Although I love this event I have to back-off from this for 2012. It breaks my heart but sometimes there is only one choice and you can only do one thing or the other.

As I said in a former post - if you want to be successfull you have to devote enough time into it. In this case Poker has lost the race and I decided that something else (more about that in a future post) became more important to me at this time.

Going to Dublin would have meant to have fun at Poker …. but giving away that important time would have been a thing for me to regret in the near future.

Beside my absence I still reccommend this event to everybody who has an interest in good poker tournaments. This is by far one of the best structured events. Organisation is great and Dublin is wonderful place at every time of the year.

If you go there “enjoy your time” and say hello to my good friends Michael Lacey, Brian Lannon and Hanns-Peter Jacobi.

Even knowing that I made the right decision …  I will for sure shed a tear in early February realizing that I miss a great time!

My poker year 2011 is close to come to an end. The last big event in 2011 will be the D4 Events 6-max at the Montesino in Vienna. 6-max is always a fun event and I am really looking forward to December 2nd.

Was delighted that the Oceans Card Casino in Haibach (near Passau) had offered a “cheap trainings session” last Saturday ;-) Unfortunately it wasn’t a good day for me and my tournament wasn’t only short handed but also short lived.

First I ran a Full House into a bigger Full House (very unfortunate in general but even more in 6-max) and then my last chips went in with 77 vs. AJo … of course my opponent caught a 4-spade flush on the river. Shit happens!

But regardless of last weeks dissapointment and the the result in Vienna I already know that 2011 is a year with black numbers for me. One of my best poker years at all. I think only 2008 had topped this so far. Therefore there’s no reason not to enjoy the last event of the year. Of course I let you know here and on Facebook/Twitter how I am running.

Not sure how much time I can/will devote for Poker next year. Have another project running which will be fun too (although it has nothing to do with Poker at all) that will consume a lot time. But I definately plan to attend the D4 Deepstack in Dublin in February again.

Beside that I hope I will make it to Kufstein more often, too. Really hate that I wasn’t able to come there on a regular base this year! 

I’m sitting here in Dublin after I busted out of my poker tournment. While I will write about the tournament itself (wich was again a great event) in a seperate entry … this is how they used social media - and unfortunately missed out on a great opportunity in my opinion.

For those who don’t know much about poker tournaments: In this one close to 1,400 people came together to eliminate their opponents over two days (lasting 12 hours each day). Due to the size of the field and the space in that venue there was one main room but also two smaller rooms nearby with poker tables.

If you look around you have (similar to a tech conference) a huge number of the participants using mobile devices and obviously updating frequently. Most of course send updates of their chipcounts or good or bad hands that happend recently. Add to this a number of relatives going out for seigtseeing here in Dublin, friends and relatives at home and even friends in the tournament itself (on far away tables) and you get a decent number of people interested in what’s happening.

Well, the organiser is up-to-date (in some kind): they use Twitter, Facebook and even offer a livestream. Cool? Yes … and no! Because unfortunately they missed the most important thing in social media activities: Connection!

As soon as the event began the Facebook event page wasn’t updated frequently anymore. I think that could be o.k. as you want to move to “faster” media during the runtime. But still updating from time to time wouldn’t have been a bad idea.

So how about their Twitter account? They had one called IPO2011. Good name as the event is called “International Poker Open”. But unfortunately this account was only used until the event had been started (mainly to inform people were and how to sign up). Then the news stream shifted to the Blog and Twitter account of the Online Poker Room who was the main sponsor.

Of course you can do this but you have to let people know in that case. Even worse, the sponsor Twitter account missed to use a proper hashtag like #ipo2011 in their tweets to get found. So all this neat information (including links to the livestreams, updateing of chipcounts, funny stories) got lost for a lot of people.

Sure, everyone who searched for it could find it. But - especially during a running event - the main goal must be to make information:

- easy to find … due to time and device restrictions
- centralized … having a single point of information that is well known

Failing here can kill your whole social media activities. Which is a real shame as they tried hard in general to offer some great stuff: having guest commentators for the twitter stream, live online video stream, offering free wireless in the whole venue area and so on.

So having a designated person to make proper plans on how to use social media for the event and have that person overlook the activties happening during that event would have been created a whole different experience for everybody. Just using the right tools (which they did) isn’t enough … you have to use them in the right way too!

Poker friends … here we are! After all that stuff about social media, Apple and Facebook here’s again something about one of my favorite hobbies.

I hadn’t posted anything about playing poker recently as there wasn’t too much happening since I came back from Vegas and the USA in July.

There was only one event worth to mention (the GUKPT Goliath in Coventry) were I cashed light. But this was basically also the reason why I stopped blogging at Wordpress and finally moved to the more lightweight Tumblr-Blog. I just couldn’t handle the time anymore devoted to the long blogposts. Hope I get more flexible that way now.

So now it’s time to give you a small update here at my new home about my next plans:

• Warm-Up in Kufstein: Although I originally considered going to the Pokertour event in Bregenz I now decided to play the 6th Day Bigstack at the Poker Royale Kufstein this weekend. It’s “only” a €66+6 Buy-In but a nice warm up to get back into tournament poker.
• On the weekend 21th - 23rd of October I will travel to Dublin for the International Poker Open (IPO). Looking forward to this as I had to miss it last year.
• With two dance competitions in November to wrap up the season I don’t expect much Poker in that month.
• But for Dec. 1st - 4th the trip to the Austrian Short-Handed Deepstack at the Montesino (organised by D4 Events) is already booked. Great way to end the year with one of my favorite tournament types.
• Some smaller events to come on short notice
• Outlook: Back to Dublin in early February 2012 for the European Deepstack Poker Championships