Interview: Catching up with Terry Schumacher

Terry Schumacher was just 9,000 chips behind the leader Alan Sternberg at the start of play on Day 3 at the $10,000 buy-in WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Finale, and Schumacher has increased his starting stack of 1,591,000 up to 1,856,000 (trailing only Ryan Riess) at the second break in play. We caught up with the Belgian poker player on that break, and he told us about his deep run in the tournament, along with his first impression about playing at a U.S. tournament series outside of Las Vegas.

“It’s going pretty well, I wasn’t involved in too many big spots, but I kept on just grinding small ones. I just had a three-bet spot that I won against Alex Keating, and he folded on the river. I three-bet, then check the flop, bet the turn, and bet him almost all in on the river, and he folded, which still gave me a big pot. Other than that no big hands to tell you about,” said Schumacher about cruising on an upward trend during the first two levels of play.

Schumacher also told us that it was much of the same on Day 2: “It was a mix between some small pot grinding, and also I was lucky once with queens against aces, but it was against short stack. He had like 18 bigs, so it didn’t matter that much, but I was still lucky that time. I was always in good shape, because I was almost every time the biggest stack at my table, and I could just play a lot wider, and people almost never played back at me. I just kept on grinding little by little.”

Schumacher has 15 career cashes to his credit for $205,254 in earnings, but the majority of them have come at international events, with his handful of stateside cashes coming in Las Vegas. But it sounds like Schumacher is ready to broaden his horizons in terms of traveling to tournaments as he changes focus from online to live poker. “I’ve only played in Vegas before this trip. I started to play live seriously six months ago; I used to play online only. This is pretty nice. The dealers are fast and good, and the atmosphere is nice and fun. It’s a good thing,” said Schumacher.