Day 2- The rest
After the 1st round of holdem, we'd had a good round, and England had extended their lead with a 28 point gap to 3rd place. We all knew that we only had to finish in the top 2, so in a lot of senses, we all just had to play sensible, grind the points to guarantee top 2.
I sit down, and have a decent start. Then get AAKx double suited, and get it all in pre vs a short stack Canadian, who has QQJJ, Q on the flop and all of a sudden I'm a short stack. Within 5 minutes, both Steve and Tony are out 1st, both with AAxx pre and losing. It's fair to say, Steve was annoyed at himself, he told Tony, they had a lil barney, and Tony, next hand gets his AAxx and loses. There's thoughts going through my mind, which is, is this where the wheels come off? Nope, not with Stu Ward and Carl Pilgrim still in. I changed my game slightly, played mega tight, mega aggressive. Before I know it, we've lost 3 players and I relax a little. Twice I've been potted on the bb, I have AAxx get it all in and win. One of them was vs AAxx but my other 2 cards hit 2 pair on the flop. Even with all that, I was still mega short stacked compared to the others on my table. We go 3 handed very quickly, and I have less than 5bb's. Both Carl and Stu have finished 3rd, so I have nothing to lose. I double up on my next bb, then proceed to pot every possible hand. I end up being heads up with either one of the Portuguese guys or Luca ( my memory is terrible), and I have slightly more chips. I get JJ84 and raise, my opponent pots, and I have a good long think. I can easily fold here and continue the pressure. The chirp starts.. I have such a pretty hand here.... which says to me, I have the top pair. It all goes in and he had AKQ9 double suited. Somehow I hold!! Which means I've had 3 wins and a 3rd out of the 4 events so far, and that propels me back to the top of the individual leaderboard!
We have about 20/25 mins before the start of the last round of NLHE STTs, so we all go and chill by the bar. The Italians, Portuguese, Spanish and Canadians are now all within striking distance of us. But we do know that fate is within our hands. We all have a discussion, and we decide to change things a little. As Carl and myself were the top 2 scorers, we were put on the 2 tables with all the above teams represented, as an attempt to control any surges by these teams, and, to hopefully, knock those players out early. We were also realistic in what we needed to achieve. The main thing was not to go gung ho, as 30 points pretty much guaranteed us a top 2 finish, unless 2 of those teams scored well over 50 points in the last round. We also knew that if the teams at the lower end of the table had a great last round, it wouldn't really affect us. As you can probably imagine, our heads were a bit full and swimming with information. My table ends up being the feature table, and that was a barrel of laughs :/ A combination of poor cards, poor play, and significant pressure meant that I literally folded for 2 hours. The only positive is that Portugal had a horrendous session, and as they were the most likely beforehand to take over the top 2, the pressure was slightly off. But I have never known poker like it. Stu had again been knocked out early in another puke pot, and Tony had gone relatively early in his 6 max. I decided to just total grind. If that meant folding every hand, so be it. If it meant tank folding, so be it. The longer I lasted on the feature table, the more pressure it would heap back onto our opponents.
There are 2 hands that spring to mind. The first was early on, where I folded 44 from mid position. Normally, I'd have ensured I'd seen a cheap flop, however decided to play no risk and folded. Of course, in a multi way pot, the 4 hits the flop and would have won a decent enough pot. The other, after being passive for a while, I raise with AQ UTG, and the oh so lovely Paul McGuiness 3 bets. He knows the situation I'm in, I know he knows that, and he's aware I'd know that ( following?). I have 3 choices, fold/call/all in. I discounted the call straight away, so was literally a coin flip between shove and fold. If I shove and lose, I get 2 points. If i fold, I may get more. I very rarely tank decisions, but with this one, I spent a fair bit of time over. As I'm agonising over the decision, I see that a couple of our rivals have lost a player, and with that, I make the decision to fold. Paul claimed after he had JJ in this spot and would have folded to a shove, however, I'm never folding JJ in that spot. I know I get a lot of criticism on the live feed over my play throughout the table, but I'm honestly not bothered. It's not my normal game ( those who watched me play the feature table day 1 at Stoke will know it doesn't really influence me), it was a tense and stressful time, and looking back, I'm ok with how I played. I still haven't watched the video of the table as of yet, and probably will do when I have a free bit of time. Then I can see if Paul was telling the truth!!
I eventually still get knocked out in 7th place, with my QQ in the sb no match for John Murray and his A10, the AAJ flop overkill imo
No matter, we're still in a good position, Wales, Ireland and Italy are all doing well which means that Steve and Carl just have to finish 4th in both their games and make sure that Spain don't win every event. Both of the guys get down to the last 3, where Stu, Tony and myself were railing the boys hard, as well as going back to the updating table what seemed like every minute to get the updates, as well as JB who was helping with the updates. At one point, I was absolutely certain we had made it, and whilst going to 100% confirm it, Steve folded JJ and Carl folded AK, both on the button!! 30 seconds later, we were confirmed top 2, alongside Italy. Quickly had a celebratory hug with Tony and Stu, then Steve and Carl. And went and chilled. I wanted 20 mins away from poker, found the table at the bar with Emma and Lucy and just took it easy.
Going into the HU, I was confident. I'm comfortable sitting across the table from most players and being able to play against them, picking up their habits, starting hands and what my ranges should be to play against them. The initial plans were that we'd have an order to play in, and my personal choice is to play 5th. I play better under pressure, always have done, and no idea why. I know that Steve was nervous as hell going into HU, I could see how badly he wanted to win. Hopefully, with my super chilled and calm manner helped him and the other guys relax. In the end, we played all the HU at the same time, and I was sat on the extreme right of the group. Again, I was pretty happy with this, as I could zone out and focus on my game.
I'm determined to play small ball. I feel that the longer I can drag the game, the better I will do, as I tend to play HU in a very certain style. After level 1 I check my stack, I'm slightly ahead. I think back over my hands, he's had and showed trips or better 7 times...
Level 3 is where I start putting more pressure on. Stu has already won his game, and I can see my opponent slightly deflating. I try and project pure confidence. One pot in particular sticks in my mind. I've called a raise pre with 98os, called bets on the flop and turn with the board running KQQJ. The river comes another K. Again I check, deciding that if he has a hand, he's probably scared of betting behind ( maybe losing to A hi), if he has nothing, he bets. He bets, so I have a small tank and 3 bet it hard, he instantly folds. I keep the pressure on, more raises pre, more 3 bets pre. We get to 200/400 and I've 7.5k opposed to 2.5k, so I'm now looking to get him to get it in weak and be ahead. I hear a shout and straight away can see Carl has won, within 2 minutes, all in and a call from Tony on the table next to me, who I know has more chips, get up and see the hand. He wins. Cue pandemonium!! Run round to celebrate with him, then Stu, Steve and then literally shoving tables and chairs out of the way to celebrate with Carl, Lucy and Emma as well. All the boys get there too and we have a bloody big group hug. Of course, my celebration pictures are with Lucy and Emma, Tony and Stu had to put up with each other!! ( definite run good!!)
I quickly pop back to shake hands with my opponent and the rest of the Italian boys, obviously they were completely gutted but very very gracious. Back with the team to celebrate was next on the agenda, most of the rest of the night is a blur, not from drinking I hasten to add! I was literally in a daze from what we had accomplished, it hadn't hit us that night to be honest, but we did have a few drinks, the presentations and the smiling. We were all completely shattered after playing so much pressure poker, and coming out on top. We were World Champions!!
There is more to come on the team event....
As an addition, had my work stocktake over this weekend. I usually put in extra hours in the weeks leading up to it, doing extra checking etc. This year with the WCOAP, I instead took 10 days off work 10 days before it happened. However, the results were good, and I"ll be spending tomorrow doing the final post stocktake checks before having a well deserved 2 days off before starting a few night shifts....
