's Crazy House in Dalat. Construction began in the early nineties but continues today with extensions on the mad ideas of it's architect. The architect happens to be the daughter of a Vietnamese General and lives in one of the houses (the spider themed house). If you want you can stay there as a hotel, but I'd be wise to do my best to hang on to whatever sheds of sanity I have left.

The compound reminded me of a 'Through the Looking Glass' scene.

Fury - I was thinking that these people all look really angry. Was happy to have Hong Kong police everywhere. I didn't fit in so well to the parade with my X-Men t-shirt and lack of face hair.

Also I don't sport that distinctive scowl and general unhappiness/anger that these marchers seem to demonstrate. I usually have a smug little smile because maybe I just told a joke that only I find funny. I was even cracking lame jokes during the March. Weird how we got off the MTR station in the middle of angry islamists whose signs supported martyrdom (Death for Muhammad) and as we made our way up to the famous tourist spot their march seemed to follow just behind us, shouting angry chants. Just being generally pissed off.

I wonder how many lives it would save if masturbation was allowed for them, of if their women could show a little leg, or if...etc etc they have a terrible life so they are generally angry, IMO. END RANT.

You wouldn't see that sort of construction in uk with so many building regs, and there would be health and safety warnings all over it. (Which is no fun imo.)

In HK, do you see many westerners? I imagine quite a few prob live there. What's the food like there? Lots on offer and pretty good I expect.

Cheers

In HK I stayed at a hostel and therefore saw many westerners. Hung out with British people, Irish people, even an guy from an Islamic republic. The Islamic guy was there to buy iphones and make a profit when he brought them home. He went to play poker with me. Doesn't sound very Islamic does it? He actually spent a long period of his life living in California. When I asked him whether moving to an Islamic republic was a culture shock, he said that while it would be terrible to be a woman living there, as a man it isn't so bad.

He in fact runs an underground poker room. You know, one of those things that if they catch you doing they will probably execute you.

Note to self: Never ever live in an Islamic country. Actually, try to avoid places like that altogether.

Food in HK was excellent and less expensive than I expected, although not cheap.

so far, which area or country did you find the girls to be the cutest/hottest?

Kaizen - Great question. Unfortunately I feel A) my sample size was too small to judge the aggregate hotness of a nation of girls and B) I'm far too biased to accurately tell you which to gauge the cutest/hottest. Certainly the countries where I had special connections with certain girls would persuade me to be more favorable towards those types of girls, just as those girls with more sweet personalities will lead me to believe they are more attractive than they are. Hot, vapid, bitchy girls are not at all my cup of tea, so I don't consider them attractive IMO because they're ugly on the inside.

That being said I did find there to be absolutely wonderful women in all of the countries that I've visited so far. The girls are just damn pretty everywhere. I may lean more towards the Vietnamese and Philipina girls myself, Vietnamese because simply there was such a high percentage of beautiful girls. They seemed to have sweet attitudes as well. The Philipina girls are also very pretty IMO and I'm partial to a girl with a decent English Vocabulary. Can't go wrong with any of the other girls either. Chinese girls I saw in HK, Macau were very pretty, though all the pretty ones had boyfriends hanging around and I just had a series of strikeouts in my 4 nights there, though actually didn't go clubbing at all so that may be part of it. Just tried game in ordinary places. And I don't really have any decent game so didn't work, o well.

ezyano what if i told you that korean girls on the street look like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmM04_OgajU

Also understand people have different taste in women... so what you find hot might not be what OP might consider attractive.

Thanks for the heads up, Spoke. I love Korean women. I love Japanese women. I love Vietnamese, Filipina and Thai women. Girls in HK were sexy as hell. Cambodian girls too.

Spent a year living in Korea, had a Korean American gf at the time. She was most excellent but of course that prevented me from actually dating a Korean Korean girl.

Temujen you're right, everybody has their own tastes in women. I'd like to think that I love all women, which puts the ez in ezyano. But there's some that may seem more attractive than others, but this may be my personal bias from the relatively small sample size of girls whom I've encountered.

Also keep in mind when you go out to the nicest clubs, everyone is generally beautiful. When you're in the ghetto everything is generally ugly. So depending on your environment in a given country, you may find the girls beautiful or ugly because you are either exposed to the young sexy models who pose for FHM or the cracked out girls who have 2 kids but are still just looking for their next fix.

Allright, less this thread get too sidetracked by women just want to mention a few books I'm currently in the middle of. Just started "The Intelligent Poker Player" by Philip Newman and it appears pretty good so far. Sort of starts off with broad ideas, and he promises to get more specific into certain decisions and hands as the book goes on. I'm also geeking out on a book called "The Metaphysics of Star Trek" by Richard Hanley. Not sure how that one will turn out but the writing seems good so far. A short excerpt -

"Why explore at all? Because travel broadens the mind. When we visit other places and other people, we often encounter different ways of living, and this provokes us to examine our own lives anew. If we are objective and reasonable in this examination, sometimes we will conclude that there is more than one way to live, sometimes we will conclude that the way other people do things is not for us, and sometimes we will conclude that we ought to adopt that other way of living. So travel isn't just about exploring other people and places, it's about exploring ourselves and testing our limits."

city of god should be the next book you read


my feelings will be hurt if it isnt