Norwegian Poker Championships

Its never a good thing when you are back home before level 6 has started, but that was my experience of the Norwegian Poker Championships. The good thing about busting when I did was that the buffet had just started and I discovered a coffee cake with orange which was almost worth the trip. I also beat my personal Nottingham-Sheffield tilt time, which I plan to get down to 33 minutes by the end of the year.

Twas a very fun time, while it lasted. Seeing 400 Norwegians at your local card room is a bit weird to say the least, a bit like if you have ever revisted a house you once lived in and seen what someone else has done with it. Its the same, but different.

I started right at the TV table which was webcase to about 300 Norwegians at the time. They're making a DVD of the whole event and I reckon I have a good chance of making it onto it, being as I flopped a set on the very first hand and folded aces on the flop of the second. The banter at the table was loads of fun, I made a nice little icebreaker by presenting my Norwegian phrasebook to the cameras and everyone was having bets on the colour of the next card.

Besides making a very good fold (IMO) of aces and a reasonably good bluff with eights, I played pretty shit to be fair. I started when I made a very good bluff on the flop,an excellent bluff on the turn and fucking horrific bluff on the river in a hand with Paul Gourley. I then simply didnt know how to play out of position against Andreas Hagen and let him walk all over me.

If I made one all encompassing mistake, it was to put too much emphasise on the 'crazy scandie' image. I joked earlier that this was the only tournament where you could flop top set and consider folding on the off chance they were holding 5-2, but this little gag stuck with me. I didnt value bet some of my hands enough and I didnt capitalise on some opportunities to push people around.

I got a few big hands but no action, tangled in a few pots I shouldn't and generally didnt play awful, but didnt play that well either. Short stacked I ran ace-queen into ace-king on an ace high flop and thats all she wrote. No complaints and I certainly will be back up to Nottingam over the bank holiday weekend to be part of the event. The atmosphere was awesome and the Scandies were great fun.

If it wasnt for the very nice folks at VC Poker sending me to these events I'm not sure how many I would play in. Online cash games are my bread and butter and they are my passion at the moment and I am happy to continue in that manner for a long time. Tournaments are all about socialising, getting my VC Poker shirt in as many pictures as possible and hopefully at some point very soon, landing a big payday.