(Note:I wrote part of this up with the intent to post after I returned and never got around to it, meanwhile I've tried to recall some of the other parts, so I have some specifics and some general commentary.)
It’s a long post, so thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing any comments from people who have the endurance to last to the end of this report.
Let me start this by saying I was hoping that this would be an entirely different post, which may be why it took me so long to post. This ideal post would have started off with the subject line “Just took down EPT main vent in Monte Carlo”. Sadly, it was not to be.
The goal was to win a satellite qualifier for the EPT main event but I came up short. I still wanted to get to Monte Carlo, so instead I played for—and won—a spot at the PokerStars Poker Camp that was going on in connection with the tournament. I figured I would still get expenses covered to Monte Carlo and get another shot at winning a seat at the main event by taking down the camp tournament.
So what do you do for a week in the playground of the rich and famous? Let me start by saying what you don’t do. You don’t go out boozing every night. I think every drink was like 18 euros, which, thanks to the suffering dollar, was like $25, for a ketel and tonic. In a single evening I think I spent enough on drinks to rent a small villa in Barcelona for the weekend.
As for the camp…let me start by saying Im not really one for poker camps. They seem a little fishy and more money than theyre worth. In fact, camps in general bother me. But the fact that you had to qualify to get into this one--rather than pay to get in--meant that everyone had to be at least decent. There weren’t going to be any fantasy campers who just wanted to sit next to Negreanu for a few days. Plus, Greg Raymer was one of the instructors, which I was jazzed about because I like the videos I've seen from him.
So that’s how I found myself in poker classes in Monte Carlo for 8 hours a day. A lot of it was just cementing things I already knew--starting hands, pot odds, position, etc, and was a little basic most of the time. But there were enough new things that it never got boring. There were even a few things that were kind of brilliant, and may very well have made the entire trip worth it.
First of all, the instructors were pretty cool. Along with Raymer, was Negreanu and a couple people I didn't know much aboutf, like Alex Outhredge and this online player Nick Brancato. Outhredge was an okay presenter but kind of long-winded. He was more like the M.C., but sorta dragged on sometimes. He kept talking about some WPT final table he played at Mandalay Bay and last year’s (2008) WSOP Main Event (because he apparently got some TV coverage), which was kind of interesting, but still, enough, after a while, ok?
The most interesting thing was on the second day when Raymer answered a question about going all in and Brancato jumped in and started talking about unexploitable shoving. The two of them improvised this lesson on pushing ranges. Nick opened up PokerStove and just off the top of his head startsed naming all the profitable hands and entering them to show profitability. Sick, and a little humbling. I guess that’s what it takes to 8-table high stakes online.
Overall, I would rate the camp pretty useful, with a couple nice highlights. I don’t know if I’d go all the way to Europe to attend another one, but it made for a nice week in Monte Carlo, and was good enough that I wasn’t too bummed when I failed to qualify for the main event again
. The only thing that sucked was the weather. Allegedly, Monte Carlo is sunny for 300 days a year or something, so apparently we managed to get like half the rain for the entire year in the week I was there. FAIL.So to chalk it up for the week: 20 hours of poker lessons with some pretty cool pros, a second failed qualifying tourney, 600 euros of winnings at the poker tables, and bar tab that rivals the gross domestic product of Haiti. Oh and some free Stars swag. Overall, let’s call it even.
I've also considered checking out one of the other bootcamps on this side of the pond but haven't really gone for it. The two I know about are the WSOP Academy and the WPT Boot Camp. Has anyone had experience with these?
