Worm Town

In 1998, Phish, one of my favorite bands, performed in Amsterdam at the Paradisio. Throughout the concert, they kept singing, "You're on the back of the worm." At the end of the show, they improvised a song called Worm Town. The song was about the haze surrounding Amsterdam and the fictional worms that live in the canals. I recently flew to Amsterdam to play in the no-limit hold'em events at the Holland Casino. I spent a lot of time sightseeing and taking pictures of that wonderful city during the day, and then played in the tournaments in the evenings.

Amsterdam is a city of beautiful people and great restaurants. It is difficult to walk down the streets without noticing the cultural differences between Europeans and Americans. Everything is different over there. People are friendlier, they all wear stylish black clothing, the ladies don't wear too much makeup, and there are more bicycles than cars. It also rained far more during the week I was there than it has in Las Vegas for the past four months.

Now that I have talked about a few differences between the two countries, it is important to mention how the poker differs. For one thing, the main games are pot-limit instead of limit. A few issues ago, I wrote that I was excited to play in Europe so that I could work on my pot-limit game. Let me be the first to admit that I got crushed in a pot-limit game, and I really did not know what to do. I kept folding the best hand and the Europeans kept showing their bluffs. In fact, it got to the point where I was making marginal calls because it wasn't worth it for me to see the bluffs without having the opportunity to win the pots. I did learn that the size of a value bet could be larger than that in the United States.

A few times, I moved all of my chips in with big hands, and always got called. I was very impressed by the English players. They rarely made mistakes, and played very aggressively. Once when I was in a hand with an Englishman, I was trying to talk him into calling me, and he seemed to be quite upset with me. As it turns out, in England, one cannot talk to another player about a hand as it is being played. Therefore, my rhetoric was culture shock to him. I also was affected by not knowing some rules. To my dismay, I was called for a few string raises during the events because I paused as I casually threw my chips in, even though my hand was still out. For reasons like this, it is important to know the rules at each place that you play. Now that I have played at the Master Classics of Poker for two years in a row, I am ready to go back to Worm Town and try again next year.