I don’t have a great deal to report on the poker front as it’s only been a few days since I last posted and in that time the internet situation hasn’t improved where I’m staying. I’m just being lazy really – there’s nothing stopping me from going to an internet cafe and putting in some sessions there. But I’ll sort that out soon.
Actually I haven’t been that lazy. I’ve been doing a fair amount of graft on the study side but now I think I’m in danger of overload. Do I actually need 3 million statistics on each opponent? Perhaps I won’t be able to see the woods from the trees if I do too much more. As it is I have 8 miniaturized tables of 6 players on my screen, and when I switch on the tracker I’ve 10 tracker stats over each player so that’s (8 * 6 * 10) bits of info. And now I’ve got my own customised stats on scraps of paper for the 25 players I’ve been stalking. It’s getting a bit ridiculous. I’m kidding myself if I think I can keep an eye on all that.
At some point all this work can actually become counterproductive. Patrik Antonius won $9m last year online and he said in an interview that he had never even looked at a hand history until after he crossed swords with Isildur1 at the end of 2009. That says it all really.
On the other hand, I mentioned David Sklansky last week and I just wondered this: for all his books and theoretical work, what has he ever won? Well I just looked that up on wiki and I can tell you that the bearded one has published 13 books and won three bracelets – all between 1982 and 1983. That’s not exactly prolific and I know who I would rather risk my money against.
It’s whatever works for you I suppose. But I am of the view that the best way to improve at poker is to play as much as possible.
Last week I said I’d be looking for a new place to stay and that I had a place called Barra da Tijuca in mind. Hence the title of last week’s piece was “On the Road Again”. The perceptive reader will notice that the title of this piece is “Not on the Road Again” and that is because I’ve actually visited Barra now.
It’s not that Barra da Tijuca isn’t a nice place - it is. After all, this is where the Rio Olympics will be held in 2016. Like I said last week, it’s got an 18km beach, including Prainha - the most beautiful beach in all of Rio (so they say but I didn’t manage to find it).
But it’s just so….so dull. There is a massive long road that runs parallel with the 18km beach and I passed through the area by travelling down this never ending straight road. And all there was along this road were new build condos and shopping malls, for miles and miles and endless miles.
As I looked out of the bus window all I could think was that “this place reminds me of Las Vegas”. Not the actual Las Vegas Strip, as I don’t think there’s another place on earth like the strip - but one of the many giant parallel roads that carve up the desert, like Sahara or Paradise. Then I realised that this road we were on was called Avenida Americas. It seems that this area is actually modelled on America. This is hard to believe because the Brazilians I’ve met aren’t exactly crazy about the US. I suppose they only started building Barra in the last 30-40 years, which might explain it, but I didn’t come to Brazil to live in cloned US suburb.
This is posh Brazil – where the footballers’ wives live (and the footballers I suppose). Yes, it is very nice but like Miss Macintyre used to tell us at school, the word “nice” doesn’t really amount to much, does it? What sort of a word is “nice” anyway? Well it’s a perfect word to describe Barra da Tijuca. Yes, Barra da Tijuca is “nice”.
It’s very clean and it feels very safe. I’ll bet it’s one of the safest parts of Rio and they will no doubt want to keep it this way for the Olympics . Of course there are lots of beautiful people here, lots of beautiful upper middle class people in their mirrored glass condominiums. Whatever.
What I would say to anyone who does come to Brazil for the 2016 Olympics though, is “spend as little time in Barra as possible!” It’s a damn shame to think that people will come to Brazil in 2016 and only see the inside of some Barra Shopping Mall. If you want to do that you might as well go to Dubai. Or Birmingham.
Heading home from Barra, when someone on the bus told me it was known as the “Brazilian Miami Beach” that sealed the deal for me. I’ll be staying put for a while. Yeah, give me Copacabana over Barra any day, with all its crime and pimps and hookers. At least it’s got a bit of character. Ha ha, I’m probably not making any friends with the Rio tourist board here.
Put it this way - if Copacabana was a madras curry, then Barra da Tijuca is a cheese sandwich. A processed sliced cheese sandwich at that. On white bread.
But if Copacabana is a madras, Rocihna is the vindaloo.

Rocihna - the largest favela in Rio
Rocinha is the biggest favela in Rio with a population of 150 thousand. That’s an estimate as I’m pretty sure they haven’t conducted a census. There are 800 favelas in Rio apparently, but whatever the exact population, Rocinha is easily the biggest. They have a saying about the favelas:
Living in a favela is an art
Nobody robs, nobody hears, nothing is lost.
Those who are wise
Obey those who give orders.
When night falls you can see all its lights twinkling from up the hillside. The funny thing about this is that no-one pays for their electricity in the favela – all of it is stolen from the mains.
You can get a guided tour of Rochina if you want. At the hostel I’m staying at they organise favela tours. When I left Praia do Rosa to come to Rio my good mate Joao, a Brazilian, said to me “please don’t go on one of those tours. And make sure you give shit to the people that do”
He is right of course. The argument in favour of the tours is that the money from the tours ends up in the favela and improves the quality of their lives. But who does the cash actually go to? I don’t expect the people who run the favelas are elected, are they?
No. It’s just morbid voyeurism for rich westerners. So I’ll be perfectly honest, I am a morbid voyeur, no different to everyone else and I want to look around a favela. But there is no way I’m going round with a load of wet-behind-the-ears tourists with cameras.
So when a guy from the hostel who has friends up in Rocinha offered to take me round there on Wednesday morning I agreed. He vouched it was safe where he would be going and mindful of my views of these tours he told me in the exact words that this was “not a favela tour”. However, come leaving time, 15 other people appeared - English Aussies, Americans, Kiwis and my Austrian mate Hannis. “I thought you said this wasn’t a favela tour” I said to the hostel guy. “It isn’t”, he replied with a straight face. Hmmm. I was getting a funny feeling about this. It was obvious what he was doing: he had asked us to meet around the corner from the hostel and he was just taking us on his unofficial favela tour, probably a bit cheaper than the hostel’s version with some of the proceeds going into his sky rocket. No problem with that, but let’s not pretend that it isn’t a favela tour shall we?
Just as we were about to get on the mini bus, I bumped into Pedro, a young bloke from Rio that I’ve become mates with. He asked me where I was going and I told him we were off to Rocihna but that I had my doubts because I had sworn I wouldn’t be going on a favela tour. He said “Rocihna, wow, I’ve never been there”. Then with a puzzled look at the group he said “that is a favela tour”. Well of course it was.
That was it for me. If Pedro has never set foot in Rocihna and he has lived in Rio all his life, what business do I have going there? So when they all got on the bus I didn’t and I told Hannis “sorry man, this is just a tour and I ain’t going”.
Later that night one of louder members of the group told me what a great day I had missed, how fantastic it was, how a select few of them had met some of the top boys and had their photos taken posing with AK-47s and pistols. This justified my decision not to go. Who wants to stand around boozing in a shanty town with a bunch of gun toting middle class “bad-asses”? (I’m sure there’s a rap in there somewhere).
Mindful of Joao’s words, I told him what I thought of favela tours and said although I wanted to go, I wouldn’t be seen dead in there with 15 gringos, nothing personal.
I got a slightly different viewpoint from Hannis. He said it was amazing how all these people who were living in abject poverty were so friendly and welcoming. One woman even let him hold her 5 month old baby. They had a few beers with the locals and he said it was funny watching one old boy of about 70 snorting his coke off the back of his hand in the middle of the street. I was surprised there wasn’t any bad feeling from the residents but it must be said that the average Brazilian is friendlier than the average European. That’s what I’ve noticed anyway.
And I might just yet get my chance to go to Rocinha. Hannis tells me that they have a very wide selection of high quality cameras on sale there. 100% legit I am sure with a full money-back guarantee and online help available.
Anything imported in Brazil costs an absolute fortune, including cameras but I need to buy one. I’ve got a little confession to Joao and his fiancée Natalie, who lent me their spare camera in May. It’s broken, or more correctly, I broke it. I don’t know how exactly but it doesn’t work and I need to replace it. So ironically, I would like to go to the favela to replace Joao’s camera. Ha ha!
In fact some lads from the hostel went up there again this morning, just a small group of four, including a local. But I had to decline the offer because I had to write this blog. Who knows, perhaps WW3 breaks out in the favela today and maybe I’ve been spared from some terrible fate because I was busy writing this?
Paddy Power could have saved my life!