Playing in Italy, Golf & Iguana's

I am currently headed to San Remo for the EPT event. En route to San Remo we spent a little time in Rome and Florence. The other times I have been to Italy we never made it to Rome or Florence for one reason or another. I had a great time in both cities. My wife and I are getting a chance to spend a great vacation together. She use to live in Florence and is fluent in Italian, which makes the experience that much better. I really loved the area around the Coliseum in Rome, it’s the kind of place you could wander around for long periods of time and think back what it must have been like almost 2,000 years ago when the area was in it’s prime. What a time for Rome, Italy and the world. No internet or cell phones or TV, how did they ever get through a day I wonder.

The event in San Remo should draw a huge field, last year 1177 players participated at 5,000 Euro, for a prize pool of well over 5 million Euro with first prize paying a cool 1.5 million Euro. What’s interesting is that the EPT San Remo doesn’t permit player’s who are sponsored by non-Italian registered sites, like in my case Full Tilt Poker, to wear names or logo’s of their sites.

When I was in Puerto Rico recently with some long time close friends we played a lot of golf and there was always action, but small action. We played stakes where you could win or loose approximately $5 in a round, and believe me you hated to lose even the $5. The last round my friend Scott was down like $10 to 2 of us and wanted an extra stroke and two off the 18th tee for double or nothing. We said he could have either or, but not both. On the course there were these huge Iguana’s which from tail to nose were 4-5 feet long and were a little creepy looking. We told Scott if he could pet one of the big ones he could have both the stroke and the two shots off the tee. Sure enough he chased one of them down and petted it. We were laughing so hard we almost couldn’t play the last hole. Ironically he pared the hole on his first ball, and we bogeyed, so his chasing the Iguana didn’t even help him. The point of all this

I have played my share of high stakes golf, and a large part of it comes down to getting the bet right at the beginning of the round and managing your handicap. If you always play with the same foursome, then that’s one thing however, if you take an inflated handicap out on the road that’s another. The point I’m trying to make is that it can be about the competition or the money, but not both. In life it seems like things are never about the money, until they are about the money, than they are only about the money.