Monte Carlo Mayhem - Part II - Scandi-lous

Monte Carlo Mayhem Part II – Scandi-lous

Where in the World? Monte Carlo, Monaco

One thing became apparent during the first day of play at the European Poker Tour Grand Final. Scandinavian players (or crazy Scandis) are to the European poker scene, what online players are to the U.S. poker scene…if they were playing on speed. This legion of aggressive young players from the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark, all claim Gus Hansen as their unofficial Godfather of Poker. As you can imagine, having the Great Dane as your poker role model leads to some hyper-aggressive poker strategy, and that was on display in Monte Carlo. Open shoves for 30 big blinds with A-10 offsuit, and drawing to the river with suited connectors, unsuited connectors, hell, even 9-6 offsuit were the norm, and it made for some fast play on the early days of the tournament. The most impressive player from this group had to be Johnny Lodden, who played and acted like the chip leader from day one (although he was eventually knocked out of the event in 17th place). Honorable mention goes out to Oyvind Riisem, who also held a large stack during the majority of his tournament run, which led to a 15th-place finish. The American players didn't quite now how to deal with this, and there were more than a few confused faces at showdown time. The tournament played so fast ahead of the blinds and antes in fact that even the average stacks held 50 big blinds late in the tournament. This led to a slower version of play near the end (notably the three-hour money bubble), and who knows, maybe that slow version of play led to the demise of the two aforementioned Scandinavian stars. Live by the shove, die by the shove…Scandi-lous!

A majority of the young Scandinavian crowd wore T6 Poker logos. While the United States has Full Tilt Poker Pros, Scandinavia has T6 Poker Pros (Unless of course you're the Scandi God Father Hansen, and you transcend into the U.S. market). European poker has hot women promoting every poker sight under the sun (even more so than Vegas at the World Series of Poker – Bodog withstanding), and T6 Poker was at the forefront of this movement. The first day of the tournament, T6 Poker rolled in with a posse of Swedish supermodels, and they were stopped at the door by the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour staff because only players were allowed to wear logos promoting poker sites inside the tournament room. The T6 Poker girls were then bought into the tournament as players and one of the actually made it to day 2…Scandi-lous!

If you ever plan on attending an EPT event as a journalist heed one warning. Get ready to throw some elbows. The sheer amount of media present was second only to the WSOP main event (unless the media event was going on during the tournament – than the number of journalists shrunk by 80 percent – different continents, different priorities). Add to the small platoon of media, a throng of fans who can roam the floor freely, and reporting becomes something akin to working in a mosh pit. At one point, Hansen was involved in a modest pot (10 big blinds max) that just happened to take a while because his opponent was stuck in the tank, and 40 people surrounded the table. This swarming of the tables only got worse as the tournament field shrank, until a barrier was set up around the tournament floor, but that didn't stop a fan from knocking a female reporter off her chair-top perch, ad caused her to twist an ankle…that's not Scandi-lous, that's just scandalous.

You can also watch the CPTV Investigates piece "Scandi-lous," by clicking here.

Two parting thoughts on the EPT Grand Final:

- PokerStars lounge at Monte Carlo: Awesome. Media getting banned from the PokerStars lounge and its plethora of free drink options: Not Awesome. Victor Ramdin smuggling beers out to you after the tournament day is done: Awesome. Ramdin also gave the Card Player team an update about his upcoming charity trip to Guyana, called Guyana Watch, where he and a team of doctors will provide his countrymen, women, and children with much needed medical care (you can read more about this right here in the blog after the WSOP in August).

- In the pantheon of poker trophies, the EPT Grand Final trophy has to reign supreme in pure physical stature – call it the Stanley Cup of poker trophies. To paraphrase Lewis Black, if a puma had attacked Glen Chorny as he held it on stage, he could have struck it down with the trophy and killed it. Gavin Griffin also related to me that the monstrosity is no joke, especially while you have to pose for pictures with it for what seems like a half hour.

Up Next: The WPT Championship Part I and Ceremony of Champions