My day off

Well, not really a day off :-))

What does a poker player who busted out of a tournament and is stuck in a city that is more than 400 miles away from his home? Find another tournament of course!

I called the new Casino in Hamburg (Esplanade) yesterday night and reserved a seat for their €100+10 Sunday tournament. Unfortunately they had reduced the number poker tables in the new place to two tables ... and I was only number seven on the waitlist. Anyway, it was a good opportunity to visit this brand new place.

I must say I'm not impressed. It's new and it's modern but it doesn't really fit into this old-style building. There are so many corners that you feel cramped in small rooms. Now I can imagine how the people have felt on opening night. The poker room has only the mentioned two tables and a Carribean Stud Table. Seems they want to advertise this crappy -EV game to their poker players.

They got lots of critics today (and the whole weekend) for reducing the number of poker tables and it looks like they are paddling back (and they are obviously sick of defending a decision they can't understand themselves). The head of the casino told us that this is just a transition time and more tables will come soon (they just couldn't be delivered on time) and they will get a separate area. For me this sounded fishy. First he said they will add one or two tables here, then it was up to five in a separate room and later the number was even higher. I'm sure they just realized their mistake and the potential loss of players with big money and try to keep the damage low. So people her in Hamburg can expect more tables in a few weeks but nobody really knows at this time how many it will be and were they will be located. And hopefully until then they get rid of those old roulette-type tournament chips and get better ones!

I was lucky to get a seat and was on the "active" table. I had some nice hands but couldn't add big money to my stack. Then I got QQ in the BB. There was a loose UTG raiser, I reraised all-in about three times his bet and he called my reraise. What do you think he had? JT of clubs! And what do you think happend? Yes, two clubs on the flop and another one on the turn. Out in 15th position.

The structure itself is great: You get 3,000 chips, blinds double from 20/40 but the rounds are 30 minutes (20 minutes in later levels). Unfortunately some dealers seem to be quite new and we got only 2,000 chips this time due to a mistake. We didn't realize until the second level as they provided the blind-charts too late. Well, at least we all had the same conditions :-(( Unfortunately they have no computer and screen to show the levels and remaining players - otherwise we may have realised the mistake earlier!

In general they lack in knowlegde and professional behavior in comparison to Schenefeld but they have a great structure for a small regular tournament.

As I was back to the hotel in time I decided to skip the dinner in Schenefeld and play the monthly Poker Academy tournament. Unfortunately I didn't have enough on Neteller at this time to fund my Titan account. Good thing there was a paysafe card machine just two minutes from the hotel.

I had a good start but lost some crucial pots later (didn't hit my speculative hands on the flop) and went out 12th of 30. Due to a weired payout schedule I even got some money as the payed 15 places this time. But I'm sure they will fix this till January.

This is my 150th post. I hoped for some better news in this anniversary post but that's poker. But to make this a special post in some way I announce my plan to challenge myself in playing online. As you may know I suck in online poker. I have some major flaws online but I know them and they can be fixed. On the other hand I played way to less hands to decide if I really suck. More worse I played quite unconsistantly at different buy-in levels and in different tournament types.
So here's what I will do: I put away a small bankroll sufficient for playing $5 one-table SnG's. I will play them on FullTilt and I will only step up after I have increased my bankroll to 50 buy-ins of the next level. If I go down below 30 buy-ins I will step down again. So this is simmilar to the way Chris "Jesus" Ferguson challenged himself by making a five figure win out of a single dollar by good bankroll management. If I loose my bankroll I'm officially a sucker in online poker, otherwise I may win a fortune in a few months. Due to the fact that I still have free time in Dezember I try to play as much SnG's as possible in the next weeks. I won't start to post hand histories here - that's just not the style of this blog. But of course I let you now how this challenge is progressing.