EPT12 Barcelona, Day 7: Getting It In Bad

It was a fairly exciting final table yesterday in the Estrellas Barcelona Main Event, won in the end by Mario Lopez of Argentina. It’s the second time I’ve covered Lopez winning a big one, after his LAPT Chile win back in the spring of 2014.

The most interesting hand I saw yesterday involved Lopez making a huge call versus the young Jose Carlos Garcia, the young Polish player I mentioned a day ago as being unafraid to put a lot of chips in the middle with or without a hand.

In this case Garcia again made a huge overbet, shoving the river on a raggy board containing a jack, a nine, a couple of fives, and a trey (and no flush). The bet (a third postflop barrel) was about four times the pot, I believe, and more than what Lopez had left, but after tanking for five-plus minutes Lopez found a call with Q-9.

Garcia’s hand? 7-4-offsuit. He’d go out a little later in fourth.

Interestingly, all of the bustouts -- aside from Garcia’s and the final hand in which Lopez’s A-Q held against Jonn Forst’s A-6 -- featured players running into hard luck left and right.

One with A-K ran into both pocket aces and pocket kings. Pocket tens lost to pocket deuces. A-8 fell to A-7. You can read the end-of-day recap for details.

Weird, too, was how after Jonn Forst busted Knut Nystedt in third, Forst had exactly 41.1 million chips versus Lopez’s 40.9 million. They’d just colored up again and so the smallest chip was 100,000, so that meant Forst had the smallest possible lead to start heads-up play. (They did an even chop, with Lopez then winning the extra cabbage set aside.)

Back at it today as the EPT Barcelona Main Event continues, the one-day €25K High Roller plays out, and a few other side events are in action. Check the PokerStars blog for the skinny.

EPT12 Barcelona, Day 6: On Repetition, Patterns, and Learning

I’ve been living in a hotel room here in Barcelona for over a week now, and have nearly a week to go. It’s very comfortable, there’s a nice view off the balcony, and the breakfast buffet is quite good. It’s located close to the casino as well, which for me on these trips is probably the most important quality-of-life factor as I don’t have too worry too much about carving out time to get to and from my workplace.

Every morning I sleepily stumble into the bathroom, slapping the wall on my way in where three different light switches are location. A couple of them control lights in the bathroom -- I can’t remember which ones.

My first move, generally, is to turn on the shower. There are two rotating knobs on either side of a long cylinder. One of them switches the water flow from the shower head located above to the hand held one on the side, while the other controls the water temperature. I can never remember which controls which, nor which direction of twisting gets me hot or cold. Trial and error gets me to where I want to be, though, and I ready to step inside.

That’s when I invariably realize the floor mat -- new, and neatly folded each day -- is for some reason sitting inside the shower and thus has become soaked through. This I’ve now done every single day, failing over and over to learn the routines and procedures of those who maintain the place in which I am living.

There are other examples of my stubbornly refusing to learn about my habitation, knowing that it is temporary even though two weeks in the same place should be long enough to start absorbing information to help prevent repeating the same mistakes or general awkwardness. But really, I’m helpless. If I counted up the light switches in this room, I’d probably get to 15 at least. I still couldn’t tell you what half of them do.

Of course, I’m spending more time away from the space than inside of it, my workdays having lasted around 13-14 hours each day so far. Looking at being able to carve that back once the Estrellas Barcelona Main Event concludes today and I move back over to other events happening as the festival plays out.

They went from 98 all of the way down to eight last night, with the young, aggressive Polish player Jose Carlos Garcia being the center of attention for much of the day. Garcia was actually born in Spain, though moved to Poland as a child. He’s easily one of the more exciting players to watch, thanks both to the fact that he gets involved so frequently and the relentless pressure he puts on opponents when he does.

Garcia mixes up his play, too, though, making it hard for players to pick up on patterns and respond accordingly. But some have been able to teach themselves how to play back at him, demonstrating a greater capacity to learn than I have each morning in my hotel room.

Garcia got caught a couple of times today making big river bluffs and getting called, in both instances having made big bets on the end that required players to call off entire stacks. Once it was the Austrian, Jonn Forst, making the big call with two pair, and as a result he has the chip lead to start today’s final table. The Argentinian Mario Lopez -- whose LAPT win in Chile I covered a year-and-a-half ago -- is also still in the mix.

Go to the PokerStars blog to read updates of today’s finale. But you knew to do that. I mean we’ve been at this for more than a week now, right?

(Photo up top from the Casa Amatller in Barcelona.)

EPT12 Barcelona, Day 5: My Mind Is On the Blink

“Six more hands,” came the announcement. It was the last level of the night, the tournament clock had been paused, and a card had just been drawn to see how many more hands each table would play. Three would be the minimum, with six or seven (I believe) the max.

René, the photographer who has been working me as we cover the Estrellas Barcelona Poker Tour Main Event, looked at me and rolled his eyes.

“That is appropriate,” he said, and I immediately understood his meaning. It had been a long day, and so it made sense to punctuate it with a longish final sequence.

All of which is to say I’m pretty much beyond exhausted this morning after a fifth straight day of work here at EPT Barcelona, this one carrying late into the wee hours. There was definitely a wall of some kind I ran up against earlier in the day, and by night’s end I was mentally leaning up against it trying my best to remain upright.

Was 2:15 a.m. leaving the casino after a long Day 2 of the Estrellas Barcelona Poker Tour Main Event that saw 984 players play all of the way down to just 98. There was more to do after that, too, making it even later before your correspondent was able at last to catch a few hours’ worth of Z’s.

That pic above, by the way, is one taken by René of the player Chris Da-Silva Oduntan during what became an especially long bubble period yesterday when the clock was repeatedly paused (thus resulting in the longer work day).

Jose Carlos Garcia, the young Polish player with a not very Polish-sounding name, is leading the tournament at present. This makes the third straight EPT I’ve covered in which Garcia has stood out, as he final tabled both the LAPT Bahamas event back in January and the EPT Grand Final Main Event in May. He’s also won a Sunday Million before (in March 2014), and I believe is only 22.

Along with Dzmitry Urbanovich and Dominik Panka, Garcia is helping to form what is fast becoming a kind of new wave of Polish phenoms in poker. I remember once speaking with Marcin Horecki, the Team PokerStars Pro from Warsaw, about Panka (who won the 2014 PCA Main Event), and he talked then about other young stars of the game from his country who were about to break out as well. (I had a chance to talk to Panka, too, back at this year’s PCA.)

I’m bracing for another long day today covering the Estrellas, as they’ll need to get all of the way down to an eight-handed final table for Monday.

Again, check the PokerStars blog for my ESPT reports while the others fill you in on the €50K Super High Roller. They had nearly 100 come out for that one yesterday (a record), with late reg still open until the start today. (Every event is breaking records, in fact.)