stevesbets

I’ve been in Denmark for a few days so far and there are a few things I figure are worthy of remark. Firstly, both Copenhagen and London are obscenely expensive. They are both above new york city on the list of most expensive cities worldwide, combine that with the dollar being totally tanked and prices are more outrageous than most people can imagine. A few examples(i know those who read my blog are mathematically gifted so i’ll let you do the conversions, 1 pound is about 2 dollars, and 1 dollar is about 5 Kroners): in the London airport I got a burger, fries and garlic bread for the low price of 25 pounds. My friend and I went to lunch in Copenhagen yesterday at a small italian place where we split a small pizza and each got a small appetizer for the very reasonable price of 368 Kroners. Dominos pizza delivers to our hotel room for the price of 125 Kroners per medium pizza. Last but not least, a 5 minute cab ride will clock in at 100 Kroners.

On the subject of cabs, nearly every cab that we’ve seen so far is a mercedes benz, not like an old trashy one either, brand new, detailed benz’s. When I asked the cab driver last night how they all have mercedes’ he smiled and said, “we like mercedes”

On the gambling front, I busted towards the end of day 1 of the EPT event. They started us with 10,000 chips as opposed to the current WPT trend of starting with 20 or 30k chips so the structure moved the tournament along pretty fast. There were two day 1s with 230 people each, when I busted there was about 95 people left in my day1. So i made it kind of far but it was all for naught as a pretty sick turn card crushed my EPT dreams.

Casino Copenhagen in our hotel is tauted as the biggest and greatest hotel in all of Northern Europe. It is very very different from any casino i can imagine in the USA. Men are required to wear jackets, there is and 85 Kroner entry fee for the privilege of gambling, there are no free drinks, they are open only from 2pm to 4am. At 3pm yesterday there were a total of 4 tables open in the whole casino, 2 blackjack and 2 roulette. In the blackjack games they have just about every rule possible to hurt the player, and a tiny max bet of 2000 Kroners. Additionally, it is expected for players to tip 10% of their original bet anytime they get blackjack and they tell you so on the signs by the blackjack games. The poker games they spread are no less ridiculous. Since it is tournament time they are spreading games like 25 50 nl/plo (all games are in Kroners), 50 100 nlh and 50 100 plo. The rake on these games is 5% per pot with a max of a whopping 150 Kroners per pot!! Needless to say, if there were an aggressive, wild 9 handed plo game at the 25 50 level, the house would probably have most of the money after 12 hours of play.

The city of Copenhagen sort of looks like a fairy tale with colorful interesting buildings, twisty towers and old churches. It is dreary and cold every day at this time of year but apparently the summer sports a sun that is up until 11pm every day and parties around the clock. Luke and I had a blackjack dealer yesterday who looked exactly like Miranda from Sex and the City and we inquired about the prices of apartments in the swanky area of town near the Queens house (we witnessed the changing of the guard). She said that a 1000 sq foot apartment may run between 20 and 30k Kroners. More expensive than Manhattan! They call diet coke coca cola light, and they use coke zero as an equal substitute for it. Every 7 11 is well stocked with all sorts of pastries, many of which are unrecognizable to my American eye.

I converted some Dollars into Kroners at the train station yesterday and the clerk warned me to beware of pick pockets as she dispensed the money. I felt no need to beware since I feel far safer here than in most cities in the US. As my friend Luke put it, “In America you may be killed for your air jordans, that just doesn’t happen here”

Today we’re going across the bridge to Sweden to check out Malmo,  seeing the twisted tower designed by Calatrava interests us. Maybe I can dream that one day I’ll have the 30 million required to buy one of the cubes in the new building he’s designing in Manhattan. That’s all for now, I’ll give more updates later.