On August 25th a group of three German poker players entered the plane from Frankfurt to Vilnius/Lithuania. We were Claudius Pleissner, who is relatively new to the game but showed good potential bubbling out in both hold’em events he entered. Christian Schulz, who many of you have played on Betfair Poker as “Favre_04” or “Benno B” and myself.

As it was a 9:20 a.m. flight I had not slept a second, and my companions also looked pretty tired, a power nap during the flight as well as in the hotel in the afternoon clearly were essential.

The Scandic Hotel was handily located being as it was only a 2 minute walk from Casino World. The tournament buy in was to be paid in Lithuanian crumbs or crowns or whatever the name of their currency is. The casino luckily offered a good currency exchange and the rate we got offered was 3,45-3,455 so no complaints there!

The poker room manager is Evelina Vilimaite, who is as competent as she is good looking and she is very competent. She was a big help with hotel reservation, tournament reservation and ran the tournament smoothly and with a blind structure that was as good as it can get for one day tournaments. In addition there was a free buffet and free soft drinks. I personally did not participate in the cash game, but from what I heard from other players the rake was fair as well. If you also take into account that the city of Vilnius is fairly inexpensive as well as have plenty of bars and good nightlife potential, I would definitely describe this event as a pearl on the circuit. The only downside was that Casino World only has a limited capacity of 6 tables, although this is due to increase for their four day festival at the end of October.

Two of the four events were Omaha, a discipline where Christian and I have very limited experience, in fact those were our first live Omaha tournaments, but as buy ins were manageable we decided to play them to gain some experience. And we would not regret it, I somehow managed to win the 55-runner €100 PL Omaha Re-buy event for a €7,300 payout.

On day 2 we managed a “German forecast” as Christian edged me in the 55-runner €150 PL Hold’em Re-buy event for €8,100 and €5,500 respectively. Christian’s win was even more impressive when you take into account that he did not re-buy at all!

Saturday saw the 45-runner €1,000 Hold’em Freezeout event that Grigorji Rudnik took down at 9 a.m. for a €15,500 payday. The final event on Sunday was the 32-runner €500 PL Omaha event (max 1 re-buy) that Christian won for another €14,000 payout!!! Bar one mistake, where he needed some help to win an all-in, he played 10 hours of flawless Omaha and dominated the final table that included some well known faces like Tony G (finished 3rd), Dave “El Blondie” Colclough (finished 9th) and Stuart Nash (finished 8th). That win also meant that Christian won the best overall player award, with me coming in second. So overall a very exciting and successful week, and we are planning on returning there to retain our new found titles.

The following is an interesting hand that I was involved in:

To lay down or not to lay down?:

In the main event we had a starting stack of 10,000 chips and at blinds of 50/100 a local player open-limped, another player limped, and I did the same from the button holding black 88. Dave “El Blondie” Colclough completed from the small blind and the BB checked. I absolutely loved the flop of J85 rainbow, and when the open-limper bet the pot size of 500, I decided to just flat call. 2 players folded, and “El Blondie” check-raised to 1,800, leaving himself with only 1,400 chips in front of him. Things got even more exciting when the local raised to 4,000 - probably to get a heads-up all-in with “El Blondie”. My turn to act, and I decided that the pot was now big enough and pushed all-in for a total of 15,000 chips having the middle set. “El Blondie” thought for about a minute then folded, later claiming he had had AJ.

The local, who had already invested 4,000 had a similar stack to me and faced a really difficult decision. He jumped out of his seat, sat down again, pulled his hair and repeated that procedure several times. You could literally see his heart beating at 200 beats a minute. I stayed calm and relaxed as I knew I was in front, if he had JJ+J he would have called immediately. As he seemingly had a big hand two pair was possible, but a low set most likely. Then, much to my dislike he started to talk with other players in Lithuanian language. I addressed this to the dealer who said “They did not say anything”. “El Blondie” then helped me convincing the table that you cannot talk to 3rd players during a hand, especially during an all-in, whether it be about the cards or about the weather. The local then turned to me “What do you have?”, no reaction from me. “You have 88?”, no reaction again. “I know you have 88”, no reaction but still praying for a call. “I know you have 88, but I call” he then said turning over the expected 55 giving him one out on the turn and one out on the river. While I had stayed relatively calm on the outside, the talking incident really had made me “fuming” inside, so when I turned my 88 over, I pointed with the finger at every single “talker” saying “You know I have 88, and you know I have 88, and you know I have 88, even my grandmother knows I have 88, so there is no reason to discuss it.” Gladly there was no miracle out draw and I doubled through.

What I find so interesting about this hand, is that a class player like Dave Colclough finds it easy to fold when he has a top pair top kicker, leaving himself with a seemingly hopeless chip position when he feels beat. An average player finds it so tough to fold, even if he “knows” he is beat. Big folds are certainly one of the main differences between top pro and “Mr.Average”.

Upcoming tournament schedule:

Having just returned from Barcelona, I have a busy schedule ahead. Later today I am leaving for London where I will be playing the World Speed Poker Open followed by the EPT London and some of its side events. Then I go straight to Vienna for a couple of tournaments, which is followed by the EPT Baden event. Later in the year I will definitely be going to the Caribbean Poker Classic in St.Kitts and then the Aussie Poker Millions. Betfair Poker is running several interesting satellites for both events, and I will try to qualify through them like I managed last year.

See you at the tables,

Buzzer