On the Road - Barcelona

Barcelona is a whirlwind of cultures, styles, history, modernista architecture, abstract artists, and much more in the heart of Spanish Catalonia. For five days last week it was also a whirlwind of poker players from all over the world that converged at the Gran Casino Barcelona for the most successful opening event in the history of the European Poker Tour (the event sold out for a record field of 619 players). Here are some observations, anecdotes, and stories both away from, and at the felt in a whirlwind of 10 stops or less:



Hit the Ground Running – No available hotel room after landing led to a mad-dash sight-seeing tour of the city. You never know how a poker tournament is going to play out so when you have time to paint the town you have to pounce on the opportunity. The works of Antoni Gaudi dominated the day, with stops at Parc Guell and Sagrada Familia first on the menu. Gaudi is to Spanish architecture what Frank Lloyd Wright is to American architecture. Everything he designed is a work of art, and people in Barcelona classify him as nothing less than a genius. He identifies as much with the city and its people as Picasso, the same way that Benjamin Franklin and Philadelphia, and Mark Twain and the riverboat heyday of the Mississippi River are forever linked in American culture.



Gaudi or Gaudy? – If Gaudi is a genius, he might also be insane. Think of a house that was painted by Picasso and then actually built, and that gives you an idea of how extreme some of his designs were, and this was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. To say he was ahead of his time was an understatement; he is ahead of present time as well (just check out the pictures). Sagrada Familia, the cathedral that is his most ambitious project has set an optimistic completion date of 2025. Cranes still adorn the building, which gives you the strange sense of watching an addition to history before your very eyes. By the way, Gaudi died in 1926, but his masterpiece still climbs into the Barcelona skyline.



Olimpic Economics – The Gran Casino is located in Port Olimpic, an area of town that used to be a swath of industrial factories and ports that made for a rough, wrong-side-of-the tracks neighborhood. When the summer Olympics came to town in 1992, it revitalized the area as the region pulled together for a huge construction effort to host the games (sound familiar?). This place used the Olympic Games to jump start their economy and reintroduce their city to the world in a new era the same way that Beijing did this August. Many of the Olympic stadiums and venues still stand their today, and locals said that the torch was burning over the Olympic stadium in Barcelona (the one the Spanish archer shot with a flaming arrow to light at the '92 opening ceremonies – how could you forget that?) during the entirety of the Beijing games.



Ain't No Party like an EPT Party – Every stop on the EPT features a kickoff party on the first night, and it's safe to say that PokerStars knows how to treat their guests to a good time. This kickoff bash was thrown at the Opium Mar, just steps from the Mediterranean and a few hundred feet from the Gran Casino in Port Olimpic. The inaugural EPT Awards kicked things off, and then the real fun began. Quick note, never attempt to argue fantasy football with Daniel Negreanu unprepared, if you don't he will apply a constant stream of verbal disagreement and defense and then just walk away when he feels he has won the battle in a satisfactory matter. When not arguing the finer points of his draft strategy Negreanu found time to hand out the awards as well. Here is a list of the winners:



Player of the Year: Luca Pagano

Best Newcomer: Trond Erik Eidsvig

Performance of the Year: Julian Thew

Overseas Player of the Year: Michael McDonald

PokerStars Qualifier of the Year: Danny Ryan

Poker Writers Award: Julian Thew

People's Choice Award: Michael McDonald



Flock of Seagulls – Poker in Europe is very much a spectator sport. Fans flocked to the rail and in many cases crossed it to get a glimpse of the action. Their apparent disregard for personal space and uncanny ability to block photographers camera angles made reporting quite the sport as well during the five days of competition in Barcelona. Is there a periscope line of Canon zoom lenses out yet? At many times it might have been the only option to get a clear shot of the players that hid inside cavernous groups of fans that flocked to every all-in bet the way that seagulls flock to tailgate parties in the San Francisco Bay Area.



Goooooaaaal!!!! – Poker may be growing in popularity as a sport in Europe, but it still pales in comparison to the most popular spectator sport in the world – football (soccer to confused Americans). A tour of Camp Nou, home of the local professional team F.C. Barcelona (a football club that has over 130,000 members) confirmed my suspicion, as rabid fans have made the team museum and stadium tour the second most popular tour in the city behind the Picasso museum. Camp Nou is a state-of-the-art football stadium that fits 120,000 screaming fans, and it can be evacuated in 5 minutes. This cathedral for soccer strangely enough was built to replace a stadium that was actually named the Cathedral of Soccer. Camp Nou has hosted the World Cup, the Summer Olympics soccer final in 1992, and even a visit from the Pope. On the two nights that there were games during the poker tournament, fans in F.C. Barcelona attire we're still roaming the streets in celebration at 5 a.m. The popularity of the team caught on with more than a few poker players as well, even American's were wearing F.C. Barcelona jerseys during the tournament.



When in Rome – Although it was a German who won the event, it was the Italian contingent of players that made the most bold statement in Barcelona. The boot-shaped country that is falling in love with the game of poker had 71 players in the event, which was more than any other country, including the U.S. Ten of those Italian players cashed, and one of them made it to the final table. Although he didn't win, Daniele Mazzia fought hard for his fourth-place finish, and he was by far the most entertaining character at the final table. He was crippled early, but through a series of fortuitous events the Italian fought back with equal parts of grit and luck. The pro-Italian crowd couldn't get enough of it, and each double up was followed by a rail-side celebration that was draped in a red, white, and green swath of color as Italian flags waved furiously.



EPT Youth Movement – An impressive youth movement was on display in Barcelona, as young players with a nice start to their career attempted to bolster their resume even further. The final table featured two bracelet winners from the 2008 World Series of Poker in Sebastian Ruthenberg and Davidi Kitai, and one former EPT champion, Jason Mercier, who won EPT San Remo in April. Mercier was the first of these three to fall, busting out in sixth place, and ending his run to become the first repeat champion in EPT history. With three players remaining in the tournament, Kitai and Ruthenberg represented two-thirds of the field. When a champion was crowned, it was the young German Ruthenberg (Kitai finished in third place) that claimed an EPT title to go with his WSOP gold bracelet, and make a serious jump up the Card Player Player of the Year leader board into fourth place. Major victories on two of the three major poker circuits in just three months – not a bad haul when your 24 years old.