APAT Season One - A Retrospective

[Des_D]

APAT Season One - A Retrospective

For over three thousand APAT members who have participated at various stages throughout APAT's first dramatic series, their competitive interest in season one will effectively finish with tomorrow"s unique OnLive event.

For six skilful and lucky players, the season will be extended by a further two weeks to determine who will win the Final Championship event live at the Grosvenor Victoria casino; a seat at the World Series of Poker main event, and possibly the prestigious APAT Season One Rankings. 

Incredibly, after 36 rounds, it is still possible that any one of ten players can still scoop the ultimate APAT accolade and an expenses paid entry to the multi million dollar PokerStars Caribbean Adventure which takes place next month in the Caribbean.

What an incredible first season it has been. 

The series has unearthed talented new players both live and online and a tremendous camaraderie has been born amongst players from all corners of the planet.

So how has the Season unfolded to reach this point?  

Follow our retrospective journey through season one below and get set for the final drama, which will unfold before us all in tomorrow"s APAT OnLive Championship from 2.30pm at Blue Square and through our discussion thread here on the APAT forum.

Players, please feel free to share your memories of significant plays, beats, wins and friendships made, to enable us to give season one the send off that it surely deserves.

[Des_D]

[Des_D]

Event 1: The English Open, took place online on 19 August 2006 and was won by online specialist Des Morris.  Wayne "Nosey P" Parker took Silver in the first of several final tables he would feature in througout season one and Geoff "Kedster" Keddy can be credited with becoming the very first APAT medalist when eliminated in third for Bronze.

Keddy:  First Medalist

While this event was playing out, drama was unfolding at the level of demand being experienced for entry to the first APAT live Championship event. 

The English Amateur Championship was scheduled for September 23rd & 24th at the Broadway and it was quicky established that 120 seats  was not going to go anywhere near enough to satisfy the number of members who wanted to play.

A member draw was decided upon and over 1,200 names went into the hat for the draw, with the lucky entrants being notified on September 4th.

Event 2:  The Italian Open was won by Antony Pollard, with Wayne Parker final tabling in fifth.  Steven Harries took Silver while Matt Whiting took Bronze.  Other notables final tabling included Nathan "xkngdcex" Zabala in 9th.

Event 3: The Canadian Open was won by Andy "Skaro" Lyon with Kevin "Zukertort" Shutt taking Silver and Mike Rowe Bronze.  Other notable players final tabling included Alan "smacl02" Lake in 6th and Zabala in 9th for the second event running.

Lyon:  Canadian Open Winner

So with the first live Championship event looming, the Rankings looked like this on 17 September:-

12   Wayne Parker   nosey-p
9   Andrew Lyon   Skaro
9   Antony Pollard   The_Ant7
9   Des Morris   purr of aces
8   Kevin Shutt   Zukertort
8   Steven Harries   Logan2004
7   Mike Rowe   jaz66
7   Matthew Whiting   matt250686
7   Geoff Keddy   KEDSTER
6   Paul Griggs   MagicPag

[Des_D]

Event 4:  The English Amateur Poker Championship was played over two days at the Broadway Casino in Birmingham and was won by Daniel 'Kinboshi' Phillips, triumphing in his first live multi table tournament. 

Phillips:  English Amateur Champion, 2006

Phillips, who got into the event from 69th on the reserve list beat serial mirrorhead Mark Donnelly for a first prize of £4,500 and a seat at the Copenhagen leg of the European Poker Tour.

Donnelly:  A pose we were to become familiar with

Scotland's Matty Milne took bronze after dominating the event for long periods.  Other notable final tablists included Antony 'Pilf' Wolsey who took 5th, Jimmy 'Flying Pig' Doran who took 6th and Alistair 'Ironside' Fowler who took 8th, along with a warning from the local city council for noise pollution!

Milne:  Bronze

The tournament report read like this:

English Amateur Poker Championship Review

The Amateur Poker Association & Tour (APAT ) held the first live event, the English Amateur Poker Championship, of its first season at the sumptuous Broadway casino in Birmingham over the weekend of the 23rd-24th September. Significantly oversubscribed, the event was full to the venue"s 120 player capacity giving many players their first taste of deep stack live poker. Of the 120 players around 20 were playing live for the first time.

At a buy-in of only £75 and with 10,000 starting chips and a 40 minute clock the structure was designed to give the players who had been lucky enough to secure entry real opportunities for creative play and an antithesis to the shallow stack re-buy competitions normally provided for new and recreational players around the country.

The Tour sponsors, PokerStars.com, are providing an expenses paid entry to an EPT event for the winners of each of the seven series one events and the added prize for the winner of the inaugural tournament was entry in to January 2007"s EPT in Copenhagen with a total value of E8,000. Also provided were cash prizes to the top nine finishers, medals for the top three and an engraved championship cup to the winner.

In another innovation play began on each of the two days at 3pm and finished on day one before midnight to allow potentially inexperienced players to avoid playing at unfamiliar times for them. A feature of the competition was the remarkable atmosphere it was played in. Each and every player exiting the competition was warmly applauded by all the other competitors, the dealers joined in the fun and the sometimes intimidating nature of festival events with an occasional air of jaded cynicism was entirely absent.

With a soft structure the early levels were uneventful until we had our first major confrontation, an almost inevitable KK versus AA all in pre flop with Ben Turnstill from Luton spiking a King first card out to send another runner home early . Sadly for Ben he then tangled with Jay Woods from London (who had already eliminated Chris Hall from Staffs with J6 versus QQ!). Ben was holding Q 10 on a Q 10 8 board, pushing on a blank turn and walking into Jay"s J 9 for the nuts. This left Jay with over 60,000 chips and chip leader by a considerable distance.

Elsewhere the tournament was beginning to hot up. A feature of the next two days was going to be some unfortunate bad beats. Take this one for example. Stephen Waddington with QQ and Jeff Povey with KK are all in pre flop together with a short-stacked Christian Briggs with A 10. The board provided a real rollercoaster of emotions for all three players : A 10 Q,K,Q, so quads beat the full house and a flopped two pair.

Amongst other players challenging on the first evening were Nigel Johnson who"s AA held up in a multiway coup to propel him towards overnight chip leader, Mark Donnelly who"s AQ bust AA by making a straight on the river and Alistair Fowler (above) who was the life and soul of the party and bluffed and bullied his way to a big stack as well as catching big hands at perfect times such as finding AA on the button with the cut off already having pushed.

At the end of the first day 33 players had survived. Chip leaders were Alistair Fowler with 74,000 and Nigel Johnson with 73,000 followed by Liverpool"s Jimmy Doran with 62,700. The remainder of the field, a few short-stacks apart, were tightly grouped in the 30-50000 region. Blinds on the return were due to be 1000-2000 so there remained plenty of play.

As the field whittled down on Day 2 two players overtook the overnight chip leaders. Matthew Milne (right) from Glasgow flopped trip Jacks to eliminate an opponent with top pair on a King high board to move over 100,000 chips and Trevor Heath from Cornwall won an unavoidable confrontation holding K8 in the small blind versus the big blinds 87 on an 87K flop to move over 85,000 chips

One of the key hands of the tournament occurred with 19 players left. This was a vital moment of the tournament because the top 18 finishers were to receive APAT player of the year points, the Player of the Year receiving a WPT package as their prize. Matthew Milne raised UTG and Nigel Johnson pushed all in from mid position for 80,000 chips. Matthew instantly called with AA and a forlorn Nigel turned over KK. When the AA held Matthew had over 250,000 of the 1.2m chips in play and then executed an impressive aggressive big stack game to go deep in the tournament.

At around 6.30pm on day 2 we were down to our final table as follows:

1.Antony Wolsely from Halifax: 42,000
2.Jimmy Doran from Liverpool 60,000
3.Matthew Milne from Glasgow 273,000
4.Steve Parker from London 75,000
5.Mark Donnelly from Birmingham 153,000
6.Scott Moore from Cumbernauld 50,000
7.Dan Phillips from Tamworth 240,000
8.Andy Winkett from Cradley Heath 121,000
9.Trevor Heath from Cornwall 74,000
10. Alistair Fowler from Elgin 123,000

The action was not long in coming. Matthew raises in mid position and is re-raised all in by Steve Parker. Matthew calls and shows QQ to Parker"s Aces. Amazingly Matthew spikes a Queen on the river to send Parker home 10th and rocket him to over a third of the chips in play. Trevor Heath lost a race with his JJ versus Wolsely"s AQ to exit in 9th followed by the aggressive Fowler in 8th after being pushed off several pots by re-raises and unsucccessfully pushing before he was blinded away.

At that point Scott Moore who had played an incredibly patient an disciplined game moved into contention with a treble up, all in pre flop with two callers, as his AQ won with Ace high! Andy Winkett departed in 7th and at that point the blinds, moving to 10,000-20,000 began to bite. A see-saw battle ensued with chip counts swinging wildly as the players aggressively battled for finishing positions in the top three where the payout structure had concentrated the rewards and more specifically the top spot with the added value.

Matthew Milne experienced a particularly up and down level, his AK call of an all in by Doran being beaten by 10 9 and A 10 by Q J to the same player. However Jimmy Doran then re-raised all in with pocket 10"s. Unfortunately for him Wolsely was holding AA to eliminate him in 6th. Wolsely"s situation was soon to turn though when he attempted to eliminate Mark Donnelly (right) by calling his all in with A 10 suited and lost to AQ. When he then lost a race with a pair versus KQ suited he was out in 5th.

Four handed the chip counts were even, the blinds were big and the prize structure top heavy. A little bit of luck was required for one of the four remaining to triumph. Here Daniel Phillips won two key hands. JJ versus Moore"s AK and KQ versus Milne"s 10 10 to move into a healthy chip lead. When Scott Moore, short-stacked, ran into AJ after pushing with K 10 he was out in 4th and Milne unluckily left in 3rd having lost the important races at the wrong times.

Daniel Phillips and Mark Donnelly were thus heads up for the title. Phillips had a healthy chip lead which was lost on the first hand losing with 66 versus AJ all in pre flop but the battle was to be short when Phillips hit a flop of 8 2 2 for his hand J2 and Donnelly caught his pair on the turn to be drawing dead when the chips went in.

Daniel Phillips is therefore the English Amateur Poker Champion and off to the EPT Copenhagen as part of his prize.

[Des_D]

Event 5: The French Open was won by Zabala, with Fowler following up his impressive showing in Birmingham with Silver. 

Zabala: French Open Winner

Kevin Shutt; who had scored points in Birmingham and by taking Silver in Event 3, took Bronze.

Shutt: Double Medalist

Event 6: The Spanish Open was won by Michael Winter, with Stephen Little taking Silver and Nathan Zabala taking Bronze, in an incredible 4th consecutive online final table.

Winter:  Spanish Open Winner

Event 7: The South African Open was won by Parker, with Aaron Gustavson taking Silver and Barry Groom Bronze.  The other notable final tablist was James "Thinker JE" Edwards who took 4th.

Parker: South African Open Winner

[technolog]

What a great idea Des! I"m getting quite misty-eyed reading back over the preceeding months. It"s really getting the juices flowing ahead of tomorrow"s OnLive tourney!

By the way, whatever happened to the £7.50 reg fee?

[Des_D]

Event 8:  Aaron Gustavson followed up his Silver in Event 7 by winning the US Open, beating Allan "bigal371" Peers heads up.  Scott Hicks took Bronze. 

Gustason: Celebrates Win In Home Event

Other notable points scorers included Dewi James taking 4th, Warren Fenwick taking 7th, Michael Gregg taking 9th but most notable of all, Daniel Phillips building on his Birmingham success with 5th in this event.

James: Caribbean bound if Pints = Points!

Event 9: The Chinese Open was won by Michael Carlson with Wayne Parker once again scoring significant points with second and James Edwards following up his success in Event 6 with Bronze here.  Other notable points scorers were Paolo "assocuori" Geovanetti with 4th, Jon Seal in 6th and more points for Allan Peers in 8th.

Edwards:  Bronze

With 210 players attending the next event, the United Kingdom Amateur Championship at Aspers Casino in Newcastle on December 2nd & 3rd, that left the Rankings as follows, a quarter way through the season:

29   Wayne Parker   nosey-p
23   Daniel Phillips   Kinboshi
19   Alistair Fowler   ironside
18   James Edwards   ThinkerJE
18   Nathan Zabala   xkngdcex
18   Kevin Shutt   Zukertort
17   Aaron Gustavson   aguskb
17   Mark Donnelly   dougal7878
16   Matthew Milne   mattymillne
15   Scott Moore   Scottf75

[Des_D]

What a great idea Des! I"m getting quite misty-eyed reading back over the preceeding months. It"s really getting the juices flowing ahead of tomorrow"s OnLive tourney!

By the way, whatever happened to the £7.50 reg fee?

Thanks Jack.  The registration fee was effectively paid by APAT for every player in Season One and negotiated out altogether for Season Two.  

[Des_D]

[Des_D]

Event 11: The UK Open was won by Julian Morgan, with Kevin Fraser taking Silver and Martin Hadfield taking Bronze.  Other notable finishers included Alan Brady in 4th, Steve Talbot following up his excellent final table in Newcastle with 5th here, Michael Carlson with 6th, Jon Woodfield with 8th and Mark Curwen with 9th.

Brady: First Points

Event 12: The Indian Open was won by James Hill, with Mark Curwen making his second consecutive final table and taking Silver.  James Dwinfour took Bronze and at 18 became APAT's youngest medal winner.

Dwinfour (with cap):  Youngest Medal Winner

Event 13: The Scandinavian Open, proved iteself lucky for Irishman Ciaran Lynch, who took Gold beating Paul Hebditch heads up, with Stephen Harries taking Bronze in his second final table of the series. 

Curwen:  Another Final Table

Other notable finishers include Michael Paterson in 4th, Alex Pattillo in 5th and Mark Curwen scoring once again, this time in 8th.

Paterson:  A Sobering Performance

[Des_D]

Event 14: The Middle Eastern Open was won by Adrian Royle, who beat Allan Deuchars heads up for the title, with Mark Holliday taking Bronze. 

Royle:  Middle Eastern Open Winner

Other notable finishers included Tom Massey in 4th, Michael Gregg in 6th and Michael Bodman in 8th.

Bodman:  Sneaks Into The Points

Event 15: Arran Keable won the Scottish Open, beating Scots Charlie Curtis (Silver) and Brian Manderson (Bronze). 

Keable:  Scottish Open Winner

Another significant points scorers was Antony Wolsey with 4th.

Curtis:  Silver Medalist In Home Event

Event 16:  The North American Open was won by Joel Roderick who beat Anthony Williams into Silver and Victoria Snider who took Bronze.  Snider"s performance was significant as she became the first female winner of an APAT medal.

Hodgkins:  First Points

Other notable finishers included Ian Jappy in 4th, David Kehler in 5th, Joe Greenhalfgh in 8th and Duncan Hodgkins with 9th.

[jacklevel06]

Paterson a sobering performance.Very good Des  

[Des_D]

With the season nearly at the half way point and ahead of the next event, the Welsh Amateur Championship being held at the Grosvenor Casino, Cardiff, the top twenty players in the Rankings now looked like this:

29   Wayne Parker   nosey-p
23   Daniel Phillips   Kinboshi
21   Kevin Shutt   Zukertort
20   Antony Wolsey   Pilf
19   Alistair Fowler   ironside
18   Steven Talbot   SteveTheRake
18   Max Ward   Spurs79
18   James Edwards   ThinkerJE
18   Nathan Zabala   xkngdcex
17   Stephen Lacey   steveinhants
17   Aaron Gustavson   aguskb
17   Mark Donnelly   dougal7878
16   Tom Hunter   thecowboy
16   Matthew Milne   mattymillne
15   Steven Harries   Logan2004
15   Adam Spratt   adamspratt
15   Scott Moore   Scottf75
14   Raymond Norton   mondonewc
13   Michael Carlson   mjcace
13   James Doran   FlyingPig73

And so to Cardiff....

[Des_D]

Event 17:  The Welsh Amateur Poker Championship was held on February 24th & 25th at the Grosvenor Casino in Cardiff.  The event sold out over 220 seats in under 6 minutes.

Mulligan:  Welsh Amateur Champion, 2007

Soldier Lee Mulligan took the honours in a very exciting event, beating Mark Donnelly heads up for the Championship.  Lee"s prize included the title, £4,000 first prize, Cup, Gold Medal and entry into the Dortmund European Poker Tour event.

Donnelly:  The Bridesmaid Again

Graham Cox took the Bronze medal and other notable points finishers were Richard Davies in 5th, Linda Iwaniak in 6th, Duncan Hodgkins in 8th, Antony Wolsey in 13th, Brendan Hartnett in 14th and Adrian Royle in 17th.

Cox:  Welsh Bronze

The tournament report was as follows:

Welsh Amateur Poker Championship Review

The Amateur Poker Association & Tour (APAT) held the third event in its first series of live tour events, the Welsh Amateur Poker Championship in Cardiff, over the weekend of 24th-25th February.

The event was a very rapid sell out to a capacity of 220 runners who once again were offered a £75 freeze-out with 10,000 starting chips, a slow clock and significant added value from tour sponsors PokerStars.com via the form of entry into next months EPT Dortmund event to the winner in addition to their cash prize, trophy, medal and Player of the Year ranking point. Fifteen members had qualified for the event in both online and live qualifiers.

Play got away at 2.30pm on the Saturday and despite the deep-stack a number of players departed early. These included local player James Fisher who called a raise on his big blind with K8 and saw a flop of 887. After a blank turn and a King on the river all the chips flew into the pot on only the third hand of the competition. James was understandably crestfallen to see his opponent turn over Pocket Kings. Elsewhere Jon Young's KK met AA leading to an early exit and English Amateur Championship winner Daniel Phillips ran AQ suited into AA on a Queen high flop to knock him out.

Early leaders included local Roberto Romanello whose opponent flopped a King high flush only for Romanello to river a straight flush, James Doran, Daniel Brown and Mark Donnelly. Dan Owston became chip-leader with over 80,000 chips after the dinner break, when calling a minimum raise on his big blind with J5, flopping trip 5's and stacking his opponent. Newcastle finalist Adam Spratt was close behind with over 70,000 chips whilst Paul Garnham seeing a flop in the big blind with 94 hit two pair on the turn and got his opponent to commit all-in with top pair with a King kicker.

Romanello made dramatic progress in the final two levels of the night, winning a 60,000 chip pot in a race, 55 versus AK and then slow-playing KK pre-flop he saw his opponent betting all-in on a 10 high flop with J 10 to propel his chip-count over the 200,000 chip mark. Mark Flynn found AA versus AK all-in pre-flop to go over 100,000 chips whilst Mark Donnelly had played an aggressive game to exceed 150,000 chips.

At the end of the first day 32 players remained with the prospect of swift early action on the second day as the average stack, with blinds going 4,000-8,000, was only 9xbb. The five chip leaders were:

* James Knox 185,000

* Adrian Royle 161,500

* Roberto Romanello 158,000

* Brendan Hartnett 128,000

* Mark Donnelly 123,000

Day Two did see immediate fireworks. On the first three hands of the day different short-stacks auto-pushed and they each doubled up in turn. In a 100,000 chip pot Curtis Ledger raised and was met by three-all-ins behind him, and thus faced a tricky decision for two-thirds of his chips with AK off-suit. Going for the win he decided to call and his face represented a mixture of relief and dread when he saw his opponents turn over A7,A10 and AQ. He was ahead but had to avoid a lot of cards. Sadly for him Andrew Jones (AQ) triumphed when a Queen fell on the flop for him to knock out two players and severely dent Ledger.

Prize Money began for the player finishing 22nd and ranking points for the Player of the Year title at 18th. Finishing 22nd was the unlucky Craig Clifford whose QQ was outdrawn by Richard Davies' 66 hitting trips on the flop. When Davies knocked out James Doran in 20th he became the new chip-leader with over 300,000 chips followed by Romanello, Donnelly and Linda Iwaniak. Indeed Iwaniak, winner of a big Ladies Championship in 2006, secured a final table spot when knocking out three players approaching the bubble including Antony Wolsey and James Knox, the latter with a rivered two pair against top pair on the flop.

However it was not one way traffic for Linda who was clearly flummoxed in one hand with eleven players left, pushing all-in on Lee Mulligan's big blind from the small blind for all Mulligan's chips (100,000 plus) with 9 10 off-suit. Mulligan made an astounding call with 54 off-suit and rivered a straight.

The final table line up, with blinds at 15,000-30,000 was as follows:

* Lee Mulligan from Southampton 425,000

* Dan Coles from Tiverton 315,000

* Roberto Romanello from Swansea 310,000

* Linda Iwaniak from Reading 270,000

* Richard Davies from Reading 255,000

* Chris Barnes from Rayleigh 250,000

* Graham Cox from Bristol 180,000

* Mark Donnelly from Birmingham 130,000

* Duncan Hodgkins from Stratford-upon-Avon 80,000

With high blinds and the prize money identical up to 3rd place it was inevitable that players would play to win and thus not back down from confrontations. Romanello provided an early example of this when he pushed all in from early position on the first orbit of the final. He was unfortunate that the player behind him to find one of the few hands capable of calling him was the chip-leader Mulligan with AK of diamonds. Romanello turned over KQ off-suit and was eliminated in 9th giving Mulligan over 750,000 chips and a commanding position.

Duncan Hodgkins was then next to depart after a valiant short-stacked battle when in a blind-on-blind battle with Mulligan flopped top pair, trap-checked but was caught out when the turn gave Mulligan the bottom straight to eliminate him. Chris Barnes struggled to make significant progress and then as the blinds rose again rose in the small blind with K2, was set in by Iwaniak in the big blind with A7 and was forced to call. The board gave him no help and he departed in 7th.

Mark Donnelly then went on a tear, doubling up three times in quick succession when pushing from late position or the blinds including on the final occasion AJ from the small blind versus Iwaniak's A10 following her button raise. Iwaniak was left short stacked and she pushed with J9 only to run into Dan Coles on the blinds with AK suited for her to leave in 6th.

Richard Davies then pushed on the button following a limp, and found himself called by Mulligan in the small blind which priced in Cox on the big and limper Donnelly.   On a 8 2 6 flop Cox himself pushed, found himself heads-up with the all-in player and revealed 8 2 to eliminate Davies with Q 9 in fifth.

Four handed Dan Coles was extremely unlucky. Donnelly raised on the button with A9, Coles pushed on the small blind with AJ and Donnelly called. A heartbreaking/fantastic flop of 9 9 2 conclusively sealed the pot for Donnelly and knocked Coles out in 4th.

Chip counts as we reached the final three were as follows:

* Lee Mulligan 900,000

* Mark Donnelly 875,000

* Graham Cox 435,000

Play three-handed ebbed to and fro for approaching two levels with Graham consistently limping on the button and attempting to out-play his opponents pre-flop. In playing in this fashion he was able to secure a number of pots by the virtue of post-flop betting in position.

The key hand appeared out of nowhere. Lee raised on the small blind and Graham pushed in the big blind. Lee (pic, staring down Cox) dwelled and after an age made the call, turning over J10 of diamonds which brought gasps from the crowd of railbirds. With a sigh and a resigned “great call” Graham turned over 35 off-suit, a fantastic move in its own right that would have got past many players. A Jack on the flop sealed Graham's (pic) fate for third place and the APAT bronze medal.

Heads- up Lee has a 2.5-1 chip lead and it lasted one hand. Mark pushed from the small blind with Q7 off and Lee called immediately with A 10 of spades. A seven on the flop gave Mark hope but a rivered 10 gave Lee victory and the Welsh Amateur Championship title.

For Mark, he received the significant consolation of knowing that his second place had given him a sizeable lead in the APAT Player of the Year rankings, and a possible trip to the PokerStars.com Caribbean Adventure World Poker Tour event. Lee is off to Dortmund.

[Des_D]

Event 18:  Following the drama of Cardiff, the Welsh Online Open was next up and fittingly won by Welshman Mark Hill.  Clive Haggett took Silver while Linda Iwaniak took Bronze. 

Hill: Welsh Open Winner

Other notable finishers included Adrian Royle in 4th, Glenn Laming in 6th, Alex Pattillo in 7th and Chris Hiam in 8th.

Iwaniak:  Ladies UK Champ Takes APAT Bronze

Event 19:  The African Open was won by Daniel Parkin with Huw Thomas taking Silver and Joseph Greenhalgh taking Bronze.

Greenhalgh:  Bronze

Other notable points scorers included Tom Massey taking 4th, and Darren Newton taking 5th.

Event 20:  The German Open was won by Chris Filus, beating Alistair Fowler headsup with German player Patrick Müßel taking Bronze.

Filus:  German Open Winner

Other notable finishers included Johnny Gibb in 6th and Geoff Grant in 7th.

Fowler:  Silver