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!