Travel Report: EPT13 Barcelona, Day 2 -- Three Hours (and Other Threes)

Kind of a crazy day today, what with the 10 a.m. start time for Day 1b of the Estrellas Poker Tour Barcelona Main Event.

In the non-poker world, 10 a.m. would represent a late start to a person’s workday, but such is far from the case in poker. Noon has been a standard earliest start time as long as I can remember, with the monkeying around with things the WSOP did this summer to start an hour earlier therefore predictably causing an understandable rumpus.

This 10 a.m. start was a bit hard on your humble scribbler, primarily because I tend to have other work I have to do on these trips, and the mornings become the only reasonable time to get such tasks done. Didn’t get to sleep until around 3 a.m. and so had to wake around six just to have enough time to get through what I had to do in order to get to the tournament on time.

Three hours of snoozing is not enough, folks. No way, no how.

Thankfully going forward there are a couple of factors that’ll alleviate things somewhat. For one, we’ll actually have earlier end times, which makes the earlier starts less terrible to endure. Also, my partner Jack is going to get us started the next few days while I’ll come in a little later and do some extra stuff at the end, which’ll make my life a lot more sane.

By the way, here’s a funny hand I saw from the first Day 1 flight. One of those strange, did-I-really-see-what-I-thought-I-saw kind of hands.

A player limped, the small blind called, then British player Adam Owen looked at his hand in the big blind.

The blinds were 1,000/2,000, adding up to 3,000. The antes were 300 apiece.

Owen announced he was raising all in, and after the dealer counted out his stack it proved to be exactly 33,300.

The situation was three-handed. Until, that is, Owen’s two opponents successively let go of their hands. That’s when Owen decided to show his cards, turning them over one at a time.

The first one was a black three. The second was the other black three. No shinola.

Back at it tomorrow -- Day 3 here for me. Check the PokerStars blog for the reporting thus far, and keep it there to see what comes next.

Photo: courtesy René Velli/PokerStars blog.