Tale of a traveling gambler

TALE OF A TRAVELLING GAMBLER

PART ONE:
EXILE

Brazil

Chapter ̶̶ 10. A better life

-First time in Brazil?
-Yes.
-Where are you off to?
-In Rio.
-Work or play?
-Uh... hobbies.

Sensing my hesitation, he looked up from his screen.

-How long are you staying?
-I don't really know. Two, three months maybe.
-Three months to visit Rio is a long time.
-Yeah, but I'm not going to stay in Rio, I’ll visit the country afterwards.
-And your return ticket?
-I haven't bought it yet, I think...

All these questions are starting to make me a little nervous. I was so excited to have finally set foot in America, and now this jerk has cooled me down. The problem is, I can't really take the risk of explaining to him what I'm doing in his country. Let alone the fact that I have absolutely no idea when I'll be back in France, and that this will depend entirely on whether or not I succeed at the continent's poker tables. I'm opting to remain vague.

-I think I'll take my return flight later, in another country. I plan to travel a bit.
-What do you do for a living?

I open my mouth for a moment, then stop in astonishment. I don't know what to say. This is the first time this has ever happened to me...
Over the next few months, I'll get used to this question and learn how to adapt to the people I talk to, and their expectations. Without lying, but without ever being perfectly accurate. To young people my age, those being stuck at school or at work, dreaming of adventure, I'll say I'm living from poker. To other travelers hoping to make it the distance, I'll introduce myself as a blogger. To pretty girls, I'll be a romantic writer. And in front of mothers, policemen, officials of all kinds, those who want to see in me a "responsible young man", I'll always have the same answer, which will often make my life easier:

"I'm an architect."

I thought for a second too long, and my official is getting a bit agitated at the counter. He starts looking at my passport. Maybe he thinks I'm too young for this job. I've always been told that I look much younger than my twenty-five years. What ever the case is, he’s sensing something is wrong and, in a way, he's right. I haven't worked in an architecture office for the last four months... And for the moment, as one says on Facebook, architecture and I have, shall we say… a "complicated" relationship.

Yet I had loved my studies. I loved uncovering the secrets of my discipline, discovering its history and secrets. How to observe a space, understand how it works, how its luminosity, its shape, its materiality can modulate the state of mind of those who walk through it. I devoured the texts of the masters. They were almost friends to me. Sometimes even enemies. During my five years of studies, architecture was more than a passion. It was a way of life. The filter through which I perceived the world.

But studying architecture in theory is not the same as being an architect in the field. And having studied art isn't enough to have penetrated the mysteries of life. It seems obvious, but it wasn't to me. When, freshly graduated after a flawless university path, I embarked on my career full of ambition and with the desire to change the world, life was quick to bring me down from the clouds on which I'd been soaring.

My very first agency was the kind that made my little student heart beat faster. Great style. Ultra-contemporary, clean-lined, pristine white buildings (Photoshop contrast + 64%) that flaunted in magazines. They stood in stark contrast to the surrounding buildings, which were often half-timbered in this region with its strong traditions, but it was done with such aplomb that it worked. An assertive radical style, almost arrogant, some might have said... It looked a hell of a lot like the one that I was at the time. I had stars in my eyes and I was ready to do anything to get in, even to move a thousand kilometers from my native Lille, to this small town in the southwest of France where I didn't know a soul. It didn't scare me. It wasn't the first time I'd found myself alone somewhere with everything to build. Actually, it was quite exciting. And after five years filled with friendships, travels, passions and successes, my confidence was at an all-time high. I had no doubts about my ability to succeed in the professional world. Nothing could happen to me. I passed the interview with ease, over-motivated as I was, and a few days later, I started.

At first, the excitement was enough to maintain the illusion that I was in the right place. I found a small studio, bought myself a scooter, and every morning I went to work with the wind on my skin, and a smile on my face. But reality soon caught up with me, and reality was simple : I was the latest recruit for a big, fast-growing company. A young kid, certainly talented, but fresh out of school, poorly paid, and positioned at the very bottom of the ladder. My role was to respond to a fairly common need in highly hierarchical structures: to do the tasks that bored my superiors. In other words, to be the "manard", as we say in this business in France. The one who works with his hands. Not with his head.

I thought I had arrived to live a great adventure, to give my opinion on Le Corbusier or critical regionalism, but all I did was cleaning up sketches of projects I hadn't drawn. Not much more was required of me than this simple technical execution. At most, a minor opinion from time to time on the thickness of a line or a shade of color. And even then, they didn't necessarily listen to what I had to say. Interesting choices, significant decisions, meetings with customers or companies were all managed by the project managers. To take on these responsibilities, I first had to "prove myself". For three years if I was lucky, probably four or five in reality.

That's how most of the big agencies work in architecture. You start by learning the basics, and gradually work your way up. But at the time, I was too fiery to have that kind of patience, and too sure of myself to see it as anything other than an unfair, if not shameful, belittling.

The euphoria of the early days wore off, and the pressure began to build. In addition to playing the half-intern, I had to put up with a pace that was far too intense. I rarely finished before 7pm, often at 10pm, sometimes later. I even pulled a few all-nighters. Unpaid, it goes without saying.

No one questioned this. Everyone was aware that there was an implicit form of natural selection and that this was the price to pay for being among the best. You had to make it or leave. My superiors had been there, had understood the process, and they'd been through so much that they weren't about to let the newcomers off so easily. All in all, it was a good school. A tough but effective school. They had become good architects. Proud to have succeeded. Even if many of them had had to sacrifice their couple or family lives. Even if sometimes, around 2 a.m., I'd see some of them coming back from the bathroom with reddened eyes.

As much as I loved this job, I couldn't pay that price. I thought I wanted it, I felt capable of it, I wanted to be capable of it, but my body wouldn't let me. In its own way. It happened slowly, with small, innocuous symptoms at first. A rash of pimples on the hands here, difficulty getting up there. Then it became clearer and clearer. After a few months, I was looking at my watch every half-hour. Hoping that the time would pass as quickly as possible so I could finally go home. Not that my life on the outside was any richer, on the contrary. My few acquaintances were limited to an insistent neighbor who insisted on being my friend, especially when he'd been drinking, and a little cat to whom I'd been kind enough to give a glass of milk one day, and who'd been coming to visit me regularly ever since. Distressing.

I'd made a few more interesting relationships at first, but they faded away due to lack of time or simply fatigue. And probably also because, after a while, I didn't recognize myself anymore. The absurd pace and daily defeats had completely shriveled me. I'd gone from the heady self-assurance of the blossoming student to total insecurity. I walked with my head down, spoke in a low voice, didn't dare support looks. Worse still, I felt I had regressed. I'd become totally insipid, wild and asocial. Even my colleagues began to avoid me. I don't blame them, I'd turned into a ghost. People have a kind of sense to detect loneliness, and they instinctively move away from those who smell too strongly.

Alongside my work, I would return to my school from time to time to take a specialization. A sort of diploma in addition to the architect's diploma, which allows you to legally set up your own business and sign building permits. It was the very last school test of my life and unfortunately, in the pitiful state I was in at the time, I failed my oral exam. The very first academic failure of my life for its very last test. Me, the guy who'd never failed an important exam, who'd passed his baccalaureate with honors. The good student.

Up until then, I'd been like a slightly pretentious boxer taking on an opponent he discovered was too strong for him. I could see that I was being slaughtered, but the situation was so unusual for me that I still believed I could beat him. I could get away with it. At least, one more round... This failure was the final punch, a little more violent than the others, which knocked me out.
And when, after a few days of shock, I came to my senses, I realized that I was broken. For the first time in my life. Incredible, incongruous and new as it seemed to me.

At the time, the word “burnout” wasn't yet in vogue, but I think that's what I experienced. Burned out at twenty-four.

In a moment of clarity, I finally understood that things couldn't go on like this. I was a few weeks away from the end of my contract, but I told my bosses that I wanted to leave right away. Even if the form was brutal, I think it suited everyone. I had become a thorn in their side. Their guilty conscience. The limp young guy, slumped in his armchair, ruining the glittering perfection of their premises.

-Are you really an architect?
-Yes.
-Really?

I feel like the guy's reading my mind.

"Of course."

Returning to the North, to the family apartment, after such a setback was complicated. Wounds had to be healed. I had to recover. And analyze the causes of defeat. Why had I screwed up? Was it my fault or theirs? And if I went a little further, there was another question I didn't want to face. Hadn't I taken the wrong path? I'd already had occasion to touch on this question during some internships, realizing with astonishment that I didn't like what I was doing, but I'd attributed it to my precarious status, or just to the company. With this disastrous experience, astonishment gave way to concern. Only concern, because I wasn't getting too close to the edge... If I'd had the courage to go for it, maybe I'd have started to feel fear to the idea that yes, I wasn't cut out for this job. That maybe I'd spent five years studying for nothing. And that after all that time, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life.

So, rather than go too far in questioning myself, I spent the winter forgetting myself in what made me feel good. Anything to take my mind off these painful issues. It worked. Time went by and the pain gradually dissipated. And in early spring, for want of something better to do, fragile but on my feet, I resolved to listen to my parents' reasonable advice and get back to work. I put back on my boxing gloves and looked for a new opponent, a little less tough this time.

Life can be strange. I was sure I was going to have a hard time finding another job, particularly because of the loss of confidence I was experiencing, but I guess it was somehow touching. I played the sincerity card by recounting my disastrous first experience at my very first interview, and I was taken on straight away...

It was a tiny agency deep in the South countryside. There were four of us. The boss, his wife, an employee who'd been there since the beginning, and me. The studio specialized in wooden construction, with a real ecological conscience, at a time when it was still rare, and not necessarily so easy to sell. The boss was cool, human, and the schedules respected our private lives. Most of the work consisted in designing small local facilities, schools and vacation homes for wealthy couples who dropped in the agency for coffee. The projects were small, my ambitions to change the world had faded, but in the end, I felt much more useful here. Piloting the construction of a small town's nursery wasn't as sexy as working with an American architectural star on a museum project, admittedly. But far more interesting than checking that the museum's toilets were up to standard...

It was the perfect job for me at the time. A quiet, pressure-free environment for the slightly broken young man that I was, and an opportunity for the architect at the start of his career. So I regained a bit of color. I told myself I wasn't as bad as some had implied (and sometimes clearly said) over there. I started to talk to people again, to make some shy eye contact with girls, and I was relieved to rediscover the joy of having mates to call on rainy Sundays.

"Do you have any money?"

The question is so incongruous in an airport that at first I think it's a joke, but there's no smile on his face. He's serious. I don't immediately understand why he's bringing this in.

-Do I have money?
-Do you have any?
-Well, yes.

The problem isn't money. I have money. For the past two years, my life has been so focused on work that I've spent almost nothing. Which is perhaps precisely the problem. Too little money spent. Too much work. Not enough life. That's what I began to realize after a few months at the agency.

No matter how much I enjoyed my work, no matter how much I realized I was in the best possible professional conditions, I started looking at my watch again. Something was missing. A girlfriend, certainly, which wasn't easy to find in this godforsaken village, but not only that. I was missing life. Passion. Maybe even risk. That's what I found in poker.

I'd been playing for fun for a long time, but by this time I was getting more and more serious. First, I was playing almost every weekend at the casino, sometimes even online in the evenings, but I remember that even during working hours, a bit like some people listen to music, I started listening in my headphones to the coaching sessions of some American pros, taking notes. My boss must have wondered what meant all those sequences of letters and numbers filling the margins of my notebooks. They looked like "TT on QQK82", "xRai 76hh on 45KhAh?", in short, they were technical, meaningless to the uninitiated, but to me they made sense. A lot of sense. Way too much.

At the end of the first year, my boss, who nonetheless seemed satisfied with my work, offered me a permanent job. Logically, I should have snap called his offer. It was supposed to be the crowning achievement. The logical continuation of the choices I'd made since the start of my studies. And after these years of struggle, I was going to be able to learn my trade in an ideal, safe environment. It was an offer I couldn't refuse.

Yet no joy came. No sense of accomplishment. Not even a distant longing. On the contrary, the idea tended to agitate me, even frighten me. Strangely enough, in the days following the proposal, I began to feel nostalgic. I started thinking frequently about my studies. Of the passion that had driven me then, and which seemed so rare in my life now. Of the wonderful trips I'd taken back then, and to that round-the-world trip I'd promised myself I'd take one day, and which I'd simply skipped when I entered the professional world. I'd become so soft. So reasonable... I thought about poker again, which was perhaps the only place in my life where I felt really good. Poker, where I was winning more and more money. No crazy amounts, just enough to buy myself a present now and then. But I still had the feeling that if I gave myself the means, I might have, no pun intended, a card to play. I thought about my love life, which for the past two years had been as exciting as a Monday morning. All those girls I'd just been looking at, so weakened by my failures that I no longer had the confidence to approach them.

I saw myself in the limp life I'd had for the past two years. A life that had nothing to do with the exciting life of my student years. I looked at that future job and searched for reasons to believe that signing it would change anything about it, and I found nothing. I started projecting myself into the near future, at thirty, with a lot of experience, responsibilities, big projects, why not a wife and kids on the way... Not for a single second did this image inspire me anything.

Worse, I had this powerful feeling that if I signed, I'd sink forever into the quicksand of a flabby, boring life. It was irrational, but it was what my fear was telling me. What my body was telling me. My body, which was obviously starting to panic a little.

So I refused.

And four months later, with my little bag on my back and some money in my pockets, I was standing in this airport, facing an overzealous civil servant who wondered if I really was an architect and if all my hesitations were not a sign that I was hiding something from him.

-How much do you have?
-How much do I have?
-How much?
-Bah, it's okay. Enough to travel comfortably.

And suddenly I understand the meaning of all these questions. The return ticket, his doubts, the money...

It's a funny feeling to be mistaken for an illegal immigrant.

I don't know whether to be offended by my loss of social status or worried about my appearance, what I must reflect without realizing it, to generate such suspicions.

Obviously, I'm far from being in the situation he suspects I'm hiding from him. I'm not one of those unfortunate people who leave their country to escape war or poverty. I'm just a young guy trying to regain a bit of color after a few difficult years. This trip is just a small parenthesis in my life. I'll be back soon, back to my routine. At least I think I will. At least, that's what I promised my parents, terrified at the thought of their youngest kid being alone in South America. A vacation. A nice trip motivated by a love of adventure and a desire to see the world. Nothing more than that.
And yet, this immigration officer in front of me seems to think otherwise.

What has he detected in me that I myself am not yet aware of?
Is it something in my eyes? An insecurity, a nervousness that he only sees in people who don't travel for vacation?

I have no idea, but it seems that the facts proved him right. As I write these lines, six years later, six years during which my life has taken a radically different turn, I can't help but admire this man's remarkable intuition.

He'd felt it. Long before I admitted it myself. Even if the reasons were probably less dramatic, more selfish. In the end, I wasn't so different from the illegal immigrant he'd thought he saw in me: I too was leaving my country in the hope of a better life.

Because the truth is, I was simply afraid. Afraid of going down a path that was clearly not for me. Afraid of finding myself fifty years old, like an idiot, stuck in my own life. Afraid of dying without having lived. Without having known.

I imagine that this professional, who saw thousands of travelers pass through his door every day, must have read me as easily as I read a poker beginner today. But finding no legal reason to detain me, he flipped through my blank passport one last time, and stamped it with the first of many stamps.

"Have a good trip."

Welcome back!

Look forward to reading more - very interesting story and good writing

Hi everyone, thanks for your nice messages. I'm still working on it, page 85 now !

So it's time to share a 2nd chapter... Hope you'll enjoy it 😀 I'm open to any kind of comment as I'm still working on it.

btw if you read French and don't want to wait for 1 year before reading the full book in English, it's on Amazon when you write "World Poker Trip")

2. Primeira partida

When I arrived in Rio, I immediately started looking for games. I couldn't wait to see what the Brazilians were worth with cards in their hands. But finding tables turned out to be more complicated than I thought, partly because at first I lived with Cristina, my couchsurfer, and she was far away from everything, and partly because poker has an ambiguous status in Brazil. Most people think that it's illegal, as are all other luck and gambling games in the country. Except that poker is a mixture of chance and strategy, and as such, navigates in murky waters where it is tolerated, without being displayed on every street corner...

My first couchsurfer had given me the contact details of a friend of hers, a so-called professional. I found comforting the idea of getting his help to find games, except that after some discussion, as he tried to get staked by me for a tiny tournament, I realized that he was as much a pro as I was Vietnamese. When I arrived at my second couchsurfer’s place, in Flamingo, center of Rio, I also asked around, but nothing came up. Reluctantly, I went off on my own, and it was while rummaging in the depths of 2+2 forum that I managed to find a few leads...

There are three clubs in Rio. I get their addresses, but not much more. The first, far out in the suburbs, is unthinkable at this stage of my adventure. I have no desire to wander around potentially dangerous neighborhoods in a bus, with my game money in my pockets. The second is at the Botanical Gardens, one of the city's most exclusive districts. I imagine the games must be beautiful, but probably a bit expensive, and I'm not really ready to gamble big this early on. The last one is in the central business district, not too far from my flat. It seems to be the most convenient for me, and I've set my sights on it.

This is how, a few days after my arrival on the American continent, I decide to go and spend an evening at the 72o Club, of which I know nothing about but the address I've scribbled on a piece of paper. I can't say I'm particularly enthusiastic. I'm even a little apprehensive. I've never played poker outside France or Belgium, and always in official casinos or with friends. Here, I'm in Brazil, in a city known to be dangerous, and I still haven't figured out if the place I'm going to is legal. As a matter of fact, I have no idea where I'm going to end up...

But there's no turning back now. I've promised myself I would be going to play poker around the world. I announced it to everyone on Facebook and published it with a bang on my brand new blog. I knew before I left that it wouldn't be easy. That it would be a bit scary sometimes... And here I am. Even if conditions are far from ideal, I have a good feeling that this will often be the case during my trip, especially in South America. If I wait to get all the safety guarantees before each game, I'm not going to play much... I have to accept this share of risk. I have to learn to live with it and adapt to it. If I let my apprehensions get the better of me right from the start, I'm likely to chicken out a lot later on.

So before going out, I take precautions. I put my small can of tear gas in my pocket and go check Shulek, one of my couchsurfers.

"Hey man, I'm off to that poker game I told you about. If I'm not back by 5 a.m., you better start worrying. Here's the address and my number."

This makes him laugh a lot, but I don't think he understood that I was serious...

The journey from Flamingo is quick. On the escalator out of the metro station, I look up at the business district. It's bustling despite the dusk, with lots of people and cars, and skyscrapers as far as the eye can see. I walk to the address, which also happens to be a skyscraper like the thousands surrounding it. It's supposed to be housing and offices. There's no sign at the entrance, no security guard, and an open door to the lobby. I decide to take the elevator to the nineteenth floor, the one indicated on the Internet... A little lump in my stomach. I'm not sure what I'm getting myself into, but it's too late to turn back now.

When the elevator doors open, I come across a small counter, and a girl at the front desk.

-Boa noite, aqui e ou poker? (Portguese speakers shall close their eyes, I only have a week of practice under my belt).
-Sim.
-Fala inglês?
-Não falo mai doubichouploglo dibolapluglurdu.

Faced with my obvious lack of understanding, she finally lets me in and takes me to what appears to be a manager.
The good news is that the place isn't the infamous gambling joint I'd feared to find. While not particularly luxurious, it doesn't make a bad impression either. I'm in what looks like a high school multi-purpose room with poker tables. False plasterboard ceilings, whitish lights, no windows even though the view over Rio must be sublime. It's clean, quiet.

A dozen or so players are already there, chatting away without raising their voices. That's reassuring.
The manager explains to me in English how the place works. I arrived right on time, as a tournament was about to begin. It's a small tournament, an almost symbolic sum of a hundred reals (around 30 euros). It won't have any impact on my bankroll if I lose, nor will it matter much if I win, since the prize is a few hundred euros. But I don't mind that the very first part of my trip is without any major financial stakes. In fact, it's a thorn in my side taken away from me. I'll be able to settle in more serenely.

I sit down and greet them casually, as if it were normal for an all-white, blue-eyed Frenchman to come here. The Brazilians greet me too, but are not hiding their astonishment. I don't say anything. I want to give an impression of comfort. It'll probably help me later on... And as soon as I'm seated, I receive my first cards.

This is it. It all begins. I'm in South America playing poker...

First hand, I fold.
Second hand, I fold.

The slow, usual, boring routine of live poker. Little by little, things are setting up. My table looks like what I'm used to seeing in France. It's so similar, in fact, that it's surprising. I thought there would be a Brazilian, or at least American specificity, but it seems not. At the table, I have three young players whom I've categorized as cautious. They'll be easy to scare and predictable. That's good news. There are also two fifty-somethings in floral shirts who seem to be there to have a good time. I guess they're there to see cards and play without pressure. I’ll force myself not to bluff them too much because they might call me off. But I'll try to get in as many hands as possible with them, because I know they'll make mistakes, out of curiosity or boredom. And just to my left, a forty-something with a very aggressive style.

From the very first hand, I can see that he's going to cause me some problems. At the table, he's very active, and bullies shy players. I’m not going to let him push me that way…

(In this book, poker games are written in italics)

Few minutes in the game, I raise Q♥ 9♣, in the cut-off. The quadra 3bets me.

The most obvious action in this case would be to believe him, put him on a very nice starting hand like JJ+, broadways, and simply throw mine, move on to the next one and wait for a better opportunity. The other option is curiosity. I can pay, because I’m not sure what he's got, and decide to see a flop and then make a decision. The problem is I'm up against a good player who's going to be able to put pressure in a lot of situations, so I'm eliminating this option after some thought.

The third possibility is to decide not to believe this player. The truth is, our friend has been extremely active since the start of the game and I suspect him to 3bet more than 20% or something. Plus, I don't know… I feel something’s wrong. Maybe a timing tell? I don't know why, I just expected he would 3bet me.

I decide to show him what French guys are made of, and throw my light 4bet…

It doesn't take him a second to react: all-in.

Well...
OK.
I fold. He shows AK. I guess I've tricked myself into this.
Brazil 1 - France 0.

The tournament I've chosen is a short format and, because of this hand, and the few unlucky ones that follow, I quickly find myself in danger. A few minutes later, I push my stack with a decent hand, get paid by a better hand, and see all my chips go to my opponent.

That’s all.

My first American tournament lasted half an hour.
I expected anything but this scenario.

- Boa noite.
- Boa noite.

I can almost feel pity in their voices, but that's just an impression, of course. You always feel a bit miserable when you come out of a tournament, even more when it’s so quick. The dealer has already dealt the next hand. I'm standing in front of the table, arms flailing. No one is looking at me anymore. I didn't even have time to tell them about my project. About where I was from. I feel like an idiot.

With my head hung low, I leave the building and take the metro back to Flamingo.

Shulek won’t have to worry. It's barely midnight.

Following this first disappointment, I console myself with my couchsurfers, who take me out to party after work. I was only supposed to stay with them for two or three days, but I got on so well with Andre that I'm still here ten days later. I love this guy, we get on like two old pals. With him and his roommates, I'm discovering this city I've been fantasizing about for months, sharing their almost cliché daily life of beach, music, parties and girls. Everything in a natural, relaxed way.

After two years immersed in routine, I don't think I could have found a better way to forget France than with this band of merry men. Of course, I'm not naive. I’m aware that they're not too representative of the average Brazilian. I’m staying in one of the nicest neighborhoods of one of the most expensive cities in Latin America, and English is spoken way more than Portuguese in the 30-real parties in the favelas where they take me. The fact remains that the hedonistic culture in which they bathe is most seductive, and I slip into it with a little guilt and a lot of pleasure.

I'm also really starting to meet people, and have conversations lasting a little longer than those one can share on a bus ride. Every day, and especially every evening, I just keep meeting incredibly nice and warm Brazilians. Of course, I was expecting this kind of warmth - I'd heard about it - but experiencing it is something else. Everything looks easy. The contact, both literally and figuratively, is totally relaxed. The distance you might put up with strangers in Europe is almost non-existent. This is especially striking for me with women, who are much less distant than I've experienced anywhere else in the world.

There's definitely something about garotas, as the women of Rio are known... First of all, it's no legend: they're beautiful. Voluptuous, with perfect bodies, and at the same time astonishingly sympathetic, open and so sure of their charm that I'm intimidated. In the evening, despite the encouraging smiles, I hardly dare approach them. All the more so as the competition is stiff: Brazilians guys are something else. Tall, muscular, tanned, funny, charming and, of course, dancing like gods. After the last two years of rusting away behind a desk, with my pallid complexion from spending all winter playing poker, I can’t match them. Even when Andre introduces me, I lose it, lowering my eyes, looking away. I spend most evenings with them in a mixture of excitement and frustration, not knowing where to look and slapping myself for being so shy.

So for the last few days, I have decided to focus on poker. I've digested my first defeat and I'm ready to fight again. Let's just say that the message I receive on Couchsurfing helps me feel like taking up arms again... It comes from a girl named Pauline, twenty-one years old, a (very) beautiful Swede who's been living in Rio for six months, playing poker on the Internet. It's so improbable that if she didn't have references on her profile confirming her identity, I could almost think she’s a scam, but Pauline seems to exist and tells me all about her life through the website. At nineteen, having left school and fed up with odd jobs, she asked her brother, one of Scandinavia's top grinders, to teach her what he knew. A few months later, she turned pro and decided to move to Brazil. She tells me about a big three-day tournament in the club I'd already spotted in the suburbs. Entry is around a hundred euros, and the first places offer a few thousand. That would be an interesting way to start the trip.

We meet on the day of the tournament and take a cab to the club together. After half an hour's ride, we get to a kind of small shopping mall. A U-shaped, single-storey building, divided into various premises. Between the Subway restaurant and the bookshop, we enter a vast, low-ceilinged room with walls painted with cards and the name of the place : the Vegas Club. At the entrance, next to the bar, a man takes our registration. All around, dozens of tables have been set up, and next to them a hundred players are already here. All in all, it would seem that poker is pretty popular in this city.

Our arrival didn't go unnoticed. A blue-eyed white guy accompanied by a little Swedish stunner - quite a contrast to the local atmosphere. For a moment, I can feel them dying to know who we are, and whether she's come "with" me, but no one dares asking, until one of them, a little drunk, jumps in with both feet. The whole table goes wild when they learn our nationalities. From now on, I'm "Francês", and they laugh at every of my moves:

"Do you have that king, Francês?", "Would you like a beer, Francês?" or, after a failed bluff: "We caught you, Francês!" Although the relatively low buy-in helps to lighten the mood, Brazilians seem to be the same people at the poker tables as they are at the beach or in the cafés. After my first tournament, during which I didn't say a word, this friendly welcome reminds me a little of the atmosphere in France, and gradually confirms my intuition that poker can be a vehicle for interesting encounters !

The tournament starts pretty well for me. I get good hands, play them well, focused, and make no mistake. I finish day 1 in the top 20 out of hundred or so remaining players. But on my way home I receive an e-mail from Leandro, a couchsurfer from São Paulo. He tells me he's going home this weekend to see his family in Piquete (pronounced Piquedje), a small village in the north of the state, and invites me to join him. The offer is so tempting that I decide to opt for a high variance strategy for Day 2, which would either ensure that I make it to the final table on Day 3, justifying missing Piquete, or get busted quickly.

Choices.

Well, the plan works quite perfectly, as I get eliminated almost immediately on day 2.

To tell the truth, I'm hardly disappointed. Rio was a preamble, a small shot of madness and frivolity before I really began my journey. Two weeks after my arrival in the party capital of the world, and despite the increasingly enjoyable time I've been spending there since moving in with Andre, I feel I've explored enough of the city and what it has to offer. It's time for adventure. To step into the unknown. I can't wait to see what life is like outside the big cities.

I announce my decision to my roommates and, for my last evening, the four of us head off to Arpoador, a sea wall near Copacabana, in search of a party to celebrate my last night with style. We wander around for a while and, failing to come up with a satisfactory plan, André offers to take care of it himself...

He approaches a guy sitting on a local drum, which looks like a fruit crate, and asks permission to use it. The guy glares at him, trying to gauge the seriousness of the request, and finally agrees.
Andre picks up the crate, places it on the floor, sits on it and begins to play and sing a Brazilian standard. The tempo is right, the voice deep and soft. A smile of surprise and satisfaction spreads across the face of the instrument's owner, and already glances are turning towards us.

Soon, curious onlookers approach and, instinctively, begin to move slightly to the beat. No one really dares to do more, until three girls, braver than the rest, stand in front of Andre and start dancing outright. That's the starting signal. The rest of the group joins, dance, sing and, in a few moments, magic has happened. Twenty or so of us form a happy circle around Andre.

The party is on. It will last until dawn.

I’m in Brazil.