EPT Monte Carlo and SCOOP

My last month started with one of my last stops before the end of my 2.5 month long trip to Europe.  Travelling from Berlin, I arrived in Monaco on April 22^nd with my final stop being in what is now my second home in Kiev thanks to which I can freely play on Pokerstars.com.

The trip to Monaco for the EPT Grand Final was unfortunately very expensive and without cashes for me.   I made the final table of the 100k Euro buy in but, alas finished in 8^th place and only 6places were in the money.  This was actually probably the largest bubble I have ever experienced as I got 0 for 8^th and 6^th place received 310k Euro.  Although my down-streak and general slow start to 2012 has continued, I have been working on updating my game non-stop and have continued to view this whole experience optimistically believing that this is all teaching me some valuable lessons for the future.  In the last month or so I have again become quite confident in my game and believe that good results will soon again follow.

I arrived in Kiev on May 2^nd and was to spend 20 days there doing some work for Pokerstars, playing lots of SCOOP events and also playing the RPS Grand Final.   This time instead of staying in an apartment like I usually do, I decided to stay at the new Fairmont hotel, which just opened.   Although it was somewhat more expensive, it made sense for me for some security reasons as well as having perfect internet there (necessary for SCOOP) and a gym inside the hotel.  Overall I was treated very well there and my stay was very comfortable.

I was very excited to play as many SCOOP events as I could, since there were some big buy-in and large field events which I knew would have some great prizepools.  Throughout the series I cashed in a lot of events and made 4 final tables in big buy-in events but unfortunately did not cash for any significant amounts in any of them that would overcome the buy-ins for the other many expensive SCOOPs.  It’s frustrating to not have been able to win one of them, but overall I still did quite well on the SCOOP leaderboard, finishing around the top 25 overall events and top 5 in the high buy-in events.  This gives me great confidence overall as WSOP is about to start and there will be even more different types of events with bigger buy-ins and bigger prizepools that I’m really excited for.

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