Quick and sweet

I need some sleep and I have an early morning tomorrow so here are the notes:

-March was the worst month I've ever had pokerwise
-flying to San Remo in the morning
-playing Day 1A
-coming back to Berlin on Saturday
-flying to Monte Carlo that following Friday
-playing the Main Event, don't know which starting day
-profiting hopefully (one time!!!)

Expect updates from San Remo after Day 1a, wish me luck!

Happy Easter!

It's March Madness time and as a result I've pretty much been glued in front of the tv these past few days, catching as many games as possible over NASN. To spice it up I've also been doing some betting on the games with mixed results. Also, my bracket has pretty much gone to shit after losing some key "coinflips" such Marquette-Stanford, Western Kentucky-Drake and Duke-West Virginia. Still, it's exciting as ever to watch and I'm very glad we finally got the satellite/Premiere deal hooked up in the apartment.

Online I've been sticking cash game grinding, though I admit that I have not played as much as I would have liked to because I'm having trouble motivating myself to play. One thing I am really motivated for is EPT San Remo, though. I'm flying to Nice on the 31st and will stay in San Remo until April, at which point I'll probably return to Berlin before going to Monte Carlo. I'm not sure if I'll play Monte Carlo, I really don't want to fork up the €10k buy-in on my own so we'll see if I can get that figured out somehow.

The next few days will be spent relaxing (as always) before going to Hamburg for Seb's housewarming party on the 29th. Apparently he has more liquor there than any one person should own so hopefully it won't get too out of control. I'll see if I can get some pictures of it posted when I get back.

(Un)successful in Vienna

The €750 Freezeout on Wednesday was over rather quickly for me. At night, another €20/40NL game started up and so I bought in with all the cash I had with me at the time (6k) in order to get max value from the three Russian fish who sat down to play as well. Don't ask me where they get their money from, but there definitely does not seem to be any shortage of it. To make a long story short, I ended the night down €1.5k after playing for a solid 12 hours. I witnessed the sickest action I've ever seen in an NL cash game before and I wasn't able to capitalize. All in all the Russians (one in particular) probably dropped somewhere around 30-40k to the table.

The €1500 Second Chance Freezeout on Friday also didn't run that well for me. After having a pretty tough starting table (Markus Golser, Michael Keiner, Philipp Roch) I lost a signifcant chunk of my stack with KK vs QQ all-in pre and then shoved J8 as first in from the cutoff with <10bb. I can't even remember what hand called me but I do remember that I didn't suck out :)

I did manage to make a score in our private NL200 game we opened up at CCC. I always love playing those private tables, it's some of the most fun poker you can imagine. I also hit a couple nice flops so I ended up around €1700. Not bad for 1-2.

As a whole, this was the first trip to Vienna where I went home without a profit. Matter of fact, this trip was even quite unprofitable. Still, I had a good time as I always do in Vienna. CCC is just the absolute nuts when it comes to European casinos, if you've never been there I would highly recommend it! I won't make it for the tournament week in the summer, but I'll surely be back again this fall for the Austrian Classics.

*Congrats to Philipp Roch for final tabling 4 out of the 6 tourneys he played (!!!), Stefan Jedlicka for taking down the all-round leaderboard and Tobi/Brian for their 1st and 2nd place finishes in the 1.5k tourney!

Wiiiiiiiien

So it's 7am and I'm not tired enough to sleep yet, so I figured why not blog? I arrived in Vienna on Monday afternoon and my first stop was my hotel. I must say, I was plesantly surprised. It's an apartment hotel, which means that I have my own kitchen and living room/bedroom, making for a very spacious stay. The place has 4 stars and is relatively new, breakfast is served 24h/day, I could definitely get used to this kind of life :)

Once I got settled in headed over to CCC, where I didn't do much other than play a couple rounds of €5/10NL. I netted around +€1000 after making a nice call on the river with 2nd pair against an overconfident opponent. I went back to the hotel pretty early to get enough sleep for the Main Event on Tuesday.

The €3150 Main Event had a starting stack of 15k with blinds of 25/50, a structure significantly better than EPT and most WSOP tournaments. With 90 minute levels, the skill factor is definitely increased and I couldn't help but smile when a few players at my table complained about the "long blind levels" because it seemed to them like no action was happening. Apparently they were spoiled with 10BB average stack, push-or-fold poker, so they had no idea how to play something this deep. My table was great and it didn't take me long to build up to 19k after I made a straight with 88 on a 457Q6 board and my opponent tried to make a move.

Then came a hand that was really strange: Blinds 100/200, effective stacks 16k. UTG2 limps (he was new to the table and had limped a couple hands during his first orbit), I make an isolation raise to 800 in the hijack with ATo, which he calls. The flop is T62 rainbow and he check/calls my 1200 continuation bet instantly. The turn is a 4 completing the rainbow. Once again, he checks and then snapcalls my 2500 bet. The river was a 7 and he checks again. At this point I'm wondering what hands I can get three streets of value from, but since he usually has a random T in this spot, I elect to make a small value bet of 3500. Before I even let go of my chips, I get the insta-check-minraise to 7000 in my face. At this point I have just under 9k left, so calling would leave me with 5k+ chips. So I tanked it pretty long trying to put him on a hand. I finally decided that his line is just too strong to justify a call and mucked my hand, I guess I'll never know.

Now I was pretty short and got moved to a new table, where I busted with KhQh on a QcJs6c flop. My opponent check/raised the flop and I came over the top for my last 7k+ chips, which he snapped with QJ. Turn and river brick off. Whoops, that went faster than I would have liked it to.

Next stop: NL €20/40 table. 8 people were on the list, but only 3 show up to the table. Am I that intimidating? We (a Russian, a German from Wiesbaden and myself) start the game 3-handed and the first pot of significance was me raising 6d9d from the button to €120, both blinds call. The flop is KdTd5s, giving me a 9-high flush draw. It's checked to me and I fire €240, which is raised by the SB to €560. He only has €2k total since he lost a pot to the Russian earlier, so I shove another 1500 over his raise, which he snapcalls with KT. The turn is a T and that seals the deal for him. Whatever, I reloaded 2k and was ready for business again.

Then I have Q2o in the BB and the Russian limps in the SB. I check and we see a flop of 2c2h5h. He checks, I bet 60, he calls. Turn is the 7s. He checks, I bet €180, he calls. River is the As. He checks I bet 400, he check-raises to 1100. I make the call and he shows me 43o for the straight. NH sir.

An interesting hand happened when Davo (?) sat down with 2k and posted his BB. I raised K9o to 140 and was called by the button and from Davo in the BB. The flop came down 9c4c2s and I contibet 300. The button folded and Davo immediately pushed for 1860. I thought for a couple moments and made the call, the turn and river left me unimproved and I just hoped that it was the same could be said for him. I was kind of surprised when he showed down 33, but I'll take whatever presents I can get :) He stood up, patted me on the back and left right after the hand.

Then came the key hand of the night: I raise KsTs to 140, the Wiesbadener reraises to 340 (eff. stack 3k, he had JUST reloaded after losing his stack to the Russian the hand before) on the button. Beacuse it's almost a minraise I elect to call and we see a flop of 7s9s3h, giving me two overcards and the 2nd nut flush draw. Taking the stack sizes into consideration, I choose to donk/3bet. I make it 300, he makes it 700, I make it 2000, he shoves, I call. Turn comes down 6d and river is some blank. He immediately starts whining about how he always misses and shows AsQs. I inform him that I missed, too. His reaction is that of a man who is 6k richer and his mood changes noticeably for the better.

I quit about an hour later, the total damage was -€5k. Bleh. Tomorrow's a new day.

You only blog when you're winning

I wish I had good news to report but unfortunately I haven't been running too well lately. Here's my graph since the beginning of March. I haven't really been motivated to play much, that's why I only have like 7k hands played. Here's my graph thusfar:

Hand ~6900 was the result of shottaking at a €50/100 NL game with one of the biggest fish on BossMedia. For anyone interested, you can check out the exact HH here. The biggest beat of all came when I went to reload after the hand but received an error message saying that a full reload would surpass my daily buy-in limits. Before I could press anything, the table was automatically closed and I lost my seat. The waiting list for the table was already 5 people deep and I knew there was no way in hell I would ever get to sit with that guy again.

Other than that I've just been hanging out not doing too much the past week. I go to Vienna on Monday and will stay until Saturday, this will be the first time for me staying in this hotel which seems nice according to other people's reviews written online. The main event in Vienna will be my first tournament I'll play under the flag of my new "sponsor" Pokertrillion.com. It's not 100% sponsorship but the deal they offered me was certainly too good to pass up, so for the time being I'll be representing them at some EPT and WSOP tourneys.