Thursday, February 15, 2007
Today REALLY sucks.
I'm sick. At home. Not sick enough to be in bed, just a sore throat and some coughing and that stuff.
So i want to play some poker, but party for SOME reason doesn't work for me, so I play on Stars and UB, knowing that I've done nothing but lose there recently... Obviously, I lose. Not terribly much, maybe $300 altogether, but still annoying. On top of that, I kept timing out during Magic Online drafts and lost like four of them today, and now that I want to play more they've been updating for the last eighthundred hours. Bleh.
Oh yea, saturday : we ended up going for a nice dinner first and then headed to the casino at ten. There were still seats so we played for a while (and got to laugh at the embarrassingly poor dealers). Won like €400.
So i want to play some poker, but party for SOME reason doesn't work for me, so I play on Stars and UB, knowing that I've done nothing but lose there recently... Obviously, I lose. Not terribly much, maybe $300 altogether, but still annoying. On top of that, I kept timing out during Magic Online drafts and lost like four of them today, and now that I want to play more they've been updating for the last eighthundred hours. Bleh.
Oh yea, saturday : we ended up going for a nice dinner first and then headed to the casino at ten. There were still seats so we played for a while (and got to laugh at the embarrassingly poor dealers). Won like €400.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Aaargh Hannover Casino...
Jeeeeez.
The casino in Hannover really is unbelievable.
The registration process is a mess. It really shouldn't be so hard to make a list of advance registrations, but somehow they manage to write down players for the wrong days, or just forget them entirely, or let people sit down and then one of the (registered) regulars shows up 30 minutes late but still gets his seat, etc etc
The dealers are disastrous. They run the game slower than anywhere I've seen, and they still manage to make more mistakes than any others. Big ones, like awarding the pot to the wrong person, dealing out turn and river as if all players are all-in when in fact two players are still active ('you were going to check anyway, right ?')
When a player leaves his seat (and there's ALWAYS someone not in his seat), you have three choices as a dealer. What do you do ?
- You don't give him any cards.
- You give him cards and if he's not there either at the start of the hand or when it's his turn to act you muck'em.
- You look around the room for him, finally see him, gesture him to come over, he's on the phone but signals you 'just a minute', and only two minutes later you can resume dealing out the hand.
The casino itself is u-g-l-y. Casinos in Germany are usually really nice, ancient buildings with big ole chandeliers and such, or at least in modern buildings, or SOMETHING. This place has all the ambiance of an office building, all that's missing is the cubicles.
The food is terrible and you never get what you order.
That said, I'll be back tonight.
The casino in Hannover really is unbelievable.
The registration process is a mess. It really shouldn't be so hard to make a list of advance registrations, but somehow they manage to write down players for the wrong days, or just forget them entirely, or let people sit down and then one of the (registered) regulars shows up 30 minutes late but still gets his seat, etc etc
The dealers are disastrous. They run the game slower than anywhere I've seen, and they still manage to make more mistakes than any others. Big ones, like awarding the pot to the wrong person, dealing out turn and river as if all players are all-in when in fact two players are still active ('you were going to check anyway, right ?')
When a player leaves his seat (and there's ALWAYS someone not in his seat), you have three choices as a dealer. What do you do ?
- You don't give him any cards.
- You give him cards and if he's not there either at the start of the hand or when it's his turn to act you muck'em.
- You look around the room for him, finally see him, gesture him to come over, he's on the phone but signals you 'just a minute', and only two minutes later you can resume dealing out the hand.
The casino itself is u-g-l-y. Casinos in Germany are usually really nice, ancient buildings with big ole chandeliers and such, or at least in modern buildings, or SOMETHING. This place has all the ambiance of an office building, all that's missing is the cubicles.
The food is terrible and you never get what you order.
That said, I'll be back tonight.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Finally back to brick and mortar
Pokerwise, I am sooo glad January is over.
I ended up losing quite a bit during my last few days in thailand so I think all in all I'm up not even $1k in January '07, playing only online. I already knew that once I was back I would play offline a lot more and online a lot less, but not winning a significant amount in what probably amounted to 50 hours or so of play didn't exactly make me rethink that.
Anyway, since Marco might be coming down for the weekend, I dropped by the Hannover casino to get seats for both of us for friday and sunday. There didn't seem to be anyone working in the poker area except for waiters and the dealers that were currently dealing, so I made the cunning plan of sitting down at one of the tables and waiting for that dealer to finish his 30 minute shift and then getting him to sign me up.
They had two tables of 5/10 NL going; table 1 was the regulars, which is a crowd of some semi-competent nits, some good players, and 3 or 4 deep-pocket-donkeys. Table 2 was literally all dead money. There are lots of different kinds of course, but my favorite is always the (usually turkish or arab) guys that take pride in 'being bluffers', and then attempt to do so with a 300-Euro stack :)
Anyway, I hit some hands, won €860 in like twenty minutes, finally even got the last two seats (keeping fingers crossed that that is actually going to work) and went home to sleep. Probably shoulda stayed and busted them all, but I had promised to be there to eat dinner and I was really tired anyway (still jetlagged a bit).
Looking forward to the weekend !
I ended up losing quite a bit during my last few days in thailand so I think all in all I'm up not even $1k in January '07, playing only online. I already knew that once I was back I would play offline a lot more and online a lot less, but not winning a significant amount in what probably amounted to 50 hours or so of play didn't exactly make me rethink that.
Anyway, since Marco might be coming down for the weekend, I dropped by the Hannover casino to get seats for both of us for friday and sunday. There didn't seem to be anyone working in the poker area except for waiters and the dealers that were currently dealing, so I made the cunning plan of sitting down at one of the tables and waiting for that dealer to finish his 30 minute shift and then getting him to sign me up.
They had two tables of 5/10 NL going; table 1 was the regulars, which is a crowd of some semi-competent nits, some good players, and 3 or 4 deep-pocket-donkeys. Table 2 was literally all dead money. There are lots of different kinds of course, but my favorite is always the (usually turkish or arab) guys that take pride in 'being bluffers', and then attempt to do so with a 300-Euro stack :)
Anyway, I hit some hands, won €860 in like twenty minutes, finally even got the last two seats (keeping fingers crossed that that is actually going to work) and went home to sleep. Probably shoulda stayed and busted them all, but I had promised to be there to eat dinner and I was really tired anyway (still jetlagged a bit).
Looking forward to the weekend !
