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.