Live Poker Tournaments in 2007
Live Poker Tournaments in 2007
Introduction
Bolton GKUPT 2007
Bregenz Poker Open 2007
Getting There
The Tournament
Some friendly locals
Quick stop off at the Irish Poker Open
Introduction
For the past few years virtually all my Poker has been played online. In 2006 I played my first major live tournament in the Poker Open of Paris in the Aviation Club De France, where I finished 10th and in the money. In 2007 one of my main poker aims has been to play more live events and so far I have already played 3 major events.
The first one was in January, the £1K Bolton leg of the GKUPT (Grosvenor UK Poker Tour). I never really got going in this event. I managed to limp through the 1st day of it, but ended up with the second shortest stack going into the second day. I mean if I had been thinking anyway properly at all, coming down to the last 40 minutes of the night, I should have been looking to gamble more, to at least come back on the following day with a moderate stack or not at all. It only dawned on me after the close of the first day, how not taking some calculated gambles was a big mistake on my part. I got off to a reasonable start on the second day managing to double up early on but that was about as good as it got, after a couple of hours play my pocket eights ran into Aces and I didn’t hit any suckout. I think I went there without enough attitude, with a kind of see what happens approach. Obviously you can’t plan for how an event is going to go but it’s important to feel determined. For some reason I did not have the same level of confidence or determination that I went with to the Paris event. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Bolton is just over 20 miles from where I currently reside, whereas having made the effort to go to Paris, I was determined to play good poker there.
Bregenz Poker Open March 2nd – 3rd 2007
Getting there
The second event was the €2K Bregenz Poker Open in Austria in March. I qualified for this event via a €100 satelite on Everest Poker. Before this event I knew Bregenz was somewhere in Austria but that was about it. There are no direct flights to any airport near Bregenz from Manchester. If I realised what an awkward spot this little town in the far north western corner of Austria would be to get to from Manchester, I probably never would have entered the online satellite, but I’m glad I did. This time my wife Adrienne came on the trip with me. There were closer locations like Zurich and Munich that we could have flown to but in the end we decided to fly to Salzburg, Austria , as it sounded like a nice city to stay in. We spent 2 nights there, staying in the pleasant and reasonably prized Austrotel Salzburg. Salzburg, a major tourist destination, is a very pretty and clean city and I think it’s safe to say we enjoyed our stay there. I didn’t realise how small the city was, in terms of size it’s comparable to Cork. We travelled by train for over 4 and a half hours to Bregenz. It was one of the nicest train journeys I ever had, passing through breath taking mountain scenery. Austria really is a beautiful country.
While in Salzburg I met my double in the dwarf park. He happily posed beside me, not sure who won the battle of the beer gut, you decide :)
The Tournament
I was determined after my poor showing in Bolton to play better poker here in Bregenz. I certainly think I managed to do that, though I did think my lack of exposure to live play let me down on a few occasions. The 2 day event kicked off at 15:30 on Saturday March 3rd. I played nervously at times and possibly my biggest mistake was not to continue bet enough. Nevertheless, after having survived a couple of coin toss all-ins, I was in reasonable shape with about an average stack, with just about 70 players left out of 200 entrants, after about 11 hours play and felt like I was playing better and better.
Then a big hand occurred. I was in middle position when I look down at the pleasing site of pocket Kings. A pretty lose Austrian player limped in early position, his range here is pretty big. I raised about pot size and he calls me for about 35% of his chips. The flop comes T88. I’m as convinced as I can possibly be that my opponent has a pocket pair and probably a small one at that, so I decide if I bet here he’s going to fold and I don’t want that. So I feign distress, as if I’m making out I have AK and can’t decide what to do, expecting and hoping he’s going to come out firing a bluff on the turn. The turn is a 5. Sure enough he pushes all-in and I can’t call him fast enough. He has pocket 4s and I’m pleased that I have played the hand really well. The only card that can save him now, and stop me from getting one of the bigger stacks on the table and being in with a real chance in this event is one of the two remaining 4s. Yeah you guessed it; he hit his 4 on the river. I never managed to get back to a decent stack again. Later on, when I pushed from the small blind with Q8o and ran into the big blind’s pocket Kings, my tournament was over, finishing in 45th place.
The following day, my wife and I decided to do some tourist type things, we got a cable car up a little mountain overlooking Bregenz. From the top of the mountain you can see 4 different countries, Austria of course, Germany, Switzerland and little Liechtenstein. We went to a bar/restaurant while we were up there. While we were there, we got chatting to 3 local guys, all in their early 30s. There were 3 really funny and different characters but you could see they were great pals. We had some real good laughs and interesting conversations with them. Although we just met them, it was one of those few occasions in life where you really feel a good friendship occurred in just a short space of time. Adrienne took their email address, but somehow ‘Miss Organised’ lost it! So now they probably think we weren’t genuine when we said we’d definitely send them an email. Anyway in the unlikely event that any of you three see this, drop me a mail, my email is found on the Contact Us.
So the trip didn’t end in Poker glory, but we enjoyed our stay overall.
Quick stop off at the Irish Poker Open
Adrienne and I were over in Portugal, completing purchase of a property there near the town of Ferreira Do Zezere. While there I got a mad brainstorm to compete in the €300 rebuy Pot Limit Omaha event of the Irish Poker Open on Saturday 7th April 2007. I think I played reasonably well here. I wasn’t getting so many cards early on. Definitely my lack of live practice told against me somewhat, when online you don’t need to hide the fact that you’re faced with a tricky decision. I think at times I made it glaringly obvious what sort of hand I had, by either my delays or lack of them.
I made it reasonably far, my exit hand I made a move to steal the blinds one from the cut off with QJTx (the QJ were suited), the small blind a pretty loose aggressive young player was deliberating, then I made a massive mistake by nervously looking at my hand again. He spotted this and unfortunately for me it was a genuine tell I had given away, he had something like AKJx and re-raised me, puting me all-in if I wanted to call, which of course given the pot odds at that stage I had to do, Still I wasn’t a massive dog, and when a Queen came on the flop I became the favourite to win the hand, the turn was a blank, and then the river put pay to my night when an Ace came. I ended up about 46th out of something like 180. It was a disappointing end to the night, but I really felt with some more live practice that Omaha tournaments are something I could do very well at, perhaps more so than Hold Em to be frank.
