Monte Carlo, Monaco. Second biggest poker tournament in the world. Over 700 players pay €10,000 euros ($13,000) to participate. Incredible experience.

After being a 'high roller' in Las Vegas for many years (yeah, those old black jack times...) and getting treated there like the King Of Everyting is is kind of hard to be impressed. Neiher atmosphere, quality of food or service or accomodation can get that much bigger anywhere, right? Well, if anywhere then of course in dreamcountry Monaco. It is fantastic here. The location, the wheater, the hotel, the food, the service, the tournament, the players, everything is AAA+. We are staying at the Monte Carlo Bay, a five star jetset hotel. The European Poker Tour EPT ist having it's Grand Final of season 2006/2007 here and this is truly the center of the poker world right now.

The most beautyfull poker room possible - overseeing the Monte Carlo Bay


Katja in the media tournament on Tuesday (yeah, after the Jimmy'z party)


Joe Hachem has a good time - meanwhile he is out of the tourney


Tommy from Denmark and his friend having lots of fun


Ram Vaswani and Phil Ivey


Phil Hellmuth is here

We arrived already on Monday as katja had all kinds of media work to do on Tuesday and then there was of course that Welcome Party at Jimmy'z, probably Europe's most famous nightclub. Wednesday was the first playing day, flight 1A. Both Katja and have been assigned day 1A and the luck of the draw even brought us to the same table!

Katja Thater...


...and me playing on the very same table

We played there together on a "friendy table" for like 6 hours before our table broke. Each day here is seven levels, 90 minutes each with a slow structure (15,000 starting chips, first blinds 25/50, no ante). After we got moved things got thougher. Katja had a rollercoaster and ended the day with like 15k and I was carddead but bluffed my way to average chips, like 28k. So we both made it to day 2 which will be tomorrow. There are three more playing days that we would have to survive, so no reason to be happy right now - of course, being still in is a nice thing.