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04-01-2007, 07:36 AM
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Monte Carlo Trip Report
Here we go again. Although I can’t win any money in Poker Stars tournaments, I keep winning entries to land based events. This will be my 4th, after 2 PCA’s and last year’s Main event of the WSOP, Now I get to go overseas for the EPT grand final in Monte Carlo. I am more excited about this trip than any of the others for totally non poker related reasons. This is a part of the world I’ve always wanted to see. I’m about 10 hours away from seeing the Mediterranean Sea for the first time. We will stay in Monte Carlo for 7 nights, then I have 2 nights free before we fly home from Rome. Right now the plan is to take a train to Rome and sight see for 2 days, but we haven’t booked anything yet. I’m hoping to not have any days off in Monte Carlo, because that would mean I final table, but in the unlikely event I get knocked out before that we’re hoping to visit Pisa or Florence which look to be not too far away on the map. We’ll either rent a car for the day or take a train. It’s very unusual for me not to have the enti9re trip planned out in detail, and I’m partially stressed and partially exhilarated about just winging it.
I’ve had real good success qualifying for these events in the big Sunday qualifiers Stars always runs. I get nowhere in double shootouts and FPP events, but this time I qualified through the FPP route. Two seats were up for grabs and with 71 people left I was in 71st place after losing a hand as a big favorite. But I went on a tear after that and with 9 people left I had more chips than the other 9 combined. I pretty much coasted in from there, not totally stress free but I never dropped out of 1st until we were 3 handed and even then it was 150K, 140K and 25K. The short stack hung on a lot longer than I expected but never got to a point where a double up would pull him even. So now my wife and I fly overnight to Frankfurt, then get a connection to Nice. It’sa6 hour time difference for us, and she is coming off 4 straight 12 hour night shifts, so we’re really hoping we can sleep on this flight. Unfortunately we have little kids both behind us and across from us, and the body odor coming from in front of us is overwhelming. This could be a long flight. I was lucky and will start on Day 2. That gives me an extra 24 hours to overcome any jet lag, which will be important if I end up playing several long days. Comments on the forum seem to indicate that Day 1 looks tougher, but that list only includes the Stars qualifiers so I’m not expecting any kind of a soft day. In fact I suspect this will be the toughest field I’ve ever faced. The main event this past year was full of terrible players, and the 2 PCA’s I’ve played certainly had enough average players that I never felt overwhelmed. But this is a 10K Euro event which is 16K in Canadian dollars and I don’t think there will be many soft spots. On top of that I’m running just horribly lately. I was on such a heater form the end of November until 3 weeks ago. I only played online a couple of days that week because I went to play a medium sized live CPT (Canadian Poker Tour ) event, and I had 3 straight 1K losses that week and no tournament cashes. Although I cashed in the live event(and honestly against that field I would have to run real bad not to cash) I still felt like I never got any cards and only some real timely bluffs and steals let me last as long as I did (17th for $2200). Then I took over a week off to take the family skiing at Mt Tremblant north of Montreal. When I cam back I was all set to play again and promptly dropped another 6K with zero tournament cashes in 7 days. I played the Stars $162 4 straight nights and had horrible luck each night. Approaching the bubble with an average stack each time I had AK lose to A6 all in pre-flop, I had KK lose to A4, then KK ran into AA and finally TT lost to 99. Saturday night was the icing on the cake. I had actually posted a small win on Friday so I was slightly optimistic on Saturday that I had turned the corner. Although I busted out of the $162 early again, I did win a WSOP sat to get into the $650 on Sunday. (the 2nd of the week, why can’t I do it in cash tournaments?), I then final tabled in the UB $120 bounty, going out 8th for a little over 1K. Then I sat down to play 2/4 and started winning right away. I was up around $700 when the bubble burst in the biggest pot I’ve ever played. I started the hand with just over $800. UTG (over 2K) mini raised to $8. He does this consistently, plays poorly and has been running sick hot. The button calls and so do I with 99. BB just sat down and has $400. I have notes on him that have him at 52/35 and he makes it $44 to go. Both players call and I call too. Do you ever have those feelings when you’re running good? I knew the 9 was coming. Flop is a beautiful K 9 5 rainbow. I check and the BB bets $125. Utg raises him to $275. I am too excited to even think about smooth calling and milking it and I shove the rest of my $760 in. BB takes a long time thinking and now I know I’m good. No way UTG has KK and I’m praying he has 55. Finally button calls and UTG calls in a shot. Now of course the hands aren’t exposed until after the hand, but my pain is much better felt when you know I’m against AK (UTG) and K5 (UTG), don’t you just love these games. SO with just over 2K in the pot and my week turned completely around a blank turns and the case K hits the river. I pride myself on not being a big tilter, but this one pushed me over the edge. I dropped another $1500 in the next 20 minutes making terrible calls with overpairs and TPTK when it was clear my opponent had flopped a monster. Sunday wasn’t any better as I played the 2 12:45 tournaments at Party and Stars and got skunked again. So here I am, with no confidence in my game or my fortune heading out to play the toughest tournament I’ve ever entered….and I’m so freaking excited just to be in Europe. I’m looking forward to catching up with all my 2+2 buddies, I hope Karen and I can get a dinner in with the Stolzman’s who we befriended at our first PCA. Mostly I want to see as much of the countryside as I can. I’m really looking forward to seeing Rome, even if we don’t have enough time to see anything, and quite frankly my expectations are so low that if I do anything in the tournament it will be a bonus. Monday has now turned to Tuesday somewhere over the Atlantic. It will be 7:30 AM in Frankfurt when we land but just 1:30 to my body which isn’t even my normal bedtime yet. So I won’t get to sleep until we’re actually in Monte Carlo, then we have the cocktail party Tuesday night. Thank God my body is used to strange sleep patterns. Tuesday Well the flight to Frankfurt was truly a horrible flight. The screaming children kept screaming all night. And both mothers thought changing diapers in the seat was a perfectly normal thing to do. And then to top it all off we arrived 1 hour late, raced through the Frankfurt airport and missed our connection to Nice by 5 minutes. So now we had a 3 hour wait for the next flight. Karen managed to grab a little sleep in the airport, but I couldn’t so when we finally flew I slept the whole 90 minutes to Nice. The trip to Monte Carlo was fantastic. Beautiful scenery, a knowledgeable cab driver who did 140 the whole way while describing the Grand Prix course to me. The hotel is beyond my wildest imagination. Elegant and spectacular. My wife just about did handsprings when she saw the room.. Davidross has scored major brownie points for this. We got to our hotel at 4:00 PM having slept 1 hour in the past 36. We decided to have a quick nap and didn’t wake up until after 8:00 PM. The welcome party started at 7:15 and by the time we showered and got down there we’d missed 90 minutes of open bar, and most of the food was gone. We did manage to grab a couple of drinks, I met Gobbo before we even got into the party, he was trying to buy some Euro’s and needed someone to get him past the door since he had forgotten his bracelet. Times like this I realize I’m too hard on my teenagers for forgetting things, and just how young some of these poker players are. I really like Jimmy, he’s a great kid. We got into the very crowded and smoky nightclub, and it struck me that it might be 20 years since the two of us went into a smoky club with loud music. Just before my daughter was born. I saw lots of familiar faces, and heard more languages spoken in 15 minutes than I’ve heard in 5 years. I love this place. We found Steve and Linda Stoltzman at a table and joined them. Pascal Perrault and his entourage were beside us and 2 different film crews seemed to be following their every move. I spoke to Colson and Schaeffer for a little bit, but didn’t get anything to eat. SO when the party started breaking we made a quick tour of the poker room, it is fantastic beyond belief, then headed back to the lounge for a nightcap and a sandwich. Delicious and small is how I would describe it. Between the small portions, the smoking and all the walking they do, I think I understand why the Europeans are so rarely over weight. Absolutely exhausted, going to head down to the poker room for the start of the event, register for my start tomorrow, then do some sight seeing. The goody bad from Stars is much improved from Atlantis, much more in line with PCA II and the WSOP. Kudos to Stars again, I’m so looking forward to this week. Wednesday After a good nights sleep I woke up with a sore hip. I get this once in a while and didn’t have any Advil so I went down stairs to the shop called the Drug Store. Turns out they aren’t allowed to sell medicine. Hmm, they might want to think about changing the name. So I went on my first tour of Monte Carlo to find a Pharmacy. What a beautiful walk. The store didn’t open until 9:00 AM so I went down to the beach and got my feet wet, it was very cold. I browsed the Mercedes showroom windows and the Bently and the Rolls Royce. I saw a Ford GT and 2 Lambourghini’s drive by in the 20 minutes I was waiting. After I got back to the Hotel we went down to the player’s breakfast. Players and family are provided with a complimentary buffet and like everything else here it is very elegant. It is nothing like the buffet’s we’re used to in North America in terms of volume however. Probably what we need, but I suspect I’m going to be hungry a lot this week. After breakfast we came upstairs to get ready for a day of sightseeing, when my wife fell asleep. She didn’t wake up until just before the 2:00 PM start for day 1 so we headed over to watch the start. It was very dramatic, with music piped in and the TV table slowly exposed on an elevated stage… smoke pouring out and the very nice trophy sitting on the table. I couldn’t help wonder how I’m going to get it home on the plane. My wife told me she wants to put flowers in it. Once they were underway we took a taxi to a shopping center on the far side of Monaco (Even though Monaco is only 2 sq kilometers, it is divided into 4 regions, and Monte Carlo is only one of them. In fact our Hotel isn’t really in Monte Carlo). My wife had forgotten to pack some essentials (that’s my nice way of saying underwear) and didn’t want to pay $100 for them so we headed to their version of Wal-Mart where she assures me that the price was reasonable. Then we started walking back. We walked up to the Royal Palace which is waaaaay up on top of a steep hill. As we climbed it I couldn’t help thinking how impossible it must have been for invading armies to capture the castle. We walked around the entire grounds before walking down the back way to the Monaco yacht club. We have a friend who owns a yacht. It’s around 55 feet, sleeps 11, and carries a zodiac and 2 sea-doos on the back. It’s the biggest boat in the Hamilton Yacht club and can only berth in one spot there because of it’s size. It would have been the smallest boat in the harbour today. We sat down for a nice lunch looking at the yachts with the start position of the annual Grand Prix right behind us. Eating outside the hotel might be the only way I will go home with any money at all. We walked the rest of the way home past the Hotel de Paris and the famous Casino, but weren’t dressed to go in. Another opulent display of cars out front, Roll’s, Bently’s Aston Martin’s. Honestly the Porsche’s and Mercedes looked like Kia’s in that company. When we got back I checked in the poker room to find my buddy Steve already busted out during the 3rd level. He overplayed AK with a K on the flop and lost to AA. I hope my fate tomorrow is better. The structure looks very slow which should be great for me. 15K to start, 90 minute levels, and they have the in-between levels that Atlantis didn’t, 25/50, 50/100, 75/150, 100/200 then 150/300 before antes kick in only at level 6. In order to accommodate the slower play though we have to play 7 levels each day which means finishing around 3:30 AM. I hope I have the stamina for it. I remember how tired I got at the WSOP at 2:00 AM this year. It leads to bad mistakes. Let’s hope for a good table or good cards tomorrow. Thursday Wow, what a day. Right to the chase, I finished with over 75K in chips which should put me in the top 20. I got to play with a whole string of big names which was nerve wracking and exciting. First things first, I started at a table where I didn’t know anyone. There was one aggressive French Canadian at the table and 9 pretty straight up players. We stayed together until dinner except 1 player who was moved because we started 10 handed and they wanted to play 9 handed. We never busted anyone and I think the biggest pot of the day was around 4K. Pretty dull actually, just the way I like it. My stack never got below 14K (we started with 15K) and never got above 19K. I had KK twice and AA once, but couldn’t make anything off it. The blind structure is super slow, and no antes until level 6. Gobbo hates it, but I love it. Patience, Patience, Patience. In fact the only guy who ended up short at that 1st table was by far the most aggressive player, but he kept getting played back at, and when he took a stand was always behind. They broke our table after dinner (halfway through level 3) and I grabbed my 20K and walked down to find….Gus Hansen in seat 1 with over 30K, Magnus Petersson, who won the EPT Copenhagen event in seat 3 and Chad Brown (2006 player of the year according to the magazine I read on the plane ride over here) in seat 4 with over 30K as well, and a Rene Angelil(Celind Dion’s husband) look alike in seat 9. I got seat 6 so at least all the guys I was afraid of were on my right. Almost right away I picked up JsJc and raised. Gus called on the button…oh [censored] here we go. Flop was 3 low clubs, I bet ¾ of the pot and he folded…phew that was easy. Gus is quite a character to watch. The hair on his chin is longer than the hair on top of his head. And his chest hair, which we were all treated to because of the tank top he wore, is longer than both by a mile. His chips aren’t piled at all, they are scattered around his 4 electronic devices which appeared to be a cell phone, Ipod, and 2 dictaphones. After each hand he played he spoke into one of the machines. I asked him if he was writing a book, and he said actually he was. He also fell asleep at one point and had to be nudged awake when the action got to him. Gus knocked out the Ptersson, and his spot was taken by Bjorn-Erik Glenne, who won the EPT Barcelona this year (Beating Ivey heads-up) who had around 70K. Almost right away he hooked up with Chad Brown. Chad called his pre-flop raise and his flop bet. The turn put a 3rd diamond on the board and after Glenne checked, Chad made a nice sized bet. Glenne called. The river was a small non-diamond and again check- bet – call and Chad did indeed have the flush and now the table chip lead. Next Chad raised pre-flop and got 2 callers, including Gus, then Glenne re-raised from the BB. Chad popped it up again to around 4 or 5 K (blinds are only 100-200 here) and only Gus called. Flop is Q22 and Chad makes a big bet. Gus calls pretty quick. Turn is a 7 and Chad bets 20K. Gus has maybe 24K left now and goes into the tank. 15 minutes, and I’m not exaggerating. I decided I wasn’t calling a clock on Gus Hansen, but the Rene Angelil look a like finally did. It was 15 minutes of amazing chip tricks though, the man is dextrous. Gus finally folded. Then the big hand of the day. Once again I wasn’t involved. 5 or 6 way limped pot. Flop is K T 7 two clubs. Chad brown bets out from MP and Rene calls from the SB. Now Gus raises from the BB. Chad calls pretty quickly. Back to Rene who announces All-in for around 25K more. Here goes Gus again, muttering “I can’t fold the best hand twice in a row” while staring at Chad. It only took 5 minutes this time for Gus to call. Two all-ins and Chad called pretty fast. AK for Rene, T7 for Gus, and……9c 6c for Chad…Wow. Turn is the 8c making the straight and the flush, and neither other player has a club. Gus has 4 outs, Rene is drawing dead. River blanks and Chad has 120K and I feel better because Gus is gone. I spend another 2 levels just hovering and building up my tight image. Glenne is the guy I pick to go after. He raise a lot of pots and always c-bets them. SO I start calling him in position. One hand I call with AK, flop is J33 and I raise his flop bet. He folds pretty quickly. The very last hand of level 5 (150/300) I call on the button with 88 (2 limpers) and the BB raises it up to 1200. The other limpers fold and I call. Flop is T 7 3 rainbow. He bets 1500 and I call. Turn is another 3. Check, check. River is a 2, and he fires 2K. I took a little time, mutter about what a bad call I’mmaking, but make it anyway and he shows A7. That gets me to 28K at the break. I then ate my secret weapon, a Granny Smith Apple. I took it from the dinner buffet earlier for my midnight snack and boy did it work. As level 6 starts I finally get some cards and make some hands. An Italian guy with around 40K raises to 1000 (150/300-25 now) and I just call with QQ. I’m calling in position a lot now, because it denies the really aggro guys a chance to 3 bet me and really disguises my hand. Of course it means I give a lot of chances for cards to come and beat me, but I tend to get a lot of chips from aggressive players that I wouldn’t have had I raised. We are heads up on a T high flop. He bets 1500 and I call. Another small card on the turn and he checks to me. I bet 4K and he calls pretty quick. River pairs the bottom card on the board and again he checks. I bet 7K this time and again he calls quickly. I show my Queens and he mucks. He’s clearly not happy, and is still feeling that way when my big hand comes up. Glenne raises again preflop and I’m actually getting ready to muck my Ad 4d when Italian guy calls. Now the pot is looking juicy and I call too. I’m close to 40K now and Italian guy is down to around 30. We see a three way flop of 532 rainbow. I didn’t need to wonder how to draw anything out of these guys. Glenne bets 2K and Italian guy raises to 6K. Yikes. I think about smooth calling for about a half second (I really wonder if it might have been a good idea though) before I pop it up to 20K. Glenne starts muttering away and takes a long time to fold (he said later it was QQ), and Italian guy takes even longer. He keeps staring at me as I sit as still as I possible can. He has to have a set so now I’m rooting for a fold. He finally pushes and I call. 22 for him and now the worst part, dodging the last 2 cards. Blank, blank. Wow on the internet I lose for sure. I’m over 70K and my hands are shaking. It takes me 3 hands to stack them all. I am proud of this hand. Glenne raises (notice a trend here?) And I call with AK. Now the BB makes it 4500, and Glenne pushes all-in for his last 12K. BB has around 30K. I really think about pushing myself. If I can get the BB to fold I can play Glenne for a 28K pot for 11K. But can I get the BB out. I decide I can’t and I muck. He calls and shows QQ. TT for Glenne. Q on the flop almost seals it, but of course the turn gives Glenn a gutshot. He doesn’t get there though and he’s out. I’m sorry to see him go. William Chen takes his place. Are there any bracelet winners in the room who haven’t come to our table? I raised AQ in LP and the BB comes over top all-in for 10K. I decide it’s not worth it and fold and he flashes AQ. Doh. Finally with only 45 minutes left in the day we break and I go to my new table to find Gavin Griffin next to me. Gavin and I know each other from 2+2 but had never met.I introduced my self and we chatted. This table had been together all-day and had only busted the first person at 1:00 AM. As a result the big stack was around 38K. So I used my stack on the very first hand. I raised with red 5’s in LP and the BB called. Flop is A84 all hearts. BB bets 1500 staring at me the whole time. Blinds are now 200/400-50. I smile at him and call. Turn is a black 3. He checks, I bet 4500, and he folds, flashing me an 8. It’s nice to have chips. That’s the last hand I played. New table draws tomorrow, lets hope to avoid the aggros on my left. I’ve been very lucky with draws so far both here and in atlantis. Hope it keeps up. Friday I’ll do this report as it happened. Started the day at a table that was scheduled to break 2nd. I’m the chip leader in seat 6. Gavin Griffin is in seat 2 but short stacked, Carlos Mortensen is on my right with 40K and a Scandinavian(lets call him Lars) with 70K is 2 to my left. I only have him covered by 5K. The day starts off perfectly. On the first hand Lars calls a raise from the BB and folds to the C-bet on the flop. On hand 2 I raise from LP with 88 and he calls again from the SB. Flop is 632 rainbow and when I bet the flop he check-raises me. My read is that he just wants to send a message so I grab all my brown 5K chips and re-raise to 25K and he mucks. The next hand I play is when Gavin raises in EP and I call him from the CO with Ad Qd. Flop is AK4 and I raise his flop bet and he folds. The only other hand I play at this table is KQ with a K on the flop and I’m up to around 94K. The real news from this table is that Lars is really bad, and blows through his 70K in the 60 minutes we play. Almost all of it goes to Carlos along with some more from a real old guy (even older than me) in the 1 seat. Carlos raised UTG to 2K and the old guy calls. Flop is K high and carlos bets 3K. Call. Turn rag he bets 6K..call. River rag, he bets 14K..call. Carlos shows K8 and the guy mucks….Doh. I don’t know what that was, how he had the balls to bet each street with an 8 kicker, and what the guy called him with. Carlos is over 100K and starts raising every pot. I’m glad to see the table break. My new table has a lot of smallish stacks. One young Scandanavian kid has close to my 94K. I get the 2 seat and the first hand I pick up 66 in the cutoff. Young Asian kid (AK47 at 2+2) who I recognize from Turning Stone raises to 2K. He has 20 to start the hand. I call. Flop is QQ6. He bets 2K and I just call. Turn is a blank. He checks and I bet enough to put him all-in. He calls, shows KK and stands up and puts on his coat. River is a K. Ouch. My luck has turned. There are a number of small stacks looking to get it all in and I play another 30K pot (15 of it mine) with TT vs AK. I lose again. Before long I’m back down to under 60K. That table can’t break soon enough for me and now I get moved to Phil Hellmuth’s table. Well as luck would have it I pick up AJ, AQ and AK in my first 4 hands and raise all 3 of them. Phil can’t helpbut comment on how the complexion of the table has changed boys. I want to say “I’m probably the tightest player in the room Phil,,good read” but I just chuckle. Phil is pretty short stacked and when he gets re-raised he pushes, and gets called right away. KK for Phil, AA for the other guy and out goes Phil very quietly….NOT. He stands up and starts “I can’t believe this [censored] [censored]!!! I come all the way to Monte Carlo, play rings around all these clowns for 2 days and this [censored] happens” Apparently it was the 3rd time he had KK or QQ run into Aces. Poor Phil. I feel bad for him….NOT. I play pretty well here. It’s a good table for me, No one trying to run over the table, No commanding stack but the Guy who busted Phil has around 150K now, but he plays pretty predictable. One of the Boatman brothers takes Phil’s place. I’m able to build back up to around 80K, but for the life of me I don’t remember how. I do however decide which guy I want to get my chips from. He’s been raising any time it is unopened before him and I have come over the top of him from my blind once and he folded. He went over the top of an LP raise from his BB and the guy called him. He had QJs and sucked out on the AK. So when I raise to 5K with JJ from EP, and he pushes 45K all-in I call almost right away. He has AQs, better than I gave him credit for. I’m due to win a race and this is a pretty good flop for my J’s…..JJ3. My Quads are good and I’m at 130K. There is an Indian guy the blog is calling rkruok who has nursed a medium stack all afternoon. He finally doubles up and is still stacking his chips on the button when it is folded to him. He puts in a raise that seemed pretty casual. I have KcQc in the BB and I make a substantial raise to 18K. He looks at me a long time and calls. I don’t like this at all. Thankfully the flop comes K high and I bet 40K and he folds pretty quick. In hindsight I don’t like the big bet. If he has AK I’m going to lose a lot of chips. I could hace achieved the same thing betting 25 or so. I’m at 150K when we break. The next level I don’t play very well. I get caught with trouble hands in bad position. AT in the BB against an LP raise. I just call and when the flop comes KJx I fold to the flop bet. KQ in the SB against an LP raise and again I flop overcards and a gutshot, but I fold to a pot-sized bet. I let my stack whittle down to 120K and I’m not in the right frame of mind. Maybe it’s fatigue. Now the big hand of the day. Rkruok raises to 6K and I call with Ac Qc. 3 more calls behind me, in the CO, button and BB. Flop is 976 2 clubs. Two checks to me and I bet 15K into the 32K pot. Now the cutoff goes all-in for 77K.Folded quickly back to me. 62K more to me, 124K already in there, I have 105K left. If he has the set I’m not getting the right price, but if he has anything else I think I am. He might even have a worse flush draw. I make the call and he has top set including the 9c. My club doesn’t come and instead of 240K I’m at 40K. We break shortly after that and I’m pretty dejected, but my wife and Brandon Schaeffer give me a pep talk and have me pretend I just got to 40 from 20 and it seems to work. I go into hyper-attack and bank on the tight image I’ve built up.My first BB is raised from the CO. I push my 40K over his 8K and he mucks showing me AJ. I had 64. Then I push my 48K from the SB with Q7 and the BB folds promising me to bust me next time I try it. My next BB I have TT and call the guy on my left (he’s the guy who won the pot with 999 and the one who promised to bust me) who had raised UTG. I call planning on playing any flop without an A or K. The flop is all low, I check he bets 10 K and I push again. He mumbles again but mucks. I’m wuickly back up to 56K. Then a guy who is hard to describe opens UTG for a raise. He has certainly been on tilt earlier. He has a thing going with Boatman and the Big Stack where he keeps threatening to go all-in if they raise his blind. In short it’s impossible to tell what he’s playing. I look at an Ace first. As I’m peeking at the 2nd card he announces “If you go all-in I call” so I said OK, and I pushed. My 2nd card was a 9. Now he sits back like he was shot..”ohhh” and you have to say it with a French accent. He asks if I will show him If he folds. He asks if I want him to call. I don’t say a word or even look at him and this seems to get him mad. I clearly don’t have a clue if I want a call or not. Finally he acts really mad and calls. He has AQ and I’m screwed…Until the 9 turns. Wow. Some good luck. Over 110K again. He busts out on the next hand. I feel sorry for him…sort of. Now my image is shot, so of course on my next button I get Aces for the first time since level 1. rkruok opens for 8 of his last 40K and I make it 20. He calls and pushes a T73 flop I call and he has 88. Turn blanks..and river…8. [censored] the poker gods are fickle. Back down to 70 instead of 155. I get moved for the last 8 hands to a table with Johnny Lodden and Ram Vaswani who each have around 300K I make one re-raise to get to 80K when the day ends. 53rd out of 88 with 64 to be paid. On to Saturday. Saturday A couple of good things to start off the day. First of all my table looks good. There are no huge stacks, so my 80K is a threat to everyone and I should have some folding equity. And because we have no big names at the table we won’t be the TV table which is fine by me, I don’t need anything extra to think about. We get going about 30 minutes late. They have to put mic’s on the feature table players and someone is late. I’m feeling pretty nervous as I can’t decide how badly I want to sneak into the money. I hope I won’t freeze up completely, but I also don’t want to donk off in 65th place. I’ve spent a lot of money in the last 3 weeks and 20K Canadian will cover my expenses. I’m in the 1 seat with 80K, A british guy is in 2, I played with him a bit yesterday and he has around 75K. 3 seat is William Hill who I saw win a UB televised tournament, and he has 170 or so. There is a young scandy in 4 with only 45K, the guy in 6 I think is Spanish, he is over 100K and AK87 is in 7 with over 100K. Ross Boatman is in 8 with the short stack around 35K. Blinds are 1500/3000 with a 300 ante, so each orbit costs 6900. I can’t wait too long. I fold a couple of hands and then from UTG I get ATo. I raise to 9,000. I guess I will be able to pull the trigger today. Just when it looks like I’ll get it past AK87 calls from the SB. I’m never sure what image I portray to the young guys, but I think he wants to play pots with me, so he could probably have anything. The flop is 3 low cards. I push a stack of blue out (20K) and he folds pretty quick. Phew. We actually started with only 85 left not the 88 I had thought. And the number drops pretty quickly at first. We lose 1 player and when we get to 80 players they break the table beside us. Rkruok who cracked my aces yesterday takes the empty seat with a stack really similar to mine. So now both of the guys who hit 2-out rivers against me are on the table. I raise with 33 and win the blinds. Another orbit later I raise with KQ and win the blinds. Then I raise 55 and get called by the short stacked Finn in seat 4. Flop is AT7 and I bet 20K. He mucks. I’m managing to stay ahead of the blinds and ante’s but just. We’re down to around 75 players when I raise KQs from EP and get called by the Spaniard in the SB. Flop is T84 and for the first time today I check behind on the flop. He fires a big bet after the blank turn and I fold. I came so close to pushing, but something scared me. The guy beside me asked him if he flopped a set, which was something I suspected too, but he said no he had a pair. Now I went a couple of rounds without picking up anything and when we hit 72 players our table broke and I moved over just 1 table. I’m now down to around 60K and I’m clearly in make the bubble mode now. The new table is equally as good as the previous one. The big stacks are to my right and no one playing table captain. I’m now in seat 6 and the Swede in seat 3 is very short. In fact there are 3 stacks smaller than me at the table. The Swede though is announcing to everyone how badly he wants to cash. “Even if I have aces I don’t want a call” he tells us all. I love these guys. I still can’t find a hand however. Blinds are now 2000/4000 with a 400 ante. They start announcing every all-in and call. I don’t play for 2 orbits and I’m sinking fast. Unbelievably when the Swede is in the BB with 18K behind it is folded to the SB who has 100K and he folds. The BB would have only played JJ-AA and he couldn’t find a raise. Wow. 69 left the next time He’s in the BB and I have 44. He says he thinks he’ll have to call this time but I raise with 44. Folded to him. I have around 38K more than him and sure enough he does call with AJs. Flop is 862, turn is another 8 making the 6 another out for him, river A. How many times can I get rivered in the same tournament? [censored] that hurts. Now I’m truly in Make the money mode. 66 left now and I could have made it 65. They announce all-in with 77 against AA at another table. 77 makes a straight and survives. Visions of 65th place start to dance in my head. I get my first hand of the day with KK in EP and I push. Folde very quickly. 65 left and I Josh Arieh says there is someone with less than 2K left. He makes it and so do I when Chris Bjorin goes out with a flush draw against a baby pair. Relief is the only word to describe what I’m feeling now. Now we get moved again and I take my measly 40K to my new table. There are some serious stacks here, but again no name players. I get bubble boy’s seat as it turns out. Again no cards for me. I do get it folded to me in the SB and I push. “Did you look?” the BB asks me. Oops I didn’t and I guess I need to be careful to make it seem like I did. I laughed and said “yes”. He mucks. He has way over 300K and could have looked me up easy. I tossed them without looking still. When I’m in the BB it’s folded to the SB who pushes his last 20K. I’m calling with any face card. 73o. Muck. Next BB same story,folded to him, his last 20K go in. I’ve only got 28K myself, and J4 is my hand. I coun’t the pot though and it’s 18 more to me to win 30K and I think I have to play. I call. He has 84. How much better could it be? The cameras come flying every all-in and call and I’m really conscious of it. SO when his 8 flops I don’t throw a fit, but I’d love to see my face. The turn gives me a flush draw so I need a J or a spade on the river, and I miss again. 8K left, and to make it worse we go on break. Blinds are now 3000/6000 – 600. SO I have to wait 15 more minutes to push in the rest of my money. The good news is that I probably triple or even quadruple if I win the first hand. I get real fortunate, it’s folded to me on the button and I push. The SB does me a huge favour by pushing 300K over top of me. The BB thinks a long time and I bet the SB is wondering why he pushed. The BB has around 100K and finally folds. I haven’t looked yet so we wait for the camera’s. The SB tells me he has a bad hand, T7. Unfortunately mine is worse 75. I can’t escape the domination and I’m out 58th. Karen and I went back to the main hotel with Linda Stolzman and ordered a bottle of pink champagne. I was pretty disappointed not to make a run at serious money, but it still felt good to cash and be sitting in the lobby of a fantastic hotel in Monte Carlo sipping champagne. In a lot of ways I’m proud of my play. I cashed despite taking some brutal 2 out rivers, losing 2 of my 3 coin flips against shorter stack all-ins and losing the biggest pot I played all week. I had the one A9 suck out in my favour but overall I’d say I was more unlucky than lucky over the course of the tournament. On the other hand I was very lucky with seats. Although I played with some truly great players (Hansen, Brown, The two EPT winners, Hellmuth, Lodden, Vaswani, Mortensen, Gavin Griffin) I never had them on my left. For three days I never had to worry about a player on my left getting out of line. Part of that comes from the image I cultivate too. Because no one thinks I’m getting out of line they are less likely to make plays at me. This has been a wonderful trip and it’s only half over for me. We will spend two more days here sight seeing, then 2 days in Rome before going home. Poker Stars and the EPT have done a great job making this event truly world class. The accommodations are incredible. They may want to re-think the drinking glass situation in the poker room. They give us long stemmed wine glasses with bottles of water on little tables 1 foot off the ground behind every seat. With all the people trying to watch I’m sure they broke over 200 glasses. Every day there was broken glass all over the floor. Crowd control was simply impossible. Every time they cleared an area 5 minutes later everyone was back. When I played with Hansen, Brown and Glenne, they had to rope off our table there were so many people trying to get right in close. It’s awkward looking at your cards when there are a dozen people close enough to touch you standing right behind you. Who knows if they might signal a player? I’ve hardly spent a cent yet (except for the champagne last night). I’ve eaten at the players breakfast and dinner every day. I guess I’ll be out of pocket for the rest of the trip though. Karen says we’ll need the prize money to pay for lung transplants. The smoking is bothersome. The poker room was no smoking but you had to run the gauntlet to get into the room. We’ve become so smoke free in Canada that I really notice it now. So I guess the next trip will be Vegas for the WSOP. Time to start playing qualifiers for that. I have now played 4 big buy in events, all of which I qualified at Stars for. Two PCA’s the WSOP and this week. I’ve cashed in 3, finishing 66th, 29th and now 58th. Clearly I’m well suited to playing the early stages of these tournaments. And I think my end of tournament play is pretty solid too, once the M’s get real low. But there is certainly a big missing in my middle game play once the bigger ante’s kick in, and I don’t really have a game plan to correct it. I really need a tournament coach to go over these things with. I’ve played 4 live events that were the main events close to home and cashed in 3 of those too. And in the small buy-in live events I’ve played with small starting stacks and fast structures I’m 0 for 6, so I guess that says something about my game too. I’m off to watch the start of day 4. 32 left including AK87 and Gavin Griffin, and guy Steve introduced me to at the cocktail party named Josh. BTW, Nat (from thepokerdb.com) if you're reading this I'd love to get some of those pictures you took of me. My wife keeps forgetting the camera. 
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#2
04-01-2007, 08:07 AM
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Re: Monte Carlo Trip Report
Nice trip report, worth the read. Congrats on the cash.
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#3
04-01-2007, 08:22 AM
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Re: Monte Carlo Trip Report
David,
Great trip report, thanks very much for going to the effort to post it.
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#4
04-01-2007, 09:40 AM
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Re: Monte Carlo Trip Report
[ QUOTE ]
BTW, Nat (from thepokerdb.com) if you're reading this I'd love to get some of those pictures you took of me. My wife keeps forgetting the camera. [/ QUOTE ] If you want the full res ones, I'll have to give them to you via flash drive, they're too big to email. So track me down somehow before you leave. Otherwise you can download them from http://www.natarem.com/ept/index.php if you want the smaller version with the watermark on it.
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#7
04-01-2007, 11:12 AM
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Re: Monte Carlo Trip Report
Great read. Enjoy your time off!
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