Three big players descended on Austria this week as the CAPT (Casinos Austria Poker Tour) takes place across four midweek days of November 19-23. Dietrich Fast, Stefan Lehner and Jessica Teusl all have plenty of reasons to believe they’ll be successful at the felt this week and with big money on the line, have pieces of their action to sell on PokerStake.
If you’re new to staking or want to know more about the professional lives of Fast, Lehner and Teusl, we’ve got the scoop as the trio head into action at the CAPT felt.
Teusl on Top
Jessica Teusl shot to fame in poker in June of 2022 when she won her biggest score to date and her first WSOP bracelet. Taking down the $1,000-entry Ladies Event Championship for $ 166,975, Teusl’s triumph was by no means her only big score in a poker career that has so far yielded over $788,000 in live tournament results alone.
Teusl, who has reached two other WSOP final tables, was delighted with her victory in 2022, especially with it coming just a week after she finished eighth in the $1,500 buy-in Monster Stack event for $120,455.
“I started to think the chance of winning was now alive,” she said at the time “I know everything could change really fast, and I’m very grateful that luck was on my side.”
Teusl had two reasons to celebrate, with her boyfriend Stefan Lehner also bagging gold that week in Las Vegas. But we’ll return to Lehner later. Teusl’s triumphs are many and in Austria alone, she has cashed five times in the past 12 months, despite mainly focusing on travelling to larger events. This time last year, Teusl came 12th in the Main Event, returning a score of $8,139 on the $3,500 buy-in. She seems a very good shot to repeat or even better that performance and is selling to both the Mystery Bounty Event and the Main Event, at a markup of between 1.00 and 1.20.
Lehner Leaning into Victory
“I do a lot of theory, so it’s just about staying calm.”
Both Teusl and her partner Stefan Lehner sit inside the top 50 players ever to represent Austria at the poker felt, but while Teusl is in 30th place, Lehner is even higher up in 16th place on The Hendon Mob All-Time Austria Money List. With over $1.25 million in winnings, Lehner followed up his WSOP Circuit Ring win in 2021 for $8,720 by winning his debut bracelet in 2022 in the $3,000 NLHE Event #16 for $558,616.
Clearly a non-believer in ‘jet lag’, Lehner’s Las Vegas title came three days after he landed in Sin City and he said afterwards that he felt absolutely no pressure in what turned out to be the biggest poker event of his career so far.
“When you know almost every time what you need to do in this spot, then it’s not so tough to play. I do a lot of theory, so it’s just about staying calm,” he said, eulogising on the benefits of playing live rather than online. “Playing against real people is great; playing against people from different nations. You get to have reads on the players – and that’s real poker.”
With just one event on sale – the Main Event – Lehner is also a very good value pick, with bullet #1 on sale at 1.15 markup and bullet #2 up for grabs for 1.10. He is selling out fast so make sure that you don’t miss out on a piece of both Lehner and Teusl as the under-the-radar poker power couple once again play in an event both have a lot of experience in versus the field.
Dietrich Making Fast Moves
“I’ve been playing live poker since 2013 and I’ve seen everything possible at the poker table.”
German poker professional and Vienna resident Dietrich Fast is quicky selling out to his Main Event on the CAPT on PokerStake, and it’s not hard to see why. Fast has won millions in his poker career and after falling out of love with the game during COVID, his passion for live poker is not hotter than ever.
“People don’t have patience, they make a lot of mistakes, they give a lot of tells,” he told Spade Poker back in 2023. “I can use that extra information to my advantage. I’ve been playing live poker since 2013 and I’ve seen everything possible at the poker table. What the players do with the cards, with the chips, how they look, their movements. I can use it and then I have better results than online, where I can’t see it.”
Fast is already sold out for his first bullet to the Main Event, but his second bullet is selling at 1.13 and isn’t to be missed. Like Lehner and Teusl, his work ethic, live experience and years in the game are big advantages over many of the field in Vienna. Another player worth keeping an eye out for is the North Macedonian Ilija Savevski. After cashing five times in the recent WSOP Europe festival, his country’s most successful ever tournament player went past a million dollars in ranking results in his career during a busy 2024.
Photos of Dietrich Fast and Stefan Lehner by Tomáš Stacha and Danny Maxwell respectively for PokerNews.
