Copenhagen, here I come

I have been especially lax of late when it comes to updating the ol' blog-a-roo.

I wanted to commit to writing this baby at least every other day, but time slips and the more days that go by without an update, the less my desire to stick with it.

That being said, I need to catch you up on my latest assinine adventure. I have long dreamt of playing in a pro poker tour event, and will finally realize that dream in Copenhagen, Denmark this week.

I recently won an online satellite tournement (a tournement where the prize is an entry to a larger tournement.)

I made the mistake of doing sme research on The Skandinavian Classic, and noticed that the lineup was brutal. It contained many of the best players from Euope and the world. The reigning World Series of Poker (the grandaddy of 'em all) champion Joe Hachem will be there, as well as online player-turned-cult-hero Chris Moneymaker, the 2003 world champ. Moneymaker won an online tournement that cost him $40 to enter, the prize being the $10,000 buy-in for the World Series of Poker. Moneymaker didn;t even have travel expenses or money for a hotel, so he cut his dad and a buddy in for a piece of his entry in exchange for travel funds.

The rest is history, as the Tennessee accountant became the first online player to win a world championship, besting 838 opponents, the largest field in history to that point. A lot of people claim Moneymaker "got lucky". Well, of course he did. At one point, he caught a third eight to beat an opponent with pocket aces, but that being said, NO ONE in the history of tournement poker has won a title without hitting at least one or two lucky cards on the river (called "sucking out", generally by the guy that got beat by the lucky turn or river card.)

The bottom line is that the kid, out $39 on himself against 17 other guys and won the mini-satellite. Then he finished first in a field of sixty to win the entry. THEN he beat the absolute best players in the world in his FIRST live tournement EVER. That's right, Moneymaker's only tournement experience to that point had been via the internet, so he had never even sat face-to-face with other players before. It's hard enough to win one tourney, let alone three in a row, so I will never never slight this guy. What he accomplished had never been done before in the history of poker, why take anything away from the kid?

He isn't even the most intimidating player in this thing. Ram Vaswani, arguably the best player in Britain, won a European Tour event last year, then finished second in the next event. I have seen this guy look right through people on ESPN while holding rags. This guy looks like he's got aces every hand.

I guess all I can do is show up, play my game the best I can and try to not be intimidated.

Hopefully, in a week or so, I will writing a blog about pulling a Moneymaker in Copenhagen.