Writing a poker blog is much easier when you are winning. Many I have come across are just an endless string of, “Oh yeah, yeah, I just binked another 20 Gs, yo, but came second in the *insert impossible to win Sunday major here* for only $100,000 when there was $200,0000 up top fml fml fml fml fml. Still, went out to celebrate/drown my sorrows with the boys drinking champagne at $1,000 a bubble!”
These entries are always suspiciously several months apart.
I set myself up a bit in my last blog by essentially promising some results. I went 0/4 in the ECOOP events I played. The closest I got was in the $430 Pot Limit Omaha, but in the end, couldn’t outrun the sickness. The WSOP Warrior was better, I managed to finish second in the penultimate event to put me in 9th of 377 going into the Grand Final. That didn’t go exactly to plan, however, and I finished a few points outside the top ten to rank 15th over the 9 events. I won a $535 WSOP Main Event satellite ticket for my efforts and despite not being able to convert that into a Vegas trip, I still feel I got some pretty great value for the $6 it cost me to win my way in.
Thank God for Luton. Even before I had the bankroll to play them, I always remember looking at British festivals run during the WSOP as great value. Imagine a field without all the pros, where all you are left with are those that can’t afford Vegas - or those that can’t make it and are bitter that they’re still in a Grosvenor. I managed to convince Jamie that the GUKPT Luton Summer Series Main Event was a must.
I played with some great players over those two days - if you were on my table and are reading this, rest assured that you were probably one of them. I also played with some awful ones though. A lot. We got off to a bizarre start when one player, who was sat waiting with us at the table 10 minutes before the start of play, was forced to sit out the first hand because he had apparently missed the registration deadline. As he was then considered an alternate, he had to begin the second hand by posting the 75 big and small blind dead, despite the blinds having got nowhere near his seat. It was a nonsensical ruling. The thing is, if everyone gets to start a tournament with 200 big blinds and you only start with 198.5, you’re pretty much dead in the water. You really are actively wasting your time by sitting there, and so it’s best to just try dust off your remaining 9,925 chips as quickly as possible. Well that appeared to be his take on things anyway. Needless to say, I didn’t get my hands on a single one of those chips and whilst Jamie and Gavin were busy doing things like flopping set over set and busting Willie Tann, I was plodding along with my starting stack. Just before the second break was a turning point for me.
Our unfortunate ‘dead blind poster’ had been replaced at my table by Ali Mallu, the player who sits proudly atop the GUKPT leader board. He had a pretty huge stack. I raised it up from early with J-J and got a call from Ali and at least one other player. The flop came down something along the lines of T-5-3ss. I led out and Ali stuck in a huge raise to all but set me in. It was folded round to me, I still had around 30 big blinds behind and don’t normally like getting that much in with one pair early, but I went with my read and his 7-7 didn’t improve. Shortly after the break, I was dealt my only A-A of the tournament and, after cold calling my three-bet preflop and open over-jamming the king high flop, the aggressive Mr. Mallu was able to miss his flush draw and our transference of chips was complete. Jamie missed all this and only wandered over once I lost a huge flip that would have given me a near final table chip lead three tables out. He just saw me putting the change back on my still above average stack and said, “Must be nice.” Boy, that kid knows how to give inadvertent rubdowns.
By the time we got down to nine, Black Belt Poker had certainly made their mark on the tournament. The three of us that entered held over two thirds of the chips in play, with myself as chip leader, and Gavin and Jamie sitting second and third respectively. The BBP one, two, three was on. It was still on with four left and how one of us didn’t win it, I’ll never know. My personal demise came as my top pair was no good against eventual winner Graham Pound’s A-A and Gavin rivered a disguised gutshot against my trips three-handed to take me from first of three to third. I was proud of my performance though and it’s nice to do well in the bigger events.
I ended the month missing the UKIPT Killarney due to it clashing with my now yearly pilgrimage to Glastonbury. It was awesome. Don’t listen to what anyone says about the Gorillaz set, it was incredible. Faithless made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, Florence and the Machine set The Other Stage alight and Snoop Dogg managed to get 80,000 of the world’s most liberally minded people to cheer at his use of the word ‘Biatch’. Bloody brilliant. There’s more to life than poker.
Having said that, the UKIPT Brighton is a couple of weeks away. I can’t wait.
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