HI GUYS!
it s christoph kreindl, winner from vienna.just read this blog and i am very happy to see that this tourney is pretty famous in britain.
i d also would like to thank all the guys who cheered for my win
here some thoughts about the tourney:day 1the structure for this buy in was really really good. i guess u cant get more for this amount of money.
my tourney started out really bad. i was tired and was not in the mood for poker honestly.
the first table was VERY tight. i guess there was no one busto in the first 4 levels.
i tried to make some silly plays and got called with A high on the river as i must have had a really bad image.
i was like down to 3k in chips pretty soon i was worried to be the first to bust
gerhard - the runner up was at my first table too and i thought he s a pretty good player from the first hand on. at the end of day 1 and during the breaks we chatted a bit about poker. we even had a beer before going home after day 1. we didnt even think about we would play heads up the next day for 7000 euros. alltough he was one of the chipleaders after the first 11 hours of play i had just 15BB or so. and i didnt give me good chances.
day 2the payout structure was pretty flat and with my 15bb stack and starting in the BB of course i only had 2 words in my mind: ALL IN. i think i was all in like 15 times the first 2 or 3 levels. i can remember 3 calls when the oponent had 3 outs and they all held up...one time the cutoff pushed as a shortstack and i snap called with AJs. he had KJ. it held up.
one time i was a bit lucky as i open pushed in the SB with some weak hand like Q4o....
BB also shortstacked called with some hand like A3 and i sucked out the first hand in the tourney after like 13 hours of play...
so far so good. after that hand i had like 200. with an average of 140 k or so. chipleader had like 350k i think.
at his time i d started to really like my chances cause i hate to play shortstacked. i love to be table captain and in order to be that you have to have a solid stack.
but i really didnt plan to give my new chips away so my plan at this point was grinding it up and pick up small pots against weak oponents. i thought when we are down to the final table i will think about a new strategy depending on the players and stacks and so on.
final tableat the FT there where 2 really huge stacks and i was like 5th in chips i think...there where some shortys around so i thought i dont have to get too agressieve at the beginning cause i can earn way more money by folding medium hands.
till there i was so ****in carddead it was really sick. i think i have never been so carddead in my live in a tourney.
till there....i got like KK QQ JJ AK like every orbit.
after having the 5th or 6th monster hand preflop and everybody always folded i really got pissed.
than i got my call as i pushed with JJ...TT called with less chips than me and of course the river was the fkn T.
i was down to 4 blinds or so and i thought it was over....but how do they say? a chip and a chair (i won a live tourney 2 years ago with 1 SB left when we where down to 4 by the way*g*)
after some up and down and a suckout from me where i open pushed and the guy left to me called with TT i was in bad shape with my baby ace. but as the ace hit the turn i was back with a pretty healthy stack.
down to 4 i really got in the zone. i gained more confidence and played pretty solid imho. the shortstack wasnt really good, gerhard was left to me as chipleader and left to gerhard was a russian guy who had pretty big stack. but gerhard picked on him every hand so his stack shrunk and shrunk. as i gave him the final hit with a hand very well played by me as i think. the situation was perfect to me as he had position and he was reall agressive. i hit top pair with a king kicker and let him hang himself with his pocket pair lower than the 9 by check calling till all was in the middle. after that there was the biggest pot in the tourney so far. it must have been over 1 mio chips. gerhard and me went all in on a 8 high flop on a dry board which was pretty sick cause of the shortstack in third place. as we both had 89 it was a split. pretty nice hand and it showed pretty clear gerhard and me wouldnt give the other one a single chip for free.
the shortstacked guy was out pretty soon as gerhard an me had like all of the 1,8 mio chips in play.
heads upi hope this post doesnt get too long or boring for u but i really wanna mention the heads up battle. not only that there was 3k euros at stake in heads up play. we where 2 good players who REALLY wanted to win this match.
the chips where: gerhard: 1.2 mio - me: 700k
as i already played many hands heads up online i gave me a little edge over gerhard. i would never say i would give me an edge on a full table....maybe i would say i come close to him if i have position.
but heads up is a whole different game and i saw a little advantage for so i didnt give up at any point even as he was chipleader 3:1 most of the time. my plane for the HU play was pla a lot of small pots and be really patient cause there was much money at stake.
i asked him before starting play HU if he wants to make a deal. we had already won 2500 euros at that point. but with my HU experience i know it can really change fast expeacially with 2 agressive players like us. we both played big bluffs and wherent afraid to pull the trigger if we had the right feeling.
i suggested to take 3000 euros each and play for the remaingn 780 euros and the ticket worth 1200 euros.
he didnt agree so i wished him a good match and we played.
my stack was up and down about 500k to 900k. lots of small pots i had really good hands.....hit some monsters but didnt get payed off.
next hand was the key hand of our match. as we played a common minraise strategy preflop in the heads up i openraised A9 to 40k he 3bet 110k i called.
flop was 944. he cbets 125k and i was pretty sure to be ahead. i tried to make him think i bluff and tried to look pretty confident and 3bet 300k with just 300k behind.
we put all the money in and he had 22 so my plan perfectly work.
i was chipleader the first time and i guess we played like an hour heads up but it felt like 3 or 4.
than we talked about the deal again cause i thought just one setup for him could change everything in one hand.
he agreed now for the previous discussed deal. a few hands later there was the last hand....pretty sick heads up...pretty lucky for me.
as i had 9Ts on a 8JQ flop and we put all the money in on the flop with gerhard holding QT which he can never get away from with our history my floped nuts held up and i shipped it!
endthat was it i wanted to make it shorter at first but when u play 17 hours u got some things to tell
i hope u liked it and i ll follow on this blog.
thanks for the team of this tour they did a really good job.
i m looking forward to play the 1k pound event maybe in a few months.
what is it with the 20k package?
? i m really curious now
ck
