Day 2 and the “Last Longer” Bet with Tony G

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 31st, 2011 at 9:30 am

Marvin Rettenmaier

Sunday, March 27^th

Hi, I’m Marvin Rettenmaier from Team Titan, playing on Day 2 of the WPT Vienna event. I usually try to go running before I play, but due to my cold I couldn’t do so. After trying to figure out if my phone automatically changed to Summer Time, which it did, I took a cab to the Montesino Card Room. I told the cab driver to take me there and he seemed a little confused about where to go, but when I asked him if he knows where the Montesino is, he seemed confident about it. So we drove for like 10 minutes and I told him again that this can’t be right, since its only 1.5 km from our hotel to the card room. We then arrived at the Concord Casino.

I was already very pissed, since this was 5 minutes before the start of Day 2 of a WPT where I was short-stacked. To make it short, he then drove the wrong way again, which this time I immediately realized due to the fact that in Vienna you can see which district you are in on the street signs and in the end I made it to the Montesino with 20 minutes’ delay.

What I didn’t tell you earlier was that I made a “last longer” bet with Tony G sometime on Day 1. I had like 65K, and he held around 28K. I put up €2K to his €1K, which is not the best bet for me, but I was very confident that I was gonna win it anyway. We also added the fun factor in that the winner of the bet gets to choose a song for the loser which he then has to perform karaoke live at the Montesino Casino. The confidence in my victory led me to printing out the lyrics of “Like a Virgin” for Tony G already. That was when I had 85K though. Maybe a little too early!?!

Influence of the Side Bet?

So it was the start of Day 2. I had 24K and Tony had about 30K. I had one very marginal decision where I folded 88 against an early position raiser sitting with 18 big blinds, where the side bet might have influenced me a bit. I usually don’t like doing “last longers” due to the fact that they may influence your tournament decisions, but the thought of Tony G performing “Like a Virgin” was just too sweet to not do it.

Roy Decker is the CEO of Royal Flush, one of the big poker magazines in Germany, and also the initiator of the side bet. He gave us updates on how the other one was doing. And when I heard that Tony just doubled in a flip to 60K, I knew I had to do something. Two hands later I got it in with 88 against a guy who tank-called to my 3bet with AQs….I am really not doing well in flips these days and so I was eliminated. I was really sad for a lot of reasons: This was the tournament I was looking forward to the most on this trip; my table looked really soft this day – so if I would have won the flip I could have done some major damage; and of course I therefore also lost the bet to Tony G, who busted only 30 minutes later.

Get Ready for Karaoke

The Montesino had already prepared a karaoke machine and I hope that my cold gets better, so that I can pay off my bet soon. They wanted me to do it later on before the start of the High Roller in front of the tv cameras and also stop the Main Event so everybody can enjoy it.

I did some more interviews, which is never too much fun after you just busted, but afterwards a lot of hugs and some nice words helped me to overcome my frustration. Also, my buddy Patrick, who I’ve met during my studies in San Diego, paid me a visit with his girlfriend. We had a couple of drinks, but then decided to postpone the partying till Tuesday, since Sunday isn’t really the best night to go out in Vienna.

Also Marko decided to wake up and come over to the casino – by then it must have been like 6pm – and planted the thought of playing online that night into my head. We headed to the place of Niki Jedlicka, a well-known high-stakes cash game player from Vienna. Ronny, still smiling from his almost victory at the WPT side event, Heinz Kamutzki and Nikis brother Stefan were there as well. This was only my third time playing online this year. To keep it short, it was a very unsuccessful night for all of us. I only made it a short session with around 10 tourneys and fell asleep on the sofa after I was done playing, at around 3am, and was woken up by a frustrated Marko at 9am, who had just finished 7th in one of the Sunday majors. Very sick was that our buddies Mohsen Tayfeh and Tobi Reinkemeier got 8th and 9th in this very same tournament.