Posted by Bond18 | Filed under Bond18
Near the end of last night the exhaustion of the tournament really began kicking in. As a result I decided not to book any of the excursions to Izmir since I felt getting the appropriate amount of sleep would be very necessary. That and I had no idea what’s in Izmir.
I sleep in to almost 10:30AM and wake up with a horribly sore throat feeling somewhat sick. Celina tells me the breakfast buffet closes at 10AM today so I sprint upstairs and begin grabbing as much food as possible before they can put everything away. I manage to get some cereal and fruit, but the juice machine has been turned off preventing any throat soothing.
I lay around for most of the day reading and writing, and later try and access the Internet in the web center. I’ve paid 38 Euros for 120 minutes of Internet and figured at 3PM while most people are out on excursion few would be on the Internet and it should run well. The Internet is fairly slow at night, but this particular afternoon it’s slow to the point of agonizingly painful. I try to load up web pages and access my email and mostly end up staring at the silent TV playing anime in front of me, growing increasingly furious at my wasted money and inability to work, rattling off more profanity filled tirades in the cafe than a court stenographer could record. It takes almost 20 minutes to fire off an email after which I shut down the computer and find the rest of the group which has made their way back to the boat after their excursion. We discuss my intended strategy for a few minutes then I make my way down to the poker room.
Coming into the day we have 33 players left and my 29,100 has me in the bottom 10 stacks. 24 players will get paid. We’re keeping the same seats as last night, so I’m on the direct left of Strassman and his monster stack, making him an excellent re-steal target, though I know he’ll be calling me wide while I can’t do him much damage.
At exactly 4 o’clock cards get in the air and the player on my immediate left hasn’t bothered to show up yet. The player on his immediate left is very tight weak, and on his left is another fairly tight guy. Strassman must be salivating. The first hand dealt sees me in the BB and I peek down at 32o. It folds to Strassman and he surprisingly limps. I check and he fires at a flop that whiffs me, and I table 3 high and tell him “we’re running hot here already.”
I fold the very next hand and on the third hand find myself in a confrontation:
My stack: ~26,100, HJ: ~50K, Blinds 800/1600 with 200 ante. The HJ player is a young German player I played with yesterday who seems moderately aggressive. I hold Ad-8h on the button. The SB still hasn’t shown up and the BB is a nit.
Pre-flop: Folds to the HJ who raises to 4,200, CO folds, I shove, and the BB folds. The HJ goes into the tank. He stares me down for a while, then asks for a count. It’s a bit under 22,000 more to him. He counts out the amount then compares that to what he’d have left. He stacks them up, then hesitantly slides it into the middle. Flip one time? I table my A-8o and the HJ tables his 7s-7h.
Flop: 6s 5s 4s
Perfect! I get up from the table and tap the felt.
Turn: Ac
The HJ player looks completely disgusted. I don’t react in the slightest. I know better.
River: 8c
I wish everyone the best of luck and make my way out of the roped off area. I wander up toward the deck to find the group and tell them how it went down. There were three of us left with 60 players in and none of us really came that close to cashing. How annoying. We waste the remainder of the afternoon and evening playing card games and foosball, and book an excursion for the next day’s port, Istanbul. Unfortunately, the available excursions leave very early, despite my attempts to talk the tour guide ladies into leaving later
“…come on, we can make this 9:30. 8AM’s really not happening.”
“Noooo! You’re young, you can make 8AM happen easily.”
“I’m young, which means I still have plenty of time to see Istanbul, at a far more sane hour.”
“You guys are with the poker yes?”
“Yes, poker and 8AM do not agree. How’s noon?”
“You must see Istanbul! It’s beautiful, not to be missed.”
“Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine. Since the Bospherous cruise is full, which do you recommend?”
“The culture, palace, and shopping tour. It’s very good and five hours long okay?”
“Alright, let’s book it.”
We get to bed early and order at 7:40am wake up call.
The phone bursts awake at 7:40AM. Oh God, am I really going to get out of bed? I crawl out and open the window, and the view of Istanbul makes me think I ought to make the effort. A half hour later we’re on a bus on our way to the “Blue Mosque,” one of the many incredible and historic monuments located all over Istanbul. Our tour guide is filling us in on the Mosque’s history and Turkish culture. She begins telling us about arranged marriage.
“Turkey still has many arranged marriages, it is a proud tradition. This is good, and we have a way for the woman to show her quality to a family before the marriage. She weaves a beautiful rug and the quality of the rug shows her intelligence and patience. And what do you need in marriage? Intelligence and patience! This is very good, and because of this Turkey has a very low divorce rate, only 2.5 percent!”
It takes all my willpower to not blurt “Do you ever think the divorce rate is so low due to massive social stigma being attached to divorce, and not because arranged marriage is a working system? Do you think this is perhaps one big failure to understand causality?”
After our visit to the Blue Mosque we are driven to the grand bazaar area of Istanbul. We are taken inside a posh store and taken up to the third floor where we are to be given a presentation about the process by which Turkish rugs are created and their history. A 50ish gentleman in a nice suit who speaks excellent English comes out and begins giving us the presentation, while two workers roll out more and more rugs as he explains their quality. He pulls out a chart that shows a simple checkered pattern; one section has some single loops drawn on it, and the other section has double loops drawn on it. He elaborates
“You can see here the creation process of our rugs. The single loop pattern is used by many peoples and their history of creating rugs. The double loop pattern as you can see here is a more elaborate threading created by the Turkish and used only by the Turkish.”
Strange that if the creation process is so much better nobody bothered incorporating it.
After his history lesson the true motivation of our stop is revealed. He begins discussing the price of the rugs, based on the fiber count and material. When he finishes a swarm of suit clad sales assistants enter the room and begin waiting for any of us to make eye contact with them, or let our eyes linger on a particular rug too long. The group makes their way around the room pressuring people to buy rugs in an only moderately polite way. Charming that we pay for excursions which result in being given a sales pitch for about a third of our time in the city. Will picks up a tiny piece of rug perhaps a foot long and 8 inches wide.
“I’d expect a decoration this small to cost like 20 euro or something.”
“No way man, that’s gotta cost way more, way more.”
One of the salesmen overhears our conversation and jumps in immediately
“That one is 720. It would look great in your home! Let me show you some others…”
I’m left with three options:
1. Do nothing: Sit perfectly still and silent, praying that the salesman’s vision is based on movement like his cousin, the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
2. Play it cool: Tell him “Thanks, but I just don’t have room for any rugs at my place.”
3. Keep it real: Launch into “Why the hell would I pay you some three million US dollars for one of these rugs when I can go down the street to the bazaar and get an imitation for like 12 bucks? Who do you think is coming into my home that will look down at my rug and say ‘Ooooo wow what an interesting ru… hey wait a minute, this Turkish rug isn’t real! Jesus, have you no class at all!? This clearly has a very low fiber count, I’m telling everyone!’ forever ruining my reputation in the society of rug snobs I hang out with. Why I ask you?”
I decide to go with option A, holding perfectly still while looking past the salesman and staring at the wall behind him. I watch terrified as he sniffs the air around him, becomes confused, leans in for closer examination, then gives up and moves on to the people next to us who make the mistake of commenting “Oh, that one has a nice pattern.” I grab our group and sprint for the door, brushing past the entourage of salesmen. I reach the elevator and jam the down button. Nothing happens, so I press it hard again. A salesman approaches.
“You don’t know how to work a button?” he says, with a serious face.
“Apparently not.”
He pauses.
“Actually it doesn’t work, we disabled the down button so you have to press the up button in order to go down.”
“So if I press up I’ll be able to get down and out of the building?”
“Yes, but make sure to stop by our jewelry shop on floor one.”
“Right, gotcha.”
We hurry out the building and stumble about the bazaar, stopping for coffee. I’m left wondering how much MSC cruises gets paid to have their tours go through that specific rug shop in referral business. Street vendors chase you down the street the moment you make eye contact or stop for only half a second. We stop in to a restaurant and order a Turkish minced meat bread that is absolutely delicious. Afterwards we make our way back in front of our meeting place and hop on the bus for a visit to St. Sofia’s.
St. Sofia’s was a church built by the East Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, that was more or less converted to a Mosque when the Ottomans took over around the 15th century. The building is pretty much the most impressive thing ever. The massive dome shaped building has now since been converted into a museum and is filled with visitors marveling at its sheer size and detailed interior, wandering about taking pictures in front of everything. Myself included.
St. Sofia’s is our last stop in the tour. We drive back to the boat and we make our way to the lunch buffet to get some food. The poker room is having a 550 euro tournament tomorrow, so we spend the afternoon organizing the appropriate funds and buying in. I have a suspicion this might end up being a 20 player tournament, but I hope not. Tomorrow is our day at sea and if this thing ends quick I won’t know what to do with myself.
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