Last night ended pretty late and our reporter didn"t manage to finish the complete story of last night"s Day 1. Here are the delayed details of "The rise and demise of Tom Clark (still alive though)"
While is was mostly Mark "Minion" Duguid who had some notable appearances in the early stages of the tournament, unfortunatly for Mark it didn"t always go as planned and we had to say goodbye to the coulourfull character before the day was over.
Tom Clark on the other hand was a slow starter, while grinding his way to the middle regions of the chipcounts, all of the sudden the Scottisch Captain popped up on our radar by becoming the tournament chipleader in a 103.600 pot while blinds were still 300/600.
His three of a kind "Three"s" were up against Aces on an all clubs board, with the overpair also having the nut flushdraw. Tom Clarck dodged the combined outs of his opponend to propel himself upwards where he stayed untill the last 6 hands of the tournament.
Where it looked like things were going to turn out allright, with a stack well over tournament average, his first hickup occured when he doubled up Patrick De Cleene. Tom opened AJo when he faced a 3B shove by Patrick. He made the call, but when his opponent"s AKo made a straight by the river, it created a dent in Tom's stack.
Things got really nasty at the very end of Day 1A. When Yves Bormans went all-in UTG for his last 20ish blinds, a player, who whished to remain anonymous (hint: CL), felt frisky and decided to isolate from the Small Blind. Tom looked down to see Aces and all he needed was the time it took for his brain to send a signal to the vocal cortex to announce the call. He covered the Small Blind by a little over 20k, so things were looking good.
With a J-high flop Yves took an unexpected lead in the hand, but it was mainly the 7 & 8 on the board that accompagnied it that got the gathered crowd cheering. The turn was a safe blank, but the brutality became clear when the dealer turned a 4 over on the river, giving the Small Blind a straigth with just a few hands left in Day 1A.
He did manage to double up back to 40k, but the dramatic turn of events made him a shortstack instead of the oligarch he could have been at the start of day 2.
Tom Clark ended the day with 40.900 chips, and is positioned 24th out of a remaining 33 players on Day 1A.
