"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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