Horses, Swedes, and some poker

Barcelona is insane. It is common to walk past a bar at 4:00 a.m. on a tuesday night and see a 200 spainiards dancing the night away. I'm having a blast just being over here with a couple friends and meeting some new ones as well. Last night we went out with a large group of Swedish guys and found a really nice club that was very high class and insanely busy for a tuesday night. Before we took off for the bar though we were in the casino playing some poker and a couple of the Swedish guys came over to us and said that there friends were up stairs playing "the horses" and we would all meet there before going out for the night. Shannon and Adam also had no idea what they meant when they said "playing the horses" because we were pretty sure that there was no simulcast racing or any satelite links in the casino to bet through, so we curiously walked upstairs to see what was going on. It turns out that there was a game in the casino that actually had fake mechanical horses run around a track and you could bet on which one was going to win. It was all automated and looked like an original Nintendo game on the screen and had a large glass covered track where the horses actually ran around. It was insanely fun and the casino staff had to repeatedly tell us to keep it down because it was disturbing the other customers when we yelled "COME ON FOUR, CATCH UP...... YESSSSS..... NOOOOOOOO..... UNBELIEVABLE!!!!" It was quite a site to see half our group high fiveing and huggin while the other ones had there head in there hands or were ripping up tickets in disgust. So that started our night off well. After that we left and went to the Movodo Club that I mentioned before where we met up with some other Swedes. As soon as we got there we met a whole group of Americans who were in Spain for a "Semester abroad" and came to Barcelona for a few days. They were pretty cool and the whole experience was a blast until the very end. After we had gone through a good ammount of alcohol a couple of the Swedish guys started to get into it with each other and eventually got into a fist fight. Security had to come over and break them up and I tried to help hold one of the guys back, but it kind of runied the good vibe that our group had going. After that a few of the other Swedes who weren't fighting went with Shannon, Adam, Myself and another American we met named Tim over to the strip of beach bars right along the docks. We had a very good time except that eveyone kept thinking that it was there turn to buy drinks and we ended up with way more shots per person than is recomended in "drinking by the numbers". Rather than let good liquid go to waste we each did our fair share and the night started to blur together from there on. We did try to go to another club in a different part of the city, but by the time we got there around 5:30 it was almost closed. It was a really shady area at that hour and I do remember trying to have a conversation in spainsh with a homeless guy who wanted a cigarette. I also offered a guy 20 euro for the 3 beers left on the six-pack that he was carrying, but eventually haggled it down to three euro... I think... and I also talked to a Jamacian prostitute for a few minutes. It may sound kind of weird but whenever I meet hookers I always wonder how they got into the position they are in. It's a really sad situation and I feel bad for them most of the time. Anyways, we made it back to our hotel just fine and woke up this morning with more than slight hang overs. I've vowed to never drink again, but might find it difficult because I also vowed to party with Swedes every chance I get.

Poker wise the week has been successful for all of us. Shannon played today and won his first match against a tight Latvian player that Adam nicknamed "The Terminator". Then he went on to play a very young, and talented, Spanish guy whom he had all-in at one point in the match, but eventaully the Spaniard came back. Shannon then got a bad break when he had his pocket 10's ran into his opponents pocket Jacks. Unfortunatly no 10 came up and Shannon got knocked out, but still pocketed $5,000 euros for making it to the final 16. Adam has been killing every cash game he has played and I have been running well in the tournaments so the week has been very profitable so far for all of us. Tomorrow is a $1,000 NL Hold'em tourney that we will play in and in 3 days there will be a $2,000 tournament. Hopefully things keep going well and we have some more success before the series ends. Tomorrow we are actually going to be tourists during the day and go see some sights in Barcelona before heading to the Casino for the tournament at 6:00.