A few days ago, I travelled to Austria to play the Local EPT Event (European Poker Tour). The EPT is currently on season 3, and it consists of 6 or 7 tourneys, where the winner usually gets between 600,000 and 1,000,000 USD. Thats not too bad :-). The events are televised, and not just the final table; usually there is a show for every day of the event. In this event, I took 10th place, and I'll attempt to share my experience with you. <READMORE>Very simply put, this was the best place I've ever played poker, and I intend to go there many times over the rest of my life. The casino was amazing, the hospitality was outstanding, everything was extremely well-organized, and every single player said the same thing: this is the best place I've ever played.
The tournament room was the second floor of the casino, a very spacious place, which could very easily accomodate over 200 players. There was a large buffet, which they kept refilling constantly, and at any point of the day or night, you could just run and grab a plate, bring it to the table, and have a bite while playing. Needless to say, the food was great, and it ranged from pepper steak to salmon (yuck) and Chinese. Waitresses were constantly walking around to keep the players as comfortable as possible.
In the far end, there was a cafe-bar like space, with couches and some tall tables, which was a perfect place if you had a non-poker-player friend with you (girlfriend, wife, even family). This might seem as not so important, but it is for me. Next time, I intend to bring my girlfriend, family, or friends with me, and I'll be sure that they will feel comfortable! This wasn't the case in other places I've played (WPT-ACF in Paris and WSOP).
Anyway, enough about the casino... I think you get the picture
.The event was run extremely well. There were very few delays in the starting times, and the tournament staff always made the right decisions. However, after day 2, there were lots of inevitable TV Camera delays, which are not too good for the game.
Also, the structure of the event was extremely fast. The event started with 10k chips, with all the usual blind levels (including 75/150 and 150/300). However, the blinds went up every hour, and therefore, by the end of day 1, the M of the median stack was around ten, which is not too good. If you add to that the TV delays of days two and three, then you realize that you have a turbo tournament with a structure significantly worse than the Stars or Party majors (yes, once upon a time Party majors existed....it's not an urban legend).
Lets get to the subject now, my poker experience. Despite not having two superstars on every table (Marcel Luske was one of the few big names), the average player was quite strong! The field was definitely stronger than the WPT in Paris, and I suspect that it is stronger than a normal WPT event. There were a lot of Scandinavians in the field, many of whom were strong players, and the only weakish players in the field were older European players who had many years of experience nonetheless.
So the tournament started, and I started playing my usual small pot poker. I got involved in way too many hands, but nonetheless I started to chip up a bit. Quite early, I was up to about 13k, and for the next hour or so I constantly moved up and down between 10k and 14k. I never had any good starting hand, which was ok for me, since I made some hands, and I was able to pick up a lot of pots uncontested. In general, things were going really well; if I wanted a call, I was getting one, and if I didn't, I talked my way to a fold. Also, I was setting up my opponents in order to win a big pot.
I was talking all the time, and I was often telling my opponent on my right to limp, so I could limp behind and we'd see an unraised flop. This worked for a while, but then opponents started raising us, as we were doing that every single hand. I folded a few times, but at that point I was ready....and what did you know, I looked down at pocket kings!!! I did my the usual talk, and I convinced my opponent to limp UTG. I also limped, and the next player raised. I continued my talk, convincing UTG to re-shove, and I did that also. The other player also called quickly. Both my opponents had about 5k in chips, and I had 12k, and we were all in. The hands were KK vs. QQ vs. A9. That was the break I needed, and after that hand, I was cruiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiising!
For the next 3-4 hours, at least until the blinds hit 200-400, I played a large number of pots, and I was chipping up very nicely---quite nicely, actually. At 200-400/50, the table changed significantly, and near the end of the day, I had a big stack LAG 2 to my right, Kill-Bill with a short stack, a big stack on my left (Tang, the eventual Winner), who played a solid game, and Colson10 two to my left with yet another big stack. This table was extremely strong, and as a result, I tightened my game significantly. It was loose enough, however, to repop Kill-Bill's button raise with A 4 when he had kings and double him up, and also also loose enough for me to double him up again in a 20k pot, where I raised UTG with A8 and called his BB KQ push when I was commited. This hand left me with about 40k, just above the 35k average. I think I'm Kill-Bill's new best friend
.The rest of my tournament will be detailed in Part II of this article, which will be available soon!
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