Another great trip with Intertops has come and gone! The Winter Poker Open in Seefeld Austria!! It’s a small ski village that’s filled with spectacular sites, all the winter activities you can think of and plenty of poker action! Great locations, great fun and poker action is what Intertops is all about and this was no exception! This trip had it all! Amazing views, wild aggressive players, TheTrooper97 ski crashes and, of course, schnitzel! It was yet another experience of lifetime!
An 18 hour trip from Ft Worth to London to Dusseldorf to Salzburg then drive 21/2 hours to Seefeld! Its a test to even experienced travelers, but well worth the journey once you see those snow capped mountains. I can’t believe I got to travel back to where it all began! When I was here year last, I was beyond thrilled to experience what I thought was a one in a lifetime trip! I never expected that I would be able to return, never mind have it be my third time to Austria now! Beyond fortunate! For the people who haven’t been following from the beginning of this journey, I won a satellite on Intertops to play in this tourney last year! After quitting my job in November of 2015 to take a shot at playing professionally, I managed to win an event on the site that started this whole amazing adventure. Flying overseas for the first time, meeting the Intertops crew, playing my first $2k+ tourney, and eating A LOT of schnitzel! Here’s the start of it all if you want to catch up to speed! www.2Fit2fold.com/seefeld. Last year is also when I met fellow satty winner and Intertops player Chris Perkins. He and I were amazed and overwhelmed by the whole experience. We didn’t do as well as we had hoped in the tourney, but it was hard to be upset for too long in such a great place.
One of the reasons we didn’t do as well as we wanted last year was due to the surprisingly aggressive play of the Europeans players! I mean, I had never seen so much 4 betting EVER! lol It was a little bit confusing to us because this was also one of the best structures we had ever played, with 50k starting stacks and 1 hour levels! I had thought it would be an easy waiting game for good hands and good spots, I mean 50k starting, c’mon there’s so much play there! WRONG! lol What we didn’t take account for was the fact that these players are used to this structure and know how to take advantage of all the players with my same strategy. So many players pour on the aggression, knowing they can keep hammering tighter players and force folds. It’s a good plan, until you realize many of these guys also have that same idea AND play against each other fairly often. It makes for a crazy dynamic that I still have yet to see anywhere else! The closet thing might have been some of the WSOP Vegas events, but still not quite as aggressive. It proves to be a difficult adjustment to make and requires another level to your poker game! So this year, armed with that knowledge and more experience of playing against such aggro players, I was prepared to have some revenge. lol Unfortunately though, the European players had other ideas!! It was a tough table draw again for me this year, but at least I had position on the most aggressive players! Still even with the 3 most aggro players on my right, I was often hand-cuffed by the 3 and 4 betting before I even got to act! It was an interesting dynamic as I had a few calling stations on my left. I had thought I would be able to take advantage of them but that backfired as well, because strangely enough, every time I put in a raise or re-raise to combat the aggros on my right, the donkeys on my left would cold call!? lol Ever have one of those tourneys were you feel like everyone’s out to get you!? Well this for sure felt like one of those for me! I lost almost 15k in the first 30 minutes of the tournament! I had AA, KK x 2, AKo and AJo all lose on the river. With the majority of the chips going in the hand where I had KK for the second time in 20 minutes and had to fold the river to an all in shove after the 3rd flush card hit! It was brutal, as obliviously had that sick run of starting hands all had gone in my favor, I would have enough chips to coast to bagging up for day 2. Not only that but given how early it was, a good chance to bag up a significant stack for a real shot at going deep on day 2.
It wasn’t in the cards for me again this year at Seefeld and history repeated itself when I played all of day one, just to bust out on the VERY LAST hand of the night!! Watching my KQs lose to AQ suited on a queen high flop! BOoooo! Oh well, what can you do right? I will put up some hand histories in the next post and maybe we can figure it out together! And of course winning would have been nice, but poker is always just PART of these trips with Intertops! There are worst places to bust tourneys for sure! Being out of the event meant I was able to head up to the top of the mountains the next day and enjoy everything else Seefeld had to offer! Not to mention we still had a day back in Salzburg waiting for us! Seeing Salzburg again is always a treat. The history of Old Salzburg is so impressive. Seeing a castle at the top of a small mountain from literally right outside your hotel window is pretty bad-ass. Not something you see everyday huh? lol The birth place of Mozart and apparently Red Bull lol, you see those two things everywhere you go. Along with buildings built right into(or from?) the mountain, with dates on them showing just how old they are, it’s like stepping back in time. The oldest one I remember seeing was a church with the date 1409 on it?! How cool is that?! Being surrounded by all that really is quite the site to see and a pretty great way to put things in perspective(especially after busting a poker tourney lol)
There’s plenty more to write about from this one, between hand histories, views from the top, weird Euro poker chips and TheTrooper97s brutal ski crash! So I’ll get to another blog to fill you all in, but if your to impatient for that(and really wanna see Trooper crash lol) check out all his videos of our trip here! Be sure to give him a like and a follow! And let us know what you would like to read and see more of in the future! Don’t forget to check us out on Twitch for give-aways and upcoming promotions from Intertops. Maybe you can win yourself a seat and come along for the next adventure!
Til next time
Run Good
Tim
Twitter
Facebook
Youtube