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.