Cyprus

I guess ill start when I left Vegas. I was totally unaware it was going to take 24 hours to fly from Vegas to Cyprus. I figured it would be something like 18 hours. It was 30 minutes to LA, lots of hours to London, then around 6 hours to Cyprus.On short flights, I usually spend the $100 to get moved to business class.

On the flight to London, I decided to splurge and spend $800 for business class. Honestly, it wasnt worth it, as the service was ok at best and the food was just decent. On the flight from London to Cyprus, they would give you all the drinks you wanted and the food was great. It kinda makes me want to upgrade on that flight going back just to see how much better it can get, as that flight was basically the nuts.

Cyprus is a weird place. First off, there are two sides to this country. The Greek side, which is actually known as "Cyprus" and the Turkish side, which isnt recgonized by any country as a country. Because of this, you cant fly into the Turkish side of Cyprus, Turks have 2 letters on their liscense plates whereas Greeks have 3, and you have to go through an odd looking boarder to get to the north side, kinda like you would see in Iraq.

Despite this, Turks and Greeks get along just fine in the casino. The land is a mix between rocky mountains and green valleys. It is also very humid. All in all, it is very pretty. Before this trip, I had no clue what jet lag felt like. I used to start getting on whatever sleep schedule I needed to be on for a tournament around a week in advance, either staying up or going to bed an hour earlier each day so that by the time I actually had to play, I would be on the perfect schedule.

Apparently I forgot to do that this time, as I havent been out of North America in quite some time. I think I slept around 18 hours on the flight then around half the time since I have been here. I played a $500 and $1000 tournament so far, and while I played technically sound, it was impossible for me to make any reads at all. I knew both times around 30 minutes into the event that I should not be playing.

Ohhhh well. After busting from the $1000, I went to sleep for around 6 hours then woke up around 10pm. I played some $10/20 plhe last night, which is in the low limit section of the poker area, and won a decent amount. The play is awful. There are basically no pros, probably because of the 3%, uncapped rake. The largest pot of the night was rakes something like $175. It was pretty sick. Also, they allow smoking in the cash game area (but not the tournament area, which is in the convention center) although most people stopped smoking around midnight for some reason.

The casino does not keep $1 bills or have $1 chips. I was talking to a Greek guy with perfect english that lives here now but lived in america for 10 years, and he said that the players requested to not have $5 chips, as they were all mostly rich people anyways and there was no use for them. Because of this, dealers get tipped $5 min, pots are raked in $5 increments and I have to tip a guy $5 to get me a green tea. Because of this, I order 2 green teas and a bottle of water, obv to get value from my $5. Does that make me cheap?

Food here has been pretty good so far. They have a buffet full of mostly european type food. For breakfast, they have a nice molet station and also my favorite, seedless oranges but up with no skin on them, just like they have at Atlantis. I think I have went through around 10 oranges each day so far. At night, they have lots of veggies and fish, which is right up my alley. One cool thing is that instead of birds begging for food, there are numerous stray cats. They are really sweet and cute.

I imagine they are all diseased up though, as I doubt they have had their shots. I guess the cats ate all the birds. The main event starts in 2 hours. I feel pretty good and am expecting good things. Even if it goes bad, I can just put in lots of hours at the cash tables and give the house $100 in rake per hour.