Update from Monte Carlo

I spent Saturday (Day 1a) hanging out doing nothing except playing Fifa 08 on the PS3 that Pokerstars had set up in their players lounge. The first game I played against an American who wanted to play me for money, so I beat him 3-0 and the second game he preferred to play for no money :) Then Chris Moneymaker came over and wanted to play me so I gave him a 2-0 beating with him having 0 shots the whole game. Ship it.

Day 1b was yesterday and I busted out in level 5 (150/300) after getting it all in with AK vs 88 in a button vs big-blind situation for 11.5k. The road up to that point was a wild up-and-down as always. I had a really sick table after the 1st hour, as I was sandwiched inbetween Dario Alioto two seats to my right, Max Pescatori to my immediate right, Marc Goodwin to my immediate left, Gus Hansen two to my left and Antonio Esfandiari three to my left. The last thing I wanted to do was get into too many pots with these guys, especially against Gus or Antonio when I was out of position, but because we played so long some situations were inevitable.

I made a nice fold against Gus after I raised QQ UTG and he 3bet me, which I called. I check/called the 943 flop and check/folded the 6 on the turn. He had a set, which he didn't show but I later read in his blog ;) In a later hand I flopped a flush against Esfandiari after defending my BB with 76s. I got two streets of value from him after he called the flop & turn but folded the river.

I escaped that table and was moved to a new table with Isaac "WestmenloAA" Baron to my immediate left. I had around 20k at this point but lost 8k after firing a couple barrels with AK on a missed flop. Then came the aforementioned hand with AK vs 88 where I got it all-in preflop and lost the flip.

And so ends a very disappointing EPT season for me. I played 7 tournaments and cashed only once for slightly over €10k. I'm not disappointed with the way I played, though, as I feel I made pretty good decisions throughout most tournaments. The large field tournaments are really high-variance so not much can be said after just 7 tournaments, so that's not really what I'm worried about. The fact of the matter is that I had a lot of fun, got to travel to a ton of cities and will certainly be back next season with better results.

I'm now going to forget my troubles and devour a €25 cheeseburger from room service. I'll add a €10 chocolate mousse to that and wash it down with an €8 bottle of Evian. This place is a pretty big ripoff, but food options are limited so I have no choice.

Monte Carlo baby

My few days off in Berlin were nice, believe it or not I actually won online! Yesterday we flew from Berlin -> Zurich and then Zurich -> Monte Carlo. Originally it was just me, Chris Niesert, Tobi Reinkemeier and Flo Langmann but at Tegel we ended up bumping into Johannes Strassmann and Freddy Keitel. Unfortunately our seats were spread all throughout the airplane so we couldn't get any group chinese game going. I played Chris HU and won a little bit, which certainly made the flight go by faster.

After arriving in Monte Carlo we all went out to eat at a local Italian restaurant "Gianni." Katja Thater, Jan von Halle, Sebastian Ruthenberg, Benjamin Kang, Max Bracht and Daniel Zink joined us so we were a pretty big group! The food was excellent, the coversation was all about poker (what else?).

After I registered for the Main Event (playing Day 1b) a few of us decided to join a €1090 SNG, where there are 10 players and winner takes all (Main Event seat or cash). To make a long story short: After capturing the early chip lead, I then lost everything except 1BB only to make a full recovery and then chop 50/50 with a pretty weak Italian player when the chipcount was 13.5k for him and 11.5k for me HU. I got €5300 for my efforts, not a bad start.

Today's plan is basically to chill (remind me to post pictures of the hotel/view/Monte Carlo when I'm back in Berlin) and get my head clear for a long day tomorrow. One time Monte Carlo!!!