My First: Calvin "cal42688" Anderson Travels Abroad For A Poker Tournament
Traveling for a poker tournament can be intimidating, especially when it��s abroad. Even though members of the PokerNews Live Reporting team are now expert travelers, they were all overwhelmed the first time. At the recent European Poker Tour Prague, the question arose: how did the pros feel when they first traveled for a poker tournament? We decided to ask Calvin "cal42688" Anderson that very question in our latest edition of My First.
If you��re not familiar with Anderson, you certainly should be. He is widely considered to be the best online player in the world, with more than $2.7 million in winnings on PokerStars and $791,000 on Full Tilt Poker. He also has two Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) titles, a World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) title and took down the PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up back in August after defeating Darren ��darrenelias�� Elias heads up for $83,835.0). That win came just one week after winning the Sunday 2nd Chance for $45,014.08.
Not surprisingly, Anderson won his way into his first live tournament online. Here��s what he had to say about that first trip:
��The first time I ever traveled to go play a tournament, besides a couple of smaller ones in my hometown, I won a frequent-player point (FPP) satellite qualifier to a different qualifier. It was like 300 FPPs with 100 people in it. Top three got $100 and an entry into a freeroll. I originally didn��t even realize there was another ticket, I was playing for the $100, that��s all I really cared about. I��d never tried freerolling satellites at all, but I went for that. I played on Sunday, and I think there were like 60 people in it, half the field was probably sitting out. You couldn��t get in it unless you��d won an earlier FPP qualifier, the one I had qualified through.
��I won that to go to London, and it was just a week afterwards. I was like, 'Oh my gosh,' I��d never even played a tournament above $200 and here I was going to play in this �10,000 event. I was completely overwhelmed. I booked my flight to go there without even knowing what the live scene was all about. This was like the first tournament I��d ever went to at all. This was like three years ago before I��d ever had much success.
��So I went there and played. I was overwhelmed by the whole vibe and everything else. I had to rush the passport. I remember getting the passport the day that I left, it was nuts. Luckily, London is English speaking, so I got really lucky with that. I went by myself, but I met some people there so it was fun.
��I didn��t do anything in the tournament. I got pretty short, and I shoved with 9x3x on the button. I was extremely short and a guy tanked for the longest time and then called me with 9x9x. That was my most embarrassing live moment I think, having to turn over that hand. I lost.��
Anderson also told us a quick story about the first time he attended a Latin American Poker Tour event:
��The first LAPT I went to was Costa Rica. I realized I lost my passport at the airport when I was about to go home and had to take a cab, with a taxi driver that didn��t speak any English, to San Jose and get a passport. I talked to the taxi driver��s mom, who spoke very little English. It was pretty scary and then I got to the embassy and heard a bunch of stories about how some people got robbed at gun point, and I was pretty thankful that wasn��t the reason I was there.��
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