Since the last update I haven't played online at all, but my new 2 part video series is up. I haven't rewatched them since making them several weeks(maybe longer?) ago but will probably do that soon. I ended up going on a roadtrip with my girlfriend where we went to Turning Stone for 2 days, visited Stevejpa in Kingston for an afternoon, went to her parents cottage for a few days and then went to Barrie to do this "tree top trekking" thing with my family as an early Birthday present(last 2 years I've been out of the country for my birthday and we've celebrated after so we decided to beforehand just to mix it up.

The drive to Turning Stone was pretty fun since the highways seemed way less jammed and traffic moved way faster than on the major Canadian highways. The casino/hotel itself was nicer than I expected yet there was far less to do there than expected. We had a draft where there were 4 teams of 6, and I was elected to be a captain. At an EPT or something I think I'd fare pretty well since I seem to know pretty much everyone there, but here I had only met maybe 3/20 of the other players and although I recognized most peoples online names when they said them, I forgot names pretty easily and after drafting nutsinho first round I more or less let him decided who we pick since he had already been there for most of the week. Our team seemed pretty solid, but as of the time I busted(like 90th/200) nutsinho was the only one left. Eventually he busted, and jordankickz who was on charder's team took the tournament down(I think he was the only 1 out of 24 of us who cashed, maybe 1 other mincash or something).

I can't imagine spending the whole like 10 days there, and Molly couldn't imagine spending more than the 2 days there. I guess the only real attractions were golf and gambling so if you don't do either there isn't much to do. The hotel tower itself was actually really nice and there were definitely some good restaurants, but unless I'm super bored I probably won't go back too often.

We then drove up to Kingston to visit Steve and his wife Nat who I hadn't seen in a while. Nat was at her baby shower for most of the time we were there but it was good to see them and apparently 5 days after we left they had their baby and named her Emily, congrats!

After that we drove up to Molly's cottage which seems to be even more isolated than my parents cottage, and despite coming last place in a poker game where the majority of people had a hand rankings chart in front of them it was pretty fun.

After that, we headed to Barrie to do this "tree top trekking" thing which is sort of similar to rock-climbing except that its less physically demanding. Everyone gets a harness which is similar to in rock climbing and 2 caribiners as well as a pulley. The trees all have a metal platform with various wires on it and each tree is connected by a "game" usually involving your carabiner's being attached to 1 or 2 wires around shoulder height and you permforming some sort of activity to get across(could be walking along a rope bridge, walking over barrels, climbing through barrels etc etc) before attaching to the next tree and continuing on. The pulley is used for the ziplines where you basically just put the pulley over a wire, sit back and zoom to the next tree.

Overall this was a really fun way to spend an afternoon, and although I would have liked it to be more demanding(pretty much every course was accessable for people trying it for the first time... I would have liked it more if it were like rock climbing in that no one can succeed at everyone on their first time), after that I finally went back to Waterloo for a few days.

My last few days of Summer in Waterloo were also pretty fun but it started to get quite cool. Fortunately it wasn't long before I was going to Cannes/Barcelona. My friend Tuhin won a package to EPT Dublin a while ago but has been busy since then so he has kept deferring the package. He was available to play Barcelona so he decided he'd use the package for that. I told him the Partouche Poker Tour event in Cannes is the best tourney of the year and agreed to buy him in for 1/2 his action + 1/2 his action in Barcelona, these are his first live tournaments but I still can't imagine anyone having less than like a 200 ROI in the Partouche event... more on that later.

We got to the airport fairly early and had time to get dinner. We went to just a random cheap diner type place and sort of lost track of time before realizing our flight had already started boarding and was taking off in like 20-25 minutes. We left quickly(had been at the diner maybe 90 minutes) and got to the gate just before they were roping it off. We saw a few customs agents waiting behind the gate so we figured it would take a while to board since I had more than 10k on me.

Right after she checked out passports Tuhin said to me "maybe I'm crazy, but did we pay for dinner?" he was not crazy and we unintentionally dined-and-dashed without paying for our chicken tenders. We were kind of thinking someone from the restaurant might come after us at this point(I've never d&d'ed before so I have no idea what standard protocol is) and were stopped by the customs guys. I told them that I had more than 10k euros and while counting it out/filling out the form in the back of my head I was just praying that the lady from the diner wouldn't come by telling them I stole my dinner since I'd look like the cheapest person in the world when carrying over 30k and not paying for my $12 meal(next time I'm at the airport I'll try to pay for that meal, hopefully it didn't come out of the waitress's salary). Anyways, while the "bad cop" was questioning me, the "good cop" was asking Tuhin about whether we are playing an EPT event, saying he really likes watching the pros play online etc. After I got done with the other cop, the "good cop" asked for my online name and apparently he watches me play all the time. Thought that was pretty random/made me look like a baller.

Anyways, we got to Cannes, realized I brought too many pants and nowhere near enough shorts, and made our way to the hotel that FunkiMunki recommended as the closest one to the casino. He was wrong and on our map we are about as far as possible from the casino, but most people are paying 3-6x what we are so it likely worked out for the best. We registered for the event, and checked out who was playing and wholy fuck it was crazy!

There were like 5 or so name pros(Matusow, Seidel, Tilly, Laak, Esfandiari, maybe a few more I've forgotten) and then NO ONE else. I mean like not even any "oh I've never played with him but I've seen him around" type guys and this is a 8.5k euro buyin with 260 runners yesterday and more today. Its ridiculous. Everyone is a grey-haired frenchman. Day 1b looks like it will be tougher, I've seen maybe 8 online guys around as well as a decent number of other people who play some EPT events and stuff, but I think it should still be the best tournament of the year(likely better than WSOP ME), since it has a very similar structure and well... no one is here.

Alright, thats it for now, play starts in just over 2 hours so hopefully I can hit some sets and other people will hit some pairs.

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