As many of you know we got kicked out of our summer residence after 22 days so it was time to come up with something new and something better. This was the last place:
Unfortunately the new place has no pool but besides that I like it more because it's alot more in the center and we have no direct neighbours. But it was a long way to sign that one... Everything was basically set up but then the landlord received an anonymous phone call telling him a german and a new zealand guy were kicked out of their old penthouse and so he didn't wanted to rent the place to us anymore. Kind of reasonable. After a long email from me and my roomie, after a long talk of the Dhalia Real Estate Manager with the new landlord, after a reference letter from my old landlord (when I lived here one year ago), after increasing the security deposit from 3000Euro to 9000Euro and after a final meeting with our new landlord we convinced him that we are not as bad as we look and were able to finally sign.
In the meanwhile I lived for a week in another penthouse in Gzira on my own because two of my poker buddies, Bao and Beyne, who rent this one, were on vacation in Germany. Alot better and cheaper then ending up in a hotel room... However, on the 27th of April I finally was able to move into the new place and we haven't had any complaints since then and I'm still very satisfied. These days I'm almost happy we got kicked out of the old one haha... Alotta pictures are up on facebook so I only post a few here that you can get an impression:
We already had some pre-drinking at the place but as being said without any complaints, most probably because downstairs is only and office which closes around 4pm and further down there are 2 restaurants. That is one of the best part for me because atm I'm cooking max. 3 times a week which is amazing. I make a phonecall and 15 minutes later I receive a decent meal for a good price :)
In case of nightlife we are also alot closer than we were before which means you can just walk into Paceville in 15Minutes or take a cab for 5Euro which will take you there in 3 minutes.
Directly after moving in I got two good german friends coming over so that I ended up making alot of party the first few days after moving in. At the moment I'm going out like twice a week which works fine along with poker. But next friend is almost on the way and since I gotta entertain this people it's going to get a little harder in case of party towards the end of the month but I assume that I will have finished work this month around the 26th so that this isn't a big issue.
I'm also doing alot of stuff in case of my summer body atm so that I reduced carbs (even not enough yet) and going one day for gym and the next for a run. Lost like 6kg since I came from London and am pretty satisfied with the results so far.
On a sidenote my roomie bought a BMW Z4 2 weeks ago and we went to Gozo last saturday with the cars. Was definitely good fun and my arms got massive tan during the day - convertible for the win. Furthermore my first sober day at the beach. Gozo is the smaller neighbour island of Malta and you can only reach it via a ferry. About 40k people living there and it's pretty beautiful for a day but living there would prolly not be my style. But during carnival it's getting pretty crazy there from what I heard so that I definitely have to try and spent at least one carnival there :)
/culture
Back to poker it has been over a month since black friday.
In the end I can say for me it's positive. Games are better than ever and very few americans moved abroad so far - I can name 3 regulars who moved (out of 200++ I know). Sure there will be some moving the next 3 months but it seems like not nearly as much are moving as I expected first... I asked myself what I would've done if they close down poker in my country of residence and I'm pretty sure I would've moved in max. one week - I mean it's my fucking job, what should I do. On the other hand I realize that many people are not that flexible and free in this case like I am or maybe they don't have the focus I have, whatever...
Traffic obviously went down but games are good. For me the only thing which changed is that I have to mix in decent amount of NL100 which I basically haven't played the last 2 years but on the brightside this takes alot of variance out of the game and games at NL100 are insanely good so that I even should be able to make some decent money there.
Atm there is also one of the biggest tourmant series on Pokerstars running at - the Spring Championship of Onlinepoker. Most people know the fact that I hate tournament but because of Supernova Elite I had 5200$ which I had to invest in tournaments so that I splitted this amount into several SCOOP events. Running more or less decent so far even if I'm unlucky and lose in the very important spot but that's tournament poker. I'm up around 4k$ so far in this scoop (since I see every event as a freerole this is like 4k free cash) and I also have a couple of nice events left. Maybe I can use my one-time on one of these, preferably the 1050$ Main Event... In case of cash games I make slow but steady money so that I should be up around 5k$ here as well and with an additional 2.5k$ out of Rakeback it's a decent month so far. Nevertheless I hope for a strong finish or better said a tournament cash above 25k$ so that I can buy the last piece missing in the penthouse on my own - teh jaccuzi!
