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Barcelona EPT Day 1a
Tuesday 28th August
We landed in Barcelona around 4pm which was about 24 hours later than scheduled. A final table at the Gutshot series of poker was the culprit but luckily the £10k I got for 3rd was enough to pay for new flights. After checking out the hotel we decided to sample some of the local culture for a few hours...ok so we played online, but at least the thought was there! After dinner we headed to the casino to check on Mickey Wernick's progress, as he was playing day 1a. Unfortunately he was to be eliminated in the last 20 minutes of play; his pocket kings no match for pocket deuces, which had turned into quads by the river. Mickey had survived on a short stack for most of the day; avoiding going broke with kings when his opponent had aces in an earlier level. No one plays a short stack better than Mickey but unfortunately the last hand was one too far.
Praz and I both play tomorrow. Hopefully the cards will fall a little more kindly for us
Barcelona EPT Day 1b
Wednesday August 29th
Praz and I were both drawn to play Day 1b. Play this year starts at 5pm each day which fits in much better with our normal routine than the dreaded midday starts. My start table featured several players I recognised but none of which I knew by name. I was later informed by Praz that the American guy to my left with a feint kiwi twang was in fact Kirk Morrisson, runner up in the Bellagio $25k championship event, earlier in the year. One of the more noticeable things about the field this year was the American invasion. Whether this is more to do with the "Negreanu effect" or the fact that most of them were coming over for the WSOPE anyway will only be known when we visit the later legs on the tour.
My 10k starting stack varied between 9 and 12 for the 1st couple of levels. On returning from the 1st break I was involved in my 1st decent sized pot. A young Russian player raises from mid position to 700. He is on a shortish stack of almost 5k total. On the button I find a pair of jacks and make it 2000 to go. When the action is back on him he goes into the tank for a good few minutes I conclude he has one of 2 hands - AQ or a pair such as 9´s or 10s. The more he dwelt the more I thought he had a smaller pair and so I started to try to talk him into putting his 5k in the middle which he eventually did. Unfortunately for me it was AQ of clubs, which I didn’t particularly want to see but still, I’m in good shape. The 2 Clubs on the flop were always going to make things trickier and the 3rd one on the river sealed the deal and I was down to 7k.
One level later I was moved to a table and was seated opposite Johnny Chan. Unfortunately my now shorter stack didn’t give me much room to play and I reverted to "lock down" poker mode, playing quite tight and waiting for some good spots. After a very dry run of cards you can imagine how pleased I felt to look down at 2 jacks in the big blind, and even more so when the aggressive player in mid position makes it 1k to play (blinds now 150/300/25). Just as I´m considering how best to get most value out of this hand, the small blind (who I’ve not seen play a hand yet) makes it 3,000 out of his 7,500. Although this seems like a standard pass now, at the time it was very difficult to keep my hands from pushing my stack over the line after the cards I’d been seeing for the past couple of levels. I did pass and the 2 players ended up getting it all in (AJ for mid position, QQ for the small blind) and I was thankful that the action hadn’t been passed around to the SB originally as that would have been a much more challenging fold, JJ in a blind war.
I managed 1 attempt to "steal" the blinds from late position with a pair of 5s and was called in one spot. Unfortunately my super tight image was not enough to get a pass from the guy on an A K 8 board, and now my stack was even shorter. Coming back from the next break and with antes at 200/400/50 I was looking for the 1st unopened pot to get my chips in, with any decent holding. QJhh was good enough but it got looked up by the small blind’s AK. The 10 9 4 flop was just a tease and as the turn and river blanked out I was eliminated. A disappointing tournament for me but not for how I played, just that nothing really happened for me and no good situations came up for me to build on. It’s very frustrating for this to happen here, after running very well in smaller tournaments back home for the last couple of weeks but that is tournament poker. I went over to check on how Praz was doing. He too had had a slow start and was on around 7k the last time we’d chatted. I caught sight of him on a new table and looked to have been doing well. Over the next few hours his stack rose to 25k and he was looking good. A late table change saw him seated next to Daniel Negreanu but unfortunately there wasn’t much time left before play ended, for them to renew the friendly rivalry they both enjoyed at the WPT Championship in March. Praz finished the day on around 16k and was looking forward to the first day 2 proper of EPT season 4.
Postscript: Unfortunately Praz did not make it past Day 2 of the event.
Read More of Karl and Praz’s poker adventures at http://pokerhitsquad.blogspot.com/
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