Pud's Poker Progress / Matthew Pitt / 10 April 2012 /

Once again I find myself updating my little piece of the internet away from the comfort of my humble abode. This blog entry comes to you from the lobby of the InterContinental Hotel in the heart of the Austrian capital Vienna.

I am here on business, poker business. The Big Game to be exact. The Big game is a 48-hour cash game that is being played during the WPT Vienna Main Event that has blinds of €25/€50 and a straddle of €100 and should see some of the big names of poker taking part. My job here is to be the man on the ground for PokerNews and to help host the Cover It Live section of the live stream they are running but more on that later on.

Sometimes in your life you make a decision that turns out to be great. If you're fortunate enough you will make several of these "great" decisions. I suppose I have been that fortunate. One such decision came recently when I wrote an article on PokerNews about a new company called Main Event Travel. Not only have I made friends but I was sent a magic t-shirt and hoodie that give you tons of run-good when you wear it when travelling. Yes really.

Ship The Free First Class Seat

The first piece of run-good I received was the train journey from Dewsbury to Manchester, most of which had been replaced by a bus service but not the exact time I wanted to travel. My good mood was boosted by the fact the train was that full the conductor never did his rounds and I travelled in First Class for nothing so had a comfortable seat, a less noisy cabin and a power point for my trusty laptop. That last part alone is worth the usual £6 upgrade fee because I can then play Football Manager 2012 whilst I travel!

When I arrived at the airport it was much quieter than I had expected for a bank holiday weekend, it was practically dead. The quietness continued at the baggage check-in point where there was just a single soul in front of me. I hate queuing so this was a major result.

Security checks were passed through equally as quick, which surprised me because I fully expected massive lines of people but again there were just two or three people in front of me. Admittedly these people were borderline retarded because they thought their mobile phone would not set the metal detector off or when the security guard asked if they had a laptop in their bag they said no only for one to be seen on the X-ray screen. Apparently they did not think a Macbook Pro was actually a laptop!

More positivity followed when I ordered my customary breakfast and it arrived literally five minutes later but that is when it started to go downhill a little as I found out my flight had been delayed by 15 minutes. Now this does not sound like the end of the world but when you take into consideration that I only had a 1.25 hour layover in Zurich the chances of me being reunited with my luggage in Vienna were starting to look slim at best.

Feeding The Fishes

Matters continued to slide downhill when I thought it would be a good idea to play some online poker whilst I waited. The player in the big blind was ridiculously bad so when I opened to $0.75 with AsKs and he three-bet to $3 I was more than happy playing for stacks with him. I four-bet to $8.75 and he jammed for $23.51 in total. I called and he showed QdJs but hit a jack on the flop to all but stack me. Could my magic t-shirt be failing me? Usually when a fish wins a stack they up and leave but not this one, he stuck around and continued to play like a lunatic. Shortly after he had won almost a full stack from me he three-bet my opening raise that I had made with KdQd, I called then check-called his bets on all three streets of a king-high board, including a shove on the river, and was good because he had pocket nines.

We were finally called to our departure gate 10 minutes after we were due to take off reducing my chances of wearing clean underpants the following day even further. Then when we were called onto the plane we were told not to fasten our seat belts because we were about to refuel, something that took another 10 minutes. This made us lose our departure time so we sat on the runway, with a screaming baby in tow, for another 10 minutes. Goodbye fresh socks.

We eventually took off and is usually the case the flight was just that, a flight. I played Temple Run and listened to some music and we finally touched down at 17:00 and my flight was at 18:00. At least I knew I would almost certainly make my flight, even if my bag wouldn't. Somehow the pilot had made it to Zurich in 1 hour 25 minutes instead of the planned 1 hour 55 minutes. Maybe he was wearing a similar t-shirt to me? As soon as we stepped off the plane we had to go through security, which I thought was weird seeing how we had literally just got off a plane but whatever. My hand luggage got stopped because I had left the keyboard-case attached to my iPad and they thought it was a laptop but I avoided any finger probing in sunshine-less orrafaces which is always good.

You Want Me To Walk How Far?

A quick glance at the TV screens revealed my departure gate was A82. A f*&$ing 82. Obviously about 10 miles away from where I was standing. Not only that but the Swiss thought it would be a great idea to make all of the walls and doors in their airport out of glass and make it impossible to see what was a door and which was in fact a chuffing wall. After fumbling around the transparent maze I finally went through passport control and headed to the far end of the airport. The FAR end.

Remember that extremely fast cooked breakfast from earlier? It turns out it was ready so quickly because they had failed to cook the sausage and now they wanted to come out and come out NOW. Upon arriving at A82, slightly out of breath and red-faced, I set sail for the toilets only to see a big sign stating they were out of order and if I was to drop off my unwanted "luggage" I would have to head to gate A50. Seriously dude, you're having a laugh. So off I trot, find the toilets which were remarkably clean, do my business and can't find where to flush the damn thing. There are no sensors on the wall to detect I have done and the thought of them having pressure sensors in the seat was a little far fetched. Then I saw a black ball-like rubber thing on the floor so, as you do, stood on that. Amazingly it was the flusher. On the floor. At the side of the toilet. A quick jog back to A82 and my flight was ready to board.

The flight to Vienna was actually almost empty. I remarked to myself about how much money the company must have lost running the flight but I wasn't actually that bothered. My run-good returned when the flight attendant asked if I minded sitting next to the emergency exit, where there is extra legroom, for the duration of the flight. To an economy class customer this is the equivalent of being upgraded to business class. I accepted and had a rather pleasant 45-minute flight to to Austria.

My magic t-shirt really came into effect at the baggage reclaim point because the third bag on the carosel was mine. YES! There might have only been 40 minutes or so between landing, having a crap and taking off again but my bag had somehow made it to Vienna! You would not believe how happy this made me, so happy I paid €35 for a taxi to my hotel without even blinking. Wow, I've just realise this post has more than 1,400 words so we'll leave it there for now and I'll fire out part two tomorrow or Thursday! Congrats for getting this far!

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