Spring Poker Trips: Busting in Namur, Escaping to Portugal

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Weekly Poker Trip Forecast

Namur: Where it all Started

If you’re planning your next poker trips in Europe, here’s a very honest field report: sometimes you win memories, sometimes you donate chips and occasionally you do both.

I spent most of the past week in Namur for the DSO festival. Namur is a place that feels a bit like a former home at this point.

This is where I learned poker and it’s also where I first experimented professional poker photography. Last week, Namur also reminded me that 4% equity is apparently enough to destroy 100% of a stack.

I fired the PLO event with confidence and left it with experience.

Then came the DSO Main Event: 1147 entries, 167 places paid. I soft bubbled in 181st spot in pretty disgusting fashion. Yes, the soft bubble: the chef’s kiss of tournament pain. Standard procedure at this point. ‘Next’, as they say.

I would not mind at all to take down one of those big-field events at some point but my real personal highlight during these poker trips, is always the people I meet. The old faces and the new ones I come across. I ended up playing the PLO event with a Parisian buddy I had not seen in more than 10 years, a crucial character in my poker player development since he was one of the people who regularly attended the legendary Paris Aviation Club de France games with me.

On top of the emergence of PLO in Namur, the ACF is where I began to focus on PL Omaha games in the early 2010s. We were playing 2/4 games against dodgy taxi drivers and all sorts of degens but also in very good company of legends like Antoine Saout or Bruno Fitoussi among many others. The rake was 5% with no cap and, somehow, I was still winning in those games.

Big shoutout to Igor, who’s now carrying the torch as the Namur house photographer, covering most of the poker action in Namur these days. Good to see the next generation grinding the same corridors. Curious? You should check out his IG. It features dope content.

I also keep throwing in some of my photos but for full results and proper coverage, it’s better to check out PokerExklusiv.com and their dedicated Namur section that does the job far better than my emotional recollection.

Also worth digging into if you enjoy travel pics and documentation: the photo archives of my poker trips.

Not all poker trips are about results and making travel success dependent on poker results, is a fantastic receeipe for being miserable.

When the weather behaves (rare, but it happens), Namur is actually a great stop with its chill pedestrian city center offering walks along the river and plenty of bars or restaurants to soften the blow.

Statistically, it should be raining a lot but let’s be honest: poker players and bad statistics have a long-standing toxic relationship anyway. We ran pretty hot last week in terms of weather. Souvenir photo albums are online on the PokerExklusiv.com and THE-ROUNDERdotnet Facebook pages.

From here, the plan is simple: reset.

Heading to Portugal to chase better weather, even chiller vibes, and hopefully the better side of variance.

I’m expecting to throw in few live cash game sessions, maybe a tournament or two if something interesting pops up in the poker trips section and a lot of catching up with friends and former business partners since I used to be based in Estoril between 2017 and 2021.

For players planning poker trips for the rest of the year, Spain and Portugal are honestly often underrated.

There are plenty of smaller series with manageable buy-ins that usually don’t attract many regs or pros and being. Enjoying those locations and landscapes after being eliminated usually doesn’t feel like punishment.

Let’s face it, if you’re going to run bad, you might as well do it somewhere with good food and ocean views.

While I was getting rid of chip stacks in Belgium, Alexandre (Brutally Honest) Rotenberg was over in Bucharest attending the Romanian Vamos Poker Tour stop. I did not hear a lot about his poker performances, so I guess he’s not coming back with a trophy or suitcases full of cash but he’s been adding fresh shots to his travel archive. Since he’s based in Cascais, he’ll be one of the local buddies I’ll catch up with after landing in Lisbon on the same day about one hour apart, making for a nice unplanned and convenient meet-up at the airport. His latest monthly stock picture contribution recap, book cover photos and travel reports, are available on his website.

In the end, that’s the beauty of these poker trips: no matter how the week goes, there’s always another table, another city, another story, and another buddy.

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