End of a dissapointing project!

It has been again way too long since the last time I have updated this blog, again… again… At least or unfortunately I have not played a single hand of live poker since last blog entry’s trip to Rozvadov either. All in all I have played not more than 20,000 hands online since Aug 1st, which is mostly because of my work.

Needless to say that I have failed to achieve my goals, well-defined and written down within this blog, by far. My ambitions were not only to create a stable return over the period of, by now, more than one year, but to be active with this blog and my poker activities in general. Neither was the case in the past months and that is why I will be putting my project to an end a couple of months earlier than its normal end date.

Of course, I will still do the remaining payouts according to the unused bankroll in a little while. After all, I want to thank everyone who stopped by this blog to read my poor results and I want to give an even bigger thank you to my investors, who believed in my project and me.

Yours, Alex

P.S.: Will I keep on playing Poker? Of course… 😉

Upcoming trip: DPT in Rozvadov, June 21-24

As announced in my last blog post, I have planned another small poker trip since Las Vegas is not going to happen for me this year – at least not during WSOP… TryABluffPLS (a poker enthusiast I got to know trough two different poker communities, e.g. AndyRA’s community), a friend of his and me will be going to the Czech Republic to play some tourneys.

Lets be more precise: our goal is Rozvadov, a little town with 700 people, located directly at the Czech-German border. Its size probably more than doubles every time the King’s Casino invites all poker players to their special events. Due to the strict governmental regulation the casino is well-known to the German poker community since there are no (legal) privately-owned poker clubs in Germany – not at all comparable to Austria for example. Previously hosted GCOP’s (German Championship of Poker) in Rozvadov attracted hundreds of players and will do so again in July with tournaments ranging from ~100 € up to the 1,100 € Main-Event with a 200,000 € guaranteed prize pool.

Our goal though will be the Deutsche Poker Tour (DPT), a rather small tourney weekend with deep and fast structures. Still, its Main-Event guarantees a prize pool of 44,444 €, which is calculated on a basis of more than 300 players paying the buyin of 144 €. Obviously I am not counting on huge cashes within this trip – the overall amount of buyins will be less than 500 € for 3-4 tourneys – but I love the structures and want to aim for multiple cashes to make it worth the 700km trip.

About the structures: there is nothing more fitting than the subtitle “Deep & Fast” for the DPT. Even though the Main Event only has blind levels of 25 minutes, a starting stack of 800x big blinds should keep everyone out of deeper trouble if no bad beats or sick setups occure. The side events all have stacks between 12,000 and 20,000 and blind levels of 20 or 25 minutes. Up to 400 big blinds to start with is also worth the fun and the low buyins.

I have not been to Rozvadov yet, but I am really looking forward to the casino and another 4-day trip full of tourney poker, maybe served with a little cashgame as a side-dish – talking about cashgame reminds of my promise to give you an update on the current bankroll (all played events are within the tables of “Played so far… –> Live Overview & Online Overview“): 3,396.50 € with 990.50 € losses coming from online qualifiers and 613 € from all other live events including cashgames.

Wiesbaden no good for me lately…

Wiesbaden is not treating me too good lately with numerous visits without cashing. I finished the past Sunday’s and today’s 75 € Rookie Tourney without cashing and busting in both after 90-120 minutes. Today’s bust was really uncalled for, since it looked like I was able to build a large stack during the second blind level of 50/100. I openraised my pocket queens to 325 in UTG+1 to see the next player, who just lost a larger pot, go allin with 2,200. The cutoff (with a stack of 6,500) did not even tank but flat-called, leaving me thinking since he flatted AA & KK earlier orbits (even without other players raising to him preflop). In the speedy structure of the tourney the decision was rather easy and I went allin myself with 4,400. The cutoff snapcalled raising doubts within me if I held the best hand. Fortunately he flipped over pocket tens and only an ace on the flop kept me away from moving up to almost 9,000. No ten on the board at least gave me back my wagered chips. During the third and fourth blind level AKs twice, KQ and pocket nines were either raised on the flop without hitting or the pocket did not improve with overcards and action. Finally I called an allin of an equal stack with AK again and my last 2,300 chips to race vs. pocket nines, hit my king on the turn, but loose against his four-flush on the river.

Right now I am sitting at the 1€/2€ electronic poker table to play some cashgame being 50 €, but I was a little late, so I have to wait for more players to join the second table since others moved to the first, by now full, table.

After tonite I most likely will not be playing until next week, because I am driving down to my girlfriend’s place to celebrate her birthday, but stay tuned for an already planned poker trip taking place in two and a half weeks time – I will let you know the details in my next blog post!