Vamos, Argentina!

Basically the past month I’ve been trying to play a lot of poker, anticipating taking some time off soon.

First I went to EPT Sanremo and then to the Grand Final in Monaco. The tournaments there didn’t go that well for me, to be honest. I played a lot of events, and got sixth in one PLO and an 11th in another one, but nothing else of note. But I had good fun, especially in Monaco. Sanremo was more quiet, but the food was good. We ate a lot of pasta and played a lot of open-face Chinese in which I actually did well.

It wasn’t all bad, though, because I had a percentage of my friend Mayu Roca from Colombia who ended up finishing fourth in the Grand Final, which kind of saved my trip.

From there it was back to Argentina for SCOOP where I actually got second place early on in a Badugi event (Event #5-M, the $215 one). I ran pretty badly heads-up, and while it wasn’t a huge score it was a nice way to start SCOOP.

Meanwhile Mayu, Angel Guillen, and Matias “Festivuss” Gabrenja had gotten a place together in Mexico City and they invited me to come, and so for the second week of SCOOP I played from there.

Even though there really wasn’t room for me we ended up getting a bed for me and it was very comfortable there. We’d do yoga and eat organic food — real healthy — and would all wake up every morning at 8:30-9 a.m. fresh and ready to go.

As soon as I got there and started playing, I won a $215 2X-Turbo, then a $109 2X-Turbo, and made several final tables in non-SCOOP tournaments and was deep in several SCOOP events, too. However, I couldn’t run well at the end of a lot of those and so couldn’t break through to win.

I ended up down for the entire series, but not by too much and considering how much I played it could have been a lot worse. And it was a lot of fun to be there, especially whenever one of us would get really deep and we would rail and root each other on. Mayu had a great SCOOP — he killed it, finishing runner-up three different times and winning a lot.

From there I went to Panama for a small tournament, then over to LAPT Brazil which just finished up. After a short trip to Vegas, it’s now time to spend the next few weeks watching the World Cup in Brazil.

Christian de Leon will be there, too, watching all of Mexico’s games, while I’ll be going to Argentina’s games. If Argentina gets to the semifinals, I’ll miss the WSOP Main Event. I’m pretty sure we’re going to make it — it would be a dream, if we did. And if we got to the finals against Brazil… man, that would be insane.

After such an intense recent schedule of poker, I’m really looking forward to watching other people compete for a while and enjoying some time off.

Vamos, vamos, Argentina!

Nacho Barbero is a member of Team PokerStars Pro