Vienna - the Concord Card Casino

I accompanied my girlfriend on a business trip yesterday - therefore my way to Vienna was somewhat unusual. First we drove from Munich to Karlsruhe and then went on to Zurich. Today I flew from Zurich to Vienna while she went back to Munich. She will meet me in Vienna three days later for our dance competition in Stockerau.

Tonight I played the €10+3 Rebuy tournament at the concord [PF=8.12]. A total of 161 players created a €5,800 prizepool. I had a great start and doubled up with a boat right on the first hand. About 15 minutes later I got KK and got paid very well against a player holding AQ. Unfortunately that were all my playable hands for the next 75 minutes. I was absolutely card dead till the next to last hand of the rebuy period. In that hand I received AK in LP and reraised a MP raiser. He called and the flop was something like 8-6-3 with two clubs. I made a pot size bet and he went all-in for his remaing chips (I had him covered). I assumed that he hit something (maybe A8) and decided that I didn't have enough outs for a call here. After I had folded he showed me QQ. Too bad. If I assumed a pocket pair here a call would have been correct. I took the add-on but even with that I had to go into the freezout time with a medicore stack.

I caught some good hands right after the break and was able to add a little to my stack. But the blinds and antes started to eat away my chips. I slightly recovered with some nice blind steals but was moved into the blinds two times due to the table break order. Finally I went all-in with K8s (9,000 chips with 500/1,000 blinds and 100 ante) but got called by AK. No help and out on 57th (with 18 places getting paid). In general there was not much I could have done different in that tournament. Of course the AK vs. QQ hand was a key situation as it involved a huge pot. But based on my informations I did the right thing. So I'm still fine with the laydown.

Before I went back to my hotel I sat down at a €1/2 NL cash game and had a good run there. I almost doubled my buy-in due to some weired plays of my opponents but the table went down two 6 players after about 90 minutes. As I wasn't in the right mood for short-handed play I called it a night and went home with a nice win.

Tomorrow I will travel down to Wiener Neustadt (about 50km) to visit the Poker Royal Casino for the first time and play some more poker of course.

REMARK: Last call for the International Poker Open. Registration closes Sunday at midnight. So far 457 players from all around Europe are registered. Rooms in Dublin are already rare (not mainly because of the IPO but some other events). But there are still some left for around €109 per night. Ask Stephen for detailed informations on special room deals. Also some cheap alternatives (hostels) should be still available.