Freerolling into December

A lot has happened in the last few days in poker so it's definately time for a new blog entry. Let's start with my personal things:

Went back to Kufstein again and went card dead in the tournament again. There was only one remarkable hand: A pair of 3's that improved to quads right on the flop. I didn't get a big payoff in the tournament but one beside the table! The Poker Royale in Kufstein is having a big €200+20 Deepstack Event on Dec. 19th/20th and currently quads or better get you a draw on the lucky wheel. You can win satellite entries und up to an entry to the event itself. Guess what ... I hit the main prize. So on two weekends in December I will play two deepstack tournaments for free: First the Pokertour.at finale in Vienna (at the CCC Prater) on Dec. 5th and then the Poker-Kings Mainevent in Kufstein two weeks later.

On the other hand cashgame is still running rough for me. After losing a big pot last week with a set vs. a guy who couldn't be departed from two pair (that improved to a full house on the river) I had two similar occurences this time: KQ hit a set of Queens on the flop and my opponent pays all streets down two the river just to hit another eight to his two pockets and make the full house. A little later A9 hit a set of 9's and it was paid all the way down until he hit his gutshot straight on the river. Of course all those hands involved big pots. Hard to be ahead if you lose those hands.

Anyway it's part of the game of poker and after reviewing the ESPN broadcast of the final table I again realized how lucky (or unlucky) some players had been there. Just two decisions (Ivey's JJ vs. Saout's 77 and one hand were Begleiter mucked the winner after a river bet) could have had changed the whole outcome of the final table. But again poker is so much easier with visible hole-cards ;-)

BTW, I really like how Ivey looks back at his infamous mucking of the winning flush on Day 8. Of course it was a mistake but he's still not regreting anything after he made it to the final table. He just says that "all things would have changed and nobody can tell if for better or worse". I love this attitude! You don't know what he's talking about? Then you should definately google the phrase "butterfly effect".

The WSOP is just over and there is already big news again: Jeffrey Pollack is leaving his position as the WSOP commissioner. That's really sad to hear. In his 4.5 years on board he truly became the public face of the WSOP and turned many things to the better. The WSOP wouldn't be so strong and popular as it is today without him. It will be hard to fill his shoes here. Especially as he always was a great middleman between the players and the "greedy" corporation. Rumors are that Mitch Garber will take this position in the future and I really doubt that he is that player friendly. But it's to early to say anyway.

Below there are Parts I-III of Jeffrey's exit interview he had with WickedChopsPoker. At the beginning he doesn't deny a rumor that the huge Pavillion (were the interview is held) maybe the new main space for the WSOP. That would mean on the other hand that at least for 2010 the WSOP wouldn't move to the Caesars as expected. As always the WSOP is over but the tension for the next WSOP is already rising.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Some thoughts about the 2009 WSOP Final Table

Spoiler Alert! - Don't read if you are waiting for the ESPN broadcast!

Again I spent the whole night to follow the Final Table audio broadcast and I don't regret any minute. Not as exciting as the 2005 Final Table with Hachem, Black, Matusow but still very interesting.

I feel very sorry for Phil Ivey and his bad beat. It would have been much fun to see him playing a big stack at the Final Table. This year obviously was the year of the bad beats. One of the toughest was the exit of my personal favorite Kevin Schaffel on 8th place (AA vs. KK with Kings improving to Quads). After seeing his exit interview I am even more sorry that he had to go so fast ... this guy would have been a great ambassodor for poker because he has just the right perspective about the game! Still happy that he was my number one pick.

From what I saw during the Final Table Steven Begleiter had improved his game a lot. Another guy I would have loved to see ending in a better position. Jeff Shulmann played a good game too but although he somewhat apologized for his bad comments I am relieved that he didn't win the bracelet.

So it's now Cada vs. Moon and you get the impression that the luckiest players made it into the heads-up. Both obviously didn't show the best poker play in the universe but nobody should call them donks. Nobody who survived over 6,500 opponents should be called a donk. But I have to retract my previous support for Moon. After getting to know more about him I think he wouldn't be great for poker. Not only will he most probably never be back on the big poker stages but he although showed some very bad moves. As said before Cada was very lucky too but I would say he's definately the more skilled player and can be marketed much better.

I will be routing for Cada on Monday and hoping for a long and exiting heads-up (but honestly I doubt it will take very long).

Can't wait to see the ESPN broadcast. Even after knowing the results this will be fun to watch.

Back home in Munich

Sorry for not posting directly after my return but there was a lot to do in the last days.

Unfortunately my last two small tournaments in Dublin hadn't been a success either. I booked a small win during a cashgame session at the Sporting Emporium ... but of course not enough to break even for the trip.

But nevertheless this was a wonderful weekend. I really enjoyed meeting Silke and Thomas as well as Benny and his brothers again. We had a good time at and away from the tables. Congrats again to Cat O'Neill for her 4th place finish at the IPO. I had played at the same table with here for some time during the Deepstack Championships in February and she well deserved that final table appeareance!

Not sure about my next plans. Of course I will play the Pokertour.at final on Dec. 5th at the CCC in Vienna. I would love to play the Poker Royal Masters Main-Event in Wiener Neustadt end of November but decided that I need either have a good run in smaller events until then and/or get a good number of shares sold at ChipMeUp for that one.

Currently I try to be at the Poker Royale Kufstein once a week. Starting with the tournament of the day and continue with some cash game if I bust early. Last Thursday I had a good run early on but then ran a good portion of my stack into a flopped straight. Never really recovered from that. The following cashgame session was fun but ended only with a tiny win.

In addition I will again hit the online tables trying for some good step-results on pokerstars. I have accumulated some FPP's and now use them to get as many step-tickets as possible. As soon as all FPP's are used I will start trying to "step-up".

Sightseeing & Poker at the Sporting Emporium

My sightseeing trip through Dublin led me this time to the area between the Dublin castle and the Guinness brewery. Lot's of old buildings and churches around. Just have a look at the pictures at the end of this entry.

The tournament at the Sporting Emporium had a great structure. They start with a 9k stack and 10 min. levels. Doesn't sound great? Well, the catch is that they add another 2.5 minutes to each new level. With the structure running 25/50, 50/100, 75/150, 150/300, 200/400, 300/600 and so on they reached 40 min. blinds al level 12. With 25 players that night it took almost 7 hours until the last five decided for a deal. In my opinion this is the perfect structure for a tournament with a decent starting stack that still allows a lot of play in the later stages.

I had a good start an brought my stack up to 16k. Unfortunately from there I went again totally card dead and at the 500/1,000 level I had to push with AT and 5,900 chips left. Got called by 77 and went out in 14th position.

Another try tomorrow at the IPO side event #3.

IPO Day 2 ... some photo impressions

Day two has started about an hour ago and I took some photo impressions from the start.

We have at least two poker couples in todays field:

Silke & Thomas from Munich, Germany

Cat O'Neil & Rob Taylor from Ireland

Other known players in todays field include:

Maria Demetriou from Nottingham, England (left)
Andy Black from Ireland (right)

Noel Furlong, Ireland, WSOP Main Event Champion 1999 (left)
Jesse May, The Poker Show (right)

I am now on my way into the city of Dublin for some sightseeing and on to the tournament at the Sporting Emporium at 8:30pm. Hopefully I haven't used up all my luck today as I just escaped a heavy traffic accident on a crossroad that I passed just seconds before while being on my way back to the hotel!

Day 1 ... and final day of the IPO (at least for me)

That wasn't like expected although the day started very well. I was well rested and in a good mood when I arrived at the Regency. I was able to take a short peek into the main room while it was still empty and then waited with the others outside until the doors opened at around 12:45pm.

Stephen and his team did a great job. That place looks really great. Feels like you're playing in a much more expensive torunament. Today's poker celebs included Padraig Parkinson and Surinder Sundar. Those two and several others had a bounty on their head (that's why the were wearing those football T-Shirts).

Didn't know anybody at my table. From the beginning I got a lot of good starting hands but couldn't catch any decent flop. Then I got bluffed off a turned straight on a JJT-A-J board. Awful Jack at the end. My opponent bet out and all I could beat was a bluff. And exactly that's what he showed me after I folded.

My stack went all the way down to 6k from 10k start when I finally caught a break with KK. Back to 10k and from there even up tp 15k. Now the world looked so much better until I ran my TPTK (AK) in a shortstack's set of fives. Down to 10k again. And back to being flop-dead. The blinds had already reached 150/300 (25) and my stack was down to around 7k.

Close to the end of that level I got AK and a guy in front of me who raised to 1,200. I weighed my options (all-in or call as raise or fold weren't possible options here) and decided for a call. With a call I could see if I get a piece of the flop ... or still opt out with enough left for an all-in on another hand. I missed totally in regards of Aces and Kings but the low flop was all diamonds and I was holding the Ace of diamonds. My opponent bet 1,500 and in this situation there was no way I would have folded that hand now. I didn't give him either the made flush or a set. So I figured that I was maybe even holding two overs to my nut-flushdraw. I went all in for 5,000 more to his bet and he called with QQ. Unfortunately 60:40 wasn't enough here and I was out at around 540's of 720 after four hours of play.

There wasn't much I could have done different so no hard feelings. Just sadness that it was over so fast. Went into the city for someting to eat and stumbled across the red carpet premiere of "Couples Retreat" at the Savoy cinema on O'Connell Street. Right in time to see Vince Vaughn (the main actor of the movie) hitting the red carpet. At least that was a nice distraction.

Will take some more photos tomorrow on Day 2 and playing a smaller event at the Sporting Emporium by night. Hopfully I can report better results then.

The day before the IPO

This will be just a short update as I am very tired and need some sleep.

The trip to Dublin was uneventful except for the fact that I arrived with 12kg in handluggage. Ryanair only allows 10kg and in Memmingen they forced every piece to be put on the scale. So I started to pack the most heavy pieces into my pockets ... just to put everything back into my handluggage once I had passed that control point. So ridiculous! On the plane I fell asleep immediately and even overslept the landing. I told you ... I am tired ;-)

The Skylon Hotel is a nice place. Rooms are small but clean in general. And if everything works out correctly I won't be in the room for long anyway. They have free W-LAN in the lobby but unfortunately not in the rooms.

Before I went to the get-together at Cassidy's I took a short look at the Regency. The Regency is just a seven minute walk away from the Skylon and fortunately the weather is much nicer and warmer than in Germany. Stephen and his team were already working hard to get the room(s) setup for tomorrow. In the meantime they also published the seat drawing and I will be sitting on table 30 seat 6. Don't recognize any of my tablemates.

Wish you all a good night!

Next stop Dublin

Just a few more hours till the next highlight of the 2009 poker year. The IPO is around the corner and tomorrow I am on my way to Dublin.

First of all I have to thank all my backers at ChipMeUp! Both events - the main event as well as my side event at the Sporting Emporium - are completely sold out. That is terrific and I will try my absolute best to make this a winning trip for all of us.

Although the main event is sold out registration will officially close tomorrow at noon. But so far it seems that we have 1,419 players that will create a prizepool well above $300,000. There are several pros in the field including names like Andy Black, Surinder Sunar, Padraig Parkinson, Fintan Gavin, Noel Furlong, Jesse May, Maria Demetriou and many others.

I got confirmation from the organiser that there should be WLAN access in the tournament area or at least close to it. So look out for some heavy twittering the next days ;-) In addition Irishpokerrankings.com has promised to put me on their homepage (together with other twittering participants). They will also broadcast live radio reports onsite. If you are interested in more then just my updates this page might be the best source for information around.

Almost everything is set so far (I only have to pack my suitcase) and at 10am I'm on the way to Memmingen Allgäu Airport for my Ryanair flight to Dublin.

As said, there will be lots of twittering and blogging in the next 5 days ... so enjoy :-))

My first ever Royal Flush

It took me almost five years and three straight flushes until the first one ... but now I got it: my first ever Royal Flush. It was only a small tournament and it was created with just one hole card. But nevertheless it was this one and only absolute unbeatable hand. And I even got a decent payout for it.



The whole tournament went very good for me until I ran my JJ into AK of a very aggressive big stack to my left. All the money went in preflop, he spiked an Ace immediately on the flop and I was crippled never recovering. Of course at the end my AJs ran into the same guys pair of sixes. Guess what? A six on the turn and a meaningless Jack on the river sealed my fate.

Just two more days until Dublin. This will be a great weekend. Hopefully I can make a lot of people very happy as I sold most of my shares for the events I play in Dublin. So far there are only four shares left for the main-event at ChipMeUp.

Wasn't able to go to Kufstein for some time due to time restrictions but hope to do so next week as they are still running hot.

The un-official german players get-together in Dublin will happen on Thursday at 6:30pm at Cassidys Bar, 27 Westmoreland Street, Dublin 2, Ireland. I reserved some extra seats so just come over if you like to meet us.

Today I got the printed Pokerfirma Magazine that they created due to their one year annniversary. They produced a real nice piece here. I've contributed a long article about Twitter and the WSOP and it's much fun to see my first ever printed article in a magazine.

So this day gave me two nice "first ones". I take this as a good sign for the upcoming trip ;-) Will try to twitter from that trip as much as possible but can't guarantee if the local condition will allow this or not. We will see!

Looking back to the beginning

For those who can read german you may probably have already read my article about the new Poker Royale Cardroom in Kufstein, Austria at Pokerfirma.de.

For those who haven't: A new and wonderful pokerroomm has opened in Kufstein (less then 100 km away from Munich). In addition Kufstein is the place were I started my live game experiences five years ago. Funnily the guy running the cardroom in that time is now part of the team running the new pokerroom.

The room is great: 10 tables with a wide selection of tournaments all week round and cashgames down to €0,50/0,50. This is definately my new homeplace for poker. I can't think of a room closer to Munich as long as the german laws won't change.

My first visit was a great success already as I made a third place for €220 in the €10 rebuy-tournament. My second visit wasn't as successfull. I was really carddead in the beginning and finally ran my top-pair top-kicker (AT) into a pair of 8's that hit his set on the river.

The following eight hours of cash game had been great fun but ended break even straight on the Euro. Really looking forward to come back to this place!

Writing that article for Pokerfirma and remembering the "old times" made me re-reading some of my old blog entries again. Amazing how much I have changed and how much my thinking has changed. Today it's too easy to laugh about those who think they are sooo good but are just "fish" (of course calling all others "fish"). Imagine, five years ago I wasn't any better. Anybody who didn't play by the book was a moron for me. Today I seldom play by the book because that doesn't win you enough. You have to be creative ... and obviously I wasn't able to make differences between the real morons and those who just showed a creative game (which I didn't understand at this time).

Just one quote from that old times:
"Got some nice hands (and a big stake) to the break after the first hour. Decided to cool down after the break and play only premium hands. Guess - I got QQ a little later. Raised it - everyone folded and the button went all-in. As I had covered her but had to invest a decent amount of my stake (about 2/3) I thought about it but finally decided that you have to call this with 3rd best hand pre-flop. Unfortunatly I ran into the best hand - AA that improved to a set on the turn."

In that time I was sure that this was the absolute right play ... today I would say this was a horrible, horrible mistake! BTW, there is of course no "absolute right play" ;-)

Oh, and I mostly like that quote from December 2005: "I'm not made for the crazy style of a Daniel Negreanu". Guess which kind of style I am playing now!

Just barely a year after I started with poker I played a WSOP Cicuit event in Tunica. Looking back this was a big mistake. Of course I enjoyed my trip ... but I was less able to enjoy the tournament as I would do today. Just think about that one: "I love this 'who can I recognize'-game [after seeing Andy Black at a table] but I pray that I won't recognize anybody at my table in a few hours!". Today I would love to have those guys and girls at my table as it would be much fun to watch them playing.

On February 16th 2006 I made my first live final table with a decent cash at the CCC in Vienna ... but still lacking much of todays experience at that time. Ah, time to stop now with those memories!

All that reminds me so much about my second passion: dancing! It's so easy to laugh about the clumpsy movements of those who are still learning but it's so hard to remember that not long ago you most probably looked the same. Having a blog like this helps a lot to take a look back from time-to-time ... realizing how far I came already but how far I still have to go to become really good!

Nowadays, if I see unusual plays I don't put them away as a donk play immediately. I always give them a second look to be sure there isn't a "wolf in a sheepskin".

IPO Dublin - unofficial "come together" on Oct. 15th

As Benny is already advertising our "come together" for german speaking players in Dublin:

If you play the IPO - International Poker Open and like to attend our "come together" please contact me at shadowbj21@googlemail.com so I can calculate how many seats we have to reserve at the pub on Thursday evening (Oct. 15th). I will then tell you the exact time and location.

This is a special un-official "come together" of all german speaking players attending the IPO!

In case you plan to play the IPO but haven't registered so far I reccommend you do so as soon as possible. Day 1B is already sold out and Day 1A has only a few seats left. There will be absolute no possibilty to buy-in on-site! Also there's only a few days left (till end of the month) to earn 1,000 extra chips by playing at Boyle and accumulating 250 player points.

If you didn't know already: I offer some shares for the IPO at ChipMeUp. So feel free to lower your variance ;-)

Trip to the APAT Amateur Worldchampionships - Day 3&4

Unfortunately there's not so much to talk about on my last two days. The saturday tournament saw me absolut card dead from the start. I never caught a break and finally ran my short stack with AJs into AK ... resulting in a very early exit.

The Sunday tournament was somewhat better. Didn't get many decent cards there too in the beginning but due to the better structure (5k startingchips and 30 min. levels) I was able to hang in longer to finally take down a decent pot with a set of aces. In addition I won a weired hand with KQ (hitting my Q) that got more expensive then I wanted. When my opponent called my last bet I was sure that I was beat but the guy folded after I revealed my hand and I took down a rather big pot.

Too bad this was the last good hand for me in that tournament. I got 9's once but had to let them go against a Lady's all-in. She was short since I came to the table and folded her way through the game. Quite sure my hand wasn't good against here at that time. So with just 11k left in chips (my highpoint was at 15k) and blinds at 300/600 (50) I got JJ in first position. I shortly considered going all-in directly but decided then to just bet 1,500. We had a lot of medium- to short-stacks at our table and I hoped for one of them trying to go all-in and getting me off the hand. I got my all-in from a stack just a little bigger then mine, I called and it was again a race vs. AK. So going all-in directly most probably wouldn't have made a difference here anyway. I think you already know what happend then? After losing an importent race with AK at the main-event I now lost it against AK. Seems I just was mostly on the wrong side of the coinflips that weekend.

So I went out in 23rd of 65 players (7 got paid) but wasn't unhappy with my play in general that weekend. I'm still ahead at the Dusk Till Dawn due to my third place finish last December but of course I would have loved to cash this time again. I was close two times and was also close to make Day 2 in the main-event.

I played a few hands with Maria Demetriou on my first tournament (even got her off a nice pot). Unfortunately I played with her only for a short time as our table was broken early but she seems to be a very nice person. In my last tournament I missed to play with 2007 EPT Baden winner Julian Thew as he busted right before I was moved to his table.

Now I'm heading back to Munich playing our Xing tournament tonight. Doesn't look if I will make it to win the Bahamas trip (too much points needed) but it's still fun to play with those people.

Trip to the APAT Amateur Worldchampionships - Day 2

Warning: This is a very long entry. If you are just interested in the poker content you can stop after the first half. If you like to know more about Nottingham then you should read the second part too!

The day of the main-event turned into real desaster for me. I had a decent start when I trapped a flush with J's that improved to a full house. But from there I went really card dead for a long time. I even went below my 10K starting stack down to 8.5K for some time. Finally I got a break as I won a classic AA vs. KK all-in situation. Now at sitting 16K our table was broken and at the new table already the first hand defined my game. With TT I made a standard raise to 1,500 at the 300/600 (50) level and got a re-raise to 3k. I decided to make a stand at least pre-flop and called. The flop was a horrible K-K-x but it obviously wasn't better for my opponent as we checked it down to the river. He showed 66 and I scooped the pot.

From there I got respect for my raises except for one guy who decided to re-raise me everytime he was in a hand with me. Fortunately I had someting everytime that justified to call the re-raise and even better I always hit or was able to represent a hit. I finally made my way up to 24k as the following hand (the last before the break) happened: I raised with KQs and my nemesis re-raised again. I called and the flop was K-9-x. He bet again and I called. I noticed that he didn't seem too happy about the call but for some reason didn't think about it any more at this time. The Turn was a Ten and I expected him to slow down now as this was a table chipleaders fight at this time. But he bet again and now it got very expensive for me if I decided to call again. So calling didn't make sense at all. It was either fold or re-raise. As he had folded to my bets so often I really was in doubt that my kicker was good in that hand. He had played the hand from the big blind so he had a wide range of possible hands. Beside AA, KK or AK even KT or K9 was a possibilty. I finally folded, showing my King to induce a reaction. He did indeed react by showing me Q8 for just a gutshot straightdraw. This was the first borderline decision that went wrong and lead into the final desaster.

I had missed on a huge hand against him with JT before that would have probably killed him as I would have hit my two pair and the only card that would have made his straight would have made me the house. Unfortunately there was a re-raise from another guy pre-flop in front of me so I (correctly) discarded that hand.

After that loss to the bluff of my nemesis I was down to 20k but still 25th in the chipcount with around 100 of 157 players left on Day 1. After the break it took me less then a full level of 45 minutes to run that decent stack into nothing and bust out in 96th position. How did that happen? Well, I first had to fold to two raises (1,500 each) vs. all-in plays. While the first one was easy, the second one was tough. After my raise I had about 15k left and the all-in demanded to put in another 5,000. With AJs I wasn't happy at all to put in a third of my stack into what would be a coinflip at best but easily could be a doomed hand too. This was one of the longest times I ever took for a decision and it was the first time somebody called the clock on me (which was o.k. as I took my time here). I finally folded but looking back I think (even so it was borderline again) I should have called here. He didn't show so nobody will ever know if it was correct or not.

Of course at my next raise another player tried to get me off the hand with a 6k all-in. But with AKo there was no way anybody would have gotten me away from that hand (in that particular situation). It was a race against 66 ... and I lost the race. Too bad as winning this hand would have put me well back into the competition. No regrets, right decision but wrong outcome ;-) Being card dead again I ran my last 6k into the K's of the guy who just a few hands before won the race and my KTs was doomed...

What a desaster! There wasn't too much I could have done different. Two hands were borderline but in both cases it was a 50/50 decision to be on the right or the wrong site. Unfortunate but not a real mistake. But I was still devasteted. Running so good and giving it all away so fast hurts very much. So I went to a bar around the corner of my hotel and had some beer. Unfortunately (or luckily) all bars close at 2am. Not enough time for me to really get drunk ;-)

The next morning it didn't hurt so much anymore. Even better my head didn't hurt (so I would say it was indeed lucky that the bars closed early) and I went on to some sightseeing today. Most people connect Nottingham immediately with Robin Hood. Nothing wrong with that ... but there's much more to know about that area. Unfortunately Sherwood-Forrest itself is about 20 miles north so this wasn't an option for me without a car. But Nottingham castle was close. I could even see it from my hotel window.

Nowadays it isn't a real castle anymore. The structure that was there during the days of Robin Hood was replaced by a mansion in the 16th century as the original castle was more or less destroyed during the civil war. But there is a nice museum in teh mansion that gives you an insight of what it has looked that days. And with a little imagination you can still "see" the original castle structure. The following pictures show: The gate of the former outer walls, the bridge (former drawbridge) of the inner wall, the mansion (were once the main part of the castle was located) and some parts of the original outer wall.









As said beside Robin Hood, Nottingham was an important city in ancient times as it was the place to be for many Kings and the area of fights that decided about the history of England. Of course Nottingham fell to the "black death" as well as many other english cities but managed to stay alive and become a nice market city in the 17th and 18th century. Unfortunately the 19th century should mark the "destruction" of the once flourishing city. The beginning industrialisation increased the citizenship by five times from 10,000 to over 50,000 in less then a century. But the company owners didn't allow to build homes on the outer fields so Nottingham became one of the worst slums in England. Unfortunately the city never really recovered from that decsion. Although there are nice buildings everywere in the city (see below) many parts still look really cramped and not very inviting.







But even without a bright skyline Nottingham is an intersting place to visit. And there are obviously a lot of great places outside of the city in Notthingamshire county. But Nottingham wouldn't be Nottingham if it still wouldn't be on top of something. The city is a very young city (citizenwise) because of the great number of students. And were students come together there are clubs and bars not far. But Nottingham put it to the extreme with the most bars per squaremile in whole Europe ... definately a good place to recover from a bad beat in poker ;-)

Hope you enjoyed that little walk through Nottingham history. I'm now off to more poker at the Dusk Till Dawn.

Trip to the APAT Amateur Worldchampionships - Day 1

Finally the weekend I was looking forward for such a long time arrived. Back to Nottingham and one of the nicest Pokerclubs in Europe - the Dusk Till Dawn. But due to my incompetent travel agency I almost had to miss out on that trip. When I tried to check-in online I found out that my original flights had been cancelled and I was re-booked. Unfortunately nobody cared to tell me! Even worse: I wasn't booked on the new flights, it was just a suggestion that I had to confirm. So I was lucky that there still were free seats available. The good side was that I had to rise later in the morning, the bad side was a three hour stay in Frankfurt which made it a fairly long trip at all.

While enjoying breakfast at Starbucks at the airport in Frankfurt a guy on the other table asked me about poker (I was wearing a WSOP T-Shirt). It was kind of interesting as he was one of those people who watches poker on TV but beyond that has no clue at all. His favorite story was when he saw to guys clash in an all-in with QQ vs. JJ. Then another Queen appeared on the flop ... and two Jacks on Turn and River. He then said to me: "Can you believe that? I almost fell out of my chair as I saw that!". And my answer to that was a simple "Yeah, seen that before, shit happens" ;-) But talking to him and explaining the simplest things (from a poker players standpoint) raised the question for me how hard it really is to convince non-poker players (e.g. politicians) that poker isn't a game of chance. Too often we take things as they are without accepting that others without our background (and bad-beat experience) might look at it from a very different perspective.

I arrived in Nottingham on late afternoon and went to the Dusk Till Dawn for the regular GBP 50 tournament (24 min. blinds & 4,000 startchips). Before I was able to find Des Duffy from the APAT and say hello. Without him I wouldn't have been able to register for the main-event (due to technical difficulties) and wouldn't be here for that weekend at all.

The tournament had 100 runners creating a nice prizepool that paid ten spots and over GBP 1,700 for the winner. My start was quite rusty. With KQ I hit two Kings on the board but was faced with a very aggresive opponent who finally went all-in when the second King appeared on the board. Hard to say if I had a kicker problem, if he just overplayed his hand or just didn't believe me that I had the King. Not enough information at this stage of the tournament. So I decided to stay on the save side and folded. But my stack was now cut into half.

Just a few hands later I was back to my original stack when my suited one gapper turned to a straight and I was able to outplay a guy with QQ. Somewhat later another suited one-gapper turned into a monster when I flopped a straight flush! I got a full payout as this guy kept betting (I just reluctantly called each street) with a flopped Q-high flush. Hi finally went all-in and then went out of the game ;-)

We already reached the end of the 200/400 level and I was sitting on 10,000 chips now when my raise to 1,000 (with AKs) faced an all-in of 7,000. Wow, that was a tough decision but I descided that in a tournament with this structure I couldn't back off here. Fortunately it was a race against TT ... which I (even more fortunately) won with the classic "Ace on the River".

Now at 17k and up to my highest point of 20K as the blinds went to 600/1,200 (100) a few levels later. But from there nothing should went right anymore. First my button raise faced two all-ins from the big-blind and small-blind. I folded and KK battled against AT. A little later my one-off-the-button raise to 3,000 was faced with a sneaky raise to 7,000 from the guy who had the KK before. I decided to fold here as my hand wasn't strong enough for a call and an all-in seemed to dangerous. But with that two hands and some blinds and antes my stack was now down to 10k and I was in push-or-fold mode. I got no customers with my first all-in, just got the antes and the small-blind while holding TT in the big blind and finally ran my 55 into TT. Out in 21st position after 4 hours.

Of course it would have been great to immediately cash on arrival but again I was very happy with my overall play. No significant mistakes, care were care was needed and aggressiveness were aggressiveness was demanded.

Todays Day 1A of the APAT Amateur World Championships is my starting day. The tournament will begin at 4:30pm UK time. We will play 45 min. levels with 10,000 startingchips and 100 runners per day (Day 2B is tomorrow and the final is on Sunday).

While it is raining heavily at the moment the weather forecast for tomorrow is quite good. So I might be able to do some sightseeing on my free day. Stay tuned for more poker stories and some pictures from Nottingham.

Summerfeeling and Poker at Lake Woerth

My trip to Lake Woerth, Austria started with a real good beat. Although I had reserved the smallest rental car category I got a brand new BMW 120d with a mileage count of just 100 miles. So I had a nice, relaxing and enjoyable three hour trip across Austria.

My hotel was located directly at the highway rest stop "Lake Woerth". A hotel in that location doesn't sound too inviting but don't get fooled. For a decent price they offer small but nice and clean rooms. And all of them are lakeview rooms! The Marché restaurant next door offered good food and an outside terrace with a magnificant view over the lake. So I was well rested, well prepared and in a good mood at the start of the tournament.

158 players created a nice pricepool with 18 paid spots and a first prize of almost €8,000. Our table was quite friendly and mostly filled with educated amateurs. Most of them seemed to have played in the team event the day before.

Very often it appears in a tournament that the same opponents get heads-up again and again. In my case it was the young girl on seat 8. I lost our first confrontation but got enough information to value her as decent but tight. Shortly after I got most of what I lost to her back again. And then during level 3 we got into a real big hand. She made a huge raise from MP that cried for AA or KK. Everybody folded to me on the button. I decided that the blinds were still low enough and the stacks deep enough for a call with JT here. In addition this was the first time I got the opportunity to have position on her on the remaining streets.

The flop came 789 rainbow. What a monster. She made a decent bet, I shortly hesitated and then called. Turn was a 3 but now put two hearts on the board. She checked and I made a half pot size bet. She called immediately. The river was a meaningless 6 of clubs and I was still holding the nuts. She did bet again and of course I re-raised her. She open folded AA with a big sigh and I showed her my hand. Why did I do that? First because I wanted her to know that I had a real hand here and second playing the hand the way I played it gained me a lot of respect from the other players after they realized what I had behind. From now they were more carefully when I checked to them ;-) I tried a simmilar stunt against another player who appeared to have AA (and later showed them to me) but missed that time and was able to let my hand go with not much invested in the pot. Small-Ball at it's finest.

Jonathan Luetkenhorst the tournament director then added even more to that respect I already got. As always he does some interviews for the promotional video they create for every event. This time he decided to interview me again and he started with "2 final tables last year, another one this year ... it seems you are our inofficial highest ranked pokertour player". While this of course is a nice accomplishment (although I think Jan Schwarz from the PokerBlatt is equal successfull) I expected my image being totally ruined now. But the opposite was the case. From there I got a whole lot of respect from the table and I was able to take down a good number of blinds and antes without much resistance. This raises a good question: Is it better to appear as a fish or a professional? As always the answer is: It depends. In that case with "educated amateurs" getting respected was the much more valuable option.

Until level 4 (45 min. each) I was able to run my stack up to almost 15k and felt very good. Bustouts came fast and at that time we dropped below 100 remaining players. With table balance needed everywere I was forced to change tables and I was jinxed. In a big hand my TT ran into AA. That hand could have been even more expensive but I was able to resist trying to bluff here on the river. A little later my raise with AJ was faced with an all-in from a short stack. I was more or less commited to call here but doubled my opponent who was holding KK.

We already had reached level 5 with 300/600 (50) blinds now. So losing those two hands became expensive even in a deepstack event that had started with 10k chips ... and I was officially shortstacked now.

I waited for my spot and it came with JJ. The chipleader on my right had raised to 1,500. I went all-in for about 6k and then the second chipleader on my left made one of the dumbest possible moves. He went all-in for about 40k chips. Why was it a dumb move? Because he was holding just AQ! Calling my all-in was o.k. even though he still had to invest more than 10% of his stack ... but raising all-in after the chipleader had raised in front didn't make much sense with that hand.

But he got rewarded twice: First the chipleader folded and then he hit his Queen on the flop. I was out in 92nd position but not unhappy about my play. No big mistakes, no plays to regret, taking calculated risks. Just a bit unlucky at the end.

With no day two for me I decided that I still wanted to enjoy my Sunday here. Especially as the weather was georgeous. So I took an extended breakfast at the hotel terrace and then started for some sightseeing. Drove around Lake Worthersee, enjoyed the scenic view over the lake from the "Pyramidkogel" and relaxed lakeside before I started to drive home.

So I am feeling very good for the upcoming APAT Amateur World Championship in Nottingham - which has a similar deepstack structure. On a funny side note I just saw the odds on the players in the APAT event and my odds are among the top 20 players. Best ten odds are 66/1 and I am ranked 80/1 with another nine players. All others are ranked 100/1 to 200/1. Getting ranked that high really surprised me. Hopefully the results will reflect that ranking ;-)

Next stop Pokertour.at at Lake Woerth (Austria)

Just came back from a great but mentaly exhausting non-poker weekend. We had a very motivating training with the national Boogie-Woogie team and are now even more hyped to dance the World Championships in two weeks in Stuttgart (which are part of the GOC - German Open Championships).

But before that I will come back to my most successfull tournament series so far - the Pokertour.at. This time the event will take place near the scenic Lake Woerth in Kärnten, Austria. Good to be back as I missed some of the other events this year due to conflicting appointments. I'm already qualified for the finals in December (which unfortunately forces me to miss a very important dance competition) but those events are still valuable in structure and prize money.

But that's not all for August. In three weeks I will be back to Nottingham for the APAT - WCOAP World Amateur Poker Championship at the Dusk Till Dawn. I'm really looking forward to this too. Not only is it again a great structured event but the DTD is a great place that saw one of my best performances at the end of last year.

Much more events to come in the next months but I will keep that for later posts.

Just to remember that if you want to play the IPO - International Poker Open in Dublin you should act soon. Although this one happens in October seats sell fast. For Day 1B (Saturday) there are now only 32 seats left. For Day 1A (Friday) there are 338 left. Expect it to sell out completely in the next 2-3 weeks. Another 300 seats are currently reserved for satellite winners and most probably won't be publicly available at any time. And don't forget that the german speaking players want to meet Thursday evening at a pub in Dublin. So if you go to the IPO let me know!

Just a short look back: Last weekend I made a visit to the CCC in Salzburg which had a Deepstack tournament. They got 146 players and paid 15 spots with first getting about €8.000.

I had a good start there busting an overly aggressive player with my JJ who decided that he had to bring his almost equal stack to war with AK. The action was three limpers in front, I then flat called my JJ and he raised it to 10x big blind (3k at this time). Everybody folded to me. He had made this over-raising move several times before and I assumed that this was again just a steal attempt.

Usually I would have re-raised him to 9k here but with a 20k stack that didn't make sense. So I moved all-in on him directly (putting his tournament life on risk ... as well as mine). And he immediately called. Ouch! That wasn't the reaction I had expected. But to my delight he showed a much overplayed AK. Don't get me wrong: His raise was a decent move with that hand (he was indeed much stronger then I had expected) but calling my all-in with just AK was a horrible move with his stack at 150/300 blinds and 45 min. levels. The board was meaningless for both of us and I was up to 38k.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to make much out of this stack. Another guy busted two players in one hand shortly after and now had almost the same stack size. He was picking on me as I had forced him earlier to fold the low full house on an 8866x board. Everytime I raised he was in the hand ... and everytime I missed the board completely. After a time this got very expensive and my stack finally went down to 15k (while the average was up to 25k).

Then I found a spot were I was able to fight back because I had a strong draw. Unfortunately this spot was badly chosen as he had a monster this time and I was drawing dead when the money went in. Went out in 67th place satisfied with my game in general but unhappy about the way I played my exit hand. This exit was avoidable!

Went on the the cash game and doubled my stack after about three hours. Still not enough to make up for the investment but at least a positive ending of the weekend.

Bleeding chips in the big one but taking down the side event

Last weekend I checked out the Kings Pokerroom in Rozvadov, CZ (close to Waidhaus). They have started a series with a €250+25 buy-in on Saturdays during July/August. The tournament sounded very promissing as they offered 10,000 startchips and 45 min. levels (Level 1-3 were 30 min.). In addition they have a guaranteed prizepool of €50,000 ... a huge overlay as they got between 100 - 150 players during the first tournaments. This weekend they had 112 players. A decent tournout as there was another big tournament in Cheb (which is not far away) running at the same time. They gave a €275-Buy-In-Ticket to players placing 16th - 30th. This ticket is non-transferable and has to be used in about 4 weeks. In addition every of the 15 paid spots gets the ticket too as part of their payout.

Unfortunately my tournament day was over after just four levels and I was really bleeding chips this time. I never lost a huge pot or made a major mistake. I even had a monster laydown with AK were I had hit TPTK and was up agains a rivered straight. But I should have known that I was doomed when I realized that I forgot my lucky dinosaur (my card protector) in the hotel room. And I was indeed jinxed. When I was holding red cards the board came all black. When I played unpaired facecards the board was all small cards. I had pairs ... there were at least two overs on the board. And of course with suited connectors the board was all face cards.

No wonder I went out in 92nd position of 112. But the same continued then in the cashgame too. It just wasn't meant to be and I went back in my hotel at 4 in the morning really unsure what to do. The options were: driving home after breakfast, playing some more cash on sunday afternoon or playing the One Rebuy + Add-On tournament at 6pm. Still unsure I arrived at the Kings around noon hoping to find Thomas & Silke who had made it into day 2. We talked for some time and then I railed them as no cash game went through this afternoon.

Silke busted before the paid spots (but got a ticket again). Thomas eventually won the tournament (at the end they split the prize money 4-way). At this time I was already sitting in the rebuy-event which had a decent structure for a €60 buy-in. The levels lasted 20 minutes with a moderate increase (no antes). With 3,000 chips + 3,000 rebuy and 6,000 add-on you got plenty of play. I was running much better here then the day before but during the middle stages my stack shrinked from 19,000 to 9,000 very fast as the blinds now started to get expensive and I had to give up some good opportunities.

I managed to reach the final table but did it as the absolute shortstack. There I got my daily lucky hand as I was all-in with A5 vs A6 hitting my 5. Still short with 18,000 chips I was now at least in the position to put selective pressure on several people and raised my stack to 38.000 with 7 players left. Now came the hand that turned everything around: I was holding AK when a decent player went all-in for almost 50,000 and I was sure that he didn't have AA or KK as he seemed to be very unhappy as soon as I asked for a count. So I expected that the worse I could get was a coinflip. With just four spots paid and the fact that everybody was shortstacked already this was a decent opportunity to call. You may imagine how delighted I was to see that I was up against AQ.

With now around 80,000 chips I was chipleader and everything had changed. Somewhat later I got a real present from the second in chips. At this time we were already down to six players. I had AJs and called a raise from this guy. Flop was 2-K-7. I checked and he checked too. Turn was a Jack. I checked again and he bet. For some reason I was sure he didn't have the King. So I re-raised him all-in and he called with A9s. Wow! The river blanked and he was out (of the money) while I was now sitting on 140,000 chips. Remember: about an hour and five eliminations before I had barely 9,000 chips!

But there was another guy who had a great run at the final table. The one who ran his AQ into my AK. He was down to 8,000 chips after that hand but managed to accumulate chips and finally we both went into heads-up almost equal in chips. It was a great heads-up as nobody of us was short at this time and we both liked to play post-flop poker. Eventually I managed to win the tournament for €1,355.

This put a great ending to a rather tough weekend. But despite my bad run on Saturday this place is a real reccomendation! It's a nice and clean place that offers very good tournaments and a wild but profitable cash game (at least in the €1/3 level that I played). On Saturday they had also games at €2/5, €5/10 and even on game at €20/40 running.

Almost all kind of drinks are free and there is a very tasty buffet almost all-day around. The service personal is among the friendliest I've ever experienced (even compared to very good american standards). The only real downside are some of the german guests that still seem to think they are superior and treat the czech people in a way that isn't appropriate in my opinion. Although you may still feel like being in Germany in that place you are not! We should always remember that we are just guests and should behave that way. I am happy to be a guest in a country so close to Germany that allows me to play my favorite game legally.

In general the tournaments are run in a decent way but the floor has to get a little bit more experienced. Especially the rebuy-event went a little hectic at one point. But I have no doubt they will get this sorted out very soon. This is really a place and tournament I can reccommend for everybody who loves to play good poker and wants to enjoy their time in addition. If my schedule would allow it I would be back in the next weeks for sure.

Their series ends with a €750 main event on August 22nd/23rd (if I remember the date correctly) ... I really hope they add a little for the higher buy-in by making the main event 60 min. levels and offering maybe 12K or 15k starting chips. But so far no details are published about the main event yet as far as I know.

I really wish them success with their series and I would be happy if they decide to either extend it or run it again in fall. In that case I would quote Arnold "Terminator" Schwarzenegger: "I'll be back!" :-)

WSOP 2009: The good guys and the bad guy of the November Nine

The WSOP is over and I am back to Germany for several weeks now. But of course I followed the action closely. The WSOP main event was and is still one of the most impressive things in the world of poker. And this year everything was even better.

Compared to the last years there had been less problems then ever and almost everything went the right way. The only "glitch" was the sell-out at Day 1D ... but I think Harrah's made the right decision. It was and is my opinion that everyone who got shut out can blame nobody then himself!

The main event saw a lot of interesting names lately including Dennis Philips, Joe Sebok, Peter Eastgate, Antonio Esfandiary, Ludovic Lacay, Tom Schneider, Blair Rodman and many others. In addition the german Marco Mattes had a great run and ended 23rd out of 6,494.

Joe Sebok (the inventor of Pokerroad Nation) as well as Dennis Phillips (a great guy who showed an incredible performance again and was only stopped by a rather bad beat) clearly belonged to the favorites of the masses. It was a sad moment to see both getting busted in the 2009 main event.

Only one guy was able to go ahead of those two! Not only regarding fans but also regarding result. ESPN and Harrah's will obviously thank the poker gods that one of the best players alive made it to the "November Nine" in the 40th anniversary year of the WSOP. Although Phil Ivey is on the lower end of the chipcount he will be good for great TV and I assume that except for his eight tablemates and fans almost all people in the poker world would love to see him take down this event.

"Ivey is Jordan, Einstein, Picasso, and Mozart all rolled into a one professional gambler"
from Tao of Poker

Every year again there is the question "will a well known pro ever win the main event again"? Every year the answer was "No way, won't happen anymore". This year can be the year. It already was the year of the pros: Three bracelets for Jeffrey Lissandro and two for Phil Ivey, many cashes for Daniel Negreanu and final tables for many other well known names.

But Ivey has to face a stack more then six time bigger then his own. This stack belongs to Darvin Moon. The difference couldn't be bigger. Moon doesn't have any big results in the books so far. But from what I heard he got great cards and made the best of it. It will be hard to overcome this monster stack. Moon reminds me in many ways of Dennis Phillips. He's not a professional but the nice guy from your neighborhood. So different and down to earth compared to some other crazy guys in the pokerworld. To play good poker you don't have to enter the Amazon room as Julius Caesar ;-) Also I am rooting for Ivey to take it down I think I wouldn't mind if Darvin Moon would make it instead. Oh, and isn't it funny that today is the 40th anniversary of the first men landing on the moon. It's the "day of the Moon" ;-)

Enter the bad guy! Beside Ivey there is another well known name at the final table. If you had asked me a few days ago I would have loved to see Jeff Shulmann from Cardplayer Magazine at the final table. But since yesterday I lost every respect for this guy. Imagine there are thousands of players that have a dream - the dream of winning the main event one day. There are people like me that stay up all night to catch the action there because this is the event for almost all poker players.

And now this guy says that he will "throw the bracelet into the garbage" if he would take down the event! Isn't that horrible? I wouldn't mind if he said that he won't ever wear it because it doesn't look nice. But what he said lacked every possible respect against a great event and is a slap in the face of every poker player. Even worse is his reasoning. He thinks that Harrah's treated him and Cardplayer Magazine unfair by selling the media rights to Bluff Magazine. So why play here at all? This guy has a passion for business but no passion for poker.

Ivey winning the main event - great for poker. Moon winning the main event - good for poker. Anybody else except "Garbage Jeff" - probably good too. "Garbage Jeff" winning - horrible for poker.

I never ever did this before (not even for Jerry Yang) but this November I am rooting for Jeff Shulmann getting busted as soon as possible!

Isn't that great? A guy like Phil Ivey who already achieved so many things in poker still has a dream - the dream to reach a main event final table. This dream has now come true for the one and only Phil Ivey!

My coming events in summer and early fall

It's some time since the last update so here comes a little wrap up and a list of my coming events for the next months.

Hadn't played much since Salzburg but last weekend I went back to Ceska Kubice in the Czech Republic. The Casino Savoy now has a weekly €50+7 DeepStack tournament. Well, personally I wouldn't call it "DeepStack" as it has a PF=12.56. But still for that buy-in it is a very good structure (and has a lot of weak players).

I started off very well by doubling up with AA vs. QQ but again lacked playable cards in the middle section of the tournament. Finally my chips went in with JJ and I was called by A9c on a two clubs flop. Of course a club hit on the river. :-(

So I went on with my cashgame experiment and again left with a nice €186 win at €1/2 after 4 hours. Most remarkable hands: Getting QQ and KK in a row and hitting my set both times on the turn. Got a decent payout on both hands. Another huge hand was QQ vs TT with Full House over Full House.

Looks like I'm still running better in cash then in tournaments. But I love playing tournaments so much more. Let's see how this develops in the future...

On July 18th I will travel to the Czech Republic again. The Kings Pokerroom in Rozvadov now offers a PF=18.67 two-day DeepStack event. Again this is a weekly tournament during the summer.

Mid of August I finally will be able to play the Pokertour.at again (LM Kärnten). Had to miss some events due to other appointments. End of August will see a trip to Nottingham for the APAT World Amateur Poker Championship at the Dusk Till Dawn. The Pokertour.at has a close stop in early September in Innsbruck. Of course a thing I don't want to miss.

And then there is October and I am really happy that this years International Poker Open in Dublin doesn't conflict with my other appointments. Was really sad that I had to miss this great event last year. I was able to catch a flight for this with Ryanair from Memmingen for just €18! Adding another €40 for the train ticket makes it still less than €60 for a return flight to Dublin. Wow! I expect my gas bill to Rozvadov next week will be about the same amount ;-)

It's a kind of tradition that the german speaking people who travel to the IPO make a little meet-up before the event. This year we will meet in a pub in the center of Dublin on Thursday Oct. 15th at 7pm. So if you play that event too please contact me and I will give you the exact location.

So as you can see there is a lot of poker planned already. And there are several other plans that are not fixed at this time. I will let you know a soon as I know more ;-)

Promise that the next blog entry will be much more interesting ... just trying to keep the tension up with that one. Next destination: Rozvadov, Czech Republic and another one of the deepstacks I love so much!

Nice cash in Salzburg (but not in the tournament)

As we danced a Boogie-Woogie competition on Saturday near Salzburg this was a good opportunity for a visit to the Concord Card Casino in Salzburg. Unfortunately the summer took a break and it was a horrible weekend in regards of the weather with a lot of rain.

My tournament started very good. Special thanks to two awful players who donated most of their stacks to me. During the first two 25 min. levels I went from a 5k startingstack to 11k. But in level 3 (50/100) this hand broke my tournament:

I got AA in early position and raised it to 250. This was my standard raise and I had shown a lot of decent hands already with that raise during that tournament. Three callers. The flop came 5-2-7 with two hearts. The pot was 1k and I bet 700. First player folded. Second went all-in for 5,700 and third one called all-in for 2,800.

Uuups, that wasn't like expected. I had already seen a lot weired play at this table. But 5,700 at this level into a 1,700 pot was a huge overbet and usually desigend to take the pot down right now. What could he have? Most probably a big pair. Flushdraw was possible but for some reason I gave the flushdraw to the smaller stack. I ruled out a set as I don't think he would have played it that way. Maybe the smaller stack could have the set but I was of course focused on the bigger stack here anyway.

It was a borderline decision for me. In a deep-stack my aces may have gone into the muck as I wouldn't have been interested in a gamble in that early stage. In this format, with 25 min. levels and the next blinds being 100/200 (25) and 200/400 (50) there was no way I discard this hand on that flop.

But the showdown was a desaster: The smaller stack showed 48s for a baby-flushdraw (as expected) while the big stack showed a surprising 52s for two pair. That indeed was the only hand I really had feared in that setup. No help and I was down to 5.5k. Didn't get many cards in the next level and went out in level 5 with TT versus QQ.

Shortly after my exit they opened a new €1/2 NL casgame table and I decided to jump into that game. As always patience pays off in a cash game. The table had 3 decent players and 3 who splashed around with chips. They loved to do straddles and showing big bluffs. Unfortunately I didn't get the right cards for a long time and my stacked dipped heavily. But finally I started to hit and it was amazing that even after I had shown several times that I have a hand when I play it strong I got customers all the time. Left the game after 4 hours with a €322 net-win. So far I am up in 4 of my 6 sessions I played since I started playing live cashgame again.

Not sure what and how much I can play in June and July but I have fixed plans for the Pokertour.at in Kärnten and the APAT - World Amateur Poker Championship in Nottingham in August.

Back home again

So I am back home from Vegas and it's time to look back. As always going to Vegas is very nice and being there during WSOP is even nicer. This time it was a special experience as media access allowed to do and see a lot more then the usual visitor. It was also nice to meet some people in person like BJNemeth (@BJNemeth), Joe Seebok (@joesebok) and many others. It was also nice to meet Jessica Welman (@jesswelman) from PocketFives Live again.

But the face of Las Vegas is changing. I'm a child of "Disneyland for adults". When I came to Vegas first the Bellagio, NYNY, Venetian and Excalibur had just opened. It was the time of the "Themed Hotels". I have spoken to people who knew Las Vegas before that times and they told me that they got tears in their eyes when places like the Sands and Dunes were imploded. At this time I couldn't understand why they didn't like the new Las Vegas.

Now I start to understand ... because as always Las Vegas is inventing itself again in very short time. The time of the themed resorts is long over. Old icons like the Stardust have followed the Sands and Dunes. Now it's the time of the glass palaces.

The Wynn & Encore started this trend. The Palazzo was the last place not following this trend (but I assume mainly because it wouldn't have fit to the Venetian otherwise). And now there is city center. A huge monster of several casinos with no real identity. City center doesn't look like Vegas - it could be anywere in any big city of the United States.

And that's the worst part. This wonderful clear line of casinos on the strip that you could see upon landing (or from far away) is now gone. Several condo builings at or near the strip make it even worse. Now I am the one to be sad about the new Las Vegas and I start to understand how the old-timers must have felt. It's like they start to take "my" Vegas away from me. And also it will take a few more years it's just a matter of time and those places that made it "my" Las Vegas will start to vanish...

Not that I don't like Las Vegas anymore. It's still a great place but some of the buzz I always felt during my stays is just gone. But for everyone comes once a day were he becomes the old-timer. And in Las Vegas this will usually happen sooner than later...

As you have read in my last entries I wasn't successfull in tournaments - again! I can't blame it to bad beats in general. The first time I was perfectly outplayed. At least two times it was my own fault ... and yes, I somewhat missed the lucky end on important occasions. On the other hand I was running very good in cash games. I hadn't played cash games for a long time now and it was a great learning experience. I still make mistakes here that I shouldn't do but it seems I found a good mix between my own style of play (action oriented) and the needed patience. I will try to keep up with the cash games but will do so very carefully for now.

Another thing I wished I had done different would have been to take a few days more and use those for resting in between. Especially after this horrible last Venetian tournament I would have loved to have the opportunity for just taking a day off.

Anyway, I am back home and next play will be on Friday at the CCC in Salzburg. No deepstack of course but still an o.k. structure.

My last big tournament in Vegas is over with no cash again

So that's it. No more of the big ones (two day events) as I have to leave on Sunday. As intended I played the Caesars and I am happy with my choice ... even without a cash. At least it was a decent ending for a tournament week.

Even after changing the structures a little and getting rid of the main-event seat the Caesars struggles in numbers of participants. 154 showed up that day and made it 18 paid spots. Still a nice 9k payday for first place. In general I like their payout structure more. 18th place here got around $700 while the Venetian just paid $450 (a next to nothing win).

As always this week I was running hot early with great cards but then struggled again for some time. But this time I hit really hard two times in the middle of the tournament and made my way up to 46k. One was a KJ that I had raised and got a reraise from my neighbor. He did this quite often so I decided to call here and see the flop. Flop comes J-J-x and the hand cost him almost all of his stack with pocket kings. The next one was really nasty. I made a raise with 23s and got one caller. Flop come 2-3-8 and the pot starts to grow. I assume that he has a pocket pair Ten to Queen. Turn is a 7. Don't think that hit him. River is another 7. Damn, my great two pair are counterfeit and I am most probably behind. Let it go or push it? My remaining stack was still big enough to push and the pot was already huge ... so I pushed and continued to make an impression that I have a monster. He finally folded ... phew!

Some time later I was involved in a big pot were my flush didn't materialize and I had to let my hand go on the river. Down to 33k. Overplayed that hand somewhat. But still over the average of 25k.

Blinds were now at 400/800 (100) and I got some hands but missed every flop. Down to 23k but still o.k. Then I received AK in MP. Guy in early position makes a huge overbet to 4k and I assume he has either AK or a middle pair. So I try to get him off his hand by pushing all-in for my remaining 23k. Taking down a 6,200 chips pot would have been more then fine for me here.

Then something strange happens. He looks at his cards and almost mucks them as the next dealer approaches the table. So he asks the current dealer "you are leaving now? Then I call because you have given me good cards so far". Indeed he got good hands from that dealer as he came short at the table and had been doubled up at least twice since then. So he calls with 66 for his remaining 18k and doubles up again. :-(

Now I have just 4,500 left and find a decent spot to get them in with J9o. I get callers and a shot to qadruple up but fail to hit the board. Out in 70th after 6 hours of play. Had a real shot to make it here but there wasn't too much I could have done different. Not the best game I ever played but very decent.

Later that night I went back to the MGM for some cash game and made another nices win. Could have been even more if my straight wouldn't have been run into a baby flush.

So for today there's most probably no more tournaments. I checked the regular events and their structures aren't good but the payouts are even worse. Most have a fee of 25-35%! So I most probably play a little more cashgame and check out the action at the WSOP again for the last time.

My most ugly day in tournament poker this week

The Venetian tournament again started very well for me but then turned into my most ugly tournament experience I ever had. But in the beginning I was absolutely owning the table.

First hand AK on the button, raising, it's folded and I show that I am not stealing. From the next 30 hands I play about 20 (all with decent hands) and win 16 ... mostly the blinds but some small pots too. The table starts to hate me. Finally we go to a showdown and my opponent falls almost from his chair as he sees that I checked the nutflush with a double pair on the board. He couldn't understand but I earned a lot respect from some other players. Which saved me from starting them picking on me harder.

During the first two levels my stack went from 15k to 22k and I even was the guy who now was defining the standard betsize ;-) Then again one hand pushed me back down. But this time it wasn't a bad played hand but rather a bit unfortunate gathering. With Q9s I hit a set on a 99x board. I was ahead at that time but a Ten on the Turn turned the worse kicker into a Full House. Good thing I didn't push here to much ... that hand could have been even more expensive. In a weired Déjà-vu I saw Matusow's exit from the 2008 WSOP Main-Event later that evening again. His AJ vs A9 almost developed the same way but cost him the whole tournament.

From there it was an up and down. Down to almost 5k and recovery to 18k. The on to a new table. But before that I had my first ugly experience of the tournament. There was a raise from EP and then an all-in for about 8k from the short-stack next to me. This happend just shortly after I made my way back up to 18k and I had lost big with QQ vs AA not long ago against a n "any-two-can be raised" jerk. Again I found QQ and thought for a long time. With action pending behind me (one hasn't acted so far and the original raiser) I decided to let my Q's go. this time The other guy then pushed all-in and the original raiser folded. Guess what: 78s vs. AK ... and a Queen hits on the flop. That would have been a huge pot!

Looking back I think that was a borderline decision and I most probably should have went all-in against the all-in player to isolate. Not sure if the other guy would have called then with his AK (I had him slightly covered).

The new table was very entertaining but the blinds started to hurt my 18k stack now. Finally I got my money in with KK vs. AK and made it up to 30k. Then an even worse situation came up: I have TT and make a standard raise from the small blind. Big blind calls. The Flop is Q-8-3. I check and the other guy checks too. Turn is a 5. I check again almost being sure he will now make a bet to take the pot down. He bets 3k into a 6k pot. Blinds at this time were 500/1.000 (100). I don't think he is very strong here and make a re-raise to 10k. He asks what I have left and makes it 30k to put me all-in. Wow! I so much wanted to call him but I finally let my hand go. He takes the pot and showes JT for complete air!

I I had called that would have been a pot of 70k total ... but even now hours and a whole night later I can't find a good reason that would have satisfied a call here. Of course I would have been sitting on a huge stack then but this isn't poker anymore. That's rolling dice then. I think my re-raise for one third of my stack (with a pocket pair) was a decent move. But re-raising with nothing for half of his stack is just crazy. The worst thing is that I would have played a super-strong hand (like a set) the same way and he would have fallen into that trap (which he will most probably against somebody else).

The Queen was a very unfortunate hit on the flop here. As this was a battle of the blinds he still could have had many other parts of the board (e.g. set with a low pair). But even being sure I did the right thing it is still so devastating to know that I was fallen into his trap and passed on the biggest tournament pot of this week.

My stack went downhill to 11k and my money went in with KK again. Guess who called? The guy who had trapped me. Guess what he had? AK. Guess what happened? An Ace hit on the turn. Out in 239th of 660 after almost 6 hours of play.

I then decided to alter my plans and not play the Venetian on Friday. Although I love to play there and they have great tournaments I really need a change of venue. So I play the Caesars Mega-Stack instead today. In addition that one has a little smaller buy-in then todays event at the Venetian. And I definately didn't feel for investing into my biggest tournament of the week at the moment. The prize pool will be lower as they get only around 200 players but thy skipped the main-event seat - so the prize pool is all cash now.

But I am in Vegas and I am here to play poker. So for the evening I went to the new "M" Hotel & Casino. This one just opened in March and is the southern most strip casino. It's about 3 miles south of my hotel but (as well as my hotel) still located on Las Vegas Blvd. aka "The Strip". It's a nice little casino with a small but wonderfull pokerroom. Played there for about 2.5 hours and went home with another nice win. Not as big as the day before but still worth the time invested.

So now it's time for my last big tournament of the trip. To be honest I am already biased to go back to the Venetian. Poker players are crazy, aren't they? But I will stay with my decision here. At least I don't have to regret anything if this doesn't go the right way - but I would bugg myself if I go to the Venetian and something weired happens today.

So wish me luck ... this is my last chance for a big win and a possible extension of my trip ;-)

Fun and dissapointment in Vegas

Sorry that this will be only a short update with no pictures. Internet is down at the whole property I am staying in. So I am now at Starbucks to make some updates before heading to the Venetian again.

Yesterdays tournament started on a table with a broken autoshuffler. But the Venetian staff was fast to re-seat us inside the poker room. Unfortunately this meant that the table would be broken first. This turned out to be a very unlucky happening as we had a real "donator" at our table. I was able to abuse this "ATM" two times myself and was on a good run when the table was broken. At the new table I could continue for a while and reached my highpoint of 22k. Startingstack was 15k. At this time close to 500 people had bought into the tournament.

Unfortunately from then nothing worked right anymore and my stack went down to 16k again (not losing a big hand or making huge mistakes but losing a good number of small hands). Nothing to worry about at 100/200 (25). The thing to worry about is the fact that again I played one hand very badly. My JJ ran into two pair of a shortstack (AT). As the final money went in on the river I think even against the shorty there was still a way to let this hand go either on the turn or the river (and save some important chips).

With the increased blinds and my smaller stack I now entered push-and-fold time. Pushed two times with no customers and then went on a one level (40 min.) dry run. I hadn't played a single hand for a whole level (!) when I finally got AJ of clubs. There was an UTG raise to 2k with blinds now 300/600 (50). I pushed for 7,200 total in LP and he almost immediately called. What the hell did he think I might have? At least he thought that KQ (clubs too!) was good here. He had a healthy but not huge stack. So why risk a quarter of it on anything that is a coinflip at best?

Anyway, I was delighted to be faced with a 40:60 setup. The flop came AKx putting me ahead even more at 80:20 ... until another King hit the turn :-(( The Jack on the river was meaningless.

Out somewere around 350th place after 4 hours. Spotted Roy von der Locht (a player from Munich) at one of the tables and said hello. At this time he had a 33k stack so hopefully he made it deep into the tournament. Other notables: Tiffany Michelle (still in after busting out of the WSOP Shootout early) and former World Champion Jerry Yang. Yang had a fast exit and it was reported that he played like crazy: raising every hand, pumping his stack up to 30k, down to 20k, up again and then blowing it all away by calling an all-in with Ace-high (that all happend during the first two levels). At least he made someone very happy at his table ;-)

I was very dissapointed the way my exit went. I don't mind to bust the way I did on Monday ... but this was cruel! So I went to the "Tacone Grill" at the Planet Hollywood and eat some delicious 4-chese quesadillas. After that I felt much better ;-)

Just to find the next dissapointment. PH used to have very good low buy-in tournaments and a nice poker-room. Both is gone now. The room is now cramped on the other end of the floor between some slot machines and the decent tournament structure of the past is gone too.

Over to the HardRock Casino that also got some good reports in the past. And yes, they have a good structured low buy-in tournament (6k chips and 30 min. levels) and a nice room. But again this one has two downsides: It seems that with the age of 42 I am getting to old for the loud rock music that is played in the casino (including the poker room). Other may like it but for me it is just annyoing and causes me headache after some time. But I know that I am not their preferred customer anyway as they try to cater for the under 30 crowd. But the worst thing is that regulars get 500 additional chips per hour of live play (up to 2k). That puts every visitor into a bad position. No play for me here.

Dissapointed with the options to play a smaller tournament but wanting to play a little that evening I decided to give cash game another chance again and hit the MGM poker-room. This was a long and interesting evening. It lasted over 5 hours with a lot of ups and downs but at the end I went out ahead with exactly the amount to buy-in for todays tournament at the Venetian :-)

An older guy at hour table who obviously thought from himself as "the-guy-who-invented-poker" was a real ATM for most of us. Especially after a female gave him a cruel bad beat. Nobody felt sorry for him as he had bad-beaten everyone at the table already before. But after that he really went on tilt and drowned several grand in a short time.

In the biggest hand of the day I could hit him very hard: as often it was only called around (he was the most aggressive anyway) and I called with K6o on the button to see a flop. Don't tell me that this is a bad play ... if you played there for five hours already you would have made it that way too ;-)

The flop comes K-6-3 with two diamonds. It was checked around to me, I bet my two pair and everybody except "Mr. Poker" (as usual) went out of the way. The turn was an Ace. Didn't like that card too much but didn't give him an Ace as he most probably would have raised with it pre-flop. He checked, I bet and then hell break loose. He re-raised me and I assumed now that he was on a flush-draw. I took him all-in and he called quickly. River was a diamond and I felt doomed. But I wasn't ... he had hit two pair either with K3. Ship It!

On of the most remarkable laydowns I saw at that table was from a middle aged asian lady. On a 6-8-9 flop she flashed AA to me and mucked after her bet got a raise and re-raise. She was dead right as she was up against a set of 8s and another set of 9s!

So I went over to the Venetian to buy into todays event with my fresh money and went back to the hotel for some sleep.

A Day at the Rio

Yesterday I didn't play a tournament but took my day to follow the action at the Rio. Obviously I choose a very interesting day with several german players, Daniel Negreanu, Annie Duke and some real drama.

If you like to read about it you can find the whole article (unfortunately available only in german) with some pictures here at Pokerfirma.de.

For those who can't read german her are at least some nice pictures from yesterday:

WSOP Reporter BJNemeth (@BJNemeth) capturing the Bracelet.
His georgeous pictures can be found here!

Daniel (@RealKidPoker) at the Omaha H/L.
Figuring out if he got the High, Low or the whole enchilada

Joe Sebok (@joesebok), Amanda Leatherman (@MandaLeatherman)
and the Pokerroad-Team who provide us Pokerroad-Nation

And finally: The hallway...

... and the Amazon Room waiting for the players

I'm now heading to the Venetian were my next Deepstack Event will take place at noon (9pm CET). As always you can follow the action on Twitter and buy some shares on ChipMeUp until the start of the event.

My first Venetian DSE and stories from the Rio

I was in a good mood entering the Venetian and got a very good start: Tight table and decent cards in the beginning including AA, KK, QQ and a set of sixes. During the first level (50/100) I was able to pump my stack from 12k to 13k already.

Then during Level 2 (75/150) I made a horribly bad play. I had hit my straight but the board showed a possible flush too when my opponent made a 6,000 chips bet into a 3,000 chips pot on the river. This smelled so wrong. Why would he bet so high if he had hit his flush? Did he really want to chase me away? I finally called and it cost me half of my stack as he indeed had the nut-flush.

The call was a huge mistake on my part (regardless if I was ahead or not). At this stage of the tournament there was no need to play a hand as big as that with anything less then the nuts.

Down to 7k I tried to calm down and decided that I still had way enough chips for playing good poker. And that's what I did. My stack went up to 9k very soon.

In the meantime a "famous guy" came to our table: You may remember the guy who was sitting there in his under-shirt while hitting a Royal Flush at the 2008 Main-Event? Well he still looked the same and I really hoped it wasn't the same undershirt anymore :-/

But to be honest, I liked this guy. He was a very bad poker player but nice at the table. Courtesy to him I made it back to 15k (and he soon left after that) in a hand that he played absoluty awful. Any decent player would have been able to get me off that hand and scoop the pot.

From there I made it to my highest point of 18k when we reached the blinds and antes. With about 3,5 hours of play the level was now at 200/400 (25) when the final hand appeared.

The setup: An asian guy - very aggressive. Had played several pots with him and lost most. Think that he was a good bluffer but didn't had the hand to proof so far. An older Lady - decent player. Had accumulated many chips since she came on our table (and busted one guy). And me of course - the victim.

Asian guy raises to 1,275 from UTG. I find AKo in MP and decide just to call his raise. Split decision here. In many cases I would re-raise with the antes already kicked in but I wanted to see a flop before inversting more (and tried to avoid him re-raising me pre-flop). The Lady just called from the blinds.

Flop comes K-7-5 and the Lady checks. So most probably she had missed the flop completely. Asian guy bets out 3k (as expected). I didn't give him AA here. Maybe AK too or a high pair. Maybe he has just nothing. So a re-raise may take down the pot directly. I make it 11k and the Lady ... calls! What? That was very surprising as I didn't had her on the radar at all anymore. At least for the Asian my plan had worked. He folded. Now I was in deep trouble. With over 25k in the pot and less then 5k behind I was committed anyway to go all-in on the turn. Turn was a 5. She checks again and I go all-in. She calls and I know I am doomed: The Lady shows 77 for a flopped set and turned full house. No help on the river and I am out in the high 600s of 840 players.

Wow, that was a perfect play on her part. Obviously she knew that those two aggressive players will battle on the flop and she could sit back and enjoy. Of course I was unhappy to leave the tournament but I prefer to bust like that against an opponent who played it well rather then against a luckbox.

I don't know if this play has a name but I would call it "reverse sandwich". By just checking the turn and knowing the Asian will bet out anyway she put me in a real bad position. Had she raised I never would have re-raised. I may have called but there was a slight possibility I would have at least survived the hand. She had shown "weakness" and I fell into her trap.

Over to the Rio to check out the action there. Right in time to see Jeff Lissandro winning his bracelet in the Stud-Game. Then looking for Cort in the 2,5k six-handend event (as I have 1% on him). He had little over average and was sitting at the table with Eric Froehlich and later the former Main-Event winner Jerry Yang.

A good number of german speaking players reached the end of Day 1 in this one: Daniel Zink, Lennart Konst, Johannes Strassmann, Thorsten Schuler, Claudio Rinaldi, Hanno Offen and Rob Sterken. But at the top of the list and second in chipcount there was Nasr El Nasr (7th EPT - Prague).

Over to the Omaha High-Low which had at least one poker star on any table. Annie Duke, Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Barry Greenstein, Phil Gordon and many others. Even Phil Hellmuth who made it deep into the event but again missed a good result in a non-hold'em event.

And finally there was the final table of the 5k-No-Limit with the german Fabian Quoss. Fabian went in as the chipleader and rolled over the final table. One of his victims was Ivan Demidov's girl friend Lika Gerasimova. Then he went into the heads-up with a 4:1 chiplead against Brian Lemke. And Brian was the only one to stopp him. He shortened the difference piece by piece and finally turned it around and took down the bracelet. Still a great success for Fabian Quoss who earned $427,911 for his efforts.



So today I wont play a big tournament. Maybe a smaller one but mainly will check out how the action evolves in the Rio.

WSOP 2009 - First day in Vegas

So I finally arrived after 18 hours of travel. It started 6:50am in the morning with a semi-cooler as KLM couldn't find my booking for some reason. Now I understand why the online check-in didn't work. But they were very friendly and helpful and finally managed to get everything straight.

The stop in Amsterdam was rather short and I was able to sleep most of the 8-hour flight time as I had enough legspace with a free seat next to me. I wasn't to happy to fly via Detroit. I went through Detroit some years ago and I remember it as a very ugly airport. So I was really surprised that all is very modern and nice her now. And the way through Immigration was the fastest I ever had ... only took me 15 minutes (including the usual "pick-up your luggage and release it again" process). Never seen an "Indoor-Tram" at an airport. But here they have it.

The plane from Detroit to Las Vegas was very crowded but even those 4 hours were over sometime and I finally reached Sin City. At this time (4pm local time) I felt very awake and refreshed.

So I went to the Rio first to pick up my media badge (as you only get this until 7pm) and then checked into my hotel. Some unpacking and then over to the Venetian to buy-in for Monday's Deepstack event and having a first look at the tournament area. They have indeed addded a lot of tables and they now reach far into the casino floor. Very noisy environment.

At this time I felt a little tired for the first time but went back to the Rio for some pictures. Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) was at the final table (and heads-up at this time) in Event #14 ($2,500 Six-handed Limit Hold'em). He went into the heads-up as the favorite but unfortunately had a bad run there and ended up to miss his next bracelet. Congratulations to Brock Parker but I was rooting for Daniel and feel very sorry for him.

Took some more photos at the Ladies event. Many had already left but Maria Ho (@MariaHo) was still in and managed to end the day around average. At the 5k No-Limit I got a shot of Erik Seidel (@Erik_Seidel) who shortly after busted in 22nd place for a $21,026 win. David Pham ended the day second in chips and returns tomorrow for the final 17 of 655 players.

Although I would have enjoyed to stay longer my body then told me that it was time for rest. I managed to get back to my hotel without falling asleep early and the rested for 8 hours straight.

Now it's time for me to pick up some breakfast and prepare for my event today. Seems that I don't have internet access at the Venetian but at least will be able to twitter my results via SMS.

Excitement is growing

Finally I am on vacation. And the excitement is growing. I am following the WSOP online and enjoyed Twitter, PokerRoad Nation, the live stream and many other options to stay up-to-date with the action. Without question Twitter totally changed the way the WSOP is covered. Beside the usual (good) coverage from PokerNews there's now a lot of "noise" that will give you an up-to-the-minute impression of what's going on inside and outside the Amazon-Room.

I will have another Boogie-Woogie competition near Passau on Saturday. My trip then starts early Sunday morning via Amsterdam and Detroit to end in Vegas about 18 hours later. Of course I will try to update my blog on a frequent base (hopefully daily) but if I have enough wireless coverage I will tweet from my whole trip on a regular base.

Due to the current attendence numbers I decided to skip the Caesars Mega-Stacks (only around 200 players) and play the Venetian DeepStacks (700+ players). If you want to have some action there are still shares available at ChipMeUp! To make the whole thing even more exciting I have a 1% share in Cort's play at the $2,500 6-max (event #19) and a 5% swap with another player in Mondays Venetian DSE event.

That's it for now. Expect my next blog entry coming directly from Sin City :-)

Structure comparison of Vegas summer tournaments

Some may know that I am a big fan of Snyders' Patience Factor as it is a very good tool to compare the quality of tournament structures. But I am aware that this tool only gives "correct" results for the early stages of a tournament. In general this is a minor problem as the later stages reflect the earlier stages anyway.

But you have to be more careful with your results in deepstacks tournaments and/or those that differ significantly in how flat or steep the blindlevels are. Which is definately the case in the summer Vegas events.

So for my upcoming tournaments in Vegas I added two columns to Snyders' PF-Calculator to get the numbers for Harrington's M=20 and M=10. While Snyder uses the blind-off time for his calculations I now use the starting stack for my considerations. The basic idea is to say "if I can maintain my startingstack how long will I be in the comfortzone and when will I reach push-and-fold mode". This defines the critical area of the tournament and usually the one were bust outs start to come faster (before slowing down again).

In addition I then checked the jumps needed to maintain M=20. Usually you should expect to increase your stack (at least that is the goal of a tournament). So with lower jumps from level to level this goal can be achieved much easier then with big jumps. Again you can find a critical area with a lot of busts combined with those big jumps as the majority can't keep up with the pace of the blinds. For my calculations I only look at the values after M=20 has reached the startingstack as it is usual and neglectible that there are up to 100% jumps in the very early stages.

While this method is not so intuitive like calculating the PF it may help to define the overall quality. So let's have a look at the Vegas events in June:

I looked always at the lowest buy-In events which is the $340 for Venetian and Caesars, $235 for the Golden Nugget.

Venetian DSE III (12,000 startchips & 40 min. levels)
PF=23.23
M=20 reached at level 4
M=10 reached at level 6

Blind-Off Time (Snyder) = 289.20 min.
Critical time frame = 160 – 240 min.
Critical jumpfactor = 75% to level 4 & 63.64% to level 6 (160 min. & 240 min.)

Remark: The blind jumps at the DSE are surprisingly wild. Between 33-50% in the early stages and then 75% and 63% during the critical time frame. From there they almost never go above 39% and even go as low as 11%.


Caesars Mega-Stacks (15,000 startchips & 50 min. levels)
PF=28.22
M=20 reached at level 3
M=10 reached at level 5

Blind-Off Time (Snyder) = 318.75 min.
Critical time frame = 150 – 250 min.
Critical jumpfactor = 55.56% to level 8 (420 min.)

Remark: The Mega-Stacks never jump more then 55% (even with the antes kicking in) and stay quite constant. Jumps in later stages go as low as 29%


Golden Nugget Grand Series (12,000 startchips & 40 min. levels)
PF=27.17
M=20 reached at level 5
M=10 reached at level 7

Blind-Off Time (Snyder) = 312.73 min.
Critical time frame = 200 – 280 min.
Critical jumpfactor = 55.56% to level 6 & to level 8 (240 min. & 320 min.)

Remark: Although not counting this for the evaluation it should be noted that there is a 133% jump to level 4 (just before the critical time is reached)! Later stages show everything from 15% to 71% in a wild mix.


Conclusion
Taking all into account it looks like the Venetian is slightly ahead in terms of structure this year. With critical time frame and critical jumpfactor almost identical you have to survice just one steep cliff (lasting 1h 20min). From there it's an much easier sail then.

For Caesars you have to survive another critical time after 240 min and even from there have to deal with higher jumps then the Venetian in general.

The Nugget has the weirdest structure of all. With the critical time frame and the critical jumpfactor overlapping there is a extended critical period from 200 min. till 320 min (2h!). The big jump before that isn't helpful either.

Any feedback on this approach is welcome. I also posted this on 2+2 in the "structure comparison" thread (page 2) if you prefer to respond there.

Addition (on May 25th, 00:47am):
Thanks to "dcarp" for making me aware of an important fact by sending me a private note on 2+2.

I talked about the difference in the jumps from level to level which are 11-39% (Venetian) and 29-55% (Caesars) as shown above. Please don't forget that this accumulates over a longer time. So with the Venetian having overall slower jumps Caesars starts to run away much faster the longer the tournament lasts.

E.g. during level 13 a M=20 is 162k @ Venetian but a whooping 420k @ Caesars. After re-reading my posting I think "...and even from there have to deal with higher jumps then the Venetian in general" doesn't emphasize this fact enough.

But then, I still think that the early stages are very important. If you have to get lucky early to reach the later stages I never call a tournament deepstack. To close out the luck factor you need a sufficient amount of time to accumulate chips. What I tried was to extent the reach of the PF (which doesn't go very deep into a tournament) to a somewhat thorough consideration.

Sometimes you just can't win

Went to the Masters Warmup tournament at the Oceanscard Casino near Passau. Not too bad of a structure with 10k chips and 30 min. levels. Unfortunately they still have the awful jump from 100/200 to 200/400(25) ... hope they fix this some day to make it a real good tournament. 38 players created a prizepool of €3,800 awarding six paid spots with about 1.2k for the winner.

This was a strange tournament for me. I got a lot of playable cards but beside AK two times there were no premium hands during the first levels. My highest pair was a pair of 8's. I connected to the flop sometimes but never good enough to face a strong competition. So my stack went back and forth between 8k and 13k for a long time. Already in the awful 200/400(25) level I managed to get a break. Raised it to 1,000 with KK and got an all-in from a guy with 12k. Of course he could have had aces but based on his previous plays I estimated that he was trying to protect a vulnerable hand. So I called and he showed AKo. No further help for him and I was up to 24k.

From there I took down some nice pots and peeked at 32k. In the following two levels I was rather card dead so my stack went down to 24k. Still nothing to panic about. Average at this time was 20k. Then during the 800/1,600(200) level I picked up QQ and was faced with a 9k all-in from a short-stack. Of course I called and was delighted to see his TT ... until another Ten hit on the river. Down to 16k. Now it was time to panic. No, not really ;-) But this was a real cooler. Still managed to bring my stack back to 24k again.

Finally I received AA in first position. Raised it to 4k and got a re-raise all-in from the button who had about the same amount of chips then me (24k). Of course I called and he showed QQ. Nice! Until a Queen appeared on the flop. Out in 18th position instead of being among the chipleaders with 52k. What the hell do people think I may have when I raise from UTG? Sure he couldn't re-raise with a 24k stack but he also should have put into account that I may have a real strong hand. To be honest, I loved his call ;-) only didn't like the result.

As said in the title "sometimes you just can't win". Today I played a good game with no major mistakes. There was nothing I could have made different to alter the outcome. Still it was a good training for Vegas and I am more and more comfortable with the way I play. My current style allows for a lot of play with less risk even when I don't get premium cards. Can you believe that none of my pairs improved to a set on that day? In addition this style allows to trap people easily. Unfortunately traps can fire back some times.

Most probably this was my last live game before Vegas ... just 16 more days. Starting to get excited. Don't forget that there are still shares available on Chip Me Up. Altered my plans a little. Now the final schedule includes tournaments at Caesars, Venetian and Golden Nugget.

Although I love the Caesars poker room I don't play the Mega-Stacks exclusively this year for some reasons: First is the fact that I don't like that Harrahs takes away 10k from the prizepool for a main-event seat. I would prefer that this money is distributed between those ITM. Second is that the Venetian really has improved their structure in the middle stages. It's time to test them again. In addition I found it somewhat exhausting to go to the same place over and over every day during last years trip. A change of venue is always refreshing. I also added the Golden Nugget as they offer a very good structure in relation to the buy-in.

Playing at the Golden Nugget is somewhat like coming back home for me. The Golden Nugget was the place were I played my first ever hand of poker in 2004. Being a cardcounter at that time I never expected that the game of Poker could influence my live so much. Now I only need a major cash in Las Vegas. I had some nice final tables and cashes in other places but in Vegas I still miss a big hit. Maybe this year! ;-)