Italy without poker

"Why did we get on the first train we saw. We should get off and at least check if it's the right one."
"But then we won't have sweat for the train ride."

-Matt "Ch0ppy" Kay and Simon Charette

It's very important for poker players traveling together to have some gambling sweat in one form or another. Anything can be bet on. Throughout the course of an entire day money can trade hands on the most absurd of bets. It's pretty well known that all poker players gamble for who pays their meals (Different versions of Credit Card Roulette). However, in search of action, much more unusual wagers can be made.

In a town near La Spezia, Italy, me and 5 other Canadians went hiking. On our return to the town we saw 2 young kids playing heads-up soccer in a fenced off area with 2 nets. Without hesitation, Mike "Timex" Mcdonald and Andrew "AChen" Chen made a wager on which kid would score first. Only 30 seconds or so after making this wager, we all realized they weren't playing 1 on 1 soccer. One kid was just playing net and the other trying to score on him! Timex had far the worst of it here.

It actually gave us a lot of sweat because on shot rebounds, the ball would almost roll to the other side of the mini-field and the shooter wasn't trying to stop it from going in. We were going nuts on the rail! Dozens of Italian on-lookers could not understand why we were so excitied. AChen shipped the bet eventually. There is a 1-minute video recording someone took of this that I will post on the blog when I get my hands on it. I continued to bet with Timex after lunch on an actual game of 1 on 1 soccer that was going on in the same area. The Italian guy who I was betting on gave me a high five when he realized how nuts I was going for every goal he scored.

I played very well in EPT San Remo and went out on a race I felt was +ev to take. Felt good about my play. I'm feeling physically sick 2 days before the Monte Carlo Grand Final so I'm gonna take it easy and hopefully feel up to playing when the time comes. This will be the biggest buy-in tournament I've ever played and most likely ever play. I have to play my very best or I'm going to be upset with myself. Getting mad at yourself for mistakes comes naturally to great poker players and generally anyone in life who is a workaholic.
Being a workaholic has hurt me a in lot of aspects in my life but has brought me a ton of success in poker. I'm still trying to grasp an understanding of how I should be balancing my work and social activities. My father is an obessive workaholic and defintely put that on me at a very young age. "No matter how good you're doing. You can always do better." was one of his staple quotes. It taught me to be hard on myself, far too hard. Defintely left me with a lot of self-esteem issues I'm still trying to break free of. I guess this is a long-winded way of saying that I don't think there is anyone in the poker world that gets mad at themselves for making bad plays more than me. At the end of this trip I hope to say I'm proud of how I played. That is my goal.

I'm goin' back to bed. Waking up for an amazing pasta dinner.
Peace,
Simon Charette