2004.10.16 - 2004.10.18 in Prague

I'm not going to delve into little details (like how we washed our clothes in the bathroom sink and hung-dried them all over the room) but basically these 3 days consisted of the following routine (more or less*):
1. Wake up in early afternoon
2. Head over to Internet cafe and kill an hour or two
3. Walk to nearby Pravek Cave Restaurant for "lupper"
4. Head over to Banco Casino after 20:00 and play or observe texas hold'em for hours
5. Go back to hostel in early morning

*On 16th, Saturday, suprisingly no other tourists had shown up to play poker the entire night and the two of us did not want to play against this one regular local who has money to burn apparently. We chatted with the dealers but eventually the poker room was closed for a change that night.

Of the 4 nights we were at Banco, we saw Czech-born NHL star Jaromir Jagr 2 times - gambling away thousands of Czech koruna on 'his' roulette table as he played (i.e. lost) this impossible game of random luck. He should learn hold'em - it's slower but there's more skill involved.

And of the 4 times I actually did play some poker, I unfortunately always ended up busting out - so I had lost roughly $400CDN in the 6 nights we were at the casino. Le on the other hand fared better by breaking even after his forays on the felt.
We played against and saw many tourists and local regulars play limit hold'em but none compared to the last game Le would play on the 18th. He played until 05:00 against an American college student (who had no idea what he was doing but had somehow beaten a bunch of other Americans the night before) and an Irish businessman where he made back ~$200CDN he had lost earlier that night against numerous other players. We learned a lot about playing limit hold'em over those many hours and looked forward to bringing that knowledge to a local casino (Rama?) in the future. Ka-ching!