The Night Before

We had a lovely time last night in Goa. The start to the evening however was marred by some problems we faced with our hotel. Despite repeated reminders and calls about our A/C not working, the staff at the Sun n Sand seemed quite clueless on how to help us out. They had no helpful suggestions on sorting out the A/C situation and it came to a point where we as guests were being looked to for suggestions on how to handle the situation. The whole incident left a bad taste in our mouth and we are unlikely to stay at this hotel again in the future.

We then left for the casino to check on the arrangements at the venue. The staff at Casino Pride had done a great job in making sure everything was setup quite beautifully. Craig Wildeman is the card room manager at the Pride and he is a consummate professional. He will also be acting as Tournament Director for the IPC event. He runs a tight ship and crew who are probably some of the most well-trained dealers you will find in Goa or indeed in any card room setup in the country. A lot of the credit for this goes to Craig who has ensured that his dealers work the table exactly like the dealers would in Las Vegas or Macau. A very pleasant and down-to-earth individual, Craig is what I’d like to call a player’s TD. Having spent many years playing the game and being a regular visitor to the World Series and other events on the European and Asian tours, he understands the nuances of the game from the player’s perspective and is able to use this to his advantage when he is acting as TD.

Craig and his boss Phil Sander were kind enough to invite us for dinner. The venue was Wan Ho, the Chinese restaurant in the Marriot where we had an excellent meal and over drinks were able to discuss what our ideas and plans for the IPC were as well as the direction of poker in India. Phil has been in the casino business for a long time and has worked across the world. His experience and knowledge allowed us to gain some insight into how games are run internationally and how we can incorporate some of these things into our own tournaments.

At the end of the night we bid goodbye to Phil and headed with Craig to one of his (and now ours too) favourite haunts – a karaoke bar called Down the Road. We had a fair few drinks and sang some songs and had a great time. We met the owner of DTR, a gentleman named Lyndon who is originally from Bombay but has now settled in Goa for the past 15 years to run his businesses here. We finally hit our room by 4:30 am and were only just able to get our shoes off and crawl into bed.

Tomorrow’s the BIG day and despite our weary states there is more than a little bit of anticipation at the start of the India Poker Championship. Months of planning and effort will hopefully pay off tomorrow.

Can’t wait!