After an early start and a long train ride from Cornwall, I arrived at the Vic to be greeted by a who"s who of the British Poker scene, John Duthie, Simon Trumper, Neil Channing, Ram Vaswani and Donnacha O"Dea, to name just a few. Donnacha was not playing in the tournament, but was playing a £4k buy in cash game on the table next to mine.
I find my table and start to get to know my opponents, and find that I am seated with the winner of GUKPT Blackpool, Brian Clark and the winner of leg 5 of the Poker Millions, Sammy George, plus a couple of pros whose name I didn"t get.
Initially seat 9 was empty, but about half an hour into the tournament, none other than Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott arrives and is now sitting directly to my right. So no pressure there then.
I was determined to play my normal tight agressive game, making 75%-100% pot-sized bets when I hit the flop or had strong draws.
My first action was against Sammy George with ATs. I raise4BB, he calls. Flop KJx
both in my suit, for a possible royal flush! I bet the pot, Sammy calls. Turn Blank Check, Check. River is a Q not of the same suit for a straight. I bet the pot, he calls. 4000 chips to me. He had KJ and never re-raised me on the flop!
Amazingly the same thing happened when I had AQs. He had top pair on a king high flop I had another Flush draw. Turn is blank and checked down. River is a 10 - I make another straight which Sammy pays off. Another 4000 to me.
Meanwhile in between showing us his £50,000 watch and telling us about how he satisfies the women in his life, the Devilfish has donked off about half his stack with bluffs that are re-raised, including 2,500 to me when re-raised with KK. he folded in return for me showing my hand, which I did, but which is something I rarely do.
Then I look down at :as: qs in the SB with the blinds 150/300. Devilfish limps I raise to 1200, he calls. Flop ks
:
: . Oh look I have the nut flush. Devilfish 8k chips me 24k. What should I do? All comments on what I actually did would be appreciated.
Using double inverted reverse psychology I decided that If I made a smaller than usual continuation bet I might get the Devilfish to make a move against me. I bet another 1200. The Devilfish moves all in, I insta-call. The whole table stands up and gasps when I turn over the :as: qs and I am so caught up in fact I have taken out the Devilfish, I genuinely have no idea what his cards were or what the turn and river were (I think the river was another spade).
So there I am with 32k+ chips basking in the admiration of the rest of the table.
Then I got cocky and donked off 10k by bluffing into a set of
. I managed to claw about 4k of it back.
Then our table was broken up and I was seated with Padraig Parkinson - no.4 in the Irish all time money earners list and Roberto Romanello, who had come 2nd & 3rd in Previous GUKPT tournaments. I obviously was not carrying my previous table image with me, and a couple of weak plays on my part further weakened my image. I tried a blind steal with QJo and was re-raised half my stack, and Padraig Check-raised me for half my stack when I held AJo. Should I have gone all in? Comments on a post card. I folded, and going card dead, added to the ever-increasing blinds and antes meant I was nearly back to the starting stack of 15k.
My exit hand was pretty standard. Middle position blinds 600/300, no entries into pot. Look down at kc ks raise to 3k. Roberto raises to 8k. I re-raise all in.
Roberto turns over
.
Flop Comes :as:
:
: Turn and river are no help, and I am out in 55th of about 100 runners. I still haven"t made the top half of a live tournament (apart from the regionals - but they don"t count do they
), but I do have fantastic memories of playing with the Big Boys for 8 hours without making myself look like a total plonker.
Oh, did I mention that I knocked out the UK"s no.1 all time money earner?
