Tripreport Namur

I must have been about 15 years old when it happened for the first time. When sitting on the sidewalk of a supermarket during lunch break with my good friend Arthur, this elderly woman tries to get on her bike carrying way to many groceries. The poor woman looses her balance and drives straight into only parked car in sight. She mysteriously manages not to fall but after about 15 feet of stumbling / balancing she finally hits the pavement with some force. Right in front of Arthur and me. Being two well raised young men we obvious did the right thing; piss our pants in laughter……

It’s terrible. I know. But once you get started with such a convulsion of laughter there’s no stopping it. It’s like taking a piss and having to stop in the middle of it. We managed to pull our self together after what seemed like forever and help this grandma back on her feet but had to run away from the situation to not let her witness our next outburst.

Last Monday was no different. Walking on the main street of the small Belgium town called Namur I hear a loud bang from across the street. After seeing what happened I immediately look around for camera’s because this could come straight out of ‘Pranked’ episode. A blind guy is waving his stick around as if he’s trying to hit a ball straight out of the park. He just ran into some commercial street sign but that doesn’t seem to slow him down much. This guy is in an obvious hurry to get somewhere but it seems as if he’s gone blind yesterday and hasn’t operated a blind man stick ever before.

He nearly punches out a dog before heading for the extremely high curbstones. I’m holding my breath but he manages to stay vertical and starts walking very fast. Down the road is a small van parked with both doors widely open. Our blind guy smashes into the open van, climbs out and runs straight into a glass bus stop that – how convenient – has a huge waste bin on it’s side so there is no way he can get passed.

All this happens in about ten seconds and the thing with these ‘unacceptable’ laughs is that they will never occur when you are alone but when I look at Iebus the damage is done. I have to sit down on the ground to prevent pissing myself. Iebus & Hugo are out cold as well only Fruithof seems to be able to compose himself. For some reason these ‘unacceptable’ laughs are almost always the best laughs you’ll ever experience. I’m crawling over the casino floor hours later whenever the subject is brought up again. Sad, but true.

Anyway, what the fuck are we VPC’ers doing in Namur on a Monday afternoon? Well, Pokerstars was hosting their Holdem Challenge Series in the Casino of Namur last week and kicked of with a rather sick Super Side Event that had and EPT like structure. This gave us amateurs the opportunity to play a non crapshoot for a change. It’s been three months since our Vegas trip so a new short trip seemed in order. I’ve only played two tournaments since Vegas and after I paid off the dent ‘VPC Went Vegas 2012’ created in our savings account I was ready for a new poker adventure to muster up VPC Goes Vegas 2013 funds.

So, that Sunday morning at 9AM I’m sitting in my car waiting for Fruithof to come outside. I receive a text message that he’s on the shitter. Scrolling trough last night’s Twitter updates I find pictures of a drunk Fruithof posted four hours ago. This wait should take a while. After picking up Iebus – who delays us another 15 minutes due to his missing passport – we head for Vegas Hugo, the final member for this trip. Apparently no one told Hugo we’re only staying overnight as he seemed to have packed for a two week holiday, and then some.

Namur is a two hour drive for us. The tournament starts at 1PM but experience thought us that one can never be in Namur too early. The registration – especially for firs timers - takes about ten minutes per person. With 250 players on this day 1b the cue is going to be beyond believe so we check-in around 11:30 AM and go for breakfast in downtown Namur.

The Super Side Event (€ 330,-) starts us off with a 30k stack, 25/50 start blinds and one hour levels so you know it’s going to be a incredible long grind. The tournament has two 250 capped starting days and will finish on Tuesday. Not to many idiots at my first table and playing 600 BB deep not much happens anyway unless there’s some kind of setup. After four hours of grinding I change gears so my chip stack diminishes to 15k rather quickly due to over creativeness and missing a gazillion draws.

I’ve played in the main casino for the first couple of hours which were like playing in a friggin’ meat locker but got moved to another part of the building which felt like a steam bad. Fruithof is already boozing heavily in the steam bad section and ships me a nice cold Carlsberg that just tastes too good. It’s bloody hot in the room so after an hour or so I’ve already knocked back 4/5 beers that hit me like a freight train. With 90 minutes left till dinner break I’m gonna be shitfaced if this continuous so I switch back to soda’s and get my stack back to 30K before dinnertime.

Couple of uneventful hours later some idiot shoves 30BB over an EP limper. I snap reshove AJo from the BB because this guy was on fire tilt after losing a regular coin flip. My AJ has to beat K6o. I flop a jack but can’t dodge one of the tree bullets left for the turn and river. Down to 16K on 400/800. Two orbits later this K6o jackass shoves over a limper again and I snap 99 on the button. Villain shows 44. Door card 4. Rien ne va plus!

Now, I couldn’t possibly run worse in pre all-in situations all my poker life but I was a little upset with my play all day. I actually put some training in before this tournament. I bought and read Jonathan Little’s second book and fooled around on the Insta Poker App on my phone giving me he impression that my game was rather sharp when really, it wasn’t. Of course It’s hard getting chips when you don’t make flush, straight or set for twelve hours straight and whenever Jonathan Little seems to open 78s he flops a gut shot and flush draw in a heads-up pot where I always seem to get stuck looking at an KQ5 all hearts board in a five way pot thinking; WTF. Anyway, I made a couple of mistakes here and there that disappointed me.

Fruithof is still in, Iebus busted the tournament hours ago, Hugo held on much longer than expected but got eliminated minutes before me. For those of you who followed the ‘VPC Went Vegas 2012’ trip report know where Iebus can be found. He’s obviously playing ‘Duh Mat’ roulette so I sit down to rail this train wreck and start pounding on those Carlsberg’s that tasted so mighty fine earlier. Iebus runs hot on the roulette and is up a bundle but there’s a thing you need to know about Iebus and gambling profits. He’s allergic to them. The € 100,- chips in his pocket are giving him a nasty rash so they get distributed across the felt rather quickly. By the time day 1b went in the books and Fruithof joins us at the roulette table Iebus is back to being himself; stuck.

We hang around the roulette tables all night where we have our personal waiter serving us drinks. This friendly old waiter keeps bringing us beers and tells us a story after each round. Problem is; he speaks French. We don’t. The first couple of times he just mumbles something in my ear, I pretend It’s really funny, give him a tip and go on with my business of watching Iebus burn monies. As the stories get longer and his facial expression indicate questions things get awkward rather quickly. I solve the problem by tapping Hugo’s shoulder, pointing at him and walking away.

Just around the time we are about to switch to Vodka Redbulls the bar closes. Bummer. It’s 4.30 in the AM and with nothing left to do we head towards our room in the hotel that is located in de same building as the Casino. We booked a family room that had four beds last year but there are only three beds in the room now. Since Iebus busted the tournament first he gets to sleep on the ground.

The lovely sound of Fruithof farting wakes me up this Monday morning around 9 AM. Thinking of what this day is going to be like this may very well be the highlight of my day . Fruithof is still in the tournament which means we have to wait until this natural born luckbox busts. After having a very unhealthy breakfast / lunch of pizza slices & Panini’s the tournament begins again at 1PM. Fruithof is playing some 20 big blinds so Iebus & Hugo expect to be out of Namur within the hour. I know better. If there is one thing I run worse at than pre-all-in it’s waiting for players to bust that I dragged along towards tournaments.

We sit down at the automated Roulette since the table games aren’t opening till 4PM. When we take a look at Fruithof we see him 4 betting his 79h into kings. Hugo is already reaching for his car keys to get the hell out of Dodge. I’m reaching in my pockets for cash to fumble into the Roulette machine. The kings are dead in the water on the turn obviously so we prepare ourselves for a long wait.

I don’t gamble at all but the thought of having to wait for several hours makes me wager some pocket change. Having followed Iebus on his ‘Duh Mat Roulette’ quests I always noticed that on pretty much every roulette table the a consecutive number on the board. We used to have an old player at our football club called Arno Arts that was late for every single duel on the pitch. So my own game of ‘Arno Arts Roulette’ consists of betting on the exact number that just hit the roulette. Throughout several hours of low stakes ‘Arno Arts Roulette’ Arno delivers and I manage to grind out a 200% profit for the day.

Out of sheer boredom we go downtown Namur again and decide to hit the movies. We watch the new Batman movie but being in the French part of Belgium these fockers don’t subtitle their synchronized movie s so we sit in a god damn theatre watching a screen for three friggin’ hours without understanding a single word. Fuck. Our. Lives.

After dinner we seriously start discussing to just leave Fruithof and skip town. I’m due back a work the day after and with a two hour drive ahead we will be home at 11PM at its earliest. Fruithof looses some of his stack and is playing 15BB all day. He shoves about 100 times in the next hours but doesn’t get called anywhere in this nit fest so he actually has some sort of stack when he gets all-in with AK vs. QQ. Hugo is reaching for his car keys again but I’m heading straight for the hotel desk. The hotel was sold out the entire week but I’m happily surprised they have one room left due a no-show. I snap call the room not even waiting for the outcome of the ‘flip’ since Fruithof simply doesn’t lose coin flips. Ever.

After dumping his stuff in the room we leave Namur at 0:30 AM wheels spinning. I don’t pay attention for a second and see that Hugo found an alternative route towards Liege, not using the freeway. We get to see about 20 small towns, 150 roundabouts and a dozen brothels driving 50 mph. Lovely. I’m back home at 03:30 AM where I find a message from Fruithof. The bastard busted last hand of the day turning the 5% action I had in him into nothing more than a handful of beers. On to the next one.