From Slovakia to Portugal over Belgium: Poker Trip update before Vegas

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Weekly Poker Trip Forecast

Leaving Bratislava

A full month in Bratislava is in the books and if I had to sum it up honestly, it was steady, almost boring in terms of results.

From a poker grind perspective, the volume was there. Plenty of cash games, a few live tournaments, but no real breakthrough. No deep runs, no standout results, just one of those stretches where you stay afloat without truly pushing forward and I ended up booking a net loss all in all against all sorts of (often) drunk recreational players.

Frustrating? A little.
Normal? Absolutely.

The PLO5 variance is a strange beast that I find difficult to master. I still see a lot of potential in getting better at those hyper-loose monkey games but I am also not frankly embracing the brutal short-term luck factor involved. 4 cards make for enough chaos in my humble opinion and I am not sure the 5 and 6 game variance serves the poker community well as a whole. It’s funny how gambling is now prohibited in the center of Slovak cities but it’s ok to run PLO6 double board bomb pot games.

That said, this stop wasn’t just about mediocre poker results. Professionally, I’ve been spending weeks in a noman’s land of deal making and I feel more and more that the poker media industry and what I am trying to achieve with THE-ROUNDERdotnet are drifting apart at an accelerating rate.

Slovakia turned into a solid hub for poker networking, meeting players, exchanging ideas, and building connections that often matter more long-term than a single score. Outside the tables and beyond the casino walls, I leaned into something that never disappoints me: photography.

Bratislava delivers reliably on that front, and I’ve put together a full photo recap of the trip as a reminder that not every highlight comes from a chip stack.

I’ve left Bratislava and made a quick stop in Luxembourg to see family before the next stretch.

Next up is Belgium where I am mostly interested in meeting one of my very best poker friend/coach/inspiration. In terms of poker, I am specifically hoping to perform well in the DSO PLO event.

The Belgian interlude will be a short one because the bigger play is what comes afterwards: meeting up with buddies for a few weeks in Portugal after they return from the Vamos Poker Tour stop in Bucharest, Romania. More info is to be found in the POKER TRIPS section.

However, the plan is to step back from constant play and focus on studying poker, reviewing hands, and resetting mentally with one goal in mind: being fully ready for the upcoming Las Vegas grind in April, May and June. It’s good to see how my poker blog is establishing itself as a part of the Las Vegas poker media landscape after a decade of presence. About half the readers by now are from the U.S. and from Canada.

This past month in Slovakia wasn’t a breakout chapter at all but those tedious periods are part of the process; putting in volume, keeping up with long-distance connections, and working on small edges. Despite the lack of success at the tables, I am pretty satisfied with how I have been managing the drought periods at the tables and I can definitely see and feel how the work put in increases my ability to take some heat in complicated phases of the grind although they don’t seem to materialize as wins lately.

Globally, I can feel I am sharpening all the weapons I have at my disposal and I am pretty confident that I will be in a good mental and technical spot by the time I return to Vegas in roughly one month.

Next stop: the DeepStack Open in Namur.
See you around and have fun at the tables!

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