In my last column, I wrote that you would have to hurry if you wanted to participate in the
EPT Copenhagen. I knew that the event would sell out quickly, but I never imagined that the 400 seats would be sold in only 18 hours. Now, most players fight over the satellite entries bought by various sites on the Internet.
In Sweden, the
Swedish Championships for online poker were held at NordicBet.com. I'd like to thank the Swedish Poker Federation and NordicBet for a fantastic event: 10,000 in starting chips, 20-minute periods, and more than $1.5 million added by the site! The competition lasted two days, stopping with 30 players remaining and resuming the next day. In my opinion, the event might very well be the best online event ever; the blinds structure was far better than, for instance, the regular Sunday tournaments with huge guaranteed prize pools.
First prize was a whooping $700,000 and was won by Henrik Josefsson. Henrik doesn't even have an Internet connection; he stayed at a hotel in order to be able to play!
Cruises
I've written lots about different poker cruises, but that's not strange. Since our local police departments in Norway, Finland, and Sweden are currently forcing poker clubs all over the countries to cease and desist as rapidly as they can, we have to play in international waters, instead. In my opinion, there's no good reason to force players to play like this. There is one casino in Finland, four in Sweden, and zero in Norway. Sweden is the fifth-biggest country in Europe, and getting from where you live to the nearest casino could easily be a six-hour trip - one way! OK, I can understand why you'd want to restrict cash games to casinos only, but for God's sake, let the people play tournaments for their own small money at their local poker clubs. It's not about fighting over large sums of cash, it's about people meeting and having fun!
Anyway, I digress; so, what about the poker cruises? There's one ship going between Sweden and Finland once a month, and one between Norway and Denmark biweekly. For more information, see http://www.pokercruise.eu. If you want to play poker with Johnny "bad_ip" Lodden and the rest of the Norwegian high rollers cheaply - go by boat!
Poker in print
We now have no fewer than three poker magazines in Sweden, since Slitz - the largest "lifestyle magazine for men" in the Nordic countries - just published a poker issue. Luckily, there are no naked female breasts in it, but considering that the editor in chief resigned after the first issue (which was actually "OK" in terms of quality), I'm still suspicious.
I almost miss back when, 10 years ago, someone would bring back a few copies of
Card Player from a trip to the U.S., and the rest of us would pass them around until they were barely readable.
Ola Brandborn is a writer and blogger for Poker.se.
