Your Man in Barcelona

Poker in Barcelona, as in cities all over Europe , has been taking off in a big way over the last few years. Spain has given us such masters of the green baize as former World Champion Carlos Mortensen and poker-ace Carlos Fuentes, and Barcelona now plays host to a European Poker Tour event and the World Championship of Heads up Poker. Plenty reason, thinks Bluff, to go and check it out for ourselves.

Barcelona is the heart of the Catalonia region of , and Catalonia exudes an independent spirit and a sense of uniqueness, with a culture and language that differ from the rest of the country. Catalonians like to celebrate this uniqueness, which is characterized by a free-spirited, fun-loving and friendly populace. It seems natural, then, that it has a reputation as ’s funkiest town – from its famous Sonar music festival, to nightlife to rival anywhere in the world. This is the city of Dali and Gaudi, where Modernism merges effortlessly with medieval gothic and originality attains synthesis with tradition. Barcelona ’s arresting mix of architecture, and its golden Mediterranean beaches, make it one of the most beautiful places to visit in the poker world.

The casinos don’t open till 1pm, which is just as well, because there’s so much to do and see. Unlike Vegas, I am in a city of old-world culture, so I head straight for the glorious cathedral and stand, mouth agog at the magnificence of it all. Barcelona is also graced with the feverish imagination and crazed architecture of the city’s number one son, Antonio Gaudi. The Temple de la Sagrada Familla, with its high pinnacles and trippy spiral towers is perhaps his masterpiece, but the city is dotted with Gaudi’s works, each one an avant-garde homage to the downright freaky. Warped neo-gothic, Surrealist, Modernist, Art Nouveau – call them what you will; the point is these buildings defy classification. Some of them look like they’re made from wax, slowly melting under the gentle Mediterranean sun. This is architecture designed to skew your vision and rearrange your brain.

My brain sufficiently rearranged, I meander through the historic Gothic Quarter. This is part of town is a beautifully preserved network of winding streets, untouched by the ravages of time, numerous civil wars, Fascist suppression and the Anarchist terrorists of Barcelona’s colorful and often turbulent history.

A word of caution, though: beware of scoundrels in amongst the whirl of musicians, jugglers and sightseers – dumb tourists are a mark for pickpockets and bag-snatchers, so as long as you’ve got ‘wise-guy’ written all over your face, like I have, you will probably be okay. Strolling down Las Ramblas in the bustling heart of the Gothic Quarter, I observe what appears to a scam unfolding. A crowd gathers around a young man with a ball and three cups who invites passers-by to guess, for a fee and the promise of a cash prize, under which cup he has hidden the ball. This trick dates back to Roman times, I chuckle knowingly; it’s been played on the streets of European cities for over two thousand years and people are still falling for it!

But hold on: Surely, if you rule out the cup the ball appears to be in, because you know it won’t be in that one, then you’re getting even odds on finding the right one…hmmm.

Three hours later, after losing half my bankroll at the cup-ball game (apparently the ball isn’t in any of the cups, they make it disappear altogether), I hot tail it to the Gran Casino Barcelona. Time to play some poker hot-tail and win back some Euros.

They spread Poker Sintético, or Spanish Poker, here, that curious local poker variant, which astute readers will remember we covered in the last issue of Bluff. I soon found this game, with its stripped deck and strange structure (five community cards dealt individually between rounds of betting), to be little more than a craps shoot. What’s more, flushes beat full houses?!!? This game is as skewed as Gaudi’s architecture.

Based in Port Olímpic, the upmarket commercial center, the casino is a stylish sky-scraping affair, conveniently situated by the beach. It’s the only place in town that offers poker games, but they happen to be amongst the juiciest games in Europe . With only a few poker tables dotted around the floor, the management still insists on spreading a €20-40 Limit Hold’em game. This naturally attracts pros from all over the world, but there are plenty of baffled tourists and naïve locals to mop up too. Play cautiously, identify the fish and avoid the pros, and you’ll be dining very well for the rest of the trip.

Which brings us neatly to the subject of gastronomy. As well as a buffet, the casino itself offers The King restaurant, which serves decent international cuisine; there is a café open till the casino closes at 5am.

You can’t help but eat well in Barcelona ; there’s excellent seafood, plenty of Tapas, plus a range of very good Japanese and Morrocan restaurants. But for real traditional Catalan cooking, your correspondent heartily recommends Los Caracoles in Las Ramblas. Los Caracoles (translation: the snails) is the oldest restaurant in town. It’ll keep all you carnivorous Las Vegans happy with its mouthwatering specialties of spit-roast chicken and suckling pig, all washed down with a bottle of Cava or two. On arrival you’re led through the hot, bustling kitchen into a cozy wood-paneled eating area, the walls covered with photographs of famous diners of the last 100 years (I found John Wayne). The restaurant is excellent, but be sure to book in advance as there’s no secret it’s one of the best places to dine in town.

Bluff can report that Barcelona is the ideal stop for the peripatetic poker player. The World Heads Up Poker Championship, a No Limit Hold’em event, takes place in mid-June (a nice time of the year to be on the Med). Multipoker.com is organizing a freeroll tournament at the end of May, which could get you there for free. September will see the European Poker Tour roll into town for its second year. The 1000 Euro Barcelona Open is the first stop of the tour, which also takes in London, Dublin, Deauville (), Copenhagen, Vienna and Monte Carlo .

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