EPT London Bound with a Bang

Am I ever in a fantastic mood! What a perfect first sentence to launch my first ever blog for Card Player. I’ll get writing about my background in a bit but first I have share my latest turn of events on route to EPT London. I woke up at 6:45 AM when Sophia’s, my girlfriend, alarm sounded. She works full time for an animation company so the morning was the last time I’d get to see her for the next two weeks.

She left the apartment just after 8 and I didn’t bother trying to sleep again. To pass the time I jumped on Skype to double check my London arrangements just to get bombarded by Andreas Torbergsen, “skjervoy”, about the plans for the weekend.

This really got me pumped for to get the trip going. He has a big group of his non-poker playing friends visiting him this weekend and we’re all going to the Arsenal vs Tottenham football match. I’m not the biggest football fan but its going to be my first ever live game so I’m sure I’ll get into the thick of things.

A little/a lot of British beer will help this happen. After the football match I’m going to spend the Sunday till Tuesday where Andreas lives hanging out with all my German, Russian and Norwegian friends. I’m staying in one of the two German compounds that is rumoured to be even nicer than the German flat I saw last visit in April. The flat I saw in April was by far the nicest condo I’ve ever been it but the new one has an 80 foot terrace pimped out with any creature comfort you can imagine so stay tuned for pictures of some sick poker flats sometime next week.

Luckily for me my London friends were also online and I got all the information I needed to get through customs. Last trip to London had me in front of a British customs agent with my return flight itinerary written in pen with phone numbers of people I know in England without an address where I was staying. The guy thought it was funny that I had landmark based direction such as “got the red building and turn right until you see the triangle shaped building. #76 behind the triangle”. This time I have the proper address and postal code of the compound with a printed return ticket. he compound is a poker flat in London comprised of Mike Piper aka Wazz, Gavin Cochrane aka Gavz101 and Tony Jacobs. They are all legends in the own right.

Tony assured me that he would be awake for my early morning arrival as there is little chance that Gavz or Wazz would be awake. The plan is to collectively play a lot of PLO and help each other improve. It’s amazing how a little observation from a different point of view can change your game entirely. Last trip Gavz had two single sentence statements about my game that opened my eyes to a whole new level of thinking. God willing I’ll be able to squeak some knowledge out of Andreas but I doubt we will have time to talk poker with all the shenanigans we’ll get into.

With my trip solidified and my bags packed I ventured from my downtown Ottawa apartment and made my way across the city to the airport. There was a huge line for bag checking but somehow they opened a new kiosk area right in front of the back end where I was waiting. My 40 minute wait was cut down to 5 minutes! Normally that would be enough of an airport brag but things just got better. The exact same thing happened in the security check line up and I was rushed through passed everybody.

With two hours to kill and nothing to do I jumped on the free airport wireless to check my emails. I was shocked to see four emails from a poker site I had long forgotten informing me of affiliate payments. Apparently I have four players raking under accounts I signed up and they raked me $186 last month. This day was getting better and better but my hot streak hadn’t peaked yet.

As per usual I waited until last boarding to be called to avoid the hassle of grumpy strangers fighting for space. The plane I’m on has a section of individual first class seats on diagonals that can be converted into beds and then the muggle area of two seats on the windows and three seats in the center. I thought to myself “Galen someday you’ll be able to pay the absurd fee for the sexy and spacious seats but not today”. WRONG! I got to my center cluster of three seats and took my aisle seat. Ten minutes went by and nobody sat in my row. I have three seats all to myself for the next six hours to London.

That catches you up to the present so I guess its time to talk about my poker life a little bit. I don’t want to drag this blog on forever so I’ll keep this short and just give you the bullet points. I’m 26 years old and have been playing poker for a living for seven years. I have many screen names but am most commonly known as Gakn29. I’m coming off a 2nd place in the $320 PLO WCOOP for $61,093. It was annoying to finish second but I ran badly HU and those are the breaks. For the record I put a monstrous river bad beat on the eventual winner to stay alive three handed. Big congratulations to the winner as he’s a friend of a friend. Since February I’ve been the CardRunners mid-stakes PLO coach. I’ve made over a dozen videos and coached over 20 players. You can find my day to day blog on their site through the link at the bottom.

That’s it for now. Next week I’ll write my second entry sometime after the £2150 EPT PLO tournament. Between the tournament and live cash games I’m expecting big things.

P.S. Bad Beat alert my laptop won’t charge through the plug on the seat in front of me. Sighhhhhhh

Follow me on Twitter @Gakn29

My CardRunners blog http://www.cardrunners.com/blog/Gakn29