Timo Pfützenreuter has been trying to read The Wolf of Wall Street all week. A tattered copy of Jordan Belfort’s boiler-room, pot-boiler memoir has been sitting next to his chips since Day 1, but it has gradually been moved further and further from his hands as his stacks have grown and grown.
Pfützenreuter duly carted the book back with him today and, after grabbing a coffee from the cafe, filling up his water bottle and talking to a friend, placed it on the table beside seat eight on table one. He then placed an energy bar on top of the book and set about cutting open his bag, spilling his tournament-leading number of chips across the felt.
He was feeling good. Pumped, you might say. He’d had a decent night’s sleep and was ready for a new day at the coal-face.
“I worked out a little bit,” he said, describing what a chip-leader does in the interval between building a stack with the potential to win €815,000 and then being reunited with it. “I ate a good breakfast, so I guess I’m prepared.”
The tournament reconvened today with 17 players, spread in the six-six-five formation around three tables. Tournament rules usually dictate that there’s a full re-draw at the end of every day’s play, as well as when the field is reduced to its last 16 players.
When the clock ran out last night, the tournament director suggested we abandoned the idea of a second re-draw. We would figure out where the 17 would sit and then simply break a table when the first player went out today. However, there were rumours overnight that a player had objected–likely having found themselves in a tough spot to the right of known maniac–and so the tournament officials reverted to plan one.
The players therefore all knew that as soon as the first unlucky fellow was eliminated, they would all be on the move again.
The dealers on all three tables flung the cards to their recipients. Pfützenreuter was some way off having stacked all his chips, but the action was folded to him in the small blind. He scrabbled through the unruly mess and found enough to represent a raise to 73,000, and got it through the big blind.
It was not quite so simple on the neighbouring table. There, Mike Adamo had open-shoved his stack of 494,000 on the first hand of the day and was insta-called by Roman Korenev to his left. Adamo tabled A♦ 7♦ , Korenev showed an off-suit big slick, and the board was blank.
“I had ace-nine,” Umberto Vitagliano, seated to Adamo’s right, said.
“Why can’t you raise, then I fold?” Adamo said. Vitagliano shrugged and Adamo put on his jacket. His Day 5 had lasted one hand.
Pfützenreuter had still not actually stacked all his chips before he, like the rest of the remaining players, were told to put them in racks and prepare for another redraw.
Suffice to say, he hadn’t read a page of his book, either. But you never know, if things go well today and tomorrow, Pfützenreuter could soon be writing his own Incredible True Story of Fortunes.
You can see where they all ended up after the seat draw in this shiny seat draw post.
Day 5 of the EPT Vienna Main Event is under way. Follow it on the Main Event page. It’s also Day 2 of the €10,000 High Roller. Follow that on the High Roller page. Alternatively, watch on EPT Live.
