Showdown Poker Tour

My month kicked off by playing some regular days of online poker. After that I flew to London to participate in the first event of the freshly launched Showdown Poker Tour – for which I had qualified on Betfair Poker.

In anticipation of this event I had checked out their homepage and spoke to the organisers. The tour had great potential with good ideas in the mix and a nice blind-structure, so everything seemed set for a great tournament.

I arrived at the Gutshot Card Club on the afternoon of May 6th. The room was well prepared, the final table/featured table was first class and they’d hired well-known tournament director Matt Savage. However, disappointment set in. There was an expected 100-150 runners but in reality the field consisted of 23 (yes twenty-three) participants. In my opinion this was due to the €5.000 buy-in which was probably a bit too ambitious for a first event. More importantly, they were lacking the massive support the EPT receives. On top of that, the Gutshot was holding a £500 event on the same day to which they added £5K – this generated 128 runners, including faces like Mark Banin and Willie Tann who played in that rather than the “big one”.

Anyway, back to the tournament. It was decided 4 places were to be paid and we started on 3 tables with 8,8 and 7 runners. The next problem was that basically all of the 23 players were either good or very good. So, I sat down finding WSOP hero Andy Black to my immediate left, Ram Vaswani to his left and Bennyboi next to Ram. Other notables were the rest of the Hendon Mob, El Blondie, Woody Deck, and recent EPT winner Mats Gavatin.

My first big hand occurred in level 1 at 25/50 when Andy Black made it 125 (his standard raise) from Under the Gun(UTG) and the Small Blind(SB) called and I found red JJ in the Big Blind(BB). I thought for a bit then only flat called - I love to play for a set in the early levels. Andy commented “Hmmm, you thought about raising”. Flop came 983 (2 spades) and I checked hoping to check-raise but all checked. The turn paired the 9 and as the SB checked I bet 300 into the 375 pot and Andy quickly called, SB folded. The river is the Jack of Clubs so I now hold the full house. I wasn’t sure what Andy might have, so I bet 600 into the 975 pot which I felt was callable as well as unsuspicious. To my surprise Andy raised 600+900 which I re-raised by an additional 1500. Andy mumbled “hmmm, what could you raise me with” and, together with his earlier comment, I was sure he would correctly figure me for a full house. I could literally see he knew he was beat but couldn’t find the strength to pass. He called me showing QT for a straight. I have great respect for Andy as a player but I’m sure he would agree with me this was not his finest hour. This pot gave me some ammunition and kick-started my tournament.

With the small field, a lot of the play was shorthanded which played right to my strengths - all I do nowadays is play Sixpaks or shorthanded limit cash. I nicked a lot of pots then won a massive one with a flush vs. trips. The main struggle during this period was not my opponents but the room temperature. Without air conditioning, we were sweating.As soon as they put it on it was freezing cold and blowing into our necks. So they kept switching it on and off which basically made it even worse. To be honest, I had never seen anything like it - totally unacceptable conditions that all players complained about. I continued to run the show and at the end of the day we were down to 9 players with me holding 74000 chips from a starting stack of 10000, which was more than double that of my closest pursuer.

The next day started well when I took out the short-stacked Woody Deck with my A5d+A+5+d+d+d, beating his KK. Unfortunately that overkill outdraw seemed to have used up all of my luck for the day, as all went steeply downhill from there.

Now playing the 8-handed final table I made it 1000 (my standard button raise) at 200/400 from the BU which Barny Boatman RR to 3000 in the BB. I moved all-in and after a lengthy thought he called for 22000 more showing AQ. So I was not even in that bad a shape but my hand failed to improve while Barny hit an ace.

I decided to slow down, but certainly could not resist playing JJ from UTG and made it 1.500 to go. Two players flat called me and we saw a flop of T62 with a flush draw. ‘Good enough’ was my first thought and I bet out 5.000 to protect my overpair. But facing a raise of 5+10K and an all-in for roughly 30.000 total behind me, it quickly dawned on me that my overpair looked pretty but was actually worthless, so I folded accordingly. I was now eager to see a showdown between the other two players. The raiser (Bjorn Helander), who had about half his stack in, made an amazing lay down folding QQ face up leaving himself pretty short-stacked. The all-in player, Dan Wicks, didn’t show but later claimed he had flopped a set. Well, I guess we’ll find out the truth if and when this event will be shown on Eurosport in July.

Things did not improve at all, my raises ran into re-raises and I went absolutely card-dead - actually I only saw one more pocket pair in 4 hours of play. I then lost a pre-flop all-in coin flip with AJ vs. Björn Helander`s 99+9. Yeah it was just one of those days. I have to admit that I ran one bluff that misfired and got way too expensive and all of a sudden we were at the bubble and I found myself as the joint short-stack. Looking down at my first good cards in hours, I raised from the SB only to get re-raised yet again by Mats Gavatin in the BB. I decided to take a stand as I was still big enough to make him fold and moved AI, but Mats quickly called showing KK. A board of QJ22K gave me the straight but him the full house and I was out, leaving myself devastated. Yet another blown opportunity in a “big” live tournament.

The Showdown Poker Tour run their next event at the end of the month in Dublin. It will be interesting to see if their plans to expand the field will work in such a short time. Personally I will not be there as I take a break from live play until the WSOP.

All-In Poker Camp in Baden, Austria

Having returned home to Frankfurt, I finalised my preparation for the poker camp. This involved quite a bit of work, especially as I was holding a 90-minute seminar on online poker with an emphasis on online STTs.

The whole camp turned out to be a fantastic event and we got great feedback all round. Betfair Poker had sent 3 players via satellites to this event, and we managed to share a couple of hours together consuming a couple of bottles of Champagne! I can confirm they were absolutely thrilled to be there. Their packages included a very nice hotel as well as fantastic food. The Betfair Poker boys also did us proud with Bifta finishing 2nd and Philly 7th in one of the MTT freerolls that were held. Apart from the seminars, the most popular feature were the Sit`n`Gos with the pros. This was a fantastic opportunity to teach and learn in a small group. It was great to see how many players improved their play during the four days.

The next camp is planned for February 2007 in Sun City, South Africa and “threatens” to be even bigger and even better. So even if a direct purchase of such a camp package might be out of your prize league you may want to have a stab at it via a satellite.

Keep your eyes peeled on Betfair Poker for more information about this event – it’s coming soon.

Veterans Table Tennis World Championships

Having once again only been home for 4 days I flew to Bremen, Germany to support my 85 year old grandmother Ursula Bihl in the Veterans Table Tennis World Championships. I knew my grandma played well, as she is still capable of handing me a beating when we play once a year during her Christmas visit. Even so, I was amazed at the general level of play all round. She won the bronze medal in the singles and even managed to win the title in the women’s double, together with her British partner Edna Fletcher. One of my friends was joking, how do you spell Bihl? With a capital B, for Bloody Competitive! :)

What has this got to do with poker though? Not much apart from me using my laptop Saturday night in the hotel room and having one of my best poker sessions ever.
I returned home yesterday and am now caught up with my homepage and my affiliate business. I feel that I’m slowly but surely shifting from being a pure professional poker player to more of a poker business man. And I certainly appreciate the different aspects and challenges it brings to me.

See you at the tables,

Buzzer