Shadow in Vienna

As my girlfriend had to travel to Vienna for a business trip we decided to make it a long weekend with some poker for the Shadow.
First I checked out the Concord Card Casino (CCC). It's a nice place. Much nicer than the CCC in Linz. It's about 3 times as big and has quite normal customers. The customer base in Linz is a little weird.
They are very friendly. First time customers receive a voucher for a free tournament entry, a free meal and €10 slotmachine play. They show you were everything is located and give you all the informations you need. My overall impression is that the place is well run.

I met here with bla from the POKER-TESTER.com forum. It's always nice to meet somebody in person after you discussed topics in the forum or played online with them. We had some nice conversation and played the $20+4 rebuy tournament. They had 64 players and my table was obviously the rebuy king ;-)). Blindlevels 30 minutes starting at 25/25 make it a decent structure during the rebuy phase. After that the blinds and antes climb very fast. But it's understandable ... even with 64 players it took from 7pm to 2am to get a winner!
I didn't get anything really playable during the rebuy time. I was able to get a little above average stack due to to hands that worked well. It was that kind of hands you can play only in a rebuy tournament (e.g. playing a J that paired on the flop very agressive ... got two callers, one had nothing the other a J with the lower kicker). So I hoped that I wouldn't need a rebuy on that tournament. Then the next to last hand of the rebuy phase arrived. I got a AQs in late position an made it 4 bets. The big blind called and everybody else folded. Flop came 10-Q-x. BB checked and I bet half the pot. He called. Turn was a K, he checked again I bet half the pot and he raised. Damm! I was sure he made the straight on the turn but the pot was so big now and I was pot commited anyway. So I went all-in with my straight draw (for a tie) & a flush draw but got no help.
Took a double rebuy and the add-on (so my total buy-in for that tournament was € 60). This was the typical "You-Can-Play-It-But-You-Don't-Have-To" hand that I really hate!
I can't imagine a tournament were I saw so many low cards like 63, 47, 48, 27 ... Sometimes a Q4, K4, A2 :-(( More worse: the seldom times I got something that could be played I got raises before me: Got 99 in third position. UTG made it 5 bets, UTG+1 raised to 10 bets ... and away with the 9's.
After the break the blinds continued with 100/200. With 3500 chips left I was forced again to change my game changed into "all-in or fold". Well it basically changed into fold...fold...fold...fold...fold...fold as I got the same kind of cards as before. Finally I was able to go all-in for three times and doubled up by being lucky, being lucky and being very lucky ;-)) (just to get blinded away between the all-ins again). It was amazing how often people called my all-in. I can't understand it. Sure they often had the better cards. But they risked a big or major portion of their stake on things that would be coinflips. Looks like they neither understand the gap-concept and the problem of +EV situations generating -EV due to the fact that they may lose chips they may need in more lucrative opportunities.

Seat open, Seat open ... the number of players decreased and we went down to two tables (final table is 10 with all 10 being paid). At that time bla and I were sitting on the same table :-) He had a similar stack than I after the rebuy phase but had improved much more. Unfortunatly he got some kind of a bad beat on a good hand that cost him the major portion of his stack. Somewhat later he moved all-in and went out on 12th position. We discussed the hand later and agreed that it wasn't a good idea to play that hand. Not because it lost ... just because it had no value here. But I can understand him - he tried to make a move on a guy who could have been on a steel attempt but he ran into a decent hand. If it worked out he would have gone to the final table with a healthy stack!

I was supershortstacked again and we were down to 11 players and they announced hand-to-hand play. I knew that I most probably had to go all-in the next hands and either win or be out on the bubble as I realized that they had an all-in situation on the other table. The big stack won with JJ and the final table was there.