How far would you travel for a good seat in a poker game?
WolfgangPoker took that question to extreme lengths on a recent excursion to Antarctica with his family, capping off an eventful few months in his life.
After becoming the first poker content creator on YouTube to crack the million subscriber mark and then playing at WSOP Paradise, Wolfgang has somehow managed to fit a week-long expedition to the world's southernmost region into his busy schedule.
PokerOrg's SarahHerring spoke to Wolfgang about the upcoming GPI Awards, playing poker on an ice table, and all the highlights from his trip to the edge of the world.
Check out the full video below, along with some selected excerpts from the conversation.
Sarah Herring talks to Wolfgang Poker
Sarah Herring: You told me that this year you guys were going to Antarctica. Now, this has been a dream of mine since like the beginning of time, but I'm not jealous – I'm here to support you. And then it looked like, when you sent me some pics, it was even better than I could have ever imagined because you brought poker to the very deep south of our planet.
Wolfgang Poker: The fact that that even happened is like the poker gods were looking down on us because there's 80, I think there's 85 people on this expedition. A lot of people are like, 'Oh, what cruise are you on?' It's an expedition. We were kayaking like five hours a day. It was pretty gnarly. But there's 80, like let's just say 85 people on the expedition. And the fact that I got six people together that knew how to play poker is insane.
So, basically from the States, you have to take an 11-hour flight to Buenos Aires. Then you have to take a three-hour flight to Ushuaia, which, look that up... It's like literally the end of the earth. And then you take a two-day boat ride across the Drake Passage to Antarctica.
The two-day boat ride, you're on such heavy drugs that you basically don't remember it. All I remember was how bad it was, like it's 15-foot waves. You either get the Drake Lake or the Drake Shake. Drake Lake is like three-foot waves, you're just chilling. The Drake Shake is what I got in both ways. My dad was yakking, like it was, it was pretty bad, but I took so many of these... I don't even know what they call it, but all the crew take it and you're fine. You're just kind of like a potato for two days.
But once you're there, it's like Disney World on Pixar on steroids. It's just crazy. Everything's white and blue and you got like penguins jumping off. You got orcas swimming by with seals running away from them. And you got the mountain ranges on both sides of you.
Sarah: You fully have confirmed the fantasy of Antarctica. That being said, I do get seasick, so like, you might have thrown me off with this Drake thing a little bit.
Wolfgang: But I'm like, I got to recruit four other people. You can't be playing heads up here on the vlog. That's kind of not too entertaining. And, so we get to the camping site. I throw my deck of cards that I brought in and my Monopoly money, but how are we going to make a table? Because if we make a table, the degenerates will come. You see that blackjack table at the corner of the casino, it's like the Vegas lights. So, I got to make a table and then it's going to be an easy sales pitch.
So, we get these shovels and we're like, 'Okay, if we make a square and we dig down, then the table will be higher than the floor, right? So that'll work, so we start digging. It's a lot of work, but I'm like, for the vlog! I have like 50 gigabytes of b-roll footage and zero megabytes of poker footage, we gotta make this happen. So I'm digging, we make a table and, all of a sudden, tourists with these massive lenses, like all these other people, start coming over and like some dude flies a drone over it. They're like just going nuts. And then three other people, my aunt's boyfriend and then two others – one of Alex's friends and then this guy named Eric who knew how to play too. They all just come over. They're like, 'You playing poker?'
And so we got a five-handed game, but keep in mind, it's still outside, right? I'm the only one who took my gloves off because I have to deal, I have to pitch, get the money going. It's a whole home game mess, but outside in like 20-degree weather.
You can join Wolfgang Poker's 1.1m+ subscribers on his YouTube channel.
