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Sweet Tooth

By Ram Vaswani, 09/03/2004

Vienna Spring Poker Festival, Vienna
€300 Limit Hold'em
Report by Ram on Tuesday, 9 March 2004 at 2:26 pm

One of the first memories I have of playing a serious game of cards goes back to a school trip I had aged around 12 or 13. It was a week in Wales and we would always get a couple of spare hours before bedtime. Of course I was the one organising the card game thinking I could earn some easy money. The game was five card stud strip deck, one down four up, and the stakes were just pennies but extra pennies in those days meant extra sweets and chocolates which at the time was a really big deal.

Even at such a young age I was picking up on everyone's tells and it wasn't long before I was cleaning up. I remember one guy was so clueless he used to place his hidden card in a position to give away his hand. In other words if he had an ace showing and his bottom card was an ace he'd place them on top of each other, or if he had 8, 9, Jack, Queen showing and his bottom card was a ten he would slip the ten in between the 9 and the Jack to show that he had a straight. Anyway, all was going well until one of the teachers walked in and stopped the game saying that we weren't allowed to play for money. Obviously I was devastated and my brain started working overtime thinking of my next move. So what I did the next day is I made everyone stock up with loads of munchies and that night we played again but instead of money flying into the pot it was sweets and chocolates. When the teacher walked in again he looked straight at me knowing I had cleaned up the night before and he gave me a big smile before leaving us to finish our game.

Of course I would never have guessed this woud be a great start to a poker career but i didn't half spend a lot of time in the dentist!

Yesterday was the Euro 300 Limit Hold-em freez-out. Joe went closest getting knocked out just before the final by fellow Brit Dave Tarbet.

Full Result Limit Hold 'em March 8, 2004 at 3:00 PM
Concord Card Casino
Buy-In Euro 300 + 30
Prize Pool Euro 24,000
Entries 80

1 Alfred Pichler (Austria) Euro 8,436
2 Peter Muhlbeck (Austria) Euro 4,560
3 Robert Binelli (Italy) Euro 2,736
4 Harun Yildirim (Turkey) Euro 2,052
5 Willie Polaschek (Austria) Euro 1,482
6 Didi Wegerer (Austria) Euro 1,140
7 Rob Hollink (Holland) Euro 912
8 Dave Tarbet (England) Euro 798
9 Alexander Tarasenko (Russia) Euro 684