Well, I just spent 5 interesting days/nights in Uruguay. Poker was dead in Montevideo the capital city, but alive and well on Easter weekend in Punta del Este which is one of the most popular beach resorts in South America.
First, Montevideo. Very nice, laid back city. Surrounded by a beach on the "Rambla", lots of old and new buildings everywhere but very few skyscraper types. Lots of cafes and bars dotting the whole city and overall clean, tree lined streets in safe neighborhoods. Hardly see any police anywhere over 5 days...that says alot for the relative safety of the country...much SAFER than the USA in general I would say.
The only poker that I could discover being played publicly in Montevideo is at the casino at the Radisson Hotel on Plaza Independencia...in the "old city". This is an interesting part of town and definitely worth seeing. According to sources at the casino, they have poker most days from 2-10PM. Some players I met in Punta del Este said that it is an inconsistent, weak game. They said they would rather play online. I stopped two different evenings and they never had a game going. Bummer, because this city has many nice features for things to do when poker players aren't playing.
I took a one day excursion to Punta del Este on Saturday where I had read there was a major tournament. I was bummed that all my emails to the Conrad hotel and casino which was hosting the event were never answered and they never posted details online about the tournament. When I got there Saturday, it turned out they were late into the second day of a 3 day structure. Kind of their own little "world series of Poker" I guess...but a baffling structure to me. They must have spent too much time in Panama during one of Panama's terrible high stakes tournament promotions. This tournament was apparently $1000 buyin with two rebuys. There were two flights over two days and then the top however many from each flight would play for all the marbles the 3rd day. The blinds went up every 15 minutes and it was NOT deep stack. This type of format is perfect for building big pots on rebuys and rewarding bad players who have all the money in the world. Skill is a much lesser asset in this format. Money/buyins is king. Not my kind of tournament, so glad I missed it. Still, I dont understand all these Latin poker promoters putting out web content and then not answering emails. Stupid in my book.
Fortunately though, I was rewarded with a lively poker room up in the main Conrad Casino (tournament was in the ballroom) and three tables had plenty of chips clacking about. They room features 3-6, 5-10 and sometimes 10-20 NL Holdem. All three tables playing when I arrived were 3-6...and there were a bunch of huge stacks in these games. Minimum buyin was $200 I believe, and it appeared many were buying in for 500+ at a time making for the big stacks in play. I only have to wait 10 minutes for a seat to open up and I found myself seated at a full table with a wonderful mixture of players. We had young and old, Spanish speakers, Portugese and English...and all languages were allowed during play. At my table to my immediate right was a young executive banker from Rio, Brazil who spoke perfect English. Another young player at the other end of the table from me was from Spain. The rest seemed to be a mix of Uruguayan and Argentinean players of all ages. The average flop saw 5-6 callers and made for plenty of action. I was never down in this game and after 2.5 hrs I decided to pull out with a $500 cash. Not bad for my first session in the deep south of South America.
Now its on to Argentina on Monday and checking out the LAPT tournament in Mar del Plata. I also met some Argentinean players at the Punta del Este tournament who invited me to their cash game in Buenos Aires...so I am licking my chops already and looking forward to making lots of new poker friends in Argentina. Hopefully I can win a satellite for the $5000 buyin at the LAPT. If not, I will probably just try to take down some major live cash games and I think they will have smaller "second chance" tournaments as well.
Ah...how I love poker adventures..
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