Hello my name is dirkb. Yakshemash !

This weekend I finally made it to the Casino in Hannover, if only because Marco and martenJ were in town to game. They had called the Casino to reserve seats in the 5/10 PL game but were told that you could not make reservations on the phone, but that there would be no problem if we got there at seven (the game starts at eight). Obviously, when we got there there was only one seat left. Apparently nine people had reserved their seats during the week since you can do that when you're there in person but not on the phone. We were also told that there was little chance that anyone would quit in the middle of the game, and that there was no such thing as a waitlist. I took the available seat and predictably within an hour both martenJ and Marco had seats as well.
I chose to buy in for only 300 Euros initially (the minimum is 200) because I wanted to get an impression of everyones play before having a real stack, but within the first orbit on my first big blind i tripled up with J6 in an unraised hand when the flop came QJ6. It was pretty much smooth sailing from there on; I missed some big draws in the middle of the session but 'recovered' towards the end. I was tired and ready to leave at midnight but stuck out the game until 2:30 which was a very good thing since as always the game got juicier towards the end..
I never had too many crucial decisions to make. One came when martenJ got me into a bad spot; I had AK utg+1, utg limped and I made it 40. I had a stack of about 2k and right behind me was 'the doctor',the only player with more chips than I had, an 'typical' arabic-type guy : loose preflop, pretty lose postflop, likes nothing better than to 'play the player' and win hands with a bluff. Anyway, this guy calls and martenJ reraise to 160. This pretty much commits his remaining stack which I estimated at about 350, so i figured he has Aces or Kings. If I shove I don't expect the doctor to call with a hand I am ahead of, if i call and miss I have to fold to martens push, and if i call and hit I am still out of position with a giant stack against a tricky player who doesn't mind putting his chips in and against a player who I expect has me beat anyway. To make it short, I fold, and the doctor wins a 1200 Euro pot with his KJs against martens QQ. The flop was K53, turn was an Ace, and I'm sure I could have won a ton off the doctor. Had Marten made a smaller raise of about 120, I would have been in the hand and he could have gotten away from it. Oh well, hindsight etc..
Anyway, I won about 2500 Euros plus $200 online so a good time was had this weekend. Pretty sure I'm going back, too. The game appears to be just as I expected : Some arab-players (no racism intended, they just usually play a similar style) as described above - they like to play lots of hands, lose a lot of money early on, but win back most of it and often more when the stacks increase in size and their 'game' - being able to read people and run over them by being aggressive and stealing pots kicks in. A few local pros, semi-pros, or maybe-some-day-pros who all know how to ABC-poker are there too, but reasonably easy to play against because they are simply too tight. They mostly live on the third type, the occasional guy who just wanders over from the roulette table and loses his 200 Euro buyin within minutes.