Riviera Life part 2

Right after arriving to Nice I went to search my hostel. It took for a while to find a place, but finally I ended up to find the correct place. The place is called Villa Saint Exupery Gardens, nice looking place about 3 kms away from Nice centrum. Hostel had gotten very good feedback from visitors, but it still surprised me positively! Common area was very big and nice, something like 10 computers free of charge, free coffee or choco or tea, free cereal breakfast, free shuttle bus from tram stop to hostel and best of all very warm welcome by roommates. People started to talk to me right after I stepped into the room. unfortunately I didn't have much time to chat to them since I wanted to go to see local casinos as soon as possible! ;)

First I went to biggest casino of Nice to find out that they don't have any tournament poker there. I was very disappointed. Luckily on my way to that place I saw also one smaller casino, so I headed there. They were just going to start a tournament of 120€ 30 minuites after I arrived there! I registered to the tournament and read french poker magazine without understanding any single word of it while waiting tournament to start. When it finally started I didn't have too much fun until I was already out. It took like 30 minutes from me to catch a top pair, top kicker with AQ against flopped set of villain. My tournament was over before it even really started. I was very disappointed, but that's poker.

After quick tournament I headed back to the hostel with a plan to go to sleep quite early. It didn't go like I planned since first of all when I arrived back to my room some American roommates of mine had been cooking and they offered food for me as well. I went to eat with them and they told about their plan to go out that night with small group of people sleeping in our room. I hesitated for a while, but ended up to go out with American, Japanese, Polish and two Mexicans. We went to some quite small bar what I didn't like very much since I prefer nightclubs much more. At least we were able to talk each other because music wasn't too loud. We had to head back to the hostel quite early, already 2 am since trams don't operate anymore later than that. That was fine to me, because I wanted to wake up early and go to Monte Carlo next morning.

I've always hated waking up early and it didn't work that morning either. Finally I got myself up from the bed between 9 and 10, because I didn't want to miss morning cereals! I ate big bowl of cereals before going to search bus number 100 from Nice to Monaco. I heard from some German travellers that bus is leaving from Port of Nice, so I went there and found the stop quite easily. The bus from Nice to Monaco is extremely cheap as it costs only 1€. Journey takes about 40 minutes and all the time bus is driving near coastline of Riviera, view is awesome! I felt like I really want to move to Riviera in future!
Part 3 later...


Sign from the hostel


Arriving to Monte Carlo

Riviera Life part 1

It's long time ago since I updated this blog last time!
But now I finally got reason to do it since I had holiday of 10 days from army!
I couldn't waste such a good opportunity and right after getting information of holiday I went to search flights somewhere. First I was thinking about Barcelona, but after finding return flight from Ryanair to Milan for 130€ I couldn't resist it. Not like I wanted to go to Milan, but it was close enough to Nice! And Nice is almost next to the place where I've always wanted to visit, Monte Carlo! So I ended up to book return flight to Milan.

I arrived to Milan on Sunday evening only to find out it was raining out there and of course I forgot my umbrella to home. Luckily there's always someone selling umbrellas on the streets in Italy, so I didn't need to walk more than 5 meters from bus without umbrella. I hadn't booked any accommodation for the night since I was going to leave the city 7 am. I thought that in such a big city like Milan there's always something going on 24/7. I was terribly wrong. The city was totally dead at the night, it was nothing compared to London. Not a single store was open at night and I didn't find any nightclubs either near by central station. Public transportation didn't work from midnight till 6 am etc.. I was freezing, bored and tired. I just wanted to steal a sleeping bag from a bum and go to sleep on the street! :D

After super boring night in Milan it was finally morning and my train was about to leave. I found Italian train seats brilliant since they were like sofas! 3 seats together without any armrest between seats. So I was able to lie on the seats and sleep whole journey from Milan to Ventimiglia.. Ventimiglia is small town near by border of Italy and France. I spent few hours there walknig around the place and eating some Italian pizza. From Ventimiglia I took another train to Nice. After 30 minutes I finally arrived to surprise surprise rainy Nice! More about Nice in part 2.


Bergamo airport, thunderstorm as usual...

Ventimiglia

Rainy beach of Nice

Military service

When I created this blog I named it as "Jani travelling" since I thought I might continue updating it sometimes from my upcoming trips after my on-the-job learning period. Unfortunately nowadays it's impossible for me to keep travelling, because goverment of Finland wants me to carry out military service.

I like everything international, so I applied and got chosen to Finnish Rapid Deployment Forces. Group of about 200 men who'll be trained to work on international operations. FRDF is supposed to be more physical than ordinary national army and all of the guys are pre-chosen, so motivation here is much higher than anywhere else. That's what I like very much. I hate watching lazy morons, who are not giving a shit about anything.

I started my service 9th July and now about 1/4 is behind. So far the time here has been okey, not so physical what I thought, but still hard enough. I'm proud to be the part of one of the best companies in Finland.

My plan is to get chosen to operation after this year and spend half a year in Afghanistan. After that I've got so much money that I can travel all around the world for a quite long time. Let's see what happens!

Poker summary

Okey, that's it.
I just got knocked out of my last poker tournament in London after playing my last hand totally terribly. I hope I at least learn something of it..

Anyway now it's time to post summary of games. During these two months I visited 7 casinos/poker clubs and played poker in 4 of them. Total 33 tournaments and 25 of them were played at Aspers. I've learnt a lot, got some new friends, made nice amount of cash and got rid of my big leak about being scared money.

Collection of my members cards

I've been keeping track of all of my games in Excel, because it's important to know where am I going. 150% ROI, that's huge and I think I ran little bit over EV, but I still believe that I could be able to have at least 100% ROI in long run!
Longest losing streak was 6 games and a bit over £300 I think, that's not too bad. Variance is huge in tournament poker, so I could easily have lost like 15 games without any single cash place. Luckily it didn't happen.

During my on-the-job learnin period I was working 36 days, 8 hours per day, total 288 hours, that's just a little bit more than half as much as I played poker, lol. Too bad they didn't pay for internship so I had to make all of the money at poker tables.

Tomorrow it's time to leave London and head to the Amsterdam! Hardstyle I'm coming! Make sure you won't disappoint me!





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Getting closer

Last days in London have been interesting!

On Tuesday's tournament I busted on bubble 12th, when top 10 paid. That's annoying.

On Wednesday I had a day-off from poker, so I went jogging. I ran 45 minutes continuously at Wanstead Park, actually surprised even myself with my stamina. . I didn't expect to be able to run that long time without walking at all. It was great feeling to be able to run wearing only t-shirt and shorts without freezing even it was 10pm. I like summer!

On Thursday I went to play one of my favourite poker tournaments of Aspers. £50 buy-in, £2500 prize pool guaranteed! Good for me it attached only 41 players, so there were a huge overlay! Casino had to add £450 extra! fortunately I was lucky enough to get my share of prize pool after disappointment of Tuesday. When there were three players left I had biggest stack and two another guys had pretty equal stacks, not very much less than me. They ended up to be all in A2 against TJ. Unfortunately it was my Vietnamese friend who lost his stack with A2. I would have liked to share top 2 prize money with him and I think he would have been willing to make the deal with me as well. Now I ended up to play heads-up against much weaker player. He would have liked to do 50%/50% deal, but I refused it, since I think I had a pretty big edge against him. Unfortunately I lost couple of big hands and finished 2nd.. I could have played better, need to study heads-up more. I got "only" £630 for my 2nd place when first place made £1000.. If I accepted the deal I would have gotten £190 more, but I really wanted to win my first 4-figs.. Still didn't get it.

The tournament finished something like 3:30 am, so after that I decided to go to Tesco to buy some cakes to not disappoint my co-workers next day when I finish my internship. I really hate traditions. After all I slept less than 4 hours.

In morning I started my last journey from Leytonstone to Deptford Bridge. I have to change the train twice, at Stratford and at Canary Wharf. When I arrived to Canary Wharf I noticed that my connection train is already there, so I had to run a bit. When I accelerated my speed I noticed something flying from my pocket, something small, shiit it's my mp3 player! I saw how it hit the ground, started sliding, kept sliding, hit the side of the train and dropped to the railway. That's it, I couldn't go to get it since there would be a risk of being hit by train. I really hate pockets of shorts! Luckily my mp3 was pretty old one and not very valuable anymore, but still it was working well and full of my playlists. Now I need to work out my playlists again and it takes way too much time!

So after all it's finally my last day at job! 3,5 hours to go and I can start my holiday, that's what I've been looking for a long time!

Almost as much as holiday I've been waiting for new episode of Headhunterz's radio show HARD WITH STYLE what was released today!
"Love it or hate it, this is hard with style!"

Shuffle up and deal

Sorry for not writing for a while. The reason is that I really haven't done anything else than slept, worked and played poker for last couple of weeks. My Oyster covers only zones 2-3 anymore, so I haven't even been in central London at all. I've totally seen it already, boring place. I've tried to play as much tournaments as possible since I'm still able to do it! Unfortunately in RAYland I can't continue playing like this. Thanks RAY and Finnish government for ruining everything funny! :(

Last week I played 6 tournaments and luckily finally cashed on Saturday to cover my losses of earlier weeks. I'm happy that I've been able to ignore influence of money when playing, that's very important when you seriously want to make profit. You don't want to be scared money at all. That has been my leak before, been playing too small games actually.

In casino I've met very much great people all around the world. There are some regular players like me who are playing almost every day, it's nice to chat with them during tournament breaks. Talking with them has also improved my language skills a lot, actually one English player told me that I'm speaking very good English. Poker players, always bluffing, haha.
People are much more open here compared to shy finns, not such a big surprise at all.. Totally strangers come to talk to me from time to time after playing once at the same table with me. Poker community is great!

6 days left in London, 4 tournaments to go! Shuffle up and deal!

Black Tuesday

My Tuesday didn't start very well when I found out that my regular sandwich artist had left the Subway in Leytonstone. Now it will take a bit more time to tell step by step what do I want since nobody there knows my typical order, how annoying!

But it's nothing compared to the fact that I went "broken". After busting in Tuesday's tournament I had only £15 left in my wallet and that won't cover Thursday's £50 tourney! I had to do a sad decision and go to get some more cash from ATM! :( I hadn't done that since I won my first poker money here. I've been living something like one and half months with money cash from poker alone.. Last weeks I haven't just cashed anything big and rent is eating my cash very quickly! £255 per week is lovely!

Anyway, last Saturday I was watching Scooter's live concert at HMV Forum and it was great! Totally better than Jeezy's performance. The guy is 46-years-old and still rocking! Must love the electro beats!

5/5