I moved my blog to a new home. Your browser should automatically take you there in 5 seconds. If it doesn't please go to http://www.fifthstreet.biz/ Fifthstreet Blog: August 2006

50k guaranteed, Kings Casino Rozvadov, Czech Republic

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

An offer too good to miss!

Well, this sounds unbelievable but it looks like it is true:

Mansion offers you the following: Bet $1,100 (and exactly that amount) to receive $1,000 on the upcoming Steelers - Dolphins game (on Sep. 7th). If the Steelers cover the spread you win $1,000. If your bet loses Mansion will refund your lost $1,100.



Mansion Online Casino and Sportsbook



I read several threads at 2+2 and Pocket5's and it looks like this offer is legit. If you have doubt's (or will be sure that you do everything correctly) just contact their live support and walk with them through the bet (like others did before). If I can get enough funds in my Neteller account early enough I will use this offer for sure!

BTW - Mansion also offers online poker and runs the poker dome in Vegas.

This is just for information purpose - I'm not liable if anything goes wrong!

Note: The promotion has ended. They had 5.000 participants wagering 5.5 Mio. Dollars.
Now let's all hope for a PIT win (even better a HIGH win as a lot of people are stuck with the original -4.5 spread)

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Monday, August 28, 2006

My new homepage: FifthStreet.biz

I really love my blog and it gets more and more readers every month. I spend a lot of time to create some unique styling to the standard blogger design. But right now it feels that I started to overload the page with content in the sidebar (links, calender, email subscription etc.).

Therefore I created a new homepage called FifthStreet.biz

No worries - the blog itself will stay were it is!

But will move some parts of the sidebar to these new page(s) and leave only the most important pieces in the blog. Of course you will still be able to access the blog directly with the known link. But I hope you will enjoy my new homepage too.

This will be an ongoing process in moving the sidebar content to the homepage piece-by-piece due to restrictions in my time schedule. So far the whole "links" section (including the other poker blogs) and the tournament calendar are already moved to the homepage.

Another reason for the new homepage was the possibillity to provide a catchy URL to those interested in my pages.

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Wednesday, August 23, 2006

The beauty of AQ - a tale from Bregenz

Just came back from the €200 rebuy tournament in Bregenz. This one had all drama this kind of tournament can have. Fast rewind to yesterday afternoon.


I had decided to take the train to Bregenz as it was just more relaxing and the main station is directly next to the casino and the hotel. I had to work that day so I took a train that would arrive about one hour before the tournament starts. Plenty of time for the hotel check-in and changing clothes (you need a shirt and a jacket for the casino). Well, not really "plenty of time"! First I missed the subway and therefore almost missed the train. Shortly after the train went on to Bregenz they announced that due to some construction work there will be a delay of about 30-40 minutes. Damn! To make it worse the train itself had some technical problems and stopped several times. I think if I hadn't already sent the buy-in I would have gone home. It felt like the whole day was ruined and nothing works out correctly. Bad mood to play a tournament (especially a rebuy tournament). So I tried to calm down. I enjoyed some good food in the train, read my adapted version of Fuel55's "Dannenemann Sheet" which starts with "You're here to have fun...". Now I was starting to focus on the game again. I called the casino that I may be late and the told me that this is no problem because my seat will be reserved. I took a nap and enjoyed the outside scenery which is really nice in that area (especially as you approach the Bodensee).
Finally we arrived in Bregenz and even with the delay I had time for the hotel check in. Back on track.

Met Sindbad (the winner of the openBC tournament) and some other guys there. Nice crowd. They were fully booked and with the alternates we had about 155 players after the 2-hour rebuy period. I was card-dead as always in Bregenz but was able to increase my stack slowly but consistently. I didn't play to much hands in that time but it was still remarkable that I never had to show my cards at any time. They were heavily contested sometimes but they never went to a showdown. Looks my aggression factor has increased since my last Vegas trip. Talking about Vegas I was really surprised about the level of play here in Bregenz. There are a lot of "regulars" here that play very often. But I saw a lot of crappy play (pushing pairs with an ace on the board, pushing middle pairs, going all-in with nothing). It went a little better after the rebuy period but still there was alot of odd play. I took the add-on but never had to rebuy and still was in a decent shape.

Our table was in a side part of the poker room (usually used for BJ tables) and I was somewhat disappointed that this most probably would be one of the first tables to be broken. It turned out that I was wrong an indeed it became the second to last table. I wasn't forced to move due to table balance so I stayed at may table in a good seat for the whole tournament. There was only one time during the 7th and 8th level were I felt uncomfortable as I had a really big stack to my left. But fortunately he got moved somewhat later.

So what's that all about AQ? Well, the AQ part started after the rebuy period was over. I lost a good chunk of chips as I missed my flops for several times and became severly short stacked. Finally picked up AQ, went all-in and got called by JJ. A lucky Q on the river saved me and I stayed in the game. From there I hit some really good cards and was able to increase my stack to about double the average. The fun part is that whenever I played AQ and I got them about 5-6 times in a playable position I made some kind of a hand or was in front against an all-in. This became a running gag at the table especially as I severly hit a stack that just arrived and couldn't succeed against my AQ with his pair of nines ("We should have told you to fold against his AQ's")
But the best of all the AQ stories was this one: I limped from early position with AQ and the BB just checked. Only me and the BB. Flop came TJK for a straight (all rags). The BB bet and I called, turn was blank, BB bet again and I called. The river brought a Jack. The BB checked and I raised him all-in. He called and showed Jx for a set of Jacks. This guy went nuts on how I could call all his bets till the river. He obviously wasn't realizing that he was already beaten on the flop with the first Jack.

Finally we went down to two tables. The prizepool was about €78,200 and 15 got paid with places 11-15 getting a flat €782,- each.
Play went tighter and tighter and the blinds increased more and more. The structure of the tournament is great (half hour blinds increasing only 50% for the most part). But at this time the tournament was already in it's 7th hour and the blinds had gone to 4,000/8,000 (no ante) with an average stack of about 50-60K.
We lost the next players quite fast as we had some real short stacks on both tables but it took us more than half an hour to eliminate the bubble-boy. In that time the blinds increased to 6,000/12,000 and my stack of 50K was melting down to about 25K. As we got to 16 players I made a decision for myself: Knowing that I invested only €400,- but would get €786,- for 15th place I decided that I don't wanted to be the bubble-boy on this one. I would take my stand with a valueable hand (we had a short stack who folded JJ against a standard raise ... I wouldn't have gone so far). Most times it had been easy folds because I got nothing, was out of position or faced a raise with a medicore hand (e.g. 55). Usually I would have played it much more aggressively here but I wanted to make it into the money.
And finally the bubble bursted :-))) shortly after that I went all-in with my last 7,000 with KQ and got called by AQ and KJ. The ace high won and I was out on 15th place. Despite other times I busted I didn't feel depressed about busting out here. As said before I made the decision to secure the money knowing that this will most probably cost me a shot on bigger money (11th place would have been around €1,500,-). So I was happy about the outcome and mentaly exhausted after exactly 8 hours of play. I have to look it up but I'm sure this is my longest tourney ever. I played cash game for 18 hours once and it wasn't as exhausting as this one. I wouldn't have found my room number if I hadn't written it down as my brain was totally mashed up (it was 4:30 am in the morning when I busted).

Was I lucky or just not unlucky? Of course! You have to be lucky one or the other times to go that deep. But I think I played a good tournament with no severe mistakes. So luck wasn't the only factor.

I got exactly one hour of sleep before I had to wake up. I enjoyed a nice breakfast went to the train and got back to work in Munich. I had some wait-time in Lindau and realized that we have the 23rd of August ... the date the first issue of the "Deutsches Pokermagazin" will be available. So I went to the news store and tried to find it. After a while I spotted it next to some chess magazins in the cultural section. Buying it at 7:25 am in the morning I was most probably one of the first buyers :-)))
Originally I planned to sleep in the train - but you can imagine what I did? Yes, I read the "Poker Magazin" ... and I really like it. Interesting stories from good authors (e.g. Michael Keiner). They only have to polish their grammar a little as I stumbled across some things (and I'm far from beeing an expert in that area). But I think the will get this done and I wish them all the success they need to keep it a regular magazin (will be issued every two months for €4,60).

Trust me I will sleep very early and very good tonight. With the win in Bregenz either Schenefeld or the Austrian Classics are an option now. But I have to check the travel possibilities first.

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Monday, August 21, 2006

Two online tournaments

Monday was tournament day at PokerStars.

Last week we had the poker-tester tournament. No luck and no good cards there. Went out 29th of 34. Can't recall some interesting hands as there weren't any.

This Monday was the "1. openBC Poker Challenge". As it was the first one we expected to start with less people. And indeed we only had 10 for this week. But anyway we had a lot of fun and some well known participants ;-)) But I won't release any names here until they allow me to do so. I can reccommend this tournament to everybody. Just join openBC and go to the poker group. I'm sure this on will grow more and more in the future.

For the results: I had some good hands. One time I held AA and flopped quads (and even got paid somewhat on this). I raised QQ on a raised pot and got re-raised all-in. Tough fold but I expected AA on the re-raisers hand.
Bad mistake sometimes later: flopped a straight with 67 on a 89T flop. Play was three handed. Small stack went-all in and medium stack went all-in too. Should have folded here but couldn't believe that someone else flopped a straight. Small stack got busted with AA but medium stack had indeed 7J for a higher straight. Now I went from healthy stack to severly short stack. Could recover somewhat and survived 3 more players but finally went out on the bubble (4th place). Next time... ;-))

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Friday, August 18, 2006

"Lucky You" starts October 27th

We have a date: October 27th will be the start of the long awaited poker movie "Lucky You" starrring Eric Bana and Drew Barrymore. Guest appareances of several poker celebrities like: Doyle Brunson, Jennifer Harmann, Barry Greenstein, Sam Farah and many more. The story is built around a fictional "World Series of Poker" tournament at the Horseshoe in Las Vegas.

I really hope it won't start much later in Germany. That will be fun and may add some more interest to the public in the game of poker.

And if you won't wait that long - here's a first trailer:






And we have more poker in the movies this fall: The new James Bond "Casino Royale" premiers November 17th. As you may heard the Baccarat game form Ian Flemmings original plot was replaced by - you guessed it - a game of high limit poker. And despite the fact that a blond James Bond is kind of weired and some critisiscm that Daniel Craig received early on ... the trailer doesn't look bad.



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Saturday, August 12, 2006

Last Man Standing

The WSOP 2006 is history and the winner is Jamie Gold. Congratulations! He dominated the main event for almost 4 days in a row as nobody ever did before.

Thanks to the espn ppv broadcast people all over the world followed the final table live this year.


(Source: Flipchip)


The cardplayer.com radio broadcast last year was great but it still is a difference. The first time I saw Hachem last year was in a video about the press conference after his win. This year people had a full 13 hours to get comfortable with the future champion. Well, he is no Raymer or Hachem. He is already crushed by lots of people especially at 2+2 for some things he said the day before about "not wanting to become famous". I read the interview at espn.com and agree that he used a bad timing and maybe not the right words to express some concerns and feelings. But I really can understand him.

"I know what fame does to people. It's not that I can't handle it; I don't want it."

Being a talent agent in Hollywood he surely knows what he's talking about.
But if you've seen him play during the final table he obviously decided to take the burden that comes with the bracelet.

Let's give him the time he needs to get comfortable with his role. Even Joe Hachem said it took him 6 month to really getting comfortable with being the "World Champion of NL Hold'em poker".

The final table is over, the WSOP is over and now? I was following the action for the whole 6 weeks mostly online but also directly in the Amazon room and it really feels weird that it's all over now. Ten more months till the WSOP 2007....!?

But as said in a previous post I have plans on my own:
Of course there's the next online tournament on poker-tester.com on Monday and another one with the openBC community on August 21st.
On August 22nd I will play the €200 NL Hold'em at the Bodensee Poker Championship 2006 in Bregenz.

There's more tournament play to come: Bregenz starts weekly €100 tournaments in September. There will be €25 SnG's in most Casinos in Austria on a weekly base (also starting in September). Bigger tournaments are available in Schenefeld (please read my article at PokerAcademy.de about that tournament - german only) and the Concord in Vienna. And many many more. But for the most part I haven't made my plans for September right now.

Btw, have you seen the nice link to the Google calender in the right column? I thought it's much nicer than the .pdf sheet I posted earlier ;-)) For bigger events all over the world the HendonMob Database (also in the right column) is still the best source.

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Monday, August 07, 2006

45 remaining...

...of 8,773. Except for Allan Cunningham and Humberto Brennes all the others are more or less so called no-names. But are they "donks", too? Surely not. After re-reading my last blog entry I felt it sounds like I think that way about the possible winner (if it's a non-pro). But that isn't the case.

I may like or dislike some of those 45 players left (and I think I like Jamie Gold and route for him) but nobody can survive over 8,000 poker players just with luck. Of course there's luck involved - otherwise Phil Helmuth would have won ;-)) but all of them proofed to be great poker players. Maybe so far they never got the opportunity to show how great they are or maybe they played the best poker in their live in the last few days. It doesn't matter ... belonging to the last 45 is a great accomplishment.

Are they the best in the world? Most probably not. As said before there's luck involved and luck is closely connected to the "bad beat". Some better players may have been just unlucky at an important moment ... but hell, that's poker. That happens in a 10-player sng as well as in the biggest tournament of the world.

One of those 45 will step out of the dark and become a well known name. Great for him! Give him a bow (even if you don't like him). He deserved it. But the sad part is that most of the other 44 and many others behind them (who played great poker) will be soon forgotten. The poker world only loves the winners.

There's no way you can honor all of them but being from Germany I like to mention a few german players (as well as fellow austrians and swiss players) finishing in the money:

Marc Friedmann - Zurich, Switzerland, placed 39th and received $247,399
Sebastian Zavarsky - Reckendorf, Germany, placed 81st and received $65,973
Markus Golser - Salzburg, Austria, placed 239th and received $42,882
George Danzer - Germany, placed 305th and received $38,759

Congratulations! Hope I didn't forget anybody.

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Friday, August 04, 2006

Those poker kids usually don't impress me

Most times if I hear an interview with of one of these newcomers I'm not impressed. Most of them play online for some time, get lucky at a live tournament and think they can crush the whole poker world. Or the play the role of the bored kid that prefers to play online because real live is so boring. It's so awful and I would be really dissapointed if one of them would win the main event because there's so much class out there in the poker world.

But there's always somebody who is different! There's a 21-year old kid named Jeff Madsen. He became the youngest bracelet winner and later the youngest 2-braclets winner (+2 more final tables). Poker kid? ... Not at all.


(Source: Breakfast Club Poker)


I first saw him in a video at cardplayer.com and I really was impressed. This "kid" really knows what he wants and doesn't fly high at all. He is focused and seems to be a real nice guy.

Read this article at pokernews.com


This guy might be one of the great exceptions. He came out of the dark but may stay in the light for a long time (even or because he is not going pro yet and finishes school first). He may be the new "kid poker" - sorry Daniel ;-)) and become one of the really big names in poker in the next years.

I was disspointed to see him bust out of the main event after he had a good run there too. He would truly make a great champion but for his personal development it was the best that could happen. And he has enough time to get the big bracelet one day...

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