From a €2 ticket to over a 4k cash at a UO! by Remco
From the 2nd of August till the 6th of August I was in Bucharest for the Unibet Open. My journey to visiting this Unibet Open started way longer ago though. While some of you know me from twitch, others probably won’t. I am a 23 years old guy from The Netherlands. Because I am Dutch, I am, unfortunately, not able to join the community fun because of our laws. I started playing in the beginning of 2016, and since then I turned a few free qualifier tickets into several Unibet Open and UK Tour packages. I wrote a blog post earlier about UO London 2017, which can be found if you search for ‘’Had a great experience at the Unibet Open thanks to the community!’’ This Unibet Open was in money terms way more fruitful though, because I turned my package into a really nice sum of money! The way of qualifying was a bit different for this UO though. However I, as always, used my ticket bankroll build up from a few free tickets, to buy in to the final, Unibet made a mistake. Instead of 1, they had set up two finals, each with five packages guaranteed. So that meant a GTD of 10 packages, divided over two tournaments, instead of 5 GTD normally. In the end it meant a total of 4000 euros overlay per tournament, so I decided to late reg at the very last minute, although I had only one final ticket at the moment. We were almost on push/fold stage immediately and in the end I shipped a package! So that’s the qualifying done, at Thursday the 2nd of August I went to Bucharest by plane, ready for another amazing Unibet Open. When arriving at the airport I took a Uber (very convenient way too come from one place to another!) to the hotel. When arriving I immediately saw Marco-Unibet and AndreiBN at the entrance, some guys I met at earlier Unibet Opens as well. We had a quick talk and after that I went to check-in and get my UO welcome package. This was a very generous welcome package, as it is at any Unibet Open. It was a Unibet backpack containing a Unibet shirt and a Unibet cap. Also some other small things like the player keycord, some other small stuff and ofcourse the information you needed to be a part of the activities. I then spend some time with AndreiBN, Jeppe-Unibet and Pirahn before going to dinner. After having dinner I went back to my room for a while to watch some soccer, and then it was time for the Welcome Drinks! The welcome drinks took place at a bar in the hotel and I was mainly standing with the Dutch and Belgium guys which was really nice. A bit later Molly Bloom arrived and everyone could get a free copy of her book and a picture with her. Again something purely for free you got from Unibet. I went to get a copy and a picture and then had some more beers. Not too many though, as I had to play on Friday and didn’t want to be hangover the next day. After Unibet extended the welcome drinks till 1am, I left at approximately that time to get some rest, because next day the main event would already start at 11am. On Friday I went to get breakfast at 9.30am and then went back to my room for a while. At 10.45 I got into the registration area to take my seat for the Main Event. The first six levels I felt like I was playing decent, but the runouts of the boards were just not going my way and I was pretty unlucky. As we proceeded my stack was slowly decreasing, but at that point everything turned around. Ten minutes before the dinner break I shove 55 from the Cut Off with around 20bb and get called by the SB who showed QQ. There was a 5 on the flop and because no helping cards for him came, I doubled to almost 50bb. That meant I took a decent stack into dinner break. After dinnerbreak I won some pots and lost some, but my stack wouldn’t really grow much. At the end of day 1 I was back to 20bb and doubled when AT>AK and there came two Tens on the board. After that I played some nice poker and got my stack up to exactly 70k that I could take to day 2. We started day 2 on the 1500/3000/500 level which meant I got around 23bb. In the beginning I won some nice pots that got my stack over 30bb. I then got moved to another table when someone opened from the cutoff and I jammed 25bb with my AQ from the BTN. The Big Blind jammed his 20bb as well and cutoff folded. I got lucky again when my AQ won from BigBlinds AK and all of the sudden I got a really nice stack to work with and getting decent chances on a cash in the main event. As I have never cashed a live tournament that was a really big thing for me, so I was playing a bit more cautious then normal, because I could essentially fold into the money. When there were 91 people left (87 players got paid) in the tournament, I am in the SB and look down at QQ. Cutoff jams his 15 bb in and I have to call this with my 40bb stack and pray that BB does not wake up with a better hand. BB folds and cutoff shows 88. We hold and now have around 60bb and 3 players to bust before we get in the money. I was over the moon at that point and really happy to have my first live cash ever. The min cash of 1980 euros is huge money for me, so at that point I felt my tournament was successful whatever would happen after. Then again some levels were I didn’t really got much going happened, and just before we would get into dinnerbreak, we were told that after it our chips would be at the feature table! That was really exciting and at the same time a bit weird to hear. Although it was really nice to have a lot of people from my town in the Netherlands watching, it also brought a bit of pressure with it. Because I already achieved more than I could wish for, it wasn’t that big of a deal though. I then went to have dinner and had a quick look who were playing the community freeroll. I didn’t had much time so after a quick look I had to go and play the main event. I still feel a bit sad to have missed it, because it is always nice to meet some new community members. Then we started in the main event again. At the feature table I got a nice double up very early on in a hand you can see if you click the link below: https://youtu.be/BxbS6hxZVPM?t=5h47m30s After having the double, I got a really nice stack to work with, but then lost a lot of it after the following hand: https://youtu.be/BxbS6hxZVPM?t=6h24m30s There was a bit of discussion about the hand and some say I should call there, some say I should fold. I still think I can fold there, even against that small sizing, because the river is horrible for me and I block his straight draws, but I would love to hear your opinion about it. Please tell me below how you would have played the hand and if you want to discuss it with me just hit me up on twitch. After that I was down to 19bb. I remember I was pretty tired and went back into push/fold mode instead of trying to see some cheap flops. I was down to 15bb when a maniac shoved his 9bb from UTG. He was shoving a lot after being on ragetilt after losing with AA<99. I look down to 77 in the SB and decided to put in my last 15bb. He held with J8o and I was crippled down to 6bb. Next hand I shove J7o from the BTN to get called by A9s from the ragetilt guy, who is now in the BB. An ace on the flop ended my dream. You can see the final hands here: https://youtu.be/BxbS6hxZVPM?t=7h34m Although I busted the tournament, I was really happy with how I played and what I achieved, so I didn’t even feel bad. I went to the registration desk to pick up my prize and then went back to my room to see my bust on stream (30 minutes delay) and chill a bit before going to the players party. The players party was awesome and held on a really nice place outside a disco. We had really much fun and together with AndreiBN and another guy from Unibet we arrived back at the hotel at 8am. On Sunday I planned to go to a soccergame with AndreiBN, NMPfan and some other guys, but I was exhausted and went to back to bed in the afternoon. I then slept too long and only woke up to see I was too late to join. On Monday morning I had my final breakfast and left around 10am to the airport, and got a safe flight home. I want to thank everyone who made this Unibet Open a great success once again. The community members, the UO staff, the ambassadors, the commentators Davitsche and Henry, who where really supporting me on stream and all twitchers who supported me on the feature table. I really enjoyed it and hope that everyone sees where a free ticket can bring you. I hope to see a lot of you in the future at a Unibet Open, maybe even on the last one this year, but then I have to qualify myself as well ofcourse. If you can dream it, you can do it! Remco – Remk_95
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