Second to None?

Vienna Spring Poker Festival, Vienna
€2,000 E-WSOP Trial No Limit Hold'em
Report by Ross on Thursday, 11 March 2004 at 2:35 pm

Vienna has always been one of my favourite places in Europe to play poker. I have had quite a lot of success here which helps of course but also Thomas Kremser does a great job of running the tournaments. He is always very calm, his rulings are fair and he even adds a little atmosphere by playing the theme tune to Rocky as all the tournaments begin which always makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. It gets you right in the mood for the battle ahead.

It’s been a good week for me so far; three tournaments, two final tables and one trophy – not bad.

Today is the one that I have really been looking forward to. It is the first day of the E-WSOP. It is a great tournament. It runs over three days. You start with 10,000 in chips and the blinds at 25 / 50 going up every two hours, so there is lots of time to play. The first day will finish with about half the field out, the second down to 27 and the third will be the last 9 and the final table.

I missed this tournament last year. It was one of those rare occasions when I had a bit of real work doing my other job – acting on TV. Well it’s about as close to real work as I’m ever going to get. I did play this event every year for the previous five years and I must admit that I’m very proud to say I made the final four years running but I’ve never won it. My best finish was in 2000. I was second to Chris Johansson. It was disappointing to come so close but who knows I’m playing well right now so maybe this time with a little bit of luck I can go all the way.

There was no tournament yesterday apart from a super satellite for today's main event, which starts shortly...

John Duthie, Barny, Ross and Alan Betson in the bar at the Concord

Update...

E-WSOP - 109 entrants Euro 2000 NLH Freeze Out

10,000 starting chips
40 players remain
current blinds 200 / 400 50 ante
two hour clock, one hour left at this level

Ram Vaswani 55,000
Ivo Donev 54,000
Alex Stevic 54,000
Bob Coombes 26,700
Jon Shoreman 13,000
Joe Beevers 13,000
Marcel Luske 32,000
Nic Szeremeta 27,000
Peter Roche 41,000
Alan Betson 32,000
Frank Callaghan 26,000
Roy Brindley 40,000

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