Saar-Lor-Lux Poker-Festival – Final Day

After my mediocre start into the Saar-Lor-Lux Poker-Festival on Thursday, it was time to get a good run going and at least survive another 50 players to make the money and play on from there. The day in Neunkirchen’s Spielbank “Lucky Jungle” started with blinds of 500/1000/100, which was good enough for 41xBB, respectively almost 17M*. History repeated itself, because it took only three hands to cut my stack down to less than 30,000 chips and yet again it was a misplayed hand – not the best start I suppose…

Time went by and after the first three levels of the second day my stack shrunk to 22,000, even though I did not play many more hands nor made any mistakes. However, it was the fourth level I believe, when my tourney live was on the line for the very first time: I used my BB to push KQ with only button and SB calling the big blind of 3,000 before my action. The button called instantly and the SB folded and the 60/40-race was on vs. AJo: blanks on flop and river, but a queen on the turn doubled me back up to slightly more than the stack I started the day with. From that point on, I never fell significantly lower than my starting stack of day 2.

During the same orbit I won a large pot with a full house, my pocket aces were paid out completely and with a stack of 140,000 I called a shorty’s re-raise allin and busted him AQ vs. AJ to move up to 180,000. I just notice, that I should not have started to write this post on Saturday and then waited until late Sunday to finish it, because I have probably forgotten half of the hands I wanted to write about. Well, somehow I managed to make the money with well-timed aggression against short stacks and/or in good positions.

With 15 players left I maybe started to play not aggressive enough to gather the chips I would have needed to have a better position at the final table, That was one of the reasons, why I joined the final table as a shorty after the 10^th and 11^th place busted simlutaneously. I started the final table with 290,000 at blinds of 20,000/40,000/3,000 – an M of just above 3. After paying the blinds and antes for two orbits and only winning blinds and antes with QQ, I was forced to push allin with basically any two cards from the button – it was 64 – but ran into SB’s 66. My bust in 9^th place gave me a payout of 570 € (550 € after tip), which is about 25 € winnings per hour – that number really bugs me, but it was a cash and that is what counts!

Tomorrow will be the 5^th tourney of iPoker’s Warrior League 2012, a Turbo Deepstack Freezeout, the second last tourney before the finale! I am going to try to achieve a better result than last Wednesday, when I just missed the final table with a 10^th spot for 14 points.

*: ‘M’ in its simplest form is simply the ratio of the blinds (and antes if applicable) to your current chip stack. At a full table you add both blinds together and divide your chips by this number to give you an ‘M’ number. For example if you have 3000 chips and the total blinds are equal to 600 then your ‘M’ is 5. What this number tells you is how many more ‘orbits’ of the table you can survive without being blinded away. In the above example, assuming you played no hands, you can last for 5 orbits.

Saar-Lor-Lux Poker-Festival hosted by Christophe “Crazysheep” Gross – Day 1

Saarland Spielbanken joined forces with Christophe “Crazysheep” Gross to host the Saar-Lor-Lux Poker-Festival 2012 with day 1 played in Saarbrücken and day 2 played in Neunkirchen. A few more than the originally announced 80 players started heat 1a @ 1pm, at least another 80 players are still playing heat 1b, that started @ 8pm. Both heats have 10 blind levels, each 30 minutes, with a starting stack of 30,000 and blinds starting as low as 20/40. First things first: thanks a lot to Crazysheep, his fanclub and the team of Saarland Spielbanken for the organisation – keep up the alliance, the players enjoy it!

I played heat 1a and had to work my way back up from 13,000 chips after losing with a, frankly speaking, very bad call holding AK to a rivered flush. Taking quite many small pots, I managed to move back up to 33,000 after six levels, already trailing the average, but still in very good shape looking at my stack in terms of BB left. Level 7, 8 and 9 gave me no playable hands at all – no pockets, no suited connectors, not even limpable one-gapper, not even talking about AK, AQ or something like that. Therefore at blinds of 1000/2000 in level 10, the last of the day, it was time to switch to push-or-fold. First chance to gather some chips was with 66 from the button only against SB and BB (= chipleader). I decided to push instead of raise and commit myself and the BB called after tanking for a while with J10. The board blanked out and I was back up to 44k.

Since there was only one more orbit to be played after this hand, I bagged 41,800 chips for day 2 – actuallly not that bad of a stack since blinds will be dropped back to 500/1000 with a 100 ante to start the second day. 42 players survived heat 1a and I expect at least the same amount of players from heat 1b to make 85-90 players starting @ 6pm in Neunkirchen. The average stack at the end of heat 1a was just below 58,000. Most likely 25 players will make the money and that is goal number one for tomorrow. Good luck to myself!

Saar-Lor-Lux Poker-Festival in Saarbrücken

Thanks to Christophe Gross, a.k.a. CrazySheep, Saarland Spielbanken is launching a very well created and hopefully also well organized tourney one week from today: the Saar-Lor-Lux Poker-Festival. The tourney will be a 2-day event with two starting sessions on Thursday in Saarbrücken and a final day on Friday in Neunkirchen.

The starting sessions will have a 30,000 stack to start with for 80 players each session and 30min blind levels. Unfortunately the blind structure has not been posted yet, but I am sure it will kick off with 50/100 at max to have at least a 300BB starting stack (rumours are that they are even starting as low as 20/40 which would result in an enormous starting stack of 750BB!!!). I have already paid the entry-fee of 165 € for the first session (starting at 1pm), but will use the re-entry option for the second session at 8pm in case I bust and in case there still are open spots to register for. The complete buyin (165 or 330 €) will count towards to project with a 24,000 € overall prize pool and more than 5,000 € for the winner. 25 places will be paid out with 288 € for the last players making the money.

I am thinking about playing tonite’s 75 EUR Rookie Tourney in Wiesbaden, but I cannot decide whether I have enough time to get home from work and then drive over to Wiesbaden and make it in time. Only in case of an early bust or sold out tourney, I will be playing some 1€/2€ cashgame at the electronic poker tables with a maximum buyin of 200 €. Another brief overview about the bankroll’s amount will be posted in one week time, since buyins to online and live events have become more over the past weeks.