The WCOOP Main Event was scheduled for the night that we were traveling to Amsterdam. We jumped off the train in Amsterdam, ran to a taxi, told the taxi to speed through the city for an extra tip, took my laptop out in the taxi, ran into the hotel with my laptop that we were checking into, and frantically tried to get connected to the internet to register for the WCOOP Main Event. Our train was running a little late, so it was nip and tuck to be able to register in time for it. With exactly three minutes to spare, I was registered, hah. All that basically was for nothing. I made it semi-deep, but not quite to the money and busted about 600’th when a guy slowrolled me for a good 50 seconds or so going into his time bank with KK preflop when I only had about 20xbbs lol. I was yelling at the computer for him to call, because I swore I was good since he was taking so long, then he called and it showed his hand, and I’m like “oh, that sucks, what an asshole”.

Anyways, while Anita and I were in Amsterdam, we saw Anne Frank’s house, Van Gogh museum (awesome), the Rijksmuseum, strolled through the infamous “Red Light District“ with all the window hookers and coffee shops, and took a canal cruise. The Red Light District is probably just as you picture it. A long street going both ways on each side of a river with tons of windows with red neon lights on them with scantily clad dressed women with bars and Amsterdam’s “special” coffee shops in between. All the days we were there, we walked down the street from our hotel to this bar with the most awesome pancakes ever that you can put fruit and sugar on. They were delicious and are cooked a certain way that they aren’t anything like American pancakes.

We didn’t have much time to linger around, we were on a schedule on the way to Austria so I could make EPT Baden. After spending a few days in Amsterdam, we took a train to Prague in Czech Republic. I have to say that Prague is sort of a creepy city at night time in some parts. I know muggings and theft are higher in Czech Republic than a lot of the Western European cities. Also, some of the people are just a little weird and sketchy to be honest, in my opinion. We were fortunate to find a taxi at about midnight outside of the train station to take us to the hotel, although it was a pretty decent rip-off. Czech taxi drivers are notorious rip-off artists. However, without any other taxis in sight, and it being late, we had no other choice except to be ripped off for an extra $10 to get to the hotel with all our luggage. We stayed in Prague for a couple days and saw Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, Old Town Square, and saw a fantastic Classical Concert playing hometown pieces from various musicians who played in Prague such as Beethoven and Bach.

Anita and I arrived in Baden, Austria the day before the EPT Tournament there and just relaxed for a while.

Day 1 of EPT Baden:

I had lunch with “Timex”, “Choppy”, and “Ansky” right before the EPT started. My starting table was not the best, but was not quite as bad as my EPT London starting table….meaning more than three people were raising pre-flop. The notable players at the table were Jeff Lisandro (who I’ve played multiple times live in cash games and two different tournaments), Ram Vaswani (who I’ve played some 100/200NL with), and some alleged euro pro named Pascal Perraut or something like that directly to my right. The entire tournament including Day 1, I was getting absolutely nothing, I had KK one time and only picked up 2k in chips or so from Lisandro. I was so focused in this tournament, and I felt like if I wasn’t so “honed in” to the table, I would’ve made a couple missteps and bluffed in wrong spots or tried to value bet when they had nothing instead check-calling and picking off their bluffs. I only flopped top pair one time and lost with it when I had to fold on the turn and never really had any other hands. Times like this call for the art of finesse to focus on timing certain plays for the right spots at the right time in order to stay alive. I worked my 10k starting stack up to 14k at two points during the day, and was down to 5500 twice, but ended up finishing the day with less than my original starting stack at a disappointing 9200.