€20 NL Rebuy-Tournament CCC in Linz

As Oct. 3rd is a holiday in Germany I decided to take Monday off too. Originally I had planned to check out Wiesbaden for two days. The Rookie-Tournament on Tuesday was something I always wanted to try. But the 450 km trip was too long for just a single tournament and I wasn't comfortable with forking over €150 for the rebuy tournament on Monday at this time. So I decided to check out the €20 NL rebuy €2,000 guaranteed in Linz. It's "only" 250 km and I decided to drive home after the tournament to avoid the hotel cost.

From my former experiences with the Concord Card Casino in Linz I expected a "Poker World"-type crowd of about 20-30 people barely covering the €2,000 guarantee.

What a pleasant surprise when I arrived there: They had 86 players signed-up (good thing I reserved in advance by phone) and it was more like the CCC Vienna crowd. Quite young in general.

The structure could be better but there are ways to take advantage to it as you play with a lot of inexperienced people. They start with 2,000 chips and 50/50 blinds. Next to levels during rebuy time are 50/100 and 100/200 (20 min.). Add-on is 4,000 chips.
After the Add-on the blind go to 200/400, 300/600, 500/1000, 750/1500, 1000/2000, 1500/3000, 2000/4000 ... Unfortunatly the blind length goes down to 15 minutes after the add-on.
What I don't like is there chip structure: 50 (green), 250 (pink), 1000 (yellow), 5000 (light-pink). It's a very odd denomination (Poker World in Vienna is simmilar) and it causes you a lot of brain work to count the chips correctly. Strange how this can affect your play if you are not used to it.

I was able to hold a decent stack of almost 10,000 due to a single good hand and a good rebuy strategie ;-)) after the rebuy time was over. I started to get some good hands and was able to run my stack up to 30,000 during the 750/1000 and 1000/2000 levels. This was well around or even above average at tis time. The interesting thing was that there had been a lot of stacks above 25,000 directly at the end of the rebuy time but most of them paid a price for not being able to adjust their game to the freeze-out time and the huge number of short stacks fighting for survival.

Then my key hand arrived. I was thinking about that hand for the whole drive home and was sure I played it badly but after a night of sleep I decided that I couldn't have played it different and that it's just that kind of hands that will cost you a bunch of money: I had AJs in the small-blind. Three people just called the big blind and I decided to raise here to 3 BB's. The big-blind folded as well did two others. But the button called my raise. The flop came KQ7 (two of the same suit but no flush draw for me). Damm, I missed even a single pair but had a straight draw with the 10. If he was holding AK or AQ I was in a bad shape. If he was holding a pair 10 or below I had about 10 outs left. Unfortunately I was out of position but decided to bet here as a check would have invited a bet from him (and he was that kind of player who takes advantage of weaknesses). He called and I got no help from the turn. Even worse the turn made a flush possible. Now this was a tough decision. Due to the pot-size I had only two options all-in or check/fold. I felt that an all-in would have been called (he had covered me) and that I didn't have the best hand here. We both checked. The river was another King and there was no way I could bet here again. I checked, he bet and I folded. That pot cost me half of my chips in total.

So why was I thinking that I played it poorly? Because I went against an important rule: "Don't build big pots out of position". But after re-thinking I'm not sure about that anymore. Raising with AJs from the small-blind to reduce the competition was a good reason to raise (and worked). Betting after the flop (even out of position) was mandatory. Due to the texture of the flop there was a good oppotunity to either get him off the hand, get another card to improve or fold to his re-raise.
Just that kind of key hand that makes or breaks your tournament.

I was able to stick in for another two levels but finally were forced to go all-in was 79 against JJ. The 7 on the turn gave me some hope but that was all. Out on 18th position (9 got paid from the almost €6,000 prize-pool).

They just recently added two more Hold'em tournaments to their schedule: a €50 rebuy NL on Friday and a €20 Pot-Limit rebuy on Sunday. Especially the €50 rebuy should be interesting as you get 3,000 chips (add-on is 6,000).