Happy New Year!

I wish you all a Happy New Year with the final scene from the most wonderful movie I've ever seen. And with "Auld Lang Syne". While playing "Auld Lang Syne" on New Years Eve might be a mostly American tradition it more then anything else represents THE new years eve song for me since I have seen "It's a Wonderful Life" for the first time ever. And yes, I 've seen it many, many times since then ;-)

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Merry Christmas Everyone

O.K. folks, this is not at all poker related but I just have to share this with you. It's just hilarious.



Merry Christmas 2.0 ;-)

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Next year will be better ... at least I hope so!

It's again that time of the year ... were you start to look back and forward. Evaluating what has happened and planning what to do or to change for the coming year.

I must admit that 2010 wasn't a bad year in general. There had been a lot of good things - like finding a new and bigger home - but in regards of poker this year unfornuately started like 2009 ended. And to make things worse I had to skip my annual trip to Vegas in 2010. I really missed that week during the WSOP. I also missed all stops of the Pokertour.at due to schedule problems with my dancing. So in general (and not only due to the lack of good results) I played much less poker that year then I hoped to do.

So it probably isn't a big surprise that I hit another low in blog posts this year (just 27 ... 28 with that one). But no fear ... I plan to continue with my blog. If I can realize a trip to WSOP 2011 (which is planned of course) you may expect a lot interesting blog entries again (despite other trips to be planned)!

And I am quite optimistic in any way for 2011. The year had a bad start but it started to went better in the second half. I had some nice cashes and wins (especially in Kufstein) but also had a quite good run at the Deepstack at the Montesino in Vienna. Yes, I missed a cash but making my first Day 2 in a bigger event after about 18 months was indeed some kind of success. If you didn't went to that bad times you can't imagine how good it feels that just a few things start to fit together again.

Therefore I got some of my optimism back. And I realized again how important it is to be in a good mood and fully focused on your game. So I have some plans to secure that I am perfectly conditioned for every tournament I play in 2011. This includes good body condition as well as the right mindset.

And there are already two nice events fully booked for early 2011. From January 21st to 24th I will be back to Nottingham for the Dusk Till Dawn Grand Prix. It's only a €100+15 Buy-In but they expect about 800 players (creating an 80k prizepool). And as to be expected from the Dusk Till Dawn the blind schedule looks very good including 10k starting chips and 40 min. levels.

And just to weeks later (Feb 2nd to 8th) I will be in Dublin. The European Deepstack Poker Championship IV will be the biggest EDPC ever held. They have space for around 1,000 players and over 350 seats are sold already! The location will be again the Ballsbridge Inn.

Beside that I am already planning for a possible Las Vegas trip. Due to my other scheduled events it looks like I will go more close to the end of the WSOP this year instead of the beginning weeks. But I am sure there are more interesting events coming up between February and summer. So stay tuned for more events to be added ... and of course reports from my two trips in early 2011.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year ... and as always many good cards - as long as you are not sitting at my table ;-))

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"Poker City Masters Munich" ... I mean Kufstein

There are occasions were you may think that something is really doomed. Moving the "Poker City Masters" to Kufstein was a good idea in general but nobody expected that the weather goods also dislike the game of Poker.

144 players (mostly from Munich) made it to Kufstein despite the icy roads and a 20 km traffic jam. Good move by the Poker Royale to push the starting time another hour to 9pm.

It was a great tournament and I had a very good start. Several small to medium pots pushed my stack from 15k to about 30k. But then I missed a big pot when my smallstack opponent called my all-in on the turn with his two pair vs. my nut-flush draw. Back down to were I had started.

Unfortunately I was card dead from there for a long time and finally pushed with AJs against a bet and a call. It was a good move as I made a pair of Tens fold ... but it wasn't good enough as AK called and finally got the rest of my stack.

Went back the next day for the big stack tournament but didn't make it very far there. After being up somewhat I lost a big pot with my Full House vs. Quads. While it is unfortunate to lose that way it was avoidable re-thinking the texture of the board and the betting patterns.

Looking forward to the "Poker King Week" were I will play the Udo Gartenback Bounty event on Thursday as well as the main event Day 1B on Saturday. See you there!

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Legal issues about Poker in Germany

Wow, what a week ... difficult times for poker players and tournament organizers in Germany!

The coming weekend should have seen two great poker tournaments in Germany. Both had been designed for the average player allowing them to win some great and valuable prices. One was the "Royal Flush Masters" in Dortmund and the other the "Poker City Masters" in Munich. Both events aren't connected and play out individually organised by different organisations.

A lot of tickets had been played out in satellites and around 600 players in Dortmund and 200 players in Munich had been looking forward to play their events.

But then early this week somebody hit the doomswitch and the "Royal Flush Masters" was declared illegal. The organisers tried to move it to the Casino Hohensyburg but it didn't work out due to schedule conflicts.

Of course a lot of players were really unhappy about the situation. But it isn't acceptable that some started to blame the Royal Flush Magazine for being dumb or even more or less accused them for cheating. There's no reason that a well known magazine like the Royal Flush Magazine would be involved in any scheme to cheat on the players. Hopefully the heated discussion calms down and the players will be able to enjoy their event at a later time.

But of course after the cancellation dark clouds started to gather over Munich. They bavarian authorities advised some changes but it still seemed that the event will go through ... until this afternoon. At the end another doomswitch was hit and they declared this event illegal too.

Good thing is that the Poker Royale Kufstein which was one of the partners of the organisers (The Gastro Poker Tour) decided to step in and move the whole event to their casino. Again there will be a lot of players that won't be happy to travel about 90 km to Kufstein. But this is a better solution then cancelling it at all or risking to get raided by the police. And I am sure that those who haven't been in Kufstein before will love the fairly new great tournament room. So let's enjoy a great tournament!

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Next stop: "Poker City Masters Munich"

The WSOP is finally over and I was able to enjoy every hour of the final table live stream on ESPN3. Well almost! I have to deduct some time were I went to hibernation during the 14 hour marathon ;-)

After watching the hole cards yesterday at the ESPN broadcast I'm finally sure about a few things:

• While Jonathan Duhamel has vastely improved in the last three months he was still very lucky not to give it all away
• Michael Mizrachi lost a crucial (and in my opinion unneccesary) coin flip vs. Duhamel which finally was the turning point. Until then he had it in his own hands to take the whole thing down.
• Matt Jarvis blew it away very early with his awful AJ bluff vs. Cheong
• Cheong blew it away late with his awful bluff vs. Duhamel
• ESPN will never learn it ... again only two hands from a two hour heads up that doesn't really give an impression of how much pressure Racener was able to put on Duhamel

Duhamel was of course lucky that his sometimes random style (calling all-ins with low pairs but folding aces to raises) didn't ruin his whole tournament. But almost like the year when Jerry Yang won it was mainly the mistakes of his hunters that made it possible for him to win. The Grinder, Jarvis and Cheong had every option to take it down. At least John Racener's patience brought him into the heads-up and there he showed that he was (even with that short-stack) a difficult opponent. But finally he made two bad plays and that was it. With that marginal stack you can't make any mistakes. So we now have the first Canadian champion. At least better then Gold and Yang and hopefully more visible then Eastgate and Cada. Still waiting for a new Ambassador of Poker like Raymer or Hachem ... or at least a new Moneymaker that gives Poker another boost!

Now the circle starts again ... we are waiting for the WSOP 2011 to be announced (still not convinced it will happen at the Rio again). If possible in any way I will make it to Vegas again  in 2011 - preferable at WSOP time. But until then there are other things to come.

Next stop is a local tournament in Munich. The Poker City Masters is a nice Deepstack tournament were you can win a car, an EPT package or a Vegas package and more stuff ... sounds all like things that I could really need. So of course I'll try my best.

In general I'm running quite good in tournaments recently. I cashed in all of my last three tournaments (one at the CCC Vienna and two at the Poker Royale Kufstein) and even won the last one. Unfortunately all smaller tournaments ... still waiting for my first high 4-digit or maybe 5-digit win. But anyway it feels good to know what you can reach if you are just not unlucky.

And for the big money win there's the Deepstack Open Dublin in early February. Flight and Hotel are booked and seat is reserved :-) Oh, and not to forget the Poker King Week at the Poker Royale Kufstein in early December. Count me in there too!

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It's not over before it's really over - a last tale from Vienna

While I am finally back home, there is a little piece from my trip that I still want to share with you. You followed me through the not so good times that weekend ... so you deserve the good times too. Even so it's just a small success.

As I told you in my last blog I went to a last tournament on Sunday evening to the CCC. It was only a €20 Buy-In and the 124 players barely covered the €2,000 guarantee. But it was a good one for me!

Of course I got a major hit quite early with AA busted but was able to recover and not only make it into the money but to the final table too. With 5 players left I then ran into the chipleader's KK. My AKs got no help but I got my first and only cash of that trip. Of course the €129 just covered the flight to Vienna but there's so much more about this as it just feels good to have some success again.

This result together with reaching Day 2 in the DSO and just being a bit unlucky after playing a almost perfect 13 hour Day 1b gives back some confidence. Especially the DSO was a good experience even without the cash. For 13 hours I followed my game plan to control the pots I played and only to allow big pots when I felt very confident with my hand.Only one single time I broke my own rules here and it cost me more then a third of my stack ... while having reached 100k shortly before. It was that dreaded hand were I was holding A8s and my opponent shoved on me on a 8-4-6-K board. It doesn't matter that I folded to his bluff (he showed AJ). What matters is the fact that I had allowed a pot to grow big when I should have tried to keep it low or pass after I realised that I can't keep it low.

This is the point when chess can be a real good example for how to play poker. It's often said that chess has one thing that poker doesn't have: The fact that you have to think ahead for the next moves. Of course you can't really think ahead of the next hand being dealt. But you can think ahead of the hand itself! And that's exactly were I made my mistake. Playing that hand like a chess player would do I would have looked at the several options how this hand may play out (especially after the flop was dealt). And if I had done so I would have realized that most of those options are beyond my comfort level at this point. Knowing that early enough I would have left this hand with at least a 90k stack instead of just a 70k stack. At this time of the game having 20k more or less was a very valuable cushion especially with the way I played that tournament.

So I blew a part of my cushion with a bad move and therefore blew the chance to end that day with 100k+ instead of 76k. No big deal with blinds starting 1,500/3,000 (400) the next day?

Then look again how my aces hand played out on Day 2: with 70k left I made it 7,500 and was called. On the all spade flop I got my 10k bet check raised to 20k. At this point I had about 53k left. So it was very hard to let the Aces go with "just" 10k to bet. On the other hand had I started my day with 100k I still would have had almost 80k. I am sure it would have been much easier for me to let the hand go at that point - also I still would have hated that option. With 80k left (or even with 70k if I had played the hand the same way) I would have had much more time to wait for a decent hand. I would have not being forced to take my chances on 79 and losing there to AK.

I don't think anybody plays without mistakes in a tournament that long. And I wouldn't say it was a big mistake in itself. I had made worse moves in other tournaments before. But looking back it turned out to be a very costly mistake and I am now sure it had cost me a very good shot on an "In-The-Money" result. And it was an avoidable mistake! Hopefully next time I start to get too much drawn into the action of a hand I start to remember the chess comparison and think ahead early enough!

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Chilipoker Deepstack Open, Vienna - Short Day 2

Unfortunately my Day 2 was much shorter then expected. I was placed on the exact same table as the day before (Table 32) but now in seat 9. On my former seat 1 there was now Ivo Donev who was quite short with about 49k. Too sad that I wasn't able to play a hand with him due to my short day. Didn't know the other players ... but not surprisingly some of them had a lot more chips then I  had ;-)

My turn came about 30 minutes into the level when I received AA in first position. Raised it to 7,500 at 1,500/3,000 (400) blinds hoping somebody tries a move on me. The usual raise at this table was 12-16k at this time!

Unfortunately all folded to the big blind who just called my bet. The flop was a disastrous all spades. My opponent checked, I bet 10k and he then re-raised me to 20k. I decided to see on the turn if he was making a move on me or not and just called. The dealer turned a red Queen and my opponent immediatly went all-in with about the same chips I had. Time to say goodbye to my rockets.

Now with just 37k my action was limited to push or fold. Actually I was limited to just fold as I didn't get anything even remotely playable for one and a half orbits. With just two more two the blinds I decided that 79 is my all-in. Everybody folded to the small-blind who went all-in instantly. I was up against AK. Could have been worse. Flop was great: 6-8-4 ... but no further help and I was out in 167th of 505.

Decided to play the East Masters at the CCC that night. It's a nice structured 10k chips, 25 min. levels tournament. Yesterday it looked a little like the DSO losers lounge ;-) And losing was ecaxtly what I did in the first three levels. I can't remember a tournament were I received more bad beats per minute then in this one! It was a wonder that I survived that long anyway.

So for tonight I will most probably play another small tournament at the CCC and that will conclude a weekend that started in a great way but didn't get the expected results.

Not sure about my next plans. Of course the DSO Marrakesh (which is directly before the WPT Marrakesh) sounds very interesting ... but I think I need a good win before or satellite my way into it to make this happen. Most probably will skip DSO Paris.

Looks like there are not many other bigger events left until the end of the year. Of course you can find me in Kufstein at some of their regular or sepcial events. The next event I am definately aiming for is of course the DSO Dublin in early February 2011!

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Chilipoker Deepstack Open, Vienna - Survived Day 1b

After a very long time of failed attemps I made it again into a Day2 of a bigger event.  Actually the DSO Sideevent in Dublin in 2009 was my last Day 2 if I remember correctly!

And it was a good day in general. It started with a little mess as I lost a pot that should have been a split ... but the dealer had announced it as a flush for my opponent. Not a big thing because it wasn't a big pot. And it was my mistake not to check accurately enough.

But from there things went very well. It was a good table with a nice mix of decent and not so decent players and the action was hard but it was always possible to control the potsizes. Therefore I never became involved in pots that grew bigger then I wanted them to be and was able to play may way up to 88k in a slow and steady way.

We had a total of 292 player on Day 1b and the number of participant of both days combined was a good 505 total.

Unfortunately 88k was my high point for most of the eveneing hours as I first missed to participate in an important pot and then lost a good bunch in one of the not so many hands that went the wrong way.

In the first occurance (which happend a little bit before the high with about 70k), a small stack went all-in for 12k when I woke up with JJ in the BB. I was eager to call this all-in but another stack with 35k moved in too. After tanking some time I discarded my Jacks as being against two opponents didn't look right here. I was wrong as the smallstack showed KJ and the other guy showed 99. No help for either of them and what could have been my pot went to somebody else :-(

The next all-in was easier to call. Patrick Hirtzer went all-in on an 7xx A board with about 12k. I called with AK and he showed me 77. Ouch, well trapped!

I now was down to 60k and to add insult to injury I was card dead for the next few hours. But then came the time of the 9's. With just 30k left I moved all-in with 9's and my opponent called with AQ. The coin fell on my side and I was back in the game. I then had to discard 9's against the same opponent somewhat later when he went all-in on me but got a third try (this time against another opponent). He was holding AK got no help (while my 9's improved to a set on the turn). I busted him and finally broke the 100k mark for the first time.

While I was very satisfied with my game in general I then played one hand very badly. Not only because I got bluffed from the hand. That's something that will happen to anybody from time to time, but because I allowed the pot to grow bigger then I wanted it to be. That brought me back down to 70k and from there even further down to 50k.

At the end I was able to revover a bit and packed 76,000 chips at the end of level 12. Still an o.k. result but I know it could have been more. Average should be around 130k in the combined field of 192 players. I am curently on 139th position in the chipcount and the blinds will be 1,500/3,000 (400). I expect 50-52 places to be paid.

Now sitting here at the Montesino, enjoying breakfast and writing this blog. Beeing in the hotel next door has advantages and disadvantages: It gives you a lot of flexibility but you start to realize that you don't get to see many different things. Same places, same people , same routine all the time. And your outside time is limited too. But for now I very much enjoy the flexibility ;-)

Start of Day 2 is at 1pm this afternoon. Live reports for Day 2 and the combined chipcount can be found here: Pokerfirma Live Reporting

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Chilipoker Deepstack Open - the day before

I finally arrived in Vienna for the DSO. Day 1a is already running. They had 213 players and most probably will be down to around 100 by the end of the day. Day 1b, which will be my starting day, will most probably have more players. They expect around 350+ ... looks like a decent prizepool.

Today I went to the Concord Card Casino for a "Deep and Turbo" tournament but only lasted about 2 hours when my A's got busted by a flopped set of 4's. Went over to the Montesino to watch some of the Day 1a action and talk to some friends.

Already got my seat assignment and I will be on table 32 seat 1. Of course I will try to Twitter as much as possible - but if you want to follow the whole action I suggest you look at the Pokerfirma.de Live Updates which are really good and acurate.

Lots of well known names in the field tomorrow (including Andreas Krause and Liz Lieu). So time to go to bed to be fresh for a 12 level, 60 minute / level day that starts at 1pm.

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Time for a small update

Unfortunately there wasn't much poker for me in the last days and weeks since I was busy with a lot of other things. So here's a small update for those who are interested.

After being back home from the UK the only bigger event I had played in so far was the grand opening of the new tournament area at the Poker Royale in Kufstein. It was a great success and both of their celebration tournaments had been a sell out. The room is wonderful and I enjoyed to see so many familiar faces (several of them being there for the first time).

I had a decent run in the first tournament but was stopped by some bad beats somewere with a third of the field left. In the second torunament I didn't ever made it above my starting stack and went out after a few hours.

For a full gallery of pictures from the Poker Royale grand opening stage 2 check at the end of this blog entry.

Since then I was very busy with training for our dance competitions. We already had the "Southern German Championship" (were we placed 5th) and our own club competition (were we became club champion the third time in a row) but there are more competitions to come. Fall is always a busy time here. Next are the German Championship in Rosenheim and the World Championship in Schaffhausen. For those who are interested I added a video form our last competition. Enjoy!

In addition to this already time consuming action the American Football season is in full swing too. Of course I am not playing myself ;-)) but do some betting analysis for Wettfirma.com and posting my picks there (german text only). I love to be back into sportsbetting but even with my improved charts it still takes a lot of time to prepare my picks every week.

This week was mainly devoted to some computer stuff as I went on a Linux course for system administrators. I was always interested in Linux but after that five days I really fell in love with Linux. Honestly considering moving to Linux compeletely and dumping that crappy windows entirely (although Windows 7 is much more decent then Vista). Only thing I have to figure out is what to do with iTunes :-(

So this was a lot of non poker stuff but no fear ... there will be more poker soon. My next big event will be the Chilipoker Deepstack Open Championship in Vienna (October 14th - 17th). Really looking forward to this: A great tournament in a wonderful card casino which is located in a very nice city ... life can be sooo good :-)

Poker Royale Card Casino, Kufstein - Grand Openeing Stage 2

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London - Nottingham - APAT WCOAP

Writing this while in the train to London on the way back home from Nottingham. Went there for the APAT WCOAP (World Championship Of Amateur Poker). Including a trip to London with my girlfirend - this was a very exciting, interesting and partially dissapointing trip.

As I read some time ago that the APAT will be back to the Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham it was clear that I wanted to be there too. I love the Dusk Till Dawn and all APAT events I attended so far had been well organised. To add some value they offered some cool side events this year (e.g. heads-up and six-max).

As it turned out my girlfriend has a former schoolmate living not far from Nottingham. So we decided to vist her and add some days in London as well (which allowed me to visit a very good friend I hadn't seen for many years too). London was great (also it was raining a few times). The city changed a lot since I was there about nine years ago. Lot's of construction work and in general the city looks much cleaner. We missed to get on the "London Eye" due the long lines there but had a nice sightseeing tour and a cool boat trip on the river Thames. Beside that we also went to see  "Wicked" which turned out to be one of the most wonderful musicals I've ever seen. If you liked "The Wizard of Oz" you will most certainly love the twist that the original movie gets by the musical ;-)

My first poker event in Nottingham was the heads-up which started quite well. I had control over my first opponent and was never in real danger to lose that match. My second opponent was much tougher. At the end it all came down to a coinflip. I went in as a favorite but lost. The guy later made 4th place in that event, cashed deep in another one and won a WSOPE side event entry as best player of the weekend. Sometimes a flip can become a very important flip!

It was nice to meet Stephan Kalhamer, Jürgen Bachmann, Mike König and some other germans from Berlin here. Mike made 2nd place in the heads-up shortly after.

The next day I had no APAT tournament scheduled and decided to play a small regular DTD tournament. Bad idea! I never really came into the game and finally lost with a small boat vs. a bigger boat. While this can happen and is most often just unfortunate I can't claim that here. I really should have seen this coming. There was enough time to stop the hand early enough and get out with little damage. I just played this really bad and deserved to bust here!

So I tried to be more focused as the next day was day 1A of the main-event. And indeed I was much more pleased with my game on that day. Unfortunately the result wasn't much better and I went out shortly after the dinner break. If people call down or bet every small hit it's quite tough if you get good starting hands (and raise a lot) but miss almost all boards.

The 6-max (my favorite event) went a lot better. Right in the beginning I was able to leave a mark with a set of 7s against an overaggressive opponent that allowed for a lot of strong raises afterwards. It was amazing that almost all players at my table weren't able to see the differences between a 6-max. and a 9-handed tournament. Unfortunately our table was broken and I was moved to a seat with one of the chipleaders to my direct left. Didn't get ahead from there and finally choose the wrong spot to push - out in 24th of 86.

That evening I watched Casino Royle on TV (first time I saw it in english). While there's really nothing to learn from the poker game there was a line from Eva Greene that came to my mind the very next day when playing the "25XXL" DTD tournament: When playing poker "you better leave your ego at home".

The "25XXL" was a strange event. 10k startchips, 30 min. levels sounded good, but due to the fact that it was a Bank Holiday Monday and it was only a £25+7 Buy-in this one really assembled some of the worst poker players on earth in a single room.

Imagine this: I was about 5 minutes little late (but had a reserved seat) and approached my table just in time to still play my cards from that round. While sorting my stuff I peeked under the cards and found JJ. Of course I raised and (of course) got callers. Flop was all low cards with no flushdraw and no real straight danger. Still betting a bit more than half the pot (just to see how the table reacts). One caller left. Turn comes a 10. Betting again and he calls. River is a 9. I'm betting again, he calls and shows T9o.

"Leaving your ego at home" - quite hard if you know you are by far the best player on that table. But you have to realize that playing in a traditional way will be the road to desaster as eight bad players combined have by far better odds to bust a single good player.

Fortunately I was able to adapt my game very fast and took a good portion of pots from them. For them I must have looked like a complete donkey - but in fact I just took advantage of a lot of weak betting that allowed for chasing draws. Unfortunately I got rivered in three of the most important pots and finally lost a coinflip with 55 vs AJo. In that type of game you are chipeader very fast or you are out even faster. Unfortunately it was the later for me.

So I am coming back from a great week in London, some wonderfull organised tournaments by APAT & Dusk Till Dawn and no In-the-Money result. Happy or sad? Hard to tell. Of course I wished to cash that weekend. But in general (with one exception) I was very satisfied with my game and in addition had a great holiday. Oh, and by the way: "Leaving your ego at home" certainly eases the pain of getting rivered, trust me!

More poker to come at the upcoming weekend with the grand opening of the new tournament space at the Poker Royale in Kufstein. If you haven't reserved your seat for the tournaments there you better do so either by phone or online as I expect it to be very crowded! If you need a ride from Munich I also suggest you check out their new implemented shuttle service.

Here's the full gallery of my Dusk Till Dawn pictures:

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Pictures from DSO Namur

Here is a selection of my pictures taken during the weekend at the DSO Namur. Resolution lowered for web presentation. High-Quality versions available on request.

Download for private use o.k. if leaving the watermark intact. Any other use only on request. Please contact hgaerttner@googlemail.com

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No side event fo me ... major failure by the casino

As you have already read in my last post I wasn't very exited how the casino in Namur treated the players. But it even got worse!

"Zille die Brille" last german standing

For the side event they just provided 7 tables! They had more tables available but it seems they didn't had enough dealers. What? They host an international event with over 500 players in the main-event and don't keep enough dealers for the side action? You think that is awful? Well, there is more to come: 11-handed tables (horrible for a structure wise good event). The waiting list (about 100 people long) was opened after the first level (with already 40 minutes into the game) and just a few more went in then. The responsible floormen didn't care at all. No official announcements - not even in french.

I am feeling very sorry for Michael, Brian and the team from Chili Poker. There's now a lot of players that are angry on them (because they are the official organisers) but you could see that there wasn't much they could do about it (except skipping Namur for the future). I am really looking forward to Vienna. I'm absolute sure that the Montesino will be a much better and appropriate host for this event!

On the good side I had time to support the last germans in the field. Two of them made it into the money. Heinz Traut went out in 36th place for €1,450 but Rainer "Zille die Brille" Ziermann survived Day 2 and played with the last 24 on Day 3. Unfortunately he was quite shortstacked and went out early on Day 3 in 19th position with 99 vs. QJ.

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Too sad ... no Day 2 for me again

Cologne in the early morning

In the beginning all looked perfect. I had a nice trip to Namur with an ovenight stay in Cologne. Arrived on time and even got my hotel room before the 2:30pm start.

Then I got the first cooler: The table draw put me into the 10-seat. Not only do I dislike that seat (as probably most people do) but it got me limited view to two key players on my table. In seat 1 there was a guy who later went on tilt after a bad beat and started to over-raise and over-reraise a lot. To make it worse in seat 2 was the table chipleader who also liked to re-raise a lot with his big stack.

So from the beginning this was a tough table and I never was able to get a decent stack together. I went down to 40k in the first few hours. Then back to 48k hitting my set of Kings on the flop. My opponenent had raised pre-flop and then just called my re-raise. He then bet the flop again with 4k. I reraised him to 15k assuming that he had aces. As he only had about 10k left after calling my bet this would have been a good spot for him to push. Unfortunately he folded after a long time in the tank.

Namur Main Station

Then I went into a hand with a female asian player. I tried to bluff her from the hand but unfotunately she had flopped a baby straight. Well played by her. Bad mistake by me. That hand brought me back down to 40k.

From there nothing went right anymore. I got nice (but not very good starting hands) but either didn't connect to the board at all or hit what was most probably only second best hand.

So without losing any big pots my stack dwindled down to about 18k after 7 hours of play. In the 300/600 (75) level I finally picked up AK in the big blind and got presented a great opportunity: Mr. Tilt again raised to 2.5k (a very decent raise for him btw.). Seat 3 re-raised to 4.5k. Everybody folded to me. Mr. Tilt wasn't the problem. He could have had anyting. But Seat 3 had a hand for sure. But as he has acted against Mr. Tilt it was a wide range of possible hands and I figured that I am 50:50 against him here. So I pushed all-in and Mr. Tilt immediately folded. Seat 3 thought for a long time but finally decided he couldn't fold his Q's. Bordeline decision in my opinion as this was my first all-in move and he put half of his stack on risk. I was fine with the coinflip as a win would have brought me back to over 40k.

One half of the tournament room on Day 1b

Well, let's put it that way: There was indeed an "Ace on the River" ... but it didn't help me as the guy already had hit his set on the flop. Too sad :-(

So I may play the first side event tonight but it depends on how many players will bust out. At this time only 60 seats are assigned and I am number 46 on the waiting list. So let's hope they bust out quickly ;-)

Namur Old Town

Namur seems to be a nice old city but the Casino has seen better days for sure (as well as the hotel). But you can always present things in the right light to let them shine (see below).

While the structure of the event is absolut great the local organisation has some real loopholes. Having dealers on an international event that don't even understand english spoken numbers or the word "call" is an absolute "No-Go". The registration for the side-event is nearly impossible as the local people from the casino (who manage the registration) seem to be absolut uninterested. I think you can't blame the people from Chili Poker and D4Events for that. They are doing a great job. But it seems they had to give up a lot of the "daily business" to the local casino for some reason. And that's exactly were the organisation gets worse compared to Dublin.

Still enjoying my time and hoping to get into tonights event...

Casino de Namur at night

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DSO Namur Weekend ahead

Now it's there! The Deepstack Poker Open Namur started today at 2:30pm. Well, in reality they started yesterday with a supersatellite but today is Day 1A.

I will play Day 1B ... flying to Cologne this evening and continuing by train tomorrow morning. Really looking forward to that event. Especially after my two final tables in the last two weeks. As expected the event was sold out days before the start and I am happy that I secured my seat early enough to participate in my first 50,000 startstack / 1h level tournament.

With that huge number of chips I am thankful for a recent blog post from a friend of my old Black Jack days that reminded me that these kind of tournaments are won the "Beppo Way". If you already know what I mean you are most probably my age and have read Momo in your youth. If not, just read Bellatrix's post here.

Of course I will keep you updated via Twitter (or just see the twitter box on the left). There won't be wireless coverage in the casino but in the adjecent hotel. So expect updates mostly during breaks. Follow if you like or just look for the hashtag #dsonamur. I'll try to add that to all DSO related tweets. Hopefully other will follow so you may find tweets from others playing at the DSO Namur. But be warned ... most of those tweets will be in french for obvious reasons ;-)

Will be an interesting tournament with the huge number of french players. Most of them aren't neccesarily good but as usual very agressiv. In addition many of them are playing a rather uncommon style (good or bad ... no judgement).

According to Roy Decker from the Royal Flush Magazine (who's playing Day 1A) there will be a good number of german players arriving for Day 1B. Starting time will be 2:30pm (not 1pm as original posted) and we have to play 12 levels on Day 1. Including breaks don't expect play to end before 4am in the morning!

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Back to winning at poker ... and it feels good!

Maybe it's just an interruption of my dry run or I finally can be successfull at tournament poker again ... no matter what - it feels good! Try to imagine that: I had three almost back-to-back final tables in 2008. Two times at the Pokertour.at and one time at Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham. I then missed the money at the EDPCII in Dublin (by my own mistake mostly) in early 2009 and cashed a third time at the Pokertour.at.

From there until now I virtually achieved nothing ... 15 month of pure frustration. There was a very small win (3rd place) in a €10 tournament upon my first visit at the Poker Royale Kufstein and a final table (without cashing) somewhat later. Every other tournament was just a big fail.

Most of it can be blamed on a very dry run and being a sure loser on any 90%+ situation but it wouldn't be fair to blame only (bad) luck. Of course it's hard to win a tournament if you don't get anything. Of course you are out if your best hand gets rivered on an all-in. But there are options to avoid getting in that situation at all.

Last week and this week I final tabled two in a row by making 3rd and 2nd in the Poker Royale Survival Tournament. This isn't a big win ... it's only a 30 people €50+7 tournament. But what counts most is the confidence boost that you get from this. You now know again how it has to feel if it's "just right". I didn't play bad in the last 15 months but looking back and comparing it to the last two tournaments - I didn't play great either. And "just not playing bad" isn't good enough at poker. "Making a move" or "living the move" are two completely different things. "Trying to trap with a good hand" or "designing a trap with a good hand" falls into the same category.

I think you got the picture. Of course I was again lucky some times (as are others) but in general I felt like being "in the zone" all the time in that two tournaments. Funny part is that both ran absolutely different. Last week a busted bluff (due to a borderline hero call from my opponent) saw me struggling early and fighting my way back until the final table were I still was the shortstack. Yesterday I was chipleader for about the first third of the tournament. My stack never took a deep dive until the final table and I arrived there with an average stack.

Two different runs but both can end successful - that's what poker is about. Can you imagine how good I feel now? Of course nobody can tell if my run continues. But I know that I still can do it. All the negative feelings are blown away. What better timing could this be with the coming events:

My little Dinosaur from Nottingham

• EDPC Namur (seeking consolation for my missed final table in Dublin 2009)
• Pokertour.at at Lake Woerth (my most successful series so far)
• APAT World Championship at Dusk Till Dawn ... back to Nottingham the place were I had one of my best results. Oh, and btw. the Dinosaur is coming home to his birthplace again ;-)

Whatever happens in the next six weeks ... cashing or not, final tabling or not ... I will enjoy what I do and I will do my very best to make it happen again ... "because it feels so good!!!!"

Oh, and if you think my run will continue ... there is an option to jump on that train while it's still gaining speed: ChipMeUp - Namur Event ;-)

But Poker is not all what's happening. Some of my german readers may have already seen my article at wettfirma.com. So I am back into sportsbetting and trying to give you some interesting views into the world of betting the NFL.

Tweet no. 1,000

Last week I also had my 1,000th tweet at Twitter. When I started with Twitter about  two years ago (ironically it was a tweet about the APAT) I wasn't really sure about that twitter thing. But now I really love it. Not only for tweeting myself but also for reading tweets from a lot of interesting people (not only poker related). Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare ... three tools have that I with me all the time. So if you are still interested in my adventures ... you know were to find me!

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Soccer half-finals Germany vs. Spain (no poker content)

Honestly, I'm not a very big soccer fan but worldcup is always something special. Even more at times were Germany gets a deep run. And much more when they play some of the best soccer ever seen.

We had seen the game against England in Berlin. Great game and great place to watch. When they destroyed Argentina we were together at the Boogie Baeren Clubhouse. The german team can be really proud about what they achieved so far (and especially the last two games). Still feeling somewhat sorry for Argentina. They are a great team and it's tough to get beaten that badly. Sad to hear that Maradonna resigned from his job ... a personality really to be missed at the 2014 worldcup on the south american continent.

Siemens Soccer City, Munich

Not sure were to watch the game this time but I'm thinking about "Siemens Soccer City" in Munich. The place reminds me about my first public viewing. Guess what - it was the euro 2008 finals Germany vs. Spain (in front of the Vienna city hall). Spain still owes me a big afterparty since then ... so this would be a good time to pay back.

We got our revenge for the Wembley goal, so why not just add revenge for the lost euro 2008? ;-))) After Brazil was kicked out of the worldcup I thought that Netherlands vs. Germany would be a fun finale. The Netherlands already did their part for it ... now it's our turn!

Octopus Paul decided for Spain ... must be a good sign! Why? Well, he was almost perfect in 2008 predictions. Except for the Germany vs. Spain finale (he predicted a german win). He's perfect until now in 2010. So it's time for his usual one time error ;-)

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It's done ... I'm registered for Namur

All is set and I will play the Deepstack Open Main-Event in Namur Belgium on Day 1b (July 30th). It's all planned to make it an enjoyable weekend. I was lucky to reserve a room at the Beauregard Hotel (which is located in the same building as Casino Namur) early enough at a rate of €60 / night.

The event will have a maxiumum of 250 players per starting day and I would wonder if they don't sell out. 50,000 Chips is a lot of starting stack to play with. But don't get fooled - you have to play and increase your stack otherwise you might be the shorty when you play for the money.

The biggest challenge will be the balance between increasing your stack and not getting drawn into too expensive adventures on Day1. With the 50k stack and 1h levels your startingstack is worth a M>20 till the 10th hour of the tournament. That's a lot of time!

On the other hand: looking at the result from Dublin the money was reached during the 20th hour of play but with an average M=12.92. Hard to say but I excpect the last 3 levels before the bubble to be the most crucial point of the game.

Casino Namur & Hotel Beauregard

Anyway ... I'm looking forward to that event and hopefully there will be W-LAN reception to keep you updated via Twitter. For those who want to get more excitement you can buy some shares for this event on ChipMeUp. A share of $16 is worth 2% of my action. With a $62,000+ first prize your share could be worth over $1,200.

Of course I will try to write a report about that event on Pokerfirma.de. So if you are a player from Germany, Austria or Switzerland attending the event please let me know.

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This will be a tough week for me!

No, not because of too much work but simply because I am here and not in Vegas.

Last weekend we had our Boogie-Worldcup in Winterthur (Switzerland) which is traditionally the last one before the summer break. And traditionally I travel to Vegas for at least a week directly after. I did this for the last few years and enjoyed the WSOP and other tournaments very much (Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza or Caesars Mega Stacks).

Unfortunately not this year. Our move to the new home was much more expensive then expected (including a new kitchen). In addition I am still running bad a tournaments and medicore at cash games. So I made the heartbreaking decision to stay at home this year. The door isn't closed completely - if I make a (really) good cash in a tournament before the series is over then I will try to make a last minute trip. Otherwise there is still the November Nine ;-)

But to go over to the good news: It's now 90% sure that I will play the Chilipoker Deepstack in Namur end of July (and most probably it will be the main-event). It's 100% sure that I play the APAT Worldchampionship and two great side events (6-max and Heads-Up) at the Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham (late August). For the Namur event I am selling shares at CmU ($16 get you 2% of my action)

Until the then there's not too much live events planned so far. For tonight I get some WSOP feeling at home playing the $25 Mini-WSOP 6-max at FullTilt ... I love the comfortable leg space you get in a 6-max ;-) Start is at 9:20pm CET.

So wish me luck and see you at some live or virtuell tables.

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"Survival Deepstack" in Kufstein

Well, that was a really interesting weekend. As expected the increasing blindstructure of the "Survival Deepstack" at the Poker Royale in Kufstein created a well playable tournament. Also as expected a good number of player didn't understand the technical basics behind that structure and started to play it like a turbo tournament in the beginning. Huge mistake ... especially with 20k or 30k stacks behind!

I was running quite good in the Warm-Up event on Friday and ended 12th of 55. No cash but at least some good hands to play. Much better run than in the last few months. Seems I can start to play real poker again ;-) But even with a good structure - running into Aces two times with big hands will hurt anybodys tournament life severly.

I didn't last so long at the Main-Event (about 60th of 81 or so) but this was an even much more interesting tournament for me. I got a nice portion of good starting hands and was able to play my most aggressive style of poker for a long time - and I really liked it ;-) Unfortunately I missed to hit on some key pots but also had a very aggressive (and very good playing) female player to my right. Playing a similar style than me we both played almost all of the first hands against each other. In the first two hours my stack went up from the original 30k, then down to almost 12k and back to 27k.

Finally my female opponent and one other player (aggressive but easy to read) went into a pot that ended up to get a size of about 80k. We had some limpers at the 500/1000 (100) level and I decided to to limp as well with a pair of 7's as my usual raise wouldn't have limited the competition in that round by very much. A higher raise on the other hand wouldn't have suited me too because of my 24k stack.

The flop looked very good with 7-T-J but included two spades. As the pot already had a size of 7k my plan was to raise my set in order to limit the competition now. Surprisingly the female player on my right made exactly the bet I wanted to do (4k). As she had shown a lot of aggressiveness this could have been either a simple conti-bet but also a draw or made hand (maybe something like two pair with JT, didn't expected a higehr set for some reason). So I reraised her two 12k. It was folded around to the aggressive guy who went all-in with about 26k. Knowing his style I was now quite sure that he was the one with the flush-draw. Obviously my right neighbour expected the same and she went all-in for about 20k. Wow, now I also gave her a possible straight with 8-9 ... but now the pot was too juicy to let a set go.

Finally the cards were opened and it was exactly like expected: My set was running against a flushdraw and straight. No further help and she scooped the whole pot. I was out with my baby stack two hands later. Would have loved to play longer but as usually it hurts much less to lose the stack against a good player!

I was a bit sad that they only had 55 and 81 players. At least they hit their guarantees of 2.5k and 10k but I really thought that pokerplayers are more progressive and interested to test new ideas. So if you are a poker player who knows the value of good level- and stacksizes I can absolutely reccomend that kind of tournament to you.

Another thing that wasn't so great is that it seems that the new breed of players isn't very competitive. Nothing against deals in general ... I did a fair share of them on my own. But making a  10-handed deal at the beginning of the final table when the best and most interesting part of the tournament starts is a thing I absolutely can't understand.

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Still on a semi-break but at least some poker and more plans

Looks like I'm still on some kind of a break. It's a mix of too much work as well as still running bad in Poker.

Last Monday I went back to the Poker Royale in Kufstein after some time and played the Deep&Turbo. Had a good start but finally missed out on a key hand with AK (flop AKx) in a 3-way all-in pot. Against 66 and KJ another 6 on the turn sealed my fate in that tournament.

Even worse I lost a key hand in the following cashgame under similar circumstances. Again it was AK (this time suited) and again a 3-way pot of almost €120 (in a 0.50/0.50 game!). I had hit my nut flush-draw on the flop but failed to improve.

Played the PokerStars SCOOP 19-L last night and was running quite good for the first few hours. Unfortunately one "not so good" played hand and one really bad played hand pushed my stack below average. At the end an AJs nut-flush draw couldn't improve against AQo and I failed to double my shortstack. Went out after 4.5 hours around 5,400st place of over 16,000 total.

So what are the next plans? Of course I will play both Hold'em events next weekend during the "Survival Festival" at the Poker Royale. So great they picked up the idea I brought back from Ireland some time ago. Will be fun to see how their variation of the increasing blinds plays out.

It still seems that I will miss out on the WSOP this year. Running bad in poker and having an expensive move isn't helpful for expensive travel plans. So I either have to win some decent money soon or find a faithful sponsor ;-)

Not sure how many events of the Pokertour.at I may be able to play this year but if possible in any way I plan to go to the event in Pörtschach at the nice Lake Woerth.

But for sure I will be back to Nottingham and the Dusk Till Dawn in August. The APAT (Amateur Poker Association & Tour) is back to Nottingham with the World Championship Of Amateur Poker in Nottingham (WCOAP). Not only I am now registered for the main-event but also take part in two great side events. The first one is my favorite game ... the 6-max. Good thing the Poker Royale has a 6-max running in their weekly schedule. So I get an option for some practice. The other side-event won't be less fun ... the heads-up. I played heads-up online for some time and of course during some final tables - in ancient times ;-) but I never played a live heads-up tournament before. Really looking forward to that trip!

Maybe I will play some more SCOOP and/or MiniFTOPS but will decide usually only shortly before the event starts.

Thanks to all who are still reading my blog. But I think you all can understand that there are times were it might be better go a bit slower than usual.

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Deepstack in Kufstein tonight

Sandra Naujoks at the Montesino

There wasn't anything to win for me in Vienna at the Montesino two weeks ago. Two guys chasing their draws until they hit on the river and one bad call of my own made me last not too long. Sandra Naujoks lasted about an hour longer but wasn't able to follow the success of Erich Kollmann (the first who won his own bounty at the Montesino).

It was a strange weekend anyway. Our car made troubles on the trip to Vienna and we used a good portion of our time there to find out what the problem was. At the end we left the car in Vienna and changed to a rental car. Our car was sent back to Erding three days later then.

The only thing that went quite decent was our dance competition. We had a good first round but gave away some spots again in the second round. But it was a good start in the new season if you consider that we had no time for practicing our stuff.

Tonight I'm finally back to Kufstein. I had to miss the last Deepstack as it happened on the weekend of our move but I will enjoy tonights event. Again 20k Chips and 40 min. levels will make up for an interesting evening. I know some good friends are there - so it will be fun anyway.

Will try to do live updates again via twitter. So check out @ShadowBJ21 beginning 7pm CET tonight if you like.

If you can read german you might have a look at another site until then. A friend of mine started his own project called Pokerkalender.at. His page offers a lot of information about upcoming tournaments (live and online) as well as live reporting from big events and many more stuff. Still a page in development but already worth to check out.

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Still alive and back online

Yes, I'm still here! :-) We finally moved in our new place and then I had to mess with the telco company for four days until they finally managed to get us back online. "Please Wait.... No, I can't do anything for you..., That's the way it works - there are no exceptions... No, I can't connect you to the other departement or my boss... No, it isn't our fault"- Ah, I really hate that!

But now we are back online and I am currently in Vienna. As we have a dance competition tomorrow I had planned for some time already to play the €50+7 one rebuy tournament at the Montesino today. So it was a nice twist that I read this week that Sandra Naujoks will be there too and that there's a €500 bounty on her. Should be an interesting evening.

Beside that I am still very vague with my plans at the moment. I definately won't make it to the EPT Snowfest also it's very close to were I live, I definately will miss the Chili Deepstack in France due to other appointments, I most probably skip the UKIPT Nottingham (also I would love to come back to the Dusk Till Dawn) and I really hope the Poker Royale Kufstein will get their troubles fixed soon as I want to play the Deepstack main-event on easter sunday.

So keep the fingers crossed that I still know how to play poker ;-)

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Finally found our new home (less poker content)

Center of Erding - "Lange Zeile"

It's done ... we signed the contract yesterday and will move from the south of Munich to the wonderful city of Erding (northeast of munich) in just two weeks. After having so much trouble with our first choice - that was taken away in such a bad way - we now found something almost equal. I'm especially happy that this is the first time I am living in a home with a nice garden. In addition you may find us from time to time at another great place that's almost in walking distance of our home: The Therme Erding.

Therme Erding

Unfortunately our new home causes us some extra costs that weren't planned so it looks like I have to skip the trip to the WSOP this year. That's the sad part of the move. Oh, and the fact that we now have to downgrade from 16,000 DSL to 6,000 DSL :-(

So I am currently planning to make either the UKIPT in Nottingham or one of the next Chilipoker Deepstacks my next big event. If I make a good cash there I will add the WSOP 2010 to my travel plans. Otherwise I have to wait for 2011.

In addition it will be now a little more difficult to come to the Poker Royale in Kufstein. Instead of a 50 minute ride it's now about 90 minutes. But that won't keep me away from that great place. Hope I can make it on a Monday soon to check out the new short-handed tournament they are offering.

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