Yes, I am still alive and the blog of course isn’t closed … but there wasn’t a lot to report recently.

I am still taking time-off from poker as we spend much time practicing for our last competition season in Boogie Woogie main class. Unfortunately - after practicing the whole winter and early spring - things didn’t turn out as expected so far. We missed our first competition in Finland (World Masters) due to my partners flight back from Canada being delayed. Our second competion (Northern German Championship) was also a no-show as I injured my extensor tendon on the left thumb just four days before the competition. Finally our third try - the World Masters in Slovenia - resulted in our first appearance in this season. But it seemed we lost our rhythm (with just one week of practice after the break) and we didn’t made a good result (40th out of 52). Hopefully things will run better in Austria (Langenzersdorf) next weekend.

As I see tournament poker as a kind of sport it also means for me you have to practice or at least have current live experience to get good results in bigger tournaments. As this isn’t the case so far in 2012 I decided to skip Las Vegas and the Venetian Deepstack this summer too. We will still have a nice vacation coming up that will lead us to Boston, Washington, Philadelphia and New York but (except for a small side trip to Atlantic City) there will be no poker during that trip.

So, “nothing to report” isn’t correct at all but there’s not much in terms of stuff that might be really interesting for my readers. I hope to come up with some more interesting stuff from other areas in the near future.

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!

This was definately one of my best years in poker ever. It all started somewere early this year in Kufstein. After a long, long time not achieving much in tournaments I finally cashed and final tabled several tournaments at the Poker Royale in a row. Shotly after, a visit in Rozvadov brought another cash and another final table.

That money was used to enter the D4 Deepstack at the Montesino in Vienna. I hadn’t cashed at any D4 event before but was close once - missing the bubble by 5 spots. This time I hit it and it was enough pocket money for the tournaments I wanted to play at the Venetian in Las Vegas this summer.

The Venetian Deepstacks - another great tournament series were I never had cashed before. Until this year!

Reaching a 14th place out of over 600 players I would definatley call this one of my greatest successes in poker so far. Not only did the win pay for the rest of our vacation but it was still enough to play some more nice events through the fall and still be sure to not going red for tournament results in 2011.

Unfortunately my run was almost over after Vegas. I had another minor cash in Coventry but that was it for this years tournament success.

In my last one - the 6max at the Montesino - I could have played somewhat better but I was also a bit unlucky too. Same was valid in my last side-event there. A bad beat on a 4-outer hit me heavily. Instead of going from chipleader to super-chipleader (and almost sure in the money) I was crippled and out somewhat later.

But that’s part of the game and it would be dishonest not to admit that I had my fair share of luck in those tournaments were I cashed!

Pokerwise it was a great year that ended in the black. Beside the result itself there were so many other things that I just loved. Making those Vegas videoblogs was fun, meeting Annie Duke and Phil Gordon in person was very enjoyable, meeting some new and old friends is good anyway and so much more.

But all this won’t change what I wrote in my last post. Poker will definately not have that much space in my life in 2012 than in the past. It’s a hobby … an enjoyable hobby that (despite other hobbies) can make you some money if you do it right but nothing more than that (at least fo me).

I leave the “becoming rich and famous” stories to those like Pius Heinz who like to devote the needed time to this game. Those are the players that really deserve it. As with every hobby/sport you can only become top of the pack if you do it at least 110% … if not, than you better be aware that your success will be limited.

Fortunately there’s still so much happening in my life that I won’tbe bored anyway. So stay tuned for 2012 … :-)

I am really surprised about myself as I would have called myself a die hard poker fan for a long time. But interests seem to shift a bit. I still love the game, I still will play it and I still will try to be in Vegas during WSOP each summer if possible … but it doesn’t feel so important anymore to me right now.

There are some challenges coming up in different areas but I can’t talk about either of them right now … cheesy, I know ;-) But those challenges not only take a huge amount of time away from the game of poker but also get my brain moving much more than any poker game could do.

So I still will enjoy the coming days in Vienna and the wonderful 6-max game a lot … of course I will tweet and blog about it as promised. But in general those who are here just for the poker content might expect a lot less posts about the game in the near future.

If you are interested in some of the other aspects of my live you might still enjoy this blog a lot. Especially when I will be able to talk about those things that I can’t talk about right now ;-)

After skipping Vegas and the WSOP in 2010 I am happy to come back again this year!

The WSOP has already started and on July 4th I will arrive in Las Vegas, too. I won’t play a WSOP event and unfortunately I was refused media credentials this year for very strange reasons. But there’s so much to do in Vegas anyway during that time of the year. Of course I will play two of the Venetian Deepstacks and add some smaller events if they fit to my time table. Top tournaments on my list are Hard Rock, Aria and Wynn.

In addition to my tournaments I hope to find some time for cashgames … especially at the MGM (which is my favorite place for cash games). Expect also some interesting pictures from the new city-center resorts and the WSOP itself. Not having media credentials doesn’t mean I won’t be able to take pictures!

A good friend helped me with my room this year … and it will be the Mandaly Bay. I haven’t stayed at the Mandalay Bay for some years … but I always enjoyed the times I stayed there! So I’m absolutely looking forward to my stay this year.

Unfortunately I will be in Vegas only for a single week … but it won’t be the end of the trip. I will pick up my girlfriend in Denver and we add three more weeks of vacation that will lead us to Yellowstone, Seattle and Vancouver too. So if your interest is not limited to Poker stay tuned for some more interesting stuff during the rest of July.

But until the start of the trip there will be another Boogie-Woogie Worldcup in Winterthur and our huge Boogie-Baers Whitsun-Camp in Landsberg.

Great times! :-)

I didn’t had much time for playing poker recently as other tasks consumed most of my time. One of those tasks had been dancing and practicing. Another task was to reinstall my laptop with the new Ubuntu (I will write about this somewhat later). But the main effort belonged to our garden.

Last year we moved into our new appartment in the small city of Erding (northeast of Munich). Not only did we get more space to live but also a garden of around 40 square meters. I always had dreamed about having a garden but I never expected that even a simple lawn would need so much effort.

Of course at the time we had moved I immediately started to think about what could be changed and how I could make the garden nicer and more interesting. Unfortunately I was soon stopped by weed, moss, stones, ants and other stuff that you won’t like to see in your own garden. At the end it took me so much time to get rid of the weed and moss that there wasn’t enough time to restructure the garden itself.

But things weren’t any better this spring. Although it seemed that I had destroyed most weed and moss last year … it all and even more came back this year. It just wasn’t fun anymore to go outside onto what was once a so called lawn.

So I decided to ultimately start from the scratch and remove the whole lawn. The plan was to use two days during the easter weekend for that process to have some additional two weeks to get the soil prepared for the new turf rolls. Good plan … except for the fact that it took me indeed four full days and three more evenings instead of just the two days planned.

The soil was hard, dry and full of stones … to make it a real hard and slow work. Even worse: our local community doesn’t take the rubbish for disposal (as long as the soil is still mixed with turf). Not only did this add to the total costs but it also took some additional time to find a disposal-place for the 1.2 tons of rubbish (packed in 50 sacks).

After I got rid of the rubbish I hoped that the fun part could finally start. Unfortunately there was still some more hard work left. The now turf free soil looked like a stone landscape with all that small and medium stones which now had went to the surface. Cleaning the the soil from the stones and other stuff created another six sacks of rubbish (with another 200 kg the dispose).

The original plan included a small path leading from the garden gate to our terrace but that plan had to be delayed … not only for the increasing costs of the whole process. Again the stones in the soil forced to change the plan. Putting a metal bar into the soil as a left and right border for the path didn’t sound like a good idea with still so many stones in the soil. And for other plans (like using some kind of curbstones) the schedule was running away.

With the still running schedule I took a day off from work this Friday and started with the final preparation of the soil in regards of the turf rolls that should be delivered one day later. But again I was way off with my estimations. Milling the ground took almost the whole day and produced another 14 sacks of rubbish. That brought the final weight of rubbish to about 1.8 tons.

The 6 sacks of humus that I had bought had been just enough for 1/3 of the area. So I had to run again for another 12 sacks (40 kg each). But finally I could place the new humus on the ground and solidify it with a lawn roller. Adding some sand and fertilizer and everything was prepared for the turf rolls.

Then on Saturday almost everything went the right way. The turf rolls had been delivered directly after we finished breakfast and I was able to start immediately. It was a bit like carpet laying. And it was fun! The turf looked so great and it was wonderful to see it growing and growing until the whole garden was green again.

But of course at the end I had to realize that I still measured incorrectly. Although I thought that I had added enough for security … it wasn’t. The last row (4 rolls) is still open. So I ordered four more rolls which I can pick up this week. But beside that everything is fine and I am very very happy with our newly created garden.

I hope it will stay that nice for a long time and I got rid of most of the weed and moss for a long time. It will probably take until next spring to see if my plan was ultimately successful. But successful or not … for the next few years I definately won’t do it again due to the huge amount of work that had to be done and the side costs that I didn’t had in my original estimation!

Fortunately the remaining tasks are much easier to accomplish: Water, Water … and Water! That’s what is no needed most by our new green surface to connect best with the old ground.