Master Days a big disapointment

Pokerwelle is hosting the Master Days this weekend in Salzburg and I decided to take part in todays €200 Deepstack-Freezout. Unfortunately that tournament was a big disapointment for me.

The whole tournament was very badly organized. Wrong starting time (so we had to start an hour late). No working beamer/laptop for the tournament timer and a bad information policy in general. The dealers were medicore and having dark-blue 10 unit and black 100 unit chips wasn't a clever idea at all. But the worst of all (and this makes future Pokerwelle events an absolute no-go for me) was the fact that they reduced the starting chips from 5,000 (as announced before) to 4,000. A 20% decrease! The only really good thing was the fact that this was a non-smoking tournament.

Beside that I was in a good mood during the one hour drive to Salzburg. The weather was nice and warm and I had a small lunch in the beergarden at the Crown Plaza were the tournament took place. During the lunch I had a nice conversation with a guy from Hamburg who turned out to be a good friend of Jan & Katja. We both also played the ICE tournament im Bremen but couldn't remember each other. With 20 tables the tournament-room looked very nice. Unfortunatly only about 72 players took part in that tournament. Surprisingly even some who had already paid didn't show up.

I was still in a good mood as I sat down. But this changed soon as I couldn't get any playable cards. I came here with the plan to play very tight in the beginning as I expected some weired play. But even my most aggressive style wouldn't have resulted in much more play. I completed two or three small blinds and checked two or three big blinds ... but folded all of them to a bet on the flop. Except for that I played exactly two hands in three Levels (30 minutes each). The first hand did cost me a major part of my stack because somebody decided that it could be a good idea to call my button raise with his Q5. Unfortunately I hit top two pair with KJ ... unfortunately, because he made a set. In the third level the blinds had already reached 80/160. With just 1,500 left I decided for a move with T9s shortly before the end of this level. From late position I raised it to 450 and hoped that my ultra-tight image will help me here. But I got an all-in re-raise from the button. It was folded around to me and I had no choice to put in my last 1,000 knowing that I was way behind. The other guy was a good player and most probably would have respected my raise except with one hand: AA. Bad, bad timing! I got some hope as two Tens appeared on the board. But all hope was lost as he found his third Ace for a Full House. Went out on 45th position and had a very dissapointed trip home.

Would 1,000 chips more have changed anything for me? Well I wouldn't have gotten better cards of course. But I'm sure I wouldn't have felt to be forced to make a move with T9s with 2,500 chips left. And even if I had ... with 2,000 chips remaining it would have been an easy fold against AA. So definately yes, it changed a lot.