EPT Baden and My Trip to Europe

I haven't written a blog entry in over a month and I feel bad. The WCOOP ran me ragged. I was so burnt out from it. I shouldn't have played 16/21 of the events and I definitely shouldn't have done the WCOOP bets. Granted, I did get 3rd in it but 3rd paid nada. The structure is so good in the events that it is really tough to play all of the events to 100% of your ability. It just wears you down. I'm not going to blame my WCOOP main event bust-out on being a litte rundown but I'd say I was only playing to 90% of my ability and made a bad call against Imperium and was out at 200/400. Yea, he was at my main event starting table along with Ims0lucky and LURPED. Like are you fucking kidding me? 2500+ people in the tourney and I get Imperium AND Imsolucky at my table. How fkn lucky. Oh well.

Last week I arrived in Europe with Juan Carlos Alvarado(PrtyPSux although his name sounds like he could be the King of Spain or something) and Jonathan Depa (Hoosier Alum on FTP). The flight was pretty easy. We flew on a 777 and paid $85 for Economy Plus seats. Did you know 5 more inches of legroom actually makes a 7 hour flight sooo much easier? For a good 3 hours we did Dealer's Choice flips. We started at $50 a person and I was up a quick 5hundo. My game of choice was Badugi. We played Triple Draw, Omaha Hi/Lo, Omaha Hi, Razz, 7 Stud Hi and I quickly found myself down 1k once we upped it to $100 a person. That's when things got really interesting. JC mentioned something about Phil Laak and Antonio Esfandari playing 8 Card Omaha on I Bet YOU (great show, definitely need to watch it/dvr/tivo it, whatever). The way it works is you start with 8 cards and discard two preflop, then one on the flop, and one more on the turn. Some pretty sick situations turn up and the variance is insane. By the end of the flight I found myself down 2400 and JC was up 3k. I think at one point JC hit back-to-back-to-back 2 outers on the turn for the higher set. It was so brutal but so addictive at the same time.

We arrived in Frankfurt, Germany at 6AM and managed to get lost finding our luggage for about an hour and a half which was conveniently enough time to miss our flight to Stuttgart. The flight was $7 for JC and I but for whatever reason Hoosier's flight was $350. Bad beat sir. Welllll, when we changed our flights JC's flight was free but of course mine was $220 Euros. I have no idea how it happened but it was so unlucky. Sick thing is, the flight was a 45 minute flight. When we finally arrived in Stuttgart we had a pretty welcoming taxi driver. He spoke English pretty well and told us all about the city. Did you know contrary to popular belief that the Autobon is only speed limit free in a few strips of the highway, not the entire thing? Also, for some reason I thought all of Europe drove on the left of the road and the left of the car. The only place they do this is in the United Kingdom. On top of being very informative, he was attempting to be hip for us. He started talking about the music he listen to. It's called freestyle and the artists he like are Debbie Deb, Jonny B, and Stevie C. This music was popular 15 years ago across all the roller skating rinks in America. I dubbed it roller skating music because it was literally the only place listening to this type of music was tolerable lol. I'm sure you remember Debbie Deb's song. It went like this: "When I hear music, it makes me dance(bah buh!)" And if you are wondering what bah buh! is, that is in fact my translation of the beat from the song to this blog. I hope you know which song I'm talking about lol. Anyways, good guy, good cab driver, good times.

Finally we checked into a pretty sweet hotel in Stuttgart called the Le Meridian and crashed for a couple of hours before going to a Barcelona/Stuttgart Champion's League football(soccer) game. We got to sit in the Barcelona section and enjoy the amazing atmosphere of a football game. Ronaldhino was everywhere just owning anyone and everything and so was Thierry Henry. But this game, the MVP was by far, the goalie. Stuttgart played pretty solid even though we all expected them to get crushed. Multiple times the goalie managed to save the ball on the initial shot and then somehow got in position to save the rebound. Whoever he is, he really impressed me. Barcelona won 2-0 after Stuttgart just ran out of steam.

Stuttgart was a very nice city. All the people were really nice and very chill. The countryside was beauitful, as was the weather and the architecture. The food was decent although there wasn't much selection. It was either you have Weiner Schnitzel or sausages. Granted they both were good but got old fast. The beer was phenomenal there. I'm really not a fan of beer in general. Occasionally I'll drink a Corona or a Blue Moon: beers that actually taste good. Well, I must've tried 5 or 6 beers in Germany and all of them were really good. They also mix beer and lemonade that tastes just delicious. I had never heard of such a thing but after drinking plenty of glasses of them, I'm left wondering how is this only a German thing? It's amazing!

The next day we hopped on a plane to Paris and stayed there for 3 days. The hotel was a piece of poopy but the city was the nuts. I had the best creme brulee I've ever had there and pretty much all the food I had was top-notch. The Arche De Triumph was beautiful and as was the Eiffel Tower although we never made it to the Tower. We did however get to shop on the Champs Elysses. Talk about overpriced! But I gave in to it. I felt obligated to buy some overpriced piece of clothing or else I truly would not have experience Paris. So what did I do? I bought me a $290 Euro Versace dress shirt. I mean, it looks pretty f'ing baller but, what a spew. The most expensive shirt I had ever bought before that was a $90 DOLLAR shirt lol. Well, whatever, live it up or go broke trying. On our last night in Paris I got a hold of YellowHat, a poker player who has a side job as one of the best Magic players in the world. Sick life. He showed us a good time and we went to some Electro (it's like House on Red Bull) club where we made it rain. A good time was had by all and we left Paris loving the city and wanting more. Oh yea, and we left Paris with 3 hardcore hangovers. I vowed never to drink again. Yea, that lasted a reeeeal long time.

From Paris we made our way over to Baden, Austria for the EPT. The casino is real classy, as is nearly everything in Europe. I <3 style="font-weight: bold;">Poker Stars, I love the feel of the EPTS.
I got the feeling that poker is treated as an elite profession in Europe. I'm not saying it's not well-respected in the US, but sometimes I do get the feeling that some, not all, look down upon me. Like when someone asks me "is this what you want to do for the rest of your life?" I guess I should just ask them if they want to be an accountant for the rest of their life because that really sounds like an AMAZING job...if you like plugging numbers mindlessly. But I digress, so the event has a ceremony at the beginning along with a party the night before. Not some ho-hum gathering like the one at the PCA. That's like a happy hour, this is a legit party. It started off slow but as the free drinks started flowing, the party started growing (Man, Lil Wayne's got nothin' on me!) it ended up being the highlight of my stay in Baden. Apparently a lot of good looking girls work for Poker Stars. Go Figure. Once it started getting late the club was opened to the public and as most of the poker players left, girls came flocking in and eventually there were maybe 10 or so poker players still there. I was one of those who stuck it out and I was NOT disappointed. The ratio of girls to guys was at the minimum 2:1. And normally there's usually a good amount of not-so-good looking girls but those were few and far between. The average girl there was a 7 but not many 10s and only a couple of 9s but still it was pretty sick to have such consistency. On top of the high rating of most of the girls, they weren't stuck up and as far as I could tell were genuine. I felt like you didn't even need to game them, they just liked when you went out of your way to talk to them. Very refreshing. I'm not sure when I left but I just know it was at least 4 hours after I got there.

2. Poker Stars, your 'Team' needs an overhaul.
Over the two days that I played in the EPT I managed to play with almost all of the Poker Stars team members there. On day 1 I got moved into a table with 4 team Poker Stars members: Andre Aakari, Katja Thater, Thang Nguyen, and Noah Boeken. On day 2 I played with Rainkhan and Luca Pagono. It seems like they would rather sign people who cater to different ethnicities, genders, regions than the best players. I think their best signing was Daniel Negreanu and before that it was Greenstein. And both of them are their saving grace. Do I think the other players are not deserving? Well, most of them are deserving but after seeing two of the worst plays I've ever seen in a live event by a player on any 'team', I'm starting to think I DESERVE IT. I really don't like spouting off negativity but what other place better to do it than in your blog lol? But seriously, there are certain things that need to be said and this needs to be said. Here are the two plays made by the supposed team pros that were just baffling:

At 100/200 a semi-tight player opens to 800 with about 7k behind. A French guy and Noah Boeken call. Katja Thater, who has been extremely extremely tight has about 4k total. She ships it in for 4k. I think I have to fold Queens there against her. Well, Queens is tough, but for sure Jacks. Anyways, the initial raiser thinks and calls and the other two fold. What does Katja Thater flip over? TEN THREE OF DIAMONDS! And she says "Squeeze, woops". To make matters worse the guy has 44 and actually has her on 3 outs and the flop come 3dd turn d river d. So she hit all 7 cards with her massive hand. Now how does a Team Poker Stars player not know basic fold equity principles?!!?!? Are you kidding me?

The next play was done by Luca Pagano and this one isn't AS BAD but not far off. Luca actually seemed to have a little bit of game from what I could gather. He was pretty aggressive but his standard raise was 4.5x. What is that? It's just an awkward raise. Those were usually big hands and then when he raised to 3x those were weaker hands. At 300/600 75 ante he raises utg with a 25k stack to 1700. The big blind who has been solid defends with 20k behind and the flop comes 746dd. The big blind bets out 3k into the pot. He seemed like he knew what he was doing so I put him on a strong hand. Luca INSTAships it in. I'm thinking man, he's got a huge hand. The big blind thinks for a second and calls with 99. What does Luca flip over? 27cc? Whaaaat?!

Now Pokerstars why not just sign some legit players who will actually bring you a lot of publicity? SCTrojans went deep in the WSOP, has a charismatic personality, and is one of the best online players right now. Where was his signing? Or Imperium's? He doesn't even live in the U.S. which is even more reason to sign him and they showed him at the WSOP! He had 25o with bottom pair against 33 and they checked it down to the river. It was pretty much like the most random hand ever. Or even my signing? I haven't had a good live showing yet but like in the stock market, buy low, sell high :). Full Tilt is doing the smart thing. Signing players like WacoKidd and PearlJammer who have been around the game for a few years now and have had success live. They are good guys who will play well and uphold the Full Tilt Poker standard. Luckily Negreanu and Greenstein are two of the biggest ambassadors for the game, as is Raymer. Rainkhan is deserving as well because he was one of the first Supernovas and has grinded for years on Poker Stars on top of being personality like him or not. I personally like him. I think having respected, skilled players representing your poker site outweighs signing players who are from different markets. So now that you have those different markets, please start focusing on the good, deserving players. Maybe I should send Poker Stars an email after writing this rant lol.

3. Poker is booming in Europe

Cameras were everywhere taking pictures of all the Europe pros. It was similar to how the WSOP is with so many different poker sites taking pictures, jotting down chip counts, and writing down notes on hands. Because there are so many different countries in Europe each country has their own reporting site so there were tons of press. Another cool thing is the observers are allowed to watch very close to the tables as long as they don't get out of line. I didn't have an issue with anyone watching too closely the entire tournament. It was nice to just have people watching you even if they weren't necessarily there to watch you. The donks in Europe are one of a kind. Similar to the Party Poker golden days except worse and in a 10k event! They are different from the American standard donk. Amercians are generally weak-tight but Europeans--they love to raise. They just have no clue how to apply it. Most of the time when they reraise preflop, they are still pricing you in with some awkwardly small reraise. Like 3 people call a raise at 25/50 to 150 and this guy reraises to 300 in the small blind. And he wasn't the only person at the table playing like this. There were 3 others lol. So yea, go to Europe. Play in EPT. Embrace the donks.

Okay, so this has been a long blog but once I start writing it's like Pringles. Once you pop you can't stop! Anyways, my tournament went well but I ended up getting 50th when 24 paid. On day 1 I chipped up quite easy hitting a couple of sets and getting paid off on them. I had 20k after the first hour was over and ended the day at 24k after dropping to 14k midway through the day. My first table draw was pretty unlucky at first sight when i saw JC Alvarado who I traveled to Europe with, sitting next to me. How unlucky! Of course, the 7 others at the table were all really spewy and even with him on my left the table was dreamy. Obviously it got broken right away and I got moved to the aforementioned Poker Stars table. It was a pretty solid table with little room to get out of line with only one donk at the table who quickly busted. I was very satisfied with my play on day 1 and was looking forward to a big day 2.

Day 2 was so so soooooo brutal. I started at I'm sure one of the toughest table draws in the entire tourney. Granted it would be a standard table in a WPT but nonetheless I want donks! The table was solid guy seat 1, Luca Pagano, me, Farzyhad Bonyadi, Nazgul18, Mark Vos, Pascal Perrault, and the only semi-donk at the table in seat 8. Oh by the way, EPTs are 8-handed on day 2 which is lovely. However, I just assumed we were 9-handed for an hour until i realized it lol. So I might've loosened up my play a tad. Early on I got up to 32k after winning a nice pot with top pair but all day I wasn't pulling the trigger and going with my instincts. At one point I got check-raised by Luca Pagano and was really sure I had the best hand on a j34 rainbow board with 88 and just couldn't go with my instincts. Then another spot after he busted I just folded when i knew a guy was trying to isolate a shortstack.
When the table broke I found myself at 18k and was moved to a table with Dave Colclough and other than that I did not know anyone. There was a ton of raising going on though which made it really hard for me to manuever. On top of that, I was really carddead and the few times I try to steal some blinds I got insta-repopped. My stack dwindled to 13k at 400/800 and I had serious trouble finding any sort of momentum. I could've reshoved a little bit but I hate reshoving especially when your hand is Q4o or 92o. Like give me 46dd(kudos to Bel0w) and I'll ship it in there but I'd rather wait for a better spot with complete rags. At the dinner break I was at 11k going into 600/1200. I found a minirush and won 2 pots in a row with AK and 77 to bring me to 15k. After blinding down for another 2 orbits after seeing complete rags again I shoved K8o 7handed with 11k in 3rd position. RainKhan called me with 55 and I doubled up to 22k.

At 800/1600 200 ante the most questionable hand of the tournament came up for me. I raised AJo utg+1 7 handed to 4400. I was planning on raise/calling the 5 people left to act at the table except for this one guy who had seemed like he semi-knew what he was doing after doubling up on consecutive hands in standard spots and raising a fair amount after that . Also, I had an exchange with him at the EPT party that gave me the impression that he was actually better than he was! Damn you EPT parties! So he looks at me and my stack and reraises me to 15k with 3 people to act. Now what was going through my head at the time was: he thinks I have no fold equity, when in reality he was the only person I was willing to fold to. On top of that I'm raising in 2nd position with a very shallow stack so I have to be strong. Along with that, he has to be strong because he is reraising me! Even though I'm pretty short already, I am very confident in my short stack game that it wasn't the end of the world if I folded down to 15k. So I fold and move on. I think he is reraising 99, AQ+ there so I definitely don't see the need to put my money in there. After that hand the table breaks and at my new table I shove J7ss on the button for 11k and run into Aces on the big blind. And that's that.

I later found out after I busted that the guy had A9o and in reality his rationale was: durrrrr he's stealing again like that K8o hand, I'm reraising him. So I've been having nightmares about this hand for the past two days but at the time, I think I made the correct fold. Some people told me I should've just shipped the 19k in but I think I had a very small amount of value in raising because I think the other players behind him could've reshipped with A10 and possibly A9. One person even told me to open fold the hand but that doesn't seem correct whatsoever. Overall I think I played my A game on Day 1 and B- on Day 2. But regardless, I was the most carddead I've ever been in any tournament online or live on Day 2. I never saw AA or KK on either day and didn't see a pair above 88 on Day 2 along with AJ twice, and AQ, AK, KQ once in about 200 hands. No suited connectors except an 810ss utg that I folded and a Q10cc on the button. It was just so sick. But I battled and put myself into position to cash with a little luck and that's all I could've done with the cards that I got aside from that AJ hand. Oh well, poop happens.

Now I'm off to Barcelona to play the WPT if I can get enough people to buy action. After that Foxwoods and then Niagara Falls. At least I'm finally enjoying live poker again.

More to come when I get back to the states or maybe if I go deep in Barcelona :). Oh and by the way to sum up Europe best. Id say the United States is the filet mignon of countries. Well all of Europe is fucking kobe beef!