Wojtek Hanus Won a Trip to Cash Game Festival London After a Break From Poker
Poland's Wojtek Hanus has been playing poker for a few years. He won a package through a promotion on Betsafe and came to London with his girlfriend Lisa Nord, who yesterday won a bottle of champagne after guessing the first player to score a goal in one of the Champions League football matches.
Hanus met Nord while she was an Erasmus student in Poland. Last year, he moved with Nord to her home country of Sweden.
The couple decided to head to London early since Hanus has never been to the British capital before. Nord, who previously lived in the city, has been showing Hanus around. Although there are many sites unique to London, Hanus is thus far most impressed with something else.
"London is nice," explained Hanus. "The city is very clean. I don't know why but it is really important for a city to be clean. I enjoyed my visit to Tallinn because the city is extremely clean. Where I live in Stockholm is also very clean."
Hanus has played a bit both online and live while in Sweden before taking a break in October to study Swedish and work as a swimming instructor.
He shared that learning Swedish has been a challenge. He has shown to some of the Swedish players in attendance he can understand them, however, this didn't come without ongoing commitment which included four hours per day of class study and homework.
He got back into playing poker in January. Shortly afterward, his close friend at PokerBreak.pl told him about the rake race competition at Betsafe. Hanus shared his path to the top 10 on the leaderboard was through pot-limit Omaha ring game tables. After this, he went on to ship a package to London to attend the Cash Game Festival.
So far Hanus shared he is having a great time.
"The festival is nice," shared Hanus. "The activities so far have been great."
Hanus is also used to long waiting lists when playing live ring games and has been pleased that he has been able to get a quick seat both of the first two days of the festival.
"There hasn't been a long line and the wait for a seat has been quite fast" Hanus explained.
Hanus left yesterday's action as a winner but was in for a surprise after he sat down at the table. He is experienced in playing pot-limit Omaha, but only has previously played the four-card variety. At Aspers, the typical pot-limit Omaha table allows the player on the button to choose between four, five or six cards.
"It was a bit confusing playing in the beginning for me as I was unused to playing with more than four cards," Hanus said. "I was playing quite safe, and was looking to only get it in with the nuts."
Since the strategy worked for him yesterday, Hanus shared he planned to play the same way today.
Despite being successful on the felt, he wants to do big things off the felts. He studied robotics while attending University in Poland, and shared he feels now that he has been learning Swedish, he should be able to get a good job in a field he enjoys.