Wimbledon!

Y'ello all! Howdy doody and all that sweet jazz...

I just got back from London after taking a mini holiday break from the poker tables. Me and my friend had said that if we had the money, we would check out Wimbledon coz we are big tennis fans! We actually went before, something like 4-5 years ago probably? Cant really remember to be honest, but back then we got the cheapest ticket possible, which was the Ground Pass for 20 quid.

Number 1618th after arriving at 4.30am!

Damn they're just too hardcore!

No sleep and caffeine makes us feeling crazzzzzy!

This time, we decided to baller it up and go for the big ones, Centre or Court No.1 tickets, to see the big names, Federer, Nadal, Murray, Djorkovic. Last time we queued up around 7am, and got inside about 10am. So according to this blog, we thought that queuing up at 4.30am would be a safe bet. We decided to go up on the Tuesday, spend Wednesday at Wimbledon, and hang out Thursday in London.

Strangely enough, its mad bright at 4.30am during this time of the year, which is really weird. Unfortunately, we were clearly not hardcore enough as it seemed that there were about 1000 campers in front of us sleeping comfortably in their tents. Centre and No.1 Courts for them!

Welcome to Wimbledon!

Order of play and random woman lol

We did think that at worst we'd get No.1 Court tickets, but in the end we managed to get some No.2 Court tickets instead. The biggest difference between No.2/No.3 Court tickets, as well as No.1 and Centre Court tickets is that you get reserved seating all day for all 3 scheduled matches. The cheapest tickets are the ground passes, and with that, you get access to half of Court 3 and Court 4-12 on a first come first serve seating basis, which is annoying if you wanna go to the toilet.

Courts 4 to 14! So close to each other!

In the end, most of the matches were awesome. No.1 Court actually didn't have that many good matches as 2 of the 3 matches had pullouts due to injuries (Tsonga and Azeranka). In fact, Wimbledon had a weird Wednesday as they had no less then 7 pullouts due to injuries that day, the most ever before!

Not just that but I witnessed so many upsets, Dustin Brown beating Lleyton Hewitt doing the old school serve and volley style, and Michelle Larcher Del Brito defeating Maria Sharapova in the battle of the screamers. The short Portuguese Del Brito was matching Sharapova's hard hitting groundstrokes before finally beating her in the 5th match point.

Panoramic View of Court No. 2. Crazy noisy Hewitt supporters to my left... should have brought my earplugs =D

 After witnessing some amazing upsets, we proceeded to head over to Henman Hill/Murray Mount to see Federer vs Stakhovsky... erm Federer lose to Stakhovsky wow! What?? Who? What How?? lol
Stakhovsky really did play great and totally deserved it. In fact both players played flawlessly pretty much until one of them snapped... which was Federer amazingly. Each set with 12 games taking like 40 mins meant that each game was like averaging like 4 minutes which is insane.

Federer, Hewitt, Sharapova, Tsonga, Cilic, Wozniacki... all out! What a crazy day!

We had a great time, and got so lucky over the weather/great games. So if your thinking about going, here's a few things that you should know;

• If you want a No.1 or No.2 Court, get your ass there early! And early meaning like 4am early!
• For a ground pass you don't need to get there that early, probs around 7-8am is good... but be prepared for some extra queuing for those seats once you get in.
• Bring water!
• Bring sunscreen!
• Only one bag allowed in, like backpack size. They actually have those measuring cages like at the airport.
• Pay in CASH! Yes, I know they can put a roof on a tennis court but for some reason cant be arsed to get card machines T__T
• Don't play "which queue is faster" when buying your actual tickets, as you'll end up buying separate seats! Of course this is obvious to you guys, not us lol. Luckily we managed to swap seats anyways...
• Food is expensiveeeee... but that's expected in places like this!

MADD GAMING CAFE

On day 2 we checked out some old locations we used to go to, and found this little gem in Soho. Its a gaming cafe/bar meeting area. We hired out a Wii U and played some 3 player New Mario (which is very impressive btw) whilst chilling in this cool place!

Later on more ppl came in for a DS meet! After some game themed cocktails we brought out the Smash Bothers Melee as well. If you're shouting out "Where am I?" then you know your playing this game right! =D

I'm not 100% sure how this place is actually gonna make money tbh, the place is great but location is really expensive, and selling drinks isn't gonna pay for the bills. I hope it sticks around anyways.

Awesome video game themed cocktails!

Pretty cool video game themed wall.

Cool chill out spaces

Actual working retro arcade game table!

Smash brothers timeeeee!!

Hope everyone is having a great summer... the weather isn't as great in UK, but hopefully everyone is enjoying themselves!