What a tournament. Still shattered. Another triumph for the APAT team. Congrats to them and to the medallists. Also wp Niall and his team (especially the catering) - showed up some other venues.
My starting table became the final table, so I was the only person in the tournament to never move - a surreal feeling to sit in the same place the whole way through while everyone gradually came to my table. The table was fairly soft to start with - not much to worry about when surrounded by Darren Shallis, Rob Swindell, Simon Auckland, Steve Redfern, Franck Viollet and Jurgen Bachmann! The bloodbath suggested by that line-up inevitably followed and I was lucky not to be involved in most of it. The massacre continued all evening with replacements coming and going all the time. There must have been more people knocked out on that table than any table I have ever played on. By the end of the night every single replacement had also left so every seat had been occupied by a minimum of three players and some by several more. I have never shared a table with so many players in one tournament - literally dozens.
Josh Sugarman & Gyorgy Kiss caused me a lot of trouble at different stages with their aggressive/creative chip accrual. Although they were taking chips from me, I had to admire the plays they were making (though some of their calls were optimistic, as those on the table may remember). Derrick Andrews filled the role in the later stages. I hadn"t come across Kev Smith before - though we only had a couple of skirmishes, it was clear to me during the time he was on the table that he was someone with the potential to do a lot of damage to my stack so, without meaning to be nasty, I was glad when he went. Same applied to Rudders & John Miller. Saw some incredible short-stack play by Brian Martin and some rough bad beats, the worst sufferer being Colin McCarthy, who rebuilt his stack after a huge bad beat (with AA, I think, not sure), only to be hit by a second with KK, each of which he took with amazing good humour, despite his tournament being destroyed very late by bad luck. So many players, I"ve forgotton a lot of what happened - I remember enjoying playing with Richard Baker, Andy Overton, Ian Thompson & Alan McBride. It was great to have Jean-Michel there on Day 2 and Matt & Silke on the FT. Pity Brendan just missed the FT for the second time in succession - might have made up for his horrible bad beat in Nottingham. In the end I was knocked out with AQ for the third successive APAT, despite hitting it again. AQ is the new AJ.
Highlights for me:
- Having raised from MP with 9 7 (ahem), flopped a 9, bet every street and been called all the way by Josh, I bet 2k (about 75% of the pot) on the River with 4th pair. I think the Board was something like T96AJ. He eventually called and the following conversation took place - Josh:What have you got? Me:One pair. Josh:Which? Me:Nines. Josh:You win.
- Gyorgy Kiss (c 40k) raised PF for the 79th time and John Miller (c 80k) called. Flop x77. On the Turn, John bet & Gyorgy reraised. John thought about it for about two hours and eventually reraised all-in. Snap-call. Miller KT (total miss), Kiss Q7. Whoops! Miller: I knew he was raising me with junk. Kiss: I didn"t have junk after the Flop. Good point. [PS: They didn"t use the word "junk"].
- Gyorgy raised my BB to 6k, the 104th time he had done this in 6 hours. By now, I was calling with Q6. Flop Axx - check, check. Turn Q - check, check. River x - I bet 6k, he called. I showed, he mucked. What did he have?
- Brian Martin shoved all-in UTG, folded to my BB. I fold and show 8 4. Brian shows 8 2. Had him dominated!
- Brian Martin again. Shortstack shoves for about 12k. Two callers and Brian last to act. This scenario was discussed on the forum last week and I could see that Brian wanted to reshove to create dead money but was struggling to force himself to make the play, presumably cos his hand wasn"t particularly good and the two callers were the two massive stacks, who could lose the amount in Brian"s shortish stack (50k ish?) without noticing the difference. Eventually he managed it and the others folded(?) leaving Brian HU for a pot of 50k at a cost of 12k. Em, A6o didn"t win and the shortstack quadrupled up, so no reward for a great play.
