Poker In Prague And A Trip To Melbourne

I haven’t written a blog for a while. Since the last one I’ve played a few live tournaments in Prague and been grinding some cash games online. Other than that it’s been a few heavy nights over Christmas on the drink.

I enjoyed Prague. I missed out narrowly in both WPT and EPT events but played well enough. The cash action there was pretty good but i didn’t get to play very much as i was trying to bubble both of the main events!

It was a great idea bringing the two events together and a lot of players showed up for the two weeks. It’s also a cheap place to stay and has some very nice hotels. Not to mention a great place to go out drinking! I’ll be back next year I’d imagine.

I want to talk about one story from the EPT main event. I’m at a very good table and then this Italian player sits down on my left who had sat beside me also at EPT London on my left too.

I’d say he plays 95% of hands and usually likes to come in for a raise. He’s a very nice guy but dealers like to have a go at him over every small stupid rule they have. Anyway the table is obviously unreal now. There was two nine-way flops (one player wasn’t there otherwise it would have been 10 handed) which is crazy for a €5,000 buy in tourney.

I started with 30k and quickly found myself down to 2k due to a pretty horrific beat by our Italian Hero. But I fancied I could probably out last him because he only has one gear and he books his flight for 8pm on the same day he plays to go back home. In London he was asking what the chip leader had in level two when he had a million times the average and looked very unhappy when he heard somebody had more than him.

Anyway I went on a rush and finally took him out of the game some hours later. He seemed to be getting very stressed out about his flight and his chips were gone below average. When we were all in he said “let’s not show”.

I was like “ok, fine” but the dealer and players weren’t happy of course so we showed one card each – a nine for him and ace for me. The flop came ace high and he started walking. He actually had like 2k left and he told me i could have them too.

Unfortunately that’s not allowed. In London he was multi-tabling live events while cashing in the main event. With his style of play that’s some serious effort to do! I finished the day with around 60k I think, which wasn’t bad from my 2k spin up.

I’m off to Australia next Wednesday, which I’m really looking forward. I think Paddy Power Poker still have some satellites to qualify for the Aussie Millions main event in Melbourne which is a great tournament. The festival is run very well and they have plenty of cash games going around the clock. Also the first tennis Grand Slam of the year is on there too. I spent last year mainly just punting and watching the tennis. I hope to play a little more poker this year though.

I played quite a lot online near the end of the year. The higher stakes games on Paddy Power have picked a lot recently which is great. I didn’t play the WPT in Ireland this week in the City West and a few people asking why not?

Well I was bit tired and had a few things to do before Australia but my main reason is I think its scandalous to be paying 10% or higher in these high buy in events. But I can see why the organisers keep increasing the % on the registration as the players don’t’ really seem to care what they pay!