CAPT Salzburg - Event #1

Haven't played at the Casino in Salzburg for quite a long time now. So I was looking forward for this event. It was a nice, sunny and warm day and I felt really good when I arrived at 2pm for the start of the event. The 126 players included: Thomas Pratter from the "Poker-Club" in Salzburg, Jonathan Luetkenhorst (TD from the CCC in Vienna), Gerhard Schiesser from the "Munich Pokerschool", Christian "chrisrokx" Taepper, Ernst Kollmann and many others. The event started with 5,000 chips and 30 min. levels.

Thomas was seated at my table and lost a huge pot quite early. He didn't show his cards but from his reaction I assume he received a bad beat with a high pocket pair. He had played his hand very aggressively but his opponent hit his ace for a pair. He never recovered from that and had to leave quite soon. Christian "chrisrokx" Taepper went out shortly before the first break. You can find his exit in his own blog.

Our table was broken soon and at the new one this funny hand happened: I found 33 in the SB but an EP player raised it to 1,000 (150/300). I almost said goodbye to may low pocket pair but a player in MP decided to call. Another 850 for a total pot of 3,000 sounded good enough for me. I wasn't severly shortstacked at this time but still below average. The flop was a desaster: T-J-5. I checked, assuming that somebody would bet and I had to fold my hand. But it was checked around. Same on turn and river. Unbelivable, but I had the best hand here and raked in a 3K pot. I assume the original raiser had AK or so. No idea what the caller had.

Unfortunately I had a very aggressive player to my left that destroyed every option to steal the blinds. I knew he played his position and stack but my hand never was good enough to stand up against him. Therefore my stack got smaller and smaller. I lost a big hand against this guy were I had a straight and a flush draw. Unfortunately despite the huge number of outs the draw never materialized.

With 4.5K and 400/800 blinds I finally went all-in with A5s. I got a called and thought to myself "well, bad timing". But I was delighted to see that this guy called me with KQs. I never gave the impression of being a loose player at this table. so what the hell was he thinking I would go all-in with? He put a quarter of his stack on risk for something that he must assume couldn't be better than a coinflip at best. But maybe he could forsee the future ... flop was blank, turn a Q and river a K. Out on 48th of 126 players after 3.5 hours.

As it was still early I went to the "Poker-Club" and played the €30 Freezeout (still had a tournament ticket left that would have been expired soon). Not much to report there. My run of "no cards for playing good poker" continued and I went out 18th of 30 here.

Drove home in a very strange mood. Still wanted to play some poker so I decided for some online play ($10 SnG at FullTilt). Wow! If I got just half of the cards that I received here I most probably would have won the tournament in Salzburg. Quad Aces two times (one time with pockets and one time with three aces on the board). Several Full houses and tricky straights. Some weak players allowed plays like 23s and got punished with A-4-5 flops and simmilar hands. I busted Aces two times. Not really bad beats - they slowplayed and got punished on the flop. Played two of those SnG's and won both of them in a very dominating way as I usually had at least half of the total chips during the bubble play.

Now I feel better again :-)) I already knew that I hadn't played badly at the CAPT event. I just wasn't able to catch anything. But knowing that it can work the other way round or seeing and experiencing it again are two different things.

Still unsure if I play the Pokernews Cup in mid April. Let's see what happens until then and if I can still get a seat on short notice.

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CCC in Salzburg - grand opening

Tonight the CCC (Concord Card Casino) in Salzburg opened their tables and the pokerworld in Salzburg will not be the same from now on. Until today there had been the classical casino (Casino Austria) in "Schloss Klessheim" and the nice and cosy "Poker-Club" in Salzburg. Two different worlds with different customers (mostly). But now the CCC jumped right into the gap.

The room is huge and consists of up to 28 tables. Not so cosy and familiar like the "Poker-Club" but catering to a similar clientele. But as they also offer some higher limits they may well compete with Casino Austria in Salzburg too. Salzburg isn't that big. But people already came from Munich, Regensburg and other southern bavarian regions to play in Salzburg. So there's definately more customers than just those from Salzburg. It will be interesting to see how the poker market behaves here. Will there be more customers or will the established two lose some to the new competitor?

The "Poker-Club" has a good tournament structure and a good offering in daily tournaments. But with six tables there is a huge difference to the CCC in quantity. The tournament structures at the CCC in Vienna aren't the best and I assume they will be similar in Salzburg. Do people care?

Of course the CCC can offer a bigger variety of cashgames due to the number of available tables. But is there a demand of such variety?

At least, the "Poker-Club" seems to know that there's trouble around. I don't think it's by chance that the have a big tournament this Friday with special offerings (bounty on some austrian Full Tilt pro's).

But today was the day of the CCC and they started with a big party. Free Sit-and-Go tournaments for all guests. Win your table and you get a €24 Voucher for one of their regular tournaments. And you have a 1:9 chance to be randomly choosen to play heads-up against either Markus Golser (left), Sigi Stockinger, Erich Kollmann or Peter Zanoni (the CEO of the CCC). They win and €1.000 are donated to a charity. You win and you will get €500 and €500 will go to the charity. Very nice!

I won my table but wasn't choosen to play one of the pros - to bad. BTW - all four won their matches. Together with the earnings from the tombola the charity for "children with cancer" received €6,330 tonight.

The CCC started big. But as I wrote before there are many open questions. The future will be very interesting. The only thing that is for sure: the pokerworld in Salzburg will not be the same from now on!

But here's the picture I love most from all I made tonight: Andreas Daniel, the dealer who played in the James Bond movie "Casino Royale" and Gabriela Sanejstra the dealer from Stefan Raab's Pokershow.

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2008 APAT European Amateur Championship - Day 1

The 2008 APAT European Amateur Championship started quite bad for me. Although the structure was great (10K chips and slow 40 min. levels) I went down to 5.5K very soon. First tough hand was AA. I got a raiser in front, re-raised and got called. Flop was all diamonds with a Queen. Although I didn't had the Ace of diamonds I led out with a bet just to face an all-in of 7k against my 9k. No way I would call this in the second hour of a deepstack tournament. A little later I lost against a rivered flush while I had flopped two pair.

Not much to report for a long time then as I was very very card dead. Finally I got something back from the guy who made me fold my aces when I called his raise with AQ and flopped two pair. He made a strong bet and I went all-in against him this time as I wanted to take the pot down immediately with two spades on the board. He was so kind to fold ;-)

The weirdest hand was a steal attempt on the last hand before the first break. With K2s I made a standard raise from the button. BB said "sounds like a steal" and SB made a min. raise. BB folded ... chicken ;-) I thought "damn ... don't want to show that he was right". So I called. Flop came K-3-5. He checked, I bet, he hesitated but called. Turn was a 3. He checked, I checked. River was meaningless and we checked again. My King won against AJ and I took down a huge pot that brought me from 7k to 11k. Weird hand.

Shortly before the dinner break our table was broken. New table was much better to play. Better cards and opponents that I could play much better than on the other table. The table also included Martin Klaeser from Cologne who was the winner of last years "Full Tilt Poker Tour".

After the dinner break I got involved in another difficult hand. MP made a min. raise and I found JTs in the big blind. Clear call. Flop was J74. I bet half the pot and he went all-in and had me covered. Bad play on my part. I should have gone all-in right away as I was pot comitted anyway. It wouldn't have made a difference ... I was up against AA. Turn was a Ten and I doubled up to 24k with two pair. Lucky on my side but also bad play from the raiser. I most probably would have folded against a standard raise.

From there I reached my highest point at 32k. Unfortunately I got several good hands that I had to fold because I missed the flops completely. So in the next 2 hours I went down from 32k to 10k just because I wasn't able to hit any of my raises in the right way. As we already had reached the 800/1,600 level you can imagine that it doesn't need many missed flops here.

Finally I went all-in with my last 10K with QJ vs. Martin Klaeser who called from the BB with 88. Flop is 9-9-4. Turn is another 9 for a Full House for him. But still any Queen or any Jack will give me the higher Full House. No help and I am out on 63rd position of 188 players and 8:14h playing time.

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2008 APAT European Amateur Championship

I will be back to Vienna on the Easter Weekend for another tournament. Just two weeks after I missed the money by just two places at the Spring Poker Festival at the Concord Card Casino.

This time I will play the 2008 APAT European Amateur Championship which is held at the Poker Royale Casino in Wiener Neustadt. The APAT (Amateur Professional Association Tour) is based in England with a series of regional events but also adds some national events to their yearly schedule. The event at the Royale will have 200 players and as the name indicates, this one is open to amateurs only (people that don't make a living with poker). Therefore the buy in is a moderate €100 but the structure is very good with 10,000 starting chips and slow climbing 40 min. blind levels - creating a PF=32.96. Due to the structure the event is a two day event and the tour sponsor Blue Square Poker usually adds a little to the prize pool.

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Spring Poker Festival at the CCC in Vienna - Event #2

This was a tough one ... and lasted 8 hours for me.

During the middle stage (400/800 blinds) I was able to push my stack to 20,000 chips. Basically it took two hands for that. The first one was an open ended straight draw with KJ on a T-Q-x flop. The other guy went ballistic how I could call his all-in (AT) when a King hit on the River. Well, 13 outs is sometimes good enough. The second hand was much more difficult. With AJ on a A-T-4 flop I had a much more difficult decision to call an all-in from a bigger stack. I had raised the last four hands before and assumed that he just didn't believe my raise and continuation bet this time. Good call here as I was up against A8.

Unfortunately I lost two big pots during the 600/1,200 level. First I raised K9s from the button to 3,500 and got re-raised from the big-blind who went in for 5,900 total. I hated to call here but a fold would have been a mistake. I was up against AT ... a nine on the flop gave me hope but an Ace on the River put me down to 14,000. Somewhat later I raised 77 to 3,500 from LP and got an all-in from a slightly smaller stack. I hoped for a coinflip (folding was out of question with 800/1,600 and higher antes round the corner). No coinflip but JJ again. No help and almost out of the game with 2,500 chips left.

I waited a few rounds, paid some antes and then the miracle began: With 1,600 left at 800/1,600 I went all-in with 62 from UTG. The small-blind didn't realize that I was all-in and folded. Big-Blind had 45 and a 6-high kicker(!) was good enough. Somewhat later I went in with T4 and 4,000 left. Got called and flop came T-T-4 ... wow! Some more all-in's with Ax to pick up the blinds and antes several times and my stack was up to 16,000,

But my luck didn't last long enough and my stack was eaten up by blinds and antes. During the 1,500/3,000 level (300 ante) we had 29 of 261 players left (with 27 getting paid). My stack was down to 5,600 chips and I moved in with JTs. Of course the big blind called with Q7 and I got no help. Out one off the bubble. Am I dissapointed? Yes, of course. It's always dissapointing to bust that close to the money. But I got incredibly lucky with 45 players left 90 minutes before and I had no choice at the end (it took them half an hour more to bust the bubble boy).

Lesson learned: "A chip and a chair" is no myth. O.K. - I had little more than that but it is very important to understand that every chip is valuable. And there is no reason to give up before it is over!

Skipped the tournament at the Poker-Club in Salzburg tonight because I just wasn't in the right mood. Will play the Sunday Million on Sunday instead.

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Spring Poker Festival at the CCC in Vienna - Event #1

Came back from the CeBIT Tuesday night and flew to Vienna on Wednesday morning. I was quite lucky with my flight because it wasn't one of those being canceled due to the strike in Germany. And even more: The original plane had technical difficulties and they rented one from a spanish airline (including two spanish stewardesses) to make the flight possible.

My hotel is medicore (but costs only €38 per night and is not far from the CCC). Unfortunstely my W-LAN seems to have technical difficulties so I had to find an Internetcafe with wired access.

The €80 rebuy event at the CCC started o.k. for me. Just needed one rebuy and the add-on to go into the 4th level with 10,000 chips (avg. 4,000). I tripled up one time with AK when I hit top pair and raked in another huge pot shortly before the rebuy time was over. This time it was KK vs. JJ and AK (both players all-in).

My table included Stefan Jedlicka (Niki's brother) and Peter Hajszan (floorman of the Pokerroyale in Wiener Neustadt). Stefan plays a very aggressive game and in the 4th level I lost two big pots against him. Both times I hit something on the flop but wasn't able to call his huge raises. The first time I made a continuation bet just to face a raise and the second time I tried to trapp him with a check-raise just to get trapped myself went he went over the top with a re-raise. Beside that I couldn't connect to the flop in level 4 and 5 and my stack went down to 3,600. With blinds 150/300 (25 ante) and an average of 6,000 Stefan raised to 1,500. As said before he raised a lot and could have had anything. But due to the size of his raise I assumed he preferred not to get a call. So I decided to go all-in with my remaining 3,600 with pocket 4's (knowing that he will call this for sure) and hoping for a 50:50 situation. Unfortunately he was holding JJ and I was out on 135th position of 241 players after close to 4 hours.

Waited for the dinner (which is always great at the CCC tournament weeks) and went back to my hotel to have some sleep and come back refreshed this afternoon for the €300+30 freezeout event.

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Munich - Hannover - Munich - Vienna - Salzburg - Munich

This will be my trip for this week. First stop (on Tuesday) in Hannover isn't Poker related. As every year I spent a day at the CeBIT to get me informed about the new hypes in the computer industrie.

On Wednesday I travel to Vienna to play the first two events of the "Spring Poker Festival" at the Concord Card Casino (CCC). On my way back to Munich I make a short stop in Salzburg on Friday to play the tournament at the Poker-Club again.

One fair, three tournaments and three cities ... this should become an interesting week.

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