I had the good fortune, thanks to Sporting Odds, to fly across to Bregenz last weekend. I'd heard of Bregenz only from Poker Fessies & Results, & before we set off, I never had a clue where it was.
We flew Ryanair from Stansted - what a splendid looking Terminal Building that is! - at 0630 on Friday, & landed at some remote, one flight a day, municipal Airport, in Germany 90 minutes later. The Airport was named "Friedrichstafen" I think - truly! From there, a sucicidal cum serial-killer taxi-driver drove us cross the border into Austria, & 20 hair-raising minutes later, we were in Bregenz - & wow, how pretty was the whole journey, awesome!
The houses out there have extremely acute pitched roofs, a sure sign of an area where plenty of snow falls. As a rule of thumb, the steeper the pitch of house roofs, the more snow they get in that area. Check it out, I ain't wrong!
So, we found Bregenz, & the feature that stuck out was a huge - & I DO mean huge - expanse of water, bigger than a lake it seemed, it had waves, but examination of a map gave the game away - "Bodensee" or "Lake Constance" as it's named. It's HUGE!
I could not really figure where we were, even now, so the Map came out again. Bottom left corner of Germany, top left corner of Austria, top right corner of Italy, & not far from Lichtenstein. Got that?
We stayed at an Ibis, cheap & cheerful, but just the job.
The purpose of the weekend was to schmooze & entertain a bunch of Sporting Odds High Rollers from - wait for it - Hungary.....! None of them - not one - spoke English & none of us spoke Hungarian......oops.
I should add that "we" comprised Joe, Nicola & Bernadette from Sporting Odds, & Chili & myself. 5 of us, 22 of them, & none of us spoke each other's lingo!
Friday night we all hooked up for what turned out to be a splendid meal (Pancake Soup was a local speciality!) and we repeated the trick on Saturday lunchtime, at a quite magnificent lakeside restaurant. This one was a real nightmare, the waitress only spoke Austrian (I understand that's German with a dialect), the Hungarians just Hungarian, & us just English. Eventually, we decided on a version of "Charades" to tell everyone what was on the menu, & I was stood there, doing impressions of chickens, cows, venison, duck, all the while wearing, Heaven knows how this arose, a pinafore. It ain't easy being sponsored, you know.....! Luckily, there were no cameras to hand.
Saturday afternoon we had all been entered in a €200 Rebuy, & each of us given one rebuy or add-on, with thanks to Sp Odds.
132 runners, 2,000 starting chips, 2,000 chips per rebuy (you could take a rebuy before play began!) and 4,000 chips for the add-on, all ensured a lumpy prize pool.
Martin Pollak, Ivo Donev, & a few other notable Austrians were in the field, including the magnificently named Harry Casagrande.
Amazingly, the very first person we saw in the luxurious Casino was none other than blondeite Langboy, (Mike Langley)who has homes in Sutton Coldfield and Salzburg. Lovely guy, works for Interpoker I think.
I got off to a flier, somehow getting all-in on the 3rd hand after calling a raise with this....
The flop of
looked to fit my hand nicely, & there was a flurry of betting & raising, & suddenly, "open your hands please", as they say in those parts
Matey Boy, to my astonishment, turned over this beauty.....
Oops, how many outs did HE have?!
Anyway, it mattered not, as he missed the lot, & I got a rather lucky double-up. Two flopped sets, in consecutive hands, soon had me up to 14,000, & I was in cruise mode.
Then, as Mike Langley & I were chatting away 13 to the dozen, I got given an Official Warning by the Dealer - "please do NOT speak English whilst the cards are out Sir".....What? Do they not know who I am?!
Inevitably, Mike & I clashed big time after a while. I can't recall my holding, but I had a monster draw I think, but Mike flopped set of 4's & all the money went in, I never improved, & that dented me.
I recovered to 9k, but then I got over-ambitious with
, Matey Boy was not going anywhere with
, & that was that, all the way to Austria & I'd busted out 97th. Damn!
Chili did much better, card-dead all evening, she still managed the last 3 tables, before running
into
, & there we were, both history.
So it was a slightly subdued journey home early on Sunday morning, landing at Stansted at 11am. We had stayed overnight at Days Inn, 5 miles from Stansted, on the Thursday night, so we had to get a taxi back to the Hotel, as I'd parked my car there.
To my amazement, you cannot "hail" a taxi at Stansted. You have to go to the Taxi Desk & book one. They are all parked outside, like little soldiers all lined up, but you MUST pre-book it. The cab-firm - Checker Cars I think - have a monopoly, they must make a bloody fortune! They charged us £10 for the 5 miles to our Hotel....!
So, there it is, all the way to Austria & we did no good. Tell you what though, Austria is a truly beautiful country, with stunning views & hill things.
A big thank you to Sporting Odds, they gave us a great experience all told.
Next stop for the Sporting Odds Road-Show is Denmark, (Aarhaus?), then Glasgow. Whisper it quietly, but we may then hold a monster Tourney, deep-stack, low-entry, at one "DtD" in Nottinghm later next year....! How cool would that be?
OK, I'm outa here.
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