I really shouldn't be drinking.

I have a plane to catch in five hours from Incheon Airport in South Korea. I was in Ireland less than twenty hours ago. I should be sleeping five hours, getting up, showering, and then getting out of Seoul semi-rested. Instead I am in some random club with my girlfriend and her friends, kicking back beers. Korean pop is blaring over the sound system. We are the only group in the entire place aside from some women getting off of their night jobs. While others are waking up and eating breakfast across the street we are drinking soju deliriously. I've finally found the only hour Korea isn't choked with people - 5:00 AM.

My girlfriend hugs me a little harder and looks at me a little longer as the night goes on. She knows her man is leaving, and as usual we do not know for how long. I'm sad to be leaving her but not as sad as some people get. I spent the first seventeen years of my life in the same house, but since then I have been through six different homes in four different cities, from flats atop Seoul to a tiny boat in Alaska. My longest stay was eight months. I've grown accustomed to goodbyes.

When we get home my girlfriend hurriedly tries to finish drying all of my laundry. Most Koreans in my experience do not use dryers, but instead hang their clothes to dry. She's turned the heat up so high in our tiny apartment that it feels like a sauna.

I pack the last of my things and fall asleep for three hours. Waking up I am so jet lagged, tired, and dehydrated I want to pass out. I curse myself for not planning my trip better. My girlfriend had booked round trip tickets that were insanely cheap from Korea to Ireland, and I already had a flight paid for to Italy from Korea that was the cheapest I could find before I knew I was doing the Irish Poker Open. I figured I'd just use the round trip ticket we had anyway, and then go from Korea to Italy, but now I am cursing what a life nit I am. I should've just put up the few hundred and flown from Ireland to Italy, screw the flights I'd already booked haphazardly and the things I left in Korea.

My girlfriend gives me a goodbye hug at the gate. She isn't crying like she was last time. She is getting used to this. I don't know if that is a good thing.

The second I sit down in my seat on the airplane I pass out. The only memories I have are vague, of some Korean guy hopping over me every time he had to go the bathroom. For whatever reason he didn't want to wake me up.

***

I barely wake up in San Francisco just long enough for customs to treat me like a toddler. They ask me what I do for a living. I tell them I am a poker player. The woman doesn't seem convinced. She asks me if I live with my parents, and I say no I live on my own. She flips through my passport and sees the Korean and Ireland stamps for this trip. She asks me how long I've been gone and I have to think about the answer. She then asks me how many Euros I have with me and I say "I don't know, but it's not over 10,000 otherwise I would've claimed it".

She looks at me coldly and says with a dry voice "that is not what I asked you." Apparently, my being a spacey young man is indicator numero uno that I am a terrorist. I am told to step aside.

For the next hour another woman goes through every pocket of every piece of clothing I have, flips through the pictures on my camera, asks to see how much money I have, etc. She is very polite through the whole process and I do my best to do the same. I try to remind myself that I bet a bunch of kids my age try to sneak pot or pills into the states when they are abroad, and that these people are just doing their jobs. The woman turns out to be a poker fan, which is nice. The last woman apparently wasn't buying my story about how I make my income.

I hang out in San Francisco a little longer on my layover then catch my flight to Frankfurt, Germany. I fall asleep on this flight too, although I have no idea how. I catch another flight from Frankfurt to Nice, France. When I come into the airport I look for the bus that Pokerstars told me would take me to San Remo. I ask the person at the information desk where Diana Tours is located, and they tell me they've never heard of it. I end up talking to a cab driver, throwing a fit when I hear the price they want because I'm obviously a stupid tourist American, and am eventually able to get the price down to something semi-reasonable.

Driving into Italy, I see the beautiful blue water washing up against the sand, palm trees, and roaming hills for miles. It's quite a contrast to Seoul, Dublin, and Seattle. Hundreds of people walk along the clean streets. Young immigrant men from Africa walk up and down a spotless stone boardwalk, selling fake watches and sunglasses. Everybody is dressed like they are posing for a Details magazine.

The women don't stir me quite like I thought they would. When I was in high school I met two Italian girls who I thought were gorgeous, so I was expecting similar eye candy.

I was in a ceramics class one year where I spent every day talking with one Italian girl. Normally this was the class stoners in my high school took so they could make bongs out of clay and still get a B. I got a D because apparently I can't unsuccessfully woo women and make birdhouses at the same time.

Here I am not seeing anything that makes me feel remotely close to that excitement. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough.

Coming into my hotel I awkwardly say "merci" to my French taxi driver, who grins as I pay him what has to be the prize fare of the day between him and his coworkers. Next to me, the door to a Beemer opens and a man in a business suit emerges, looking down on me through his Prada sunglasses. Looking down the row of cars I realize that most of the patrons at the Royal Hotel are very well off.

I, on the other hand, am looking like my net worth is approximately three dollars, or 0.02 euros. Strolling into the hotel lobby in my basketball shorts, Guinness Beer T-shirt, matted greasy hair, and uneven stubble I draw more than a few stares. I am too tired and happy to be at my destination to care, however.

***

The door to my hotel room slams open.

I awaken startled, my eyes feeling like they want to bleed when they open to the glare of my laptop monitor. Word Pad is open to my Irish Poker Open trip report. Empty Heineken bottles crowd the bedside table next to me. Before I fell asleep I noticed the Heinekens from the mini-bar cost eight euros each, or $12.50. Jet lagged and tired then… I didn't care. With three hours of sleep now to revive my sanity I feel like an idiot spending so much.

My friends Konstantin and Nathanael walk into my room, yelling "Alex how are you?" in their thick German accents. I get up from my bed and give them both guy hugs, you know, not real hugs that would look affectionate and thus would make our inner homophobia rage, but those hugs guys do where you end up kind of looking like a ram butting heads with a competing male.

I spent time with both of these guys when I was in Germany back in the fall. On my way to Dublin for the EPT, I went to their small German town and spent some time recouping. I was on the end of the biggest downswing of my career then, shortly after I chopped the $200.00 rebuy with my friend Damage1. For whatever reason I could not win a hand or close a tournament. I had something like 20+ finishes between 21st and 8th. I had botched the $100 rebuy final tables, $50 rebuy final tables, The PokerStars Super Tuesday and $200 rebuy when we were down to two tables each, $100 MTTs, and dozens of others.

Instead of remaining strong I had lost my mind. I became needlessly tight at the end of tournaments - constantly worried that other players would snap me off when I bluffed. Once I realized I was doing that I became needlessly aggressive. Soon I did not know which way was up. I could not think clearly. I was seeing things - value where there was none, re-steals that were hopeless, and four-bet shoves that were insane.

In Germany, I talked to my friend Nathanael about my situation. Nathanael would not normally be the person you'd think you'd go to for advice. When he was younger he split his time between drinking during high school, playing piano, competing in chess tournaments, and training to do triathlons. When he got bored with Germany, he moved to New York on a whim. There he played on PokerStars, and in the first three months he ever played poker he won the TLB and tens of thousands in tournaments.

When I watched him play the first time it was clear to me he knew something I did not. I had shifted my focus in poker from grinding SNGs to tournaments, and while I had had some success, I felt like I was playing too tight. He seemed to always have complete control of the table though, and would get value in the most ridiculous spots.

Talking with him online, he opened my eyes to what a really strategic thinker considers when he is playing poker. He introduced me to the re-steal before PokerXFactor had everyone and their mother doing it. He gave me ideas on how to define ranges better, and a number of other plays I had never considered. Soon both him and I were complete maniacs at the end of low stakes tournaments, and to my shock it worked really well. Again and again I couldn't believe how often my opponents found the fold button against me. Whereas before I was straggling along in tournaments, more often than not now I was bashing my way to top finishes.

As I moved up though, I learned that I couldn't be as ridiculously aggressive as I could be at the lower limits, and I had to adjust to a more calculated aggressive style. Nathanael, however, continued to move up and push things too hard. While he had some success eventually, he fell on some harder times in tournaments. So he moved on to learning Russian. He winged an entrance exam and got into one of the finest schools in Germany. When he got bored with that, he set records on iPoker in cash game earnings at lower stakes games, when he started with the last $1,000 he had to his name.

Though Nathanael could never conduct himself in the way he knew he should, he would always give me great advice.

Months before, I had done well in tournaments, but had been depressed. At the time I was living alone in a tiny apartment, where my only window looked out on another apartment complex ten feet away. I couldn't even see the sky. My life had revolved around the tournament grind. I told him I was feeling a bit down and he invited me out to New York to hang out for a while.

In Germany, before EPT Dublin, he told me to calm down about my losing streak, take a break, and then start playing cash games on smaller websites to make more consistent money. He told me I was being too emotional, and I was just experiencing a normal downswing in tournaments. He was also very blunt and honest, and after watching me play a session in his flat, he told me my game had gone to shit.

Afterward I had taken his advice and, sure enough, I started to make real consistent money in cash games. I also enjoyed them more than tournaments because of how complex the games could become when you were so deep-stacked -- a level of complexity I had never experienced before in tournaments. Once I was relaxed and comfortable with my game again, I decided to play tournaments for a weekend. There I shipped a $100 MTT and took second in a $100 rebuy within a 24-hour period.

My friend had given me the help I needed to get back on track. He was just one of those cool guys you meet very seldom in life. He was a great poker friend because he could be honest with you, and he was a great friend otherwise because he always kept his word.

It was nice getting to see him and my other German friend Konstantin, who is another PokerStars regular who lived in the same city as Nathanael. We had all been doing well recently in poker and were ready for a break in Italia. They also enjoyed a good time but were not crazy partiers like many poker players, which was more my speed.

Over the next couple days, we all checked out San Remo. While it was a very scenic and cultured city, it wasn't as exciting as some other cities I've been to. Still, it was warm, and the country itself was amazing to walk through. While in the states and in Korea I rarely saw anything over twenty years old, all around me in San Remo were buildings and villas that were hundreds of years old. The people were friendly too, helping me navigate the maze that is the Italian language, although often they would flip out for seemingly no reason on the roads.

Eating out in the fine restaraunts, drinking good wine, jogging through the city, and swimming in the pool outside of the hotel provided for some good relaxation leading up to the tournament. Walking through the villas quickly becomes one of my favorite morning activities. Ancient homes crawl up for stories and stories, with only a few stone paths a few feet wide between each wall. Clotheslines hang low overhead, vines twist through crevices, and people shout at each other from their homes.

At some point we find a mini golf course and we decide to “get our degenerate on” by gambling on each hole. I end up winning most of the holes, despite being in more of a drunken stupor than most of my friends. I go through a fit on one of the holes though, and smash a golf ball into the pool. Oops.

Once in a while I do make it to the poker room to play a few of the satellites. I get to be one of the chip leaders deep in one but lose A-K to K-Q and then another race to go out. Another one I played a hand like a three-year-old and got the exit I deserved.

The night before the event, PokerStars holds a welcome party, like they usually do. Circus performers put on a show for us. A number of the online and live stars are in attendance. The bar is impossible to get drinks from… it is so crowded and understaffed.

Konstantin and I end up chilling with “Apathy123.” I offer a cute girl in braces cleaning tables 100 euros to get me three beers as a joke (because no bribe out of the fifty I'd offered so far had worked), thinking she will blow me off like everyone has so far tonight. To my horror she runs off to get the drinks. Konstantin starts laughing at me while Apathy123 tells me I'm insane. When she returns with the drinks, she darts off really quickly, before I can pay her. I call her back, thanking my lucky stars she apparently isn't expecting $160.00 and slipping her a 10 euro note instead.

Later on my friends and I try to make it to a club to celebrate our friend aaajack's chopping the 500 Euro event. Unfortunately, aaajack and his friends never show, and I end up hanging out with Elmastermind and his crew. I drink a little more than I normally would the day before a poker tournament, because the 3:00 PM start time gives me ample time to recover, but I still don't drink that much.

* This is Part 1 of Assassinato's San Remo Trip Report. Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 The next part will feature in-depth tournament commentary including discussion of individual hands.

Alex assassinato Fitzgerald is a professional poker player who specializes in multi-table tournaments. You can read more about Assassinato's adventures in the poker world by visiting his blog, www.assassinatopoker.blogspot.com. His online accomplishments include a win in the PokerStars $200 rebuy for $50k, along with a victory in the Full Tilt Poker $100 rebuy for another $22k. For more poker-related content from today's top online players, readers are encouraged to visit our Poker Articles section here at PocketFives.