European Poker Tour

            Time now to talk about poker some of the hands that I’ve played in Europe.  From Late Night Poker, which was filmed in Wales, and is now on American television (on Fox); to the European Poker Championship (the “Poker EM”), the biggest seven card stud tournament on the planet, held each October in Baden, Austria; and the masters Classics of Poker tournament held at the Holland Casino, Amsterdam.

the poker em

The European Poker Championship is held annually in Baden, Austria, which is about thirty miles south of Vienna.  Of all the places in Europe where this Championship could have been held, it happens to be in the one small town in Europe where I had previously spent more than one week.  Back in 1989, after I had won the World Series of Poker, I traveled with a good friend of mine to stay at his parents’ house Baden.

            In fact, I had play poker card games for a couple of days at the Casino Baden in 1989, a year before the venue for the European Poker Championship.  One of the problems was that they imposed a 5 percent pot rake.  If a pot held 400 schillings, they raked 20! In other words, all of the money ended up in the casino’s coffers pot limit omaha.

            One thing I will never forget about my 1989 trip was my rude introduction to the German word Strauss (sounds like “STRASS-saa,” means both ‘street” and “poker straight).  During a game of seven card stud, I would have aces up and be firing all the way, when four other players would call me down.  I would then confidently flip up my hand, saying, “Aces up.” They would then study my hand with confused poker expressions and shout, “Strasse!” and proceed to show me a five-or six-high low poker straight and laugh.

            The word Strasse has conjured up nightmares of bad beats and slow rolls for me ever since! In 1989, I forgot to have a winning “session” in Baden in the side games, and in 1999, I somehow failed to win a single pot in the side games! (Fortunately, I played for only about 45 minutes in the side games that year.)

            The limit seven card stud European poker Championship in 1999 was structured in a very unusual way.  There were three qualifying events, from each of which the top 24 players out of 432 (432 the first day, 432 the second day, and 432 the third day), or 72 players total, would participate in the final.  Each day you would play down to six tables, and then each table would play down from 8 to 4 players (4 each from 6 tables makes 24).

            The buy-in for the three qualifying events was 3,000 schillings (about $250) for 1,200 units of chips (yes, they call them units).  In addition, one optional rebuy (3,000S for 1,200 in chips) and one optional add-on for “double chips” (3,000S. for 2,400 in chips) were allowed.  But if you lost both your buy-in and your rebuy before the fifth level, then you were out of the qualifying event (no add-on was allowed at this point high limit action 1980 ).

            Because making it to the sixth level and the “double-chip add-on” was so important, I figured that you would want to throw away some pretty big hands on the fourth and fifth levels if you had already used your rebuy.  In fact, if  you had already had your rebuy, throwing away “rolled-up” hand before the add-on was the correct move, because you could go broke in one hand! Can you imagine having a starting hand of (A-A) A- the best possible starting hand in Stud-and then have to fold it?  I find it interesting to observe some of the goofy things that you sometimes need to do in poker tournaments!

            In order to play in this tournament, you also had to pay a mandatory 4,500S food charge to the casino, but the operators would provide “pretty good” unlimited food for the players whenever the casino was open texas hold'em poker.  And in order to guarantee a seat in the tournament, you had to sign up with a credit card well in advance of the first day.  In fact, they turned away people who hadn’t signed up in advance, because they already had their full 432-player complement.

            The qualifiers were held Thursday, October 7, 1999, at 7:00 p.m., Friday at 3:00 p.m., and Saturday at 1:00 p.m. The final was held on Saturday night at 8:00, right after the last qualifier ended.  Johnny Chan and Kenny “Skyhawk” Flaton were at a big disadvantage because they happened to qualify on Saturday afternoon and then had to jump right into the main event Saturday night.  Johnny Chan suffered another bad break by having someone tell him that the Friday qualifying tournament was being held at 7:00 p.m. when it really began 3:00 p.m.

            Included in the final five at my table on the second day were Jack Fox, Marsha Waggoner, and me.  Unfortunately, Jack ended up finishing fifth, and only four of us could make it to the main event.  Some of the Americans who reached the finals were Ted Forrest, Kenny Flaton, Marsha Waggoner, Ross Lichen, Johnny Chan, and me.

            I was really distraught after finishing in ninth place.  I knew that the final eight would be broadcast live on the Internet in both audio and video.  Because of this, I had called all of my relatives (and John Bonetti) to tell them to look for me on the live telecast, because I have a god feeling that I was going to win it coty award.  Alas, ninth place.  To add insult to injury, eighth place paid nearly three times what ninth place paid ($13,000 versus $5,000).  Oh well, someone had to finish ninth.

            The tournament had a great ambience to it.  Imagine a beautiful casino where everyone is well dressed, and where huge crowds watch the action and scream when key cards come off the deck.  Of course, the ambience didn’t seem quite as sweet when I took a really bad beat from the eventual the winner of the tournament, and the crowd started screaming, “England, England, England, England first wpt 2003!”