Bad Beat Weekend

I'm usually not the person to moan about so called bad beats. I know that they are only negative statistical variance. But this weekend was somewhat tough. It continued like it started yesterday...

You read about the KT that killed my queens on thursday? Well, it was exactly that KT again that made me exit the Freezout at the Poker-Club in Salzburg one day later. I had about 9,000 chips in the 200/400 level. Received JJ in the SB. Almost everybody limped and I made it 1,200 to go. Everybody except one player folded. Flop was JQA. As the pot was almost 5,000 due to the huge number of limpers I bet 2,500 and was reraised to 5,000. Calling wasn't an option as I would be left with less than 3,000 chips. I put him on AQ and went all-in. But again somebody thought it is a good idea to call a three bet pre-flop raise with KT and was rewarded.

Played some more games of my 6-max challenge and I'm now 42% ITM (1st or 2nd) and 14% winning for a decent win after 21 games. Way to go ... but I feel more and more confident with those games. Unfortunately my last one tonight was a dissapointment. Was in good shape. Got KK, raised pre-flop and got called. Flop was 468. Caller made a pot size bet and I was sure that I was ahead. Went all-in (he had not many chips left after his bet) and got called with A7. An Ace on the river left me crippled and resulted in an exit on 4th place.

Before that I played the 350K Sunday-WarmUp at PokerStars. First hand I was in the big blind and got 34. Two limpers, flop comes 344 .. wow! Check, Check, Check. Turn is an 8. Small bet, fold, fold. Damn! During the 3rd level I made a 10-high straigt flush. Not a big pay day as I completed on the river and it was checked or small bet before. I lost several races like two pair with lower two pair, flush against higher flush and things like that. Finally had to go all-in with KJ just to be called by AJ. Far away from the money.

I know there are much worse bad beats but it seems that this weekend I lost all the key situations that would have lead to stacks that would have allowed me to make it into the money quite easily. But that's poker. In the short-run you have to play good and win your key races to be successfull. And one of these two requirements can't be influenced. Over the time it will even out and the fact if you are a good player or not will be the important factor. But as said before, it hurts especially during days like these were you know you played a good game...

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In Salzburg Queens are no good vs. young ladies

Originally I had planned to go to Schenefeld playing the $500 freezout. But I was somewhat exhausted from the CeBIT (caught a cold there). The weather wasn't good either (snow on the first day of spring). So I decided to go back home right away, relax a little and play some smaller tournaments down here.

So my exact plans are: The $100 Freezout at the Casino Salzburg, the $100 Freezout at the Poker-Club Salzburg, some WSOP Satellites at FullTilt, some games for my online challenge and as the great final playing the 400k guaranteed on FullTilt for the first time (or the PokerStars 350K Warm-Up).

The dealers at the casino Salzburg are as bad as last week. I saw some weired mistakes mainly because the dealers don't pay attention to the game enough. The worst one: telling an all-in player to show his cards while to others were still in the hand. He showed AQ, made two pair on the flop. An unexperienced player bet and made the other guy fold (who would have had made a straight on the turn). Good for the all-in player but the action (and the outcome) may have been much different without the dealers mistake. The only positive improvement: the clock is now managed centrally by the floor! But the weak competition makes the tournament still worth to play. But weak competition can also lead to bad beats. While I improved my stack from 3,000 to 5,000 chips in the first level there wasn't much to play for me until the 300/600 level and I was short-stacked with 3,200 chips at that time. We were down to two tables and I had just changed tables two rounds before when I received QQ in the small-blind. Everybody folded to a young lady in MP that made it 1,200 (saw a lot of those weak raises!). It was folded to me and I went all-in. BB folded. The young lady decided that it could be a good idea to call my all-in (she had about 8,000 chips or so) with KTo. Unfortunately a King on the flop proved that she made the "right" move. Out on 14th of 27.

Back home I played some more games for my online challenge with medicore success. BTW, I added another challenge: "Six-handed one table SnGs" (currently the $23+2 on PokerStars). Played 7 of them so far. Won one of them and made the money in another two (they pay only two spots) for a small overall win. Way to less for a "trend", but I like those as you have lot's of action here. Had also much action in one of my 90-player-DS SnG's. The amazing thing here was that I pushed 4 times with the nut-flush draw and the draw materialized not one single time. I had 15+ outs each time (in one case it was even a straight flush draw). The good thing was that in the first case I won because my pair was good anyway and in the other three my tournament life wasn't on risk. But due to that I went from big stack to short stack very fast. Is it worth to take these kind of risks? Definately yes! If just one of them would have hit I would have been a hugh chipleader and most probably made it deep into the money. But that's a thing I had to learn over the time. You have to take some risks to get rewarded big. If you only play the save hands you most probably never make it to the top of the list and very soon fight the "short-stack"-game. But you have to be aware that this can result in some early exits on the other hand. But since I changed my style here I find myself more often playing with a big stack than in the past. Now I have to learn the proper use of a big-stack.

Found a nice video-documentary about the WSOP 1999. It's funny to see how several players changed their look in less than 8 years. And it seems that some grew really old (and grey) in that time. The "record number" of almost 400 participants sounds like a joke today but you get a feeling about what the WSOP was like before. And yes, it was different and it makes you understand why some of the "old" guys liked the old and small WSOP much more than todays WSOP in Harrah's style. Oh, and did you now that Chris Moneymaker wasn't the first "Satellite"-Winner? In 1999 runner-up Alan Goehring as well as winner J.J. Furlong (both non-professional poker players at this time) won their way into the event via $200 satellites. Of course these were live satellites at the Horseshoe and not online-satellites at this time.

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A tale of two tournaments

Now that was fun! Again both forum tournaments (poker-tester and xing) on the same day. Luckily this time with a one hour difference. Found a nice bar in Hannover called VIVA that offered free W-LAN. They also have a lot of tables with power-supply close to them and you can sit in a way that not everybody sees what you are doing on your computer.

Had a great start but cards went cold soon and I became short stacked for most of the time in the xing tourney (42 players). Managed to make it to the final table but finally got busted with the nut flush draw. Unfortunately only first five got paid.

But in the poker-tester tournament (47 players) I had a very impressive run of cards in the beginning. Not really big hands, but good playable hands that always connected someway with the board. The three or four people I busted in less than 15 minutes will definately hate me from now on. But to my excuse: I was underdog for only one time when a miracle 10 made me trips and ended somebodys tournament. Due to this run I was chipleader or in the top 3 for a long time in that tournament.But later I got an opponent that liked to play back at me all the time. Unfortunately I wasn't able to play back as I didn't hit anymore of my cards. Slowly but steadily I went down from top of the list to medicore stack. More worse was the fact that due to some weired table balance all the short stacks had been on one table and all the big ones on the other table. Therefore it took ages to go down from 14 to the final 9. But I managed to make the final table here too. But not only my chips but also my time was running out as the bar were I played wanted to close. Went all-in very short stacked wit K9 on a A79 board (being fully aware that the Ace could be my bust card). Unfortunately that was exactly what happend as my opponent showed AQ. No further help, went out on 9th again (but ITM here). The people at the bar went home and I had a nice evening that could have had much better results. But I wasn't running good in both of these tournaments for some time. So reaching two final tables in one night was really nice.

BTW, is there any place in the world were you can't find poker? Maybe, but the CeBIT isn't one of them. One Exhibitor has a poker table there and they run a little tournament. The person with the most chips at the end of each days wins a chip-case. Turbo blinds but fun because it's a freeroll. And what does poker have to do with the CeBIT? This company makes security software and their slogan is ... "don't gamble with your security".

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Katja Thater made it to the Final Table at the EPT in Warsaw

I'm currently in Hannover for the CeBIT and only have limited internet access (at least for private use).

So just a short note that Katja made the Final Table at the EPT in Warsaw. She went shortstacked into that final table and was able to hang in some time for a 5th place. More information can be found in the German PokerStars Blog and Jan's Website.

Congratulations to Katja. While she is crushing the cash games everywere she had a tough time with tournaments recently. So she deserves this succcess very much.

And it's great to see that german players get more and more successfull in international tournaments!

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Two Queens busted by a lady

Went to the Casino in Salzburg at Schloss Klessheim to test the new €100 Freezout tournament. The structure is not that bad as you get 3,000 chip. Blinds start at 25/50 with 25 minute rounds (20 min. from the 3rd level). So it's playable but nothing special. But the downside is that this is the worst organized tournament I've ever seen. I never excepted this from a "real" Casino. It seemed nobody really knows who is responsible for what. They have 4 tournament tables but one of those tables is in a separate room. No tournament screen and to make it more worse: no central tournament clock. The tournaments at the Poker-Club are far more worth to play than this one.

The tournament had 43 players and I had a really good start. Within the first two hands I added about 800 chips to my stack due to aggressive play. I folded the next two hands and woke up with QQ in EP on the third. Raised to 150. Everybody folded to a young lady in LP who raised it to 500. Mmmh, difficult decision. I haven't seen her play but due to her talking and overall behavior I was sure she had a hand but it wasn't AA or KK. Most probably JJ or TT. The flop came 972 rainbow and I bet 500. She raised it to 1,000. This was the moment something told me to let this hand go. But the flop looked too good for me. Turn was a 3. I checked, she bet 500. Damm, small enough to see the river which brought another 2. Checked it again and she went all-in with about 1,100. So I got 5-1 for my QQ's to win a pot of 6,000 total ... tough decision again. I paid and she showed 99 for a full house. Wow! She overplayed her pocket 9's pre-flop but instead of being punished for it she got rewarded by another 9 and played the rest of the hand very well. Congratulations!

I was down to 760 chips and folded my way to the next rounds as I didn't get much playable. Had to change tables and shortly after the change got AQ on the Button. Raised all-in, got called from the SB with JJ. Ouch! But the board gave me another AQ. With 2,600 chips I wasn't back in comfort zone as the blinds had climbed to 100/200. Had to fold to a reraise and wasn't able to defend my blinds for some time. At the end of this level I got AJ on the button. MP raised it to 500, two callers. I went all-in with 1,200 chips and the original raiser folded as well as the next player. But the last caller decided to play his AK. Another AK on the board ended my tournament on 33rd place

I'm still thinking about this QQ hand wich was crucial for my tournament life. The good thing is that I had a good read on her per-flop. Her re-raise on the flop made me think for a long time and I was close to let the hand go. This was definately my biggest mistake here. Even with the innocent looking board something told me that this wasn't right. Another borderline decision was to call her all-in at the end. O.K., I got 5-1 with a big pot but I wasn't pot-committed. Had I folded here I still had about 1,800 chips left during the end of the 25/50 level. So she made the initial mistake by overplaying here hand but I made much more mistakes after that and deserved to lose this hand.

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R.I.P. Stardust

Another part of Las Vegas history became now history itself. A farewell party and a huge firework provided an honorable end for this Las Vegas icon. Since 2:33am PST the Stardust Hotel & Casino is gone forever.

Thanks to leavinglv.net for providing the video and all those nice pictures to keep at least some memories of the Stardust.

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Sebastian Ruthenberg makes the Final Table at the EPT in Dortmund

Sebastian Ruthenberg aka Luckbox made it down to the last 8 players of about 500 playing in the first EPT tournament ever held in Germany. He's now at the final TV-table which will start at 6pm tonight.

I wish him all the luck and success ... although it was him who beat me out of the ICE tournament in Bremen (which he later won). At least it doesn't hurt so much to lose against a good player. And he showed in many performances before that he is indeed a good player and it's no fluke that he's at this final table now.

He's currently 3rd with 717,000 chips. The Chipleaders Christian Blanco and Andreas Hoivold have 1,258,000 and 750,000 chips. So Sebastian is in good shape and everything is possible!!!

You can follow the action live on http://www.eptlive.com

Follow-Up: Congratulations to Sebastian for a 3rd place! Well done. Another cool information: At this time he is ranked 34th of 1,279 players in the "CardPlayer Player of the Year (POY)" ranking. Tied with players like Liz Lieu, Andrew Black and Richard Toth.

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Bavarian Playerscup (PF=9.22)

Usually I don't advertise those "non-casino" tournaments from private organisers. Mostly they have a crappy structure and pay way to less in regards of the prizes. For those who don't know: In Germany Poker is by law a game of luck and therefore only allowed in licensed casinos. There is a small grey area that allows tournaments outside of casinos as long as the buy-in is low and the prizes are fix before the tournament starts (but no cash prizes allowed). This makes it hard for the organisers (as they can't be sure about the number of buy-ins) to provide prizes worth enough for the buy-in. And to get as much people at one particular night they usually have a structure that leaves you short stacked in the second level with blinds of 12 minutes or lower.

But the "Bavarian Playerscup" is definately different. They learned from the series they did before and changed to a great structure. Now they offer a deep-stack structure with 5,000 chips starting with 25/50 and 30(!) minute blind-levels. This tournament usually lasts a total of 5 hours. The first three win an entry to a big cash tournament held in Innsbruck (Austria) in November with a total cash prize of €50,000. The next four places get a voucher to play another qualifier for free. Is this tournament worth the €35,- buy-in? Well, that's your decision ... but at least you get the best tournament structure I have ever seen in Munich (and the other locations Ingolstadt and Regensburg) so far.

So did I qualify? Well, almost. I was able to maintain an average stack for a long time while we went down from 65 players to about 30 players ... losing especially those who don't know how to handle a deep-stack. Unfortunately the jump from 100/200 to 200/400 after 90 minutes of play left me almost short stacked. But that's the good thing with these blindlevels. I could take my time and choose my spot for the appropriate action. The dealer jokingly told me to un-check my autofold option ;-) But finally I woke up with QQ in MP. All-In ... the small blind thought for a long time and finally called with JJ (tough decision, but still a wrong call on his part). My QQ's held and I doubled up (and we lost this player two rounds later as he was now super-short-stacked). I could feel with him. Although I'm aware of the rule that it's a big difference between raising all-in and calling all-in, this would have been no easy fold for me, too.

Still not in comfort zone but good shape compared to the average stack I had some space to move. Somewhat later I got KK and raised them to 3 BB's. Everybody folded and I picked up the blinds and some bets. Although I very seldom show my hands I did here to make clear that I had a hand. This was a good decision as I got KK again in the very next hand. Raised it again and picked up blinds and bets. Of course I showed the KK's again and the table went nuts about my luck. From there my raises got a lot of respect and I picked up a lot of money with decent but improvable hands. Another key hand was a 99 that I raised from the button. Everybody folded except of the UTG caller. He looked at his cards for a long time until he decided to call my raise. O.K., he had something but it wasn't a power-hand. The flop was A73 and he checked. I was sure the Ace didn't help him. I put him on a pair lower than QQ's but maybe higher then my 99. So I pushed all-in. Had him covered as I had about 2 times of his stack. He folded his hand with a sigh and people started to think twice before testing my raises. From there it was a smooth sail to the final table. Although I increased my stack to 36,000 chips the blinds went up to 3,000/6,000. We had two big stacks (over 50,000) and one shortstack about 15,000. Everybody else was around average. We lost the two bubble-boys quite fast and then this situation came up: I got AJ in late position with a blind button and just the big blind (due to a busted player on 8th place). Everybody folded and the player to my right just called the BB. I expected a medicore hand from him and the opportunity to see a fold from the BB and him if I pushed it. Went all-in with the 28,000 I had left. To my surprise the BB called my bet with exactly the same amount of chips left. To add more bad surprise the short-stacked caller went all-in too. I took the worst possible spot for my move as my AJ was up against JJ and AA. Ouch! The only remaing Ace was my last chance to win at least the side-pot. But no miracle Ace showed up and I went out on 7th place winning at least another free shot to qualify.

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Not a good night for playing online tournaments

I was in Paderborn early enough to take part in the "PokerAcademy tournament" at PokerStars. Unfortunately Stars stalled during the second level. I was in a hand with JJ and half of my stack. It took about 15 minutes until the tournament continued. Good thing was that I won my hand. My opponent folded because he went back late, well maybe he would have folded anyway. But I still was somewhat short stacked. Unfortunately the blinds continued during the outage (which doesn't makes sense). Why does Stars not pause the whole tournament for that time? Some times later I choose the wrong time for a bluff as I lost against QQ. Out 46th of 67 (which was an all-time high of participants).

Went over to FullTilt and decided to play the scheduled $30+3 DeepStack. Won some, lost some and had a medium stack as FullTilt started to experience technical problems and went down. Unfortunately their problem is much bigger. As I write this they are still down (for more than two hours now). Tough beat for FullTilt as this may result in a cancellation of the "Sunday Guaranteed" tournament.

No further information available about what happend but it's at least strange that two poker-room pages crash on the same day. As the FullTilt Website is slow too a DoS-Attack (Denial of Service) may be possible. But this is just an assumption. There may be other reasons. Those two incidents may even have no connection at all...

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Let the "Race for Bracelets" begin

PokerStars was the first to offer satellites for the WSOP 2007. But beginning yesterday you can win your seat on FullTilt, too. And again FullTilt offers the "Race for Bracelets" tournaments. Those can win you a seat for a $1,500 WSOP-Event of your choice plus $500 spending money.

What I liked here last year was that they usually play a fair amount for the runners-up. I was close to win a seat in two of them but got stopped both times somewhat unlucky. But I still went out as a winner from playing those satellites in terms of money won. And of course I will try again this year to pick up a seat...

Here's the schedule for the "Race for Bracelets" Events:

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