Lol Livaments

Posted by Prateek Bhartia on 2013-04-01 at 12:00 AM

For the last 3 years ( since I started working ), the only time I took off from work and go on a holiday, is to go play live poker in Goa. Seems like it becoming a ritual for me. Couple of years back, I went to play the Aces unlimited Series in Pride. This was my first time playing poker in a Casino. I remember being nervous and excited. I somehow managed to convince dad and get backed by him, although for me it was like ” Dad can I have 30K to go to goa ? “, I could see his expression change, forehead getting tense, was expecting a flood of abuses. But instead it turned out to be healthy discussion and I could persuade him with logic. I wanted way more than 30K obv, but I had to logon to the website and show him all the buyins etc, after which he somehow managed to part with his dearest 30K. So anyway I was in goa. Roomed with my long time friend, Goindi. We had started out playing together in college, Rs50 buyins, playing 24 hours straight etc. Good times.
This was also the First time I met with Adi, Amit Verma, Donkabomber, Jasven and a ton of other guys from the Indian circuit. I actually expected Adi to be some arrogant poker god. But anyone who has even met with him for 5 mins can confirm that only the poker god part is true. I dont remember much about the tourneys or any fun hands, but I do remember Maddy on one of my tables, Owning me hand after hand. I played some cash and ended the trip in a small profit.

Last year, I went down to play the APT. This time again, convinced dad for some money but then he also said it was the last time he was giving me money to play poker. Fair enough. Goindi as always willing to help, bought some of my action for all tourneys. This time I had the pleasure (maybe honour is the right word :p) of meeting Vik and staying the week at his place. For those of you who dont know him, he has the played the Highest stakes EVER!! Apt turnouts were a bit disappointing, but I managed to satty to the ME, which was the highlight of my trip. In the main event, I had the misfortune of having Ravi Goyal (better known as RG) at my table. He busted my very early on, my trip Kings to his straight, got it in on the turn. For anyone who knows him knows he is such a character. But gotta give it to the guy, he knows how to smack talk and make it advantageous for himself. Quite a fun guy to have on a boring live table actually, but only if you are not the one playing against him :D. Anyway ended the trip in slight profit, and after giving back the money I took from dad, I deposited the rest on PS. It was about $400. I thought, this is it, One last shot at online poker. Thankfully (touchwood) never have deposited online again .

Now this time, I am going for PGT that starts on 3rd with the PoY Freeroll and goes on till the 7th. I will only be able to make it on 5th due to work commitments. but weekend gonna be fun too. I will play the 10K bounty, 7K main, and the turbo on sunday. Adi is planning to take a conference hall or something for all the people who are going to be there for the Sunday Grind. Looking forward to grinding it out with the beasts. Oh Also, this time I didnt have to trouble dad for money for live pokerz. Thanks to the awesome mentoring Adi has been giving us, I been doing not too bad this year. Last saturday, there was a 2k buyin, 100K gtd on Deccan poker which i managed to ship. Deccan poker is prob the only Indian site I deposited on till date. Although they have a browser based software (I dont know the security hassles that comes with using these, or how reliable these sites can be), I decided to test it out, mostly cause of the real soft player pool. Also the rake is pretty low comparatively, and they have daily Freerolls etc. So In a way these are pointers that they care about players, and hence I decided to test it out. Depositing options are aplenty , and they have friendly reps who help you with cash outs etc. I wouldn’t recommend keeping huge sums of money on there, until they have built a better rep in the community. From a MTT players perspective, its heavenly. Although they could work on a few important factors like late reg, and syncing tourney breaks with Stars (this is key if they want to attract MTT players). Overall I think Deccan has a lot of room for improvement, but its prob the best Exclusive site for only Indian players right now. I hope they are reading this and take into consideration, cause we do need a good Indian site for the small Indian community to meet and play together.
Anyway Since I hardly play live, I am going to have a huge tells on my face. Come at me Bros!