What a day!

7. October 2004 | Category: 50outs

I already told you about the tournament we play over this long weekend, the european 7stud poker championship, a very well established tourney with very nice side action over 5 days. Yesterday (wendsday) was the start. I had a really hectic day…

The day started at 6:00am where I went to work in Stuttgart, where I do client project. After a long meeting (5 hours) and some very quick descisions Frank (my good friend and colleque, see actual image album for a picture of this cool dude) and I jumped into a cab to the airport at 13:30 with the filght going at 14:45 so more than an hour left with a drive time of usally about 25 minutes. So far so good. As it turned out, there was a heavy traffic jam on the highway and we got real late to the airport, actually about 14:30. We directly went to the check-in counter just to be informed that the flight is cancelled due to technical problems. Umppf. Ok, next flight? At 17:30 buuuuut: booked out nothing possible. Car? Train? Over 900 miles with about 4 hours left until the tourney starts? Impossible… and I did not even mean the nice gala dinner at 17:30 which we liked to get (dont forget, 500eur just for eating and drinking as a fixed price). Katja catched her flight the same morning at 6:30 from Hamburg to Vienna without any problems and was doing something like a “day off” until I called with these problems (we could not come). Uiii, that must be really love… Anyway, we figured to fly to Frankfurt and try to catch anything there and that actually worked. After long and serious discussions with the airline we got new vouchures and made it to Vienna at 18:40! Great, the tournament starts at 19:00 with a 40 minute ride from the airport to the casino. Good, Katja made our buy-ins (also after some discussions as no passport copies were available) and the chips were placed on the table, so the worst that could happen that we are going to be blinded away by something right (four 30 minutes low levels)?? Wrong. After the tournament was on for about 5 minutes Katja got informed that after 30 minutes the stacks without player will removed. 25 minutes left for us to make it no problem at all, right?? Wrong again, annother heavy traffic jam! We talked our driver into breaking every possible rule and sweated the whole way, all the time on the phone with Katja (she was trying to talk the floorman into extending the time). That was the first time we got real nervous as we had to jump into our hotel room before arriving to get our document to be allowed to actually enter the casino. Ok, we made it 29 minutes and 30 seconds after the tournament started and as we approached out seats the announcment to get in the stacks was made… not 30 seconds later and our weekend would be busted! Great!

For the first hour I played real bad, unconcentrated and uninspired and needed to make my rebuy very fast. My table had 3 unkowns, 3 known-to-me players, one local hero and Kiril Gerasimlov, the heads-up champion from 2002 I believe and a real though customer if he get any cards (which was not the case this night). After the first hour I managed to focus on my game (stud is really my hometown) and got better and better results. After two hours I took the add-on for double the chips as nearly everbody I believe to be in medium chip position with serious limit raises ahead. After the break out table got broke soon, the table I got was full of chips but before I could take these into my stack this table broke to and I got moved to one of the final tables. A word about this tournament: there are 3 qualifiers over 3 days where 24 player out the field are qualified to play the super-final on Saturday. Each of these 72 (plus 8 players from a last chance crabshot saturday right before the final starts) is already “in the money” which not means the player is actual ahead as you got to pay 3 times 900eur if you got to play all three qualifiers. So the ultimte goal is to make it on Day One and have a freeroll to the big price money. So it was very comfortable for me to actual sit on one of these 6 final tables – when only 48 players are left eah table plays down to four player, each of them is qualified and gets some money right away. I did so lala for 2 hours, just holding my self. I checked for Katja regulary but the was in trouble all the time, failing to improve her big holdings. The got all-in one time with rolled up 4’s and catched a fouth one on the river to surive a little longer but actually got busted around place 60 🙁

I got out of trouble right after a break with high limits with rolled up 2’s and sending two players out of the tournament. From there on it was easy sailing, just by using standard tournament play (ok, whatever that means, but I got out of any trouble after that). My friend Frank got to our table but he made one mistake and got crippled and never recovered from that. He was something arround #35. Katja’s and mine friend Castey Castle came to our table and got the nickname “action casey” very quick. After holding very many chips when busting out Henry Novakowski (who is famous for his 6th place finish in the WSOP championship event and “discussion” about “american idiots” with Daniel Negrenau) he got in trouble later but made our day by going all-in with a small chiplead (but the worst hand, “action casey” as I said) against a guy and busting him as 5th on our table so we all got qualified!!! Wow! Thank you Casey! 

It was already 3:00 in the morning and I was eating and talking with Katja as someone showed a open seat in an omaha 500eur buyin 5-10 pot limit game where I realized three drunk live ones, 3 ok players and 2 sharks. I wanted to go to bed at that time but the situation was clea, the seat looked so inviting and the situation was just right. And right it went – I got ahead real quick, dropped it to one of this sharks by managing to forget everything about “playing the player” and “dont chase weak draws” and went ahead again by playing just straight against the weakies. After about 90 minutes I quitted a 1700eur winner.

The nice and successful day continued in the hotel room for annother 15 minutes but I will not go into more details here.


« »