Back home in Munich

Sorry for not posting directly after my return but there was a lot to do in the last days.

Unfortunately my last two small tournaments in Dublin hadn't been a success either. I booked a small win during a cashgame session at the Sporting Emporium ... but of course not enough to break even for the trip.

But nevertheless this was a wonderful weekend. I really enjoyed meeting Silke and Thomas as well as Benny and his brothers again. We had a good time at and away from the tables. Congrats again to Cat O'Neill for her 4th place finish at the IPO. I had played at the same table with here for some time during the Deepstack Championships in February and she well deserved that final table appeareance!

Not sure about my next plans. Of course I will play the Pokertour.at final on Dec. 5th at the CCC in Vienna. I would love to play the Poker Royal Masters Main-Event in Wiener Neustadt end of November but decided that I need either have a good run in smaller events until then and/or get a good number of shares sold at ChipMeUp for that one.

Currently I try to be at the Poker Royale Kufstein once a week. Starting with the tournament of the day and continue with some cash game if I bust early. Last Thursday I had a good run early on but then ran a good portion of my stack into a flopped straight. Never really recovered from that. The following cashgame session was fun but ended only with a tiny win.

In addition I will again hit the online tables trying for some good step-results on pokerstars. I have accumulated some FPP's and now use them to get as many step-tickets as possible. As soon as all FPP's are used I will start trying to "step-up".

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Sightseeing & Poker at the Sporting Emporium

My sightseeing trip through Dublin led me this time to the area between the Dublin castle and the Guinness brewery. Lot's of old buildings and churches around. Just have a look at the pictures at the end of this entry.

The tournament at the Sporting Emporium had a great structure. They start with a 9k stack and 10 min. levels. Doesn't sound great? Well, the catch is that they add another 2.5 minutes to each new level. With the structure running 25/50, 50/100, 75/150, 150/300, 200/400, 300/600 and so on they reached 40 min. blinds al level 12. With 25 players that night it took almost 7 hours until the last five decided for a deal. In my opinion this is the perfect structure for a tournament with a decent starting stack that still allows a lot of play in the later stages.

I had a good start an brought my stack up to 16k. Unfortunately from there I went again totally card dead and at the 500/1,000 level I had to push with AT and 5,900 chips left. Got called by 77 and went out in 14th position.

Another try tomorrow at the IPO side event #3.

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IPO Day 2 ... some photo impressions

Day two has started about an hour ago and I took some photo impressions from the start.

We have at least two poker couples in todays field:

Silke & Thomas from Munich, Germany

Cat O'Neil & Rob Taylor from Ireland

Other known players in todays field include:

Maria Demetriou from Nottingham, England (left)
Andy Black from Ireland (right)

Noel Furlong, Ireland, WSOP Main Event Champion 1999 (left)
Jesse May, The Poker Show (right)

I am now on my way into the city of Dublin for some sightseeing and on to the tournament at the Sporting Emporium at 8:30pm. Hopefully I haven't used up all my luck today as I just escaped a heavy traffic accident on a crossroad that I passed just seconds before while being on my way back to the hotel!

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Day 1 ... and final day of the IPO (at least for me)

That wasn't like expected although the day started very well. I was well rested and in a good mood when I arrived at the Regency. I was able to take a short peek into the main room while it was still empty and then waited with the others outside until the doors opened at around 12:45pm.

Stephen and his team did a great job. That place looks really great. Feels like you're playing in a much more expensive torunament. Today's poker celebs included Padraig Parkinson and Surinder Sundar. Those two and several others had a bounty on their head (that's why the were wearing those football T-Shirts).

Didn't know anybody at my table. From the beginning I got a lot of good starting hands but couldn't catch any decent flop. Then I got bluffed off a turned straight on a JJT-A-J board. Awful Jack at the end. My opponent bet out and all I could beat was a bluff. And exactly that's what he showed me after I folded.

My stack went all the way down to 6k from 10k start when I finally caught a break with KK. Back to 10k and from there even up tp 15k. Now the world looked so much better until I ran my TPTK (AK) in a shortstack's set of fives. Down to 10k again. And back to being flop-dead. The blinds had already reached 150/300 (25) and my stack was down to around 7k.

Close to the end of that level I got AK and a guy in front of me who raised to 1,200. I weighed my options (all-in or call as raise or fold weren't possible options here) and decided for a call. With a call I could see if I get a piece of the flop ... or still opt out with enough left for an all-in on another hand. I missed totally in regards of Aces and Kings but the low flop was all diamonds and I was holding the Ace of diamonds. My opponent bet 1,500 and in this situation there was no way I would have folded that hand now. I didn't give him either the made flush or a set. So I figured that I was maybe even holding two overs to my nut-flushdraw. I went all in for 5,000 more to his bet and he called with QQ. Unfortunately 60:40 wasn't enough here and I was out at around 540's of 720 after four hours of play.

There wasn't much I could have done different so no hard feelings. Just sadness that it was over so fast. Went into the city for someting to eat and stumbled across the red carpet premiere of "Couples Retreat" at the Savoy cinema on O'Connell Street. Right in time to see Vince Vaughn (the main actor of the movie) hitting the red carpet. At least that was a nice distraction.

Will take some more photos tomorrow on Day 2 and playing a smaller event at the Sporting Emporium by night. Hopfully I can report better results then.

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The day before the IPO

This will be just a short update as I am very tired and need some sleep.

The trip to Dublin was uneventful except for the fact that I arrived with 12kg in handluggage. Ryanair only allows 10kg and in Memmingen they forced every piece to be put on the scale. So I started to pack the most heavy pieces into my pockets ... just to put everything back into my handluggage once I had passed that control point. So ridiculous! On the plane I fell asleep immediately and even overslept the landing. I told you ... I am tired ;-)

The Skylon Hotel is a nice place. Rooms are small but clean in general. And if everything works out correctly I won't be in the room for long anyway. They have free W-LAN in the lobby but unfortunately not in the rooms.

Before I went to the get-together at Cassidy's I took a short look at the Regency. The Regency is just a seven minute walk away from the Skylon and fortunately the weather is much nicer and warmer than in Germany. Stephen and his team were already working hard to get the room(s) setup for tomorrow. In the meantime they also published the seat drawing and I will be sitting on table 30 seat 6. Don't recognize any of my tablemates.

Wish you all a good night!

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Next stop Dublin

Just a few more hours till the next highlight of the 2009 poker year. The IPO is around the corner and tomorrow I am on my way to Dublin.

First of all I have to thank all my backers at ChipMeUp! Both events - the main event as well as my side event at the Sporting Emporium - are completely sold out. That is terrific and I will try my absolute best to make this a winning trip for all of us.

Although the main event is sold out registration will officially close tomorrow at noon. But so far it seems that we have 1,419 players that will create a prizepool well above $300,000. There are several pros in the field including names like Andy Black, Surinder Sunar, Padraig Parkinson, Fintan Gavin, Noel Furlong, Jesse May, Maria Demetriou and many others.

I got confirmation from the organiser that there should be WLAN access in the tournament area or at least close to it. So look out for some heavy twittering the next days ;-) In addition Irishpokerrankings.com has promised to put me on their homepage (together with other twittering participants). They will also broadcast live radio reports onsite. If you are interested in more then just my updates this page might be the best source for information around.

Almost everything is set so far (I only have to pack my suitcase) and at 10am I'm on the way to Memmingen Allgäu Airport for my Ryanair flight to Dublin.

As said, there will be lots of twittering and blogging in the next 5 days ... so enjoy :-))

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My first ever Royal Flush

It took me almost five years and three straight flushes until the first one ... but now I got it: my first ever Royal Flush. It was only a small tournament and it was created with just one hole card. But nevertheless it was this one and only absolute unbeatable hand. And I even got a decent payout for it.



The whole tournament went very good for me until I ran my JJ into AK of a very aggressive big stack to my left. All the money went in preflop, he spiked an Ace immediately on the flop and I was crippled never recovering. Of course at the end my AJs ran into the same guys pair of sixes. Guess what? A six on the turn and a meaningless Jack on the river sealed my fate.

Just two more days until Dublin. This will be a great weekend. Hopefully I can make a lot of people very happy as I sold most of my shares for the events I play in Dublin. So far there are only four shares left for the main-event at ChipMeUp.

Wasn't able to go to Kufstein for some time due to time restrictions but hope to do so next week as they are still running hot.

The un-official german players get-together in Dublin will happen on Thursday at 6:30pm at Cassidys Bar, 27 Westmoreland Street, Dublin 2, Ireland. I reserved some extra seats so just come over if you like to meet us.

Today I got the printed Pokerfirma Magazine that they created due to their one year annniversary. They produced a real nice piece here. I've contributed a long article about Twitter and the WSOP and it's much fun to see my first ever printed article in a magazine.

So this day gave me two nice "first ones". I take this as a good sign for the upcoming trip ;-) Will try to twitter from that trip as much as possible but can't guarantee if the local condition will allow this or not. We will see!

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