mystpoker.com: The New MystPoker.com, Malta/Monaco Trip Report

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Thursday, May 01, 2008

The New MystPoker.com, Malta/Monaco Trip Report

After many months of hard work, the new and improved MystPoker.com is finally here! Thanks to my manager and good friend Bill Sparks, the site launched a couple of weeks ago and the feedback so far has been awesome! The site now features sections on News, Blog, Forum, Articles, Video, Pictures, and Hands.

There are so many things I want to blog about, but I don't want to cramp them all into one post, so I will probably throw in an update every few days or so.

My trip to Malta and Monaco ended up being very successful outside of the actual tournament itself. In Malta, I played some €5/€10 NL at the Dragonara Casino. The game was very lucrative, with me being the youngest player at the table by about 20 years, until my Norwegian buddy joined the game later in the night. I cashed out with a tidy profit and didn't play any more poker until Monte Carlo. I met with Jo, the owner of Eurolinx, and we talked mostly business. I will (hopefully) have some exciting announcements to make in the upcoming weeks.

I arrived in Nice, France the day before the EPT Championship started, and then took a short helicopter ride to Monaco, and the view from the air on the way in was ridiculous. It's probably my favourite place in the world after Vegas. In Monte Carlo, I also did pretty well in the side games. I played two $20,000 sit and go's with some Europeans and I ended up chopping the first one heads up and in the second one I lost QQ to T9 all-in after a 762 flop to bust out of the money. One of my reporter friends took some video of the game and said he was going to post it online, but I can't read Norwegian, so if I do end up finding it I will post it.

I was later invited to play in a high stakes cash game. The game was hosted in a nice suite just outside of Monte Carlo in Marseilles. There were two conditions which were required to be met before anyone could play in the game.

1) No Americans, because they are too tight.
2) You must be drinking during the game.

As you can see, this was meant to be more of a fun game than a serious game. I can say with confidence that this was the craziest game I have ever played in. Not meaning the easiest, but the most aggressive and wild game. Bunch of drunk Scandidavians = action! The players were made up of a couple of rich guys, some high stakes online cash game players, and a couple of successful tourney players. The buy-in was 100,000 Norwegian Kroner, which equates to around $20,000. So you basically divide everything by 5 to get the number in U.S. dollars. The blinds were set at 100kr/200kr with a common straddle to 400kr.

The action was wild right from the get go. Almost every raise was met by a re-raise and every pot seemed to be huge. The first pot I played was the highlight of the night for me, and (being slightly results-oriented) one of the best hands I've ever played.

I was dealt KsJs on the button, and it folded to me. I make it 1400 to go, SB folds, aggressive high stakes online guy makes it 11,000 to go from the BB. I have around 140,000 total, and I flat call. Flop comes 853 with 2 hearts. He leads out for 16,000, I think for a while, decide to float, and call again. Turn is an offsuit 3, pairing the board. He checks, which I thought was really weak, because if he had an overpair and he put me on the 8 or a flush draw, he should be firing here most of the time, so I decide to bet 25,000 and hopefully take it down. He takes his time and makes it 75,000 to go, crap! Now I'm patiently trying to sort everything out in my head. My gut is saying he has nothing but my head is saying so what, you only have 38,000 more and you have King high! After a very long time, I go with my gut and push all-in for only 38,000 more into a 200,000 pot. As soon as he doesn't insta-call, I feel a big relief inside of me. He starts laughing and shows his cards to the guy next to him, before mucking!

In the next big pot, there's a straddle to 800 on my BB, 4 callers and I complete with QJ. So, 4000 in the pot right? I check, and it checks to the same guy that I made the move with KJ on, and he leads out for 20,600. Into the 4000 pot... He had another 80,000 behind. I just shoved since I was out of position and in case he had T9 or KT I didn't want him catching up. He folded.


Then I won a big coinflip. There's a straddle to 800, 3 callers to me on the button, and I make it 4000 to go with Kd7d. BB calls, and the 3 limpers call, 20,000 in the pot. Flop comes Ad 8d 2x. Checks to me, I make it 12,000 to go, BB goes "I'm just going to call with my flush draw" and he calls, it folds to the cutoff and he makes it 30,000 to go. Now I don't want to face a big bet on the turn so I try to represent a monster. I re-raise to 80,000. BB insta-pushes all-in, crap! Cutoff folds, and there's around 220,000 in the pot and its 175,000 more for me to call. So I'm getting a little over 2 to 1 on my call and I just hope he doesn't have a set. I eventually call, and he goes "Nice call". He wasn't lying about the flush draw, but he has Qd2d for a pair of 2's making him a slight 52/48 favourite. It was a 600,000 pot so almost $120,000. We decide to cut the variance down a bit and agree to each take 150,000 back from the pot and play for the other 300,000. We run it out, and the board comes 7 7. Ring a bell? lol, ship it!

Then I got stubborn on one hand. I raised with AJ on the button to 3000, SB calls, same BB as last hand makes it 11,000, I call, SB calls. Flop comes JT3r. SB checks, BB bets 36,000, I call, SB folds. Turn K. He bets 60,000, I call. River K, he bets 100,000, I call pretty quickly. He shows KQ. This hand kept bothering me for a few days afterwards, unsure of whether I should have just folded the turn. He knows I'm capable of calling down very thin, so I don't know if he would have tried to bluff me in that big of a pot.

After that things got really crazy, and I didn't play any more big pots. It was insane, a guy would raise to 4000, other guy would make it 28,000, call. Flop Q92. Check, check. Turn 5. Check, bet 50,000, push for 120,000, call. Pusher shows 96, guy who re-raised to 28,000 preflop shows 92off. River blank.

Then a guy raises to 4000, guy re-raises to 50,000. Other guy shoves for 220,000. Fold. lol.

The game broke around 9:00 AM, and we went for a nice breakfast at the Hotel Paris. I took a pretty cool pic right in front of the hotel, it will give you an idea of the type of cars that are driven in Monaco. Sorry for the picture quality, it was taken on my cell phone.



From left to right: Mercedes Benz CLS63 AMG, Bentley Continental GT, Rolls Royce Phantom, and in the front, the 1001 horsepower, $1,700,000 work of art they call the Bugatti Veyron 16.4. Not a bad lineup, eh?

The WSOP is starting in exactly one month, so I think I'm going to take it easy until then. I'm still trying to work out my schedule for the World Series, I'll be staying in Vegas for the whole month, and I want to space my tournaments out so that I won't always be playing on consecutive days. I'm planning on playing at least 10 events, but they have an insane 55 events this year, so I'll have to choose wisely.

5 Comments:

  • At 2:11 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    sick sick sick so fuckin sick

     
  • At 11:36 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Good job Marc keep it up!

     
  • At 3:31 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I read several blogs each day,but yours is truly the best.

    Keep them coming more often please.

    Best regards

     
  • At 7:01 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    My dream is to visit Monaco one day... must be so nice!

     
  • At 4:54 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    just a thought.
    Your friend has a store "world poker depot".
    Half the city can't access his site during the day because all the Gov't offices, etal, block the word "Poker".

    If he could have a link somehow without that word, his hits would go through the roof.

    just thinking aloud.

    Ifoldallday.

    Oh...good post as well

     

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