First time in long time I was able to play online. Online games tasted so sweet after a long break and I had one of the biggest upswings I've ever had. When playing is fun and I can make good profit everything else comes after poker. So now when I'm writing again I lost some money and my game wasn't as good as it was when I started again. I think I'll just continue my break and get back to live tables.

 

Anyway, I think it's time to tell something about HK's games. Running a casino is illegal in HK but there's some kind of gap in the law so that you can arrange private games. So this has lead the city to the point where there are multiple small poker houses offering games only for members – and anyone can be a member. I'm still not quite sure if this is legal but I've been playing in Hong Kong Poker House (HKPH) and I was more comfortable going there the first time as I saw from their homepage that PokerStars is their sponsor. Can't be too dangerous. Right? HKPH is pretty open as they have homepage and big signs on their windows in the city central. Becoming a memeber costs 500HKD and includes one nights play (250HKD+2 drinks). Games start every night 8pm and end around 4am. So you can play 8 hours with 250HKD. Even though tipping is kind of required, the price is extremely cheap as no rake is taken. You can also find other places with search engines and even on Facebook.

 

HKPH offers mainly 10/20HKD NL fullring games which sounds boring but the level of the game is pretty much same as 10c/20c online games. If you patience and know what you're doing, it's really hard to loose in these games. Same thing in Macau. Normally they also have one table of 25/50HKD NL. The sweet thing in HKPH is that pretty much every time I go there I'm able to get enough omaha players (10/20 or 25/50) to start the game and if these guys suck in NL they're even worse in PLO. Macau didn't offer omaha because Chinese government didn't give license for it (weird). But just few weeks ago they got it and I heard that Wynn is offering 50/100 PLO!! That's my next stop. But back to HKPH. There are a couple of decent regulars who play for living, but even they are pretty easy to beat, even though it's much easier to just concentrate on really bad players. Every time there hasn't been omaha I've challenged everyone to play me mixed NL/PLO HU. So far I got one response when a local professional took the challenge. He played HU surprisingly well but was still pretty easy to beat because he (as Asian players in general) don't mix up his ranges enough.

 

If you ever plan a poker trip to Macau, you should mainly stay in HK because the city is 100 times better than Macau and games are easy and cheap.