Quick follow up about what I am up to these weeks. I stopped in Namur in late August before returning once more for a few days to Luxembourg and making my way back to Portugal for most of the rest of September. Not sure about what my October will look like but there's a lot coming up soon in the POKER TRIPS section!

They quit their job, sold and gave away all their non-essential belongings and off they went! After years of patiently watching me move around the world, my sister in law and my brother are taking their revenge :-)

From this month, they are off to tour the world. We are a family of rounders it seems!

Only dates so far but that's already exciting enough to share the news :-) Updates incoming soon for the next Spanish Poker Festival in Spain and we're off to Casino Gran Via in the heart of the Spanish capital. Vamos!

Stay tuned on spfpoker.com and in the POKER TRIPS section of my site.

View galleries further down or view more of my PHOTOS here.

Masks are still sticking in everybody's face but since many of the travel bans and restrictions are being lifted, I am doing some catching up in terms of traveling. After spending most of my summer in Portugal, I made a stop in Madrid this week for the plentiful Casino Gran Via cash games and I am now off to Luxembourg for some short family and buddy time before making my way to where summer never really started: Wallonia :-D

It looks more and more like the live Poker scene is coming back to life these weeks and months. Honestly, I still don't know what to do with my Poker photography career since work in the industry is still kinda scarce but, at least, I am getting enough opportunities to play these days.

I arrived in Madrid 4 days ago and all I have done so far, is spending time with my buddy, Alex 'Brutally Honest' Rotenberg, and I tried to make new Asian friends at the Casino Gran Via live Poker tables :-) Some 30 hours of cash game later, I have new friends ... and foes. Games are running scorching hot like the Madrid weather over here these days. NLH 1/3 and 2/5 for the sane, PLO 2/5 up to 5/10 for the insane. I have been insane :-D

We played until very late last night and, on my way home, I suddenly remembered that something very special was going on up there...

Spain seems to be back in business for good when it comes to live Poker. SPF, CNP, Golden ... some of the major actors of Iberian Poker are back! While the SPF Castellon is on at the moment, some Covid curfews are still in place on the Mediterranean coast which is not a great thing in terms of cash game profitability. That's why I decided to skip the festival and I am now back in Madrid for a week of Gran Via cash game action in the heart of the capital where the local government is very relaxed about sanit(ar)y measures and opening times. We play with masks but the plexiglass separations are mostly gone here. Finally!

#allineverywhere is back with a nice summer tour in Portugal, Spain, Belgium and Slovakia. The hashtag has not been around too much on social media though since I am on a sort of screen detox for a few weeks. Still, I enjoy sharing some updates here with you guys especially since it becomes more and more reasonable to travel. I have not completely disappeared from social media and I keep enjoying the feedback I get. Yet, I am looking forward to meeting more and more people IRL that are getting back on the circuit also and I prefer to dedicate my self-imposed reduced screen time to studying and to other more productive activities.

No ocean, no waves, no bikinis... but an open Poker room! Although the casino is undergoing huge renovation works and despite the fact the Poker room has been reduced to a capacity of (I guess) a dozen tables, Namur is still one of my best options to play live Poker at the moment while spending a few weeks in Luxembourg and before I fly to Portugal in August.

​I'll be playing there from this Thursday, July 29 and I am staying throughout the weekend. The standard games are 2/4 and 5/5 NLH and occasional PLO games. They also resumed organising small MTTs. Check out their website for info.

​See you in Belgium!

The Casino Estoril back-and-forward saga continues with a reopening since July 24. However, in order to enter, guests will have to present a negative test or a digital Covid-19 certificate.

For now, 11pm curfews are still in place and 8-max cash games will be running from 1pm to 10:30pm until further notice.

August in Portugal? Sim, caralho!

Seven months into 2021 and some Portuguese have been confined or living with Covid restrictions for almost 5 of them until now. Having my base in Cascais since last September, I am one of them. The latest lockdowns were enforced in January and it took authorities until May 1st to reopen Casino Estoril. The action was great in May but I had to leave Portugal for 2-3 weeks in early June for film shootings abroad. Unfortunately, while I was away, Covid numbers started rising rapidly again and, in a total despair move, the Portuguese decided to confine large parts of the Lisbon area again. The casino has been closed since early June again with no sign of any reopening to come.

Trusted sources and contacts of mine amongst the casino management staff are confident they will be able to open again during August but there is no sign for that coming from authorities and they have no idea about the playing conditions they will be able to offer to players.

After the Israel Poker Tour of early July, Cash Game Weekend is back with another cash game festival during the early August period so why not get back to Batumi on the Georgian Black Sea shores for some great live Poker action around the clock?!

​Dates: 04-09 August, 2021
Location: Royal Casino & Hotel Batumi

Get in touch with me for complimentary service & accommodation offers for players. You can get your premium room for free for 7 hours of play per day or 35 hours of table time over the 5 days.

I am back in Luxembourg for some friends and family time over a few days after almost two weeks in Bratislava during the Banco Casino Bounty Hunter Days. I did not really play a lot of MTTs though. I rather took advantage of the cash game action enjoying a Banco Casino offer awarding me with a free room at the 4* Crowne Plaza in exchange of 6 hours of cash game play per day.

My Portuguese summer is still not looking good so I am now considering a few cash game sessions in Namur and maybe in Madrid over the coming weeks. Maybe I'll make a hop back to Portugal soon when Casino Estoril opens again and maybe I'll decide to spend more time in Bratislava over the late summer and autumn weeks.

Let's see what the Covid non-sense will be throwing at me in the near future ... I will keep you posted about my decisions in the coming blog posts. In the meanwhile, enjoy some Slovakia photos in the album below and visit the POKER TRIPS section for info about upcoming Poker events at Bratislava's Banco Casino.

Let my know if you wanna join somewhere!

The Spanish Poker Festival is back with some breaking news: there will be a SPF CASTELLON in August! An epic King's Casino backed Poker tour of a dozen stops had been announced for 2020 and then, Corona. Since then, the brand has been struggling to find a good timing needed to relaunch such an ambitious live project in the current context but here they are with an upcoming Poker festival for this summer in August! Hooooooooold! :-)

The spfpoker.com website is in the process of being updated but you can already find detailed info about the event on their social media accounts via Instagram or Twitter.

If the pandemic has taught me something at all, it is to give up all sorts of mid- & long-term plans. I haven't quite learned the lesson yet though... So here I am transitioning between two apartments in Portugal and not being able to go back since the casino closed recently and many new lockdown restrictions are in place again since Covid numbers have been climbing rapidly again after only two months of opening on May 1st.

I carefully planned and set myself up for an awesome summer of grinding in Portugal. I gave up the flat I have been using as a base in Cascais since September 2020 to take another one in Estoril closer to the casino and practically by the Atlantic ocean in order to be able to focus mainly on playing the PLO tables at Casino Estoril. Since Portugal busted temporarily in terms of my July plans, I am turning my attention to Bratislava. This last minute decision will take me far away from the beaches but the Poker action should be great. 24/7 cash game action and a tournament event for those who are into playing flips.

Today is the last shooting day for Karolina Markiewicz's & Pascal Piron's latest creation together with Wady Films. Last week, I was the location manager of SPECTRUM CINGFONTAINES, a conceptual documentary short film with contemporary dance elements and live musicians. The film tells the story of the Cinqfontaines Monastery that was used as a check point by the Nazis for deportation purposes since the building has a direct access to a railway.

The film is going to be part of the Luxembourg representation at the Dubai World Expo in 2022.

While I was on the set, I took advantage of some free time to shoot some making of photography. Find the full album in my PHOTOS & COVERAGE section.

Cash Game Weekend is making its post-pandemic comeback next month with an ISRAEL POKER TOUR event in Batumi, Georgia.

This poker festival will take place from July 1st to 10th at Royal Casino & Hotel with non-stop Texas Holdem & Omaha cash games at 5/5$, 5/10$ and 10/20$.

There is a direct info number for all your inquiries: +34 677 064 842 (Telegtam/Whatsap)

Detailed info can be found under www.batumipoker.com and www.cashgameweekend.com.

Summer skies are back! I shot this one late at night in Gouvy, Belgium last weekend.

In June 2018, I decided to spend a few weeks off in Portugal between stops in Riga, Latvia and Namur, Belgium. I ended up playing loads of cash games and spent a week in a cork plantation near Samora Correia (Santarem) chilling by the pool while drinking Lambrusco during the day and shooting the dark Portuguese countryside skies at night. Tough life!

The first happy customers are getting their copies of WINTER IN CASCAIS photos on tiles these days! Find out more about this photo project by browsing the BLOG or by visiting the FINE ART PRINTS section.

I recently presented the first batch of 3 items of this series of 15 in this blog. The prints are now available for 35EUR if you care to have your copy.

The rest of the series remains available on pre-sale for 30EUR each until the next batch of 3 is released next month and I'll hand them over for 25EUR each for purchases of 3 or more.

Don't hesitate to share this if you know someone who could be interested in this.

tile dimension: 10x10m
with the cork frame: 14x14cm

While the first casinos are dropping the plexiglass separation walls, Poker events take more time to come back in Europe. Reports about Poker room re-openings are nevertheless coming in from many places all around the old continent too. Amongst the first to re-open in Europe, was Banco Casino in Bratislava where a Belgian Poker Festival is about to take place. By now, Live Poker is progressively back in Italy & France with TexaPoker and the Paris Poker Clubs will also re-open these weeks. Belgian casinos too are about to open their Poker rooms again as far as I know.

​King's Resort is back in the Czech Republic for all tournament lovers. Spain is also slowly coming back with a couple of summer events announced from Castellon to Madrid and Poker events are also slowly coming back to Portugal.

From Texas to China over Denmark and Morocco, we have been able to screen SAWAH in more than 100 international film festivals prior to the pandemic. The great run was interrupted just as we were in the process of releasing the film in cinemas on major European markets ... in spring 2020 ... top timing :-)

​Since then, digital broadcasting has been doing the job in Europe and in the Middle East via Netflix and OSN and now, SAWAH is also available in the US through Amazon Prime.

I am glad to share some live Poker info with you today. Belgian friends are in Bratislava at the moment and they are putting on a Poker festival together with Banco Casino.

For those, who don't know, during the winter 2020/2021 lockdowns in Portugal, I spent quite some time walking and shooting the Cascais beaches in Portugal. I decided to select a series of 15 photos as a collection of prints on Portuguese tiles framed with local cork.