I was going to do an interview with Paul, but then saw he"d updated his blog, and everything I needed was in there
I"ve chopped it down, and am going to send it to the press and the websites, if they want to use it
The original thread is here
http://www.apat.com/forum/index.php?topic=7004.msg117525;boardseen#newbut the short version, if you haven"t seen it or don"t want to wade through ther pages...is
Pre Tournament:I have to say I don"t feel nervous at all - a little excited but not nervous! I remember when I played the £1k Monte Carlo at Dusk Till Dawn last year, I felt nervous on the run up to the event because it was the highest value tournament I"d played. Having said that, I played a $1500 NLHE WSOP event prior to this but that was different. I was on holiday spending my holiday money in a massive field where I wasn"t likely to bump into anyone too challenging till later on in the event. I knew at the Monte Carlo event at DTD, that I was likely to have a tough time of it. Although the same applies here in that there will probably be around 200 great players on my day 1c, I"m really not that nervous. I think the fact that I"ve been to the Empire casino during the WSOPE before (but not played) is probably helping a little as I will be acquainted with the place.
Day 1cI"m in two minds whether to go into too much detail or go for a summary but I"ve opted for a long post as I think the day deserves it!
I started on table 25, seat 7. Who should be two to my left? Stuart Rutter, who has had a stomping WSOP and is in fine form. The rest of the table were unknowns though and was pretty happy with my draw. After about 45 minutes they were already wanting to move us to a new table and needless to say I loved my new seat draw.
I had two shortish stacks to my left and a guy opposite me that had about 10k when the average was 3200. He"d obviously played every pot as he had all the 25 and 100 chips. This leads me into key hand 1. I raise from the cut off and my man with all the chips in the bb flats. I have QQ and a stack of 2900 with the blinds at 25/50. The flop is 4J7hh. Nice flop for me. He checks and I lead for 225 and he calls. The turn is a
. He checks and I lead for 450, again he just flats. The alarm bells ring a little but given the type of player and the things I"ve heard him talking about, I"m not too worried. The river is a blank and he checks again! I expected a made flush to bet. His check felt to me like KJ, AJ possible J10. Because of all my reads, I decided to try and get maximum value from a J. So I bet around 1100. (The pot sizes are a bit vague in my mind.) Disgustingly he puts me all in and I have to pass with 900 back! He had Q6hh by the way.
From here it"s all pretty standard AJ type shoves to a bet apart from when I made a call with K high on a 44227 board when it was checked to the river and then he bet pot. Needless to say he was bluffing and I won 1/3 of my stack in that pot.
Key hand 2 was against Justin Smith, a Full Tilt Pro known to many as Boosted J. I"d been moved to table 2 where the aforementioned Boosted J and Richard Ashby resided. Justin limped from the hijack and I checked my bb with 107. The flop came 1093. I check with the intention of raising a bet and he leads for 325. I make it 900 to go with 1400 back and he tanks for what felt like 10 minutes but in reality it was probably like 3 minutes. In the end, he put me all in! I thought about it for 0.5 seconds lol. I thought he"d put me on some sort of a draw or a 9 or something so I snapped him off. Turns out I"m a fish. He flips Q10. But a Q and a 10 is no good when the turn is a 8 and the river is a 6!!! Double up!
Key hand 3. Not long after that double up, i"m sat with around 4500 and a short stack shoves for around 1500. I"m late ish and look at 77. I don"t have a calling stack and I"m not to keen on a fold in this structure so I decide to isolate to take the pot. Unfortunately for me, Rich Stevenson (WarBwastard) wakes up with AA in the bb. A beautiful 7 on the river hurts Rich but puts me up to around 10k.
From here I played pretty solid. Mainly showing down strong hands and picking good spots to gain chips, and at the dinner break, I had amassed 25k or so.
The last key hand really was against Freddie Deeb who my father loves to watch not only on TV but from the bar from where he was watching me! There is a fair amount of thought goes into this so bear with me. He"d just moved to our table from the table behind us. I"d just witnessed him loose a 40k pot and knew he was pretty tilted. So the first hand I raise from the cutoff with KK into Freddie"s big blind. He looks me up and down, dwells, and passes. He has about 8600 left and I can just tell by his demeanour that he wants to double up before the end of the day or go back to his room for a massage! The next hand he mucks in disgust. The very next hand I"m dealt A10hh. I look down at my stack to raise and then remember what I knew about Freddie. I know that if I raise, I probably going to have to call the 9000 or so he has behind. A10hh in my position is too strong to pass though IMO. The couple to my left are short stacks and playing relatively tight and Freddie is going to shove any two.
All this in mind I make my standard 2k raise and as expected after about a minute of eyeballing me again Freddie sticks it in with Q7cc. A harmless board with an A in the door seals a big scalp for me and a new bulging stack of 34,000.
I finished the day on 34,600 and depending which site you use for the updates, I"m 14th or 15th. Again depending which site you use, there are 75 or 83 players left. They pay 54 with £127k and the beautiful bracelet going to the eventual winner.
I can honestly say that if I had to go home now, I"d be happy. I can"t thank APAT enough for getting me into this event. Playing and getting the better of players like Richard Ashby, Justin Smith, Feddie Deeb, Dan Shack and Stuart Rutter has been amazing. However, there is a job at hand. First priority is cashing. The 2nd is getting that bracelet.
Day 2:If memory serves me correct, I went into day 2 with 36,000 chips. I knew this was top 14-18 out of the 80 remaining, so was very happy about that. Setting Freddy Deeb up (to a certain extent) at the end of day 1c definitely helped my spirit going into day 2 as it made me realise a couple of things. Firstly and the most obvious, the pot was nearly half my stack again at the time and put me into a excellent position to move on into day 2. Secondly, it gave me my first real positive sense that I could perhaps win this event. Paul Pitchford from Sutton in Ashfield could mix it up with someone who has amassed some $7,000,000 in tournament winnings alone. Ok, so it was only one hand, but it made me feel good.
To be honest, the start to day 2 couldn"t have gone any better. They drew me onto one of the two outer tables which broke after about 20 minutes as most of the 10 small stacks busted fast. They redrew me back down onto the main stage where I"d played for a lot of day 1c. As I sat down I couldn"t see any big names that I recognised at my table. Then after sitting in seat one, I noticed seat three was Andrew Lichtenberger. For those who don"t know him, click his name. He is a very, very good player and famously offered Phil Ivey a playing deal on his poker site Lego Poker last year during his deep run in the 2009 WSOP Main Event. So now I"m faced with quite a prolific player in the BB from where I"d probably be trying to steal most of my chips.
Before I go onto our big hand though, there is a key hand I played with an unknown player which got me into a very good situation. Late in day 1c, I"d played with a Chinese guy on my right that was very loose, made quirky plays, and I felt was generally looking to avoid playing pots with me. In this hand on day 2, he made his usual quirky raise from the button. By quirky, I mean that he never counted out a precise raise. He would just grab a hand full of chips and sling them over the line. I knew this meant he didn"t play much and I was always trying to isolate him to get him to myself. In this hand however, I have KK in the BB and he has raised 4.5x the BB. I know I"m out of position but elect to just call.
The flop comes J high with two diamonds. I check and he bets about 2/3 of the pot. I know he leads a lot so I call so as not to scare his weak hands off. I"ve already decided that I"m check raising the turn if no diamond comes. A blank hits the turn and I check, and he strangely checks behind. The river fills me up and completes the flush. Beautiful! I decide to under represent my hand and check. He bets half his stack. After a few moments I move all-in and he passes after a long dwell. This pot puts me up to 58,000 and sets me up perfectly to the hand against Andrew.
From the button, I raise 3x with AA. SB folds, and Andrew dwells, then raises me 3x. Being a great player, I know he can just be putting me to the test here, however, he could also have a hand. I decide to try and make a weak looking 3 bet as the both of us are so deep stacked (~40-50BB"s each). I was hoping he would see this small raise as weakness and 4 bet me light. I"m not sure how he actually read this but needless to say, he stuck it in with KK, I snap him off and I now sit at 110,000 when the nearest has 55,000. Looking back, I think if I make a normal sized 3 bet here, Andrew is good enough to call and sniff my AA out post flop.
Two hands later I have KK again and knock a short stack and a micro stack out. 126,000!!!!! And at 500/1000/100. I was in a daze.
Now it wasn"t as easy as you"d think from here. Every photographer in the room came and took my photograph. Every reporter in the room came and counted my stack from afar. The players kept raising their eyebrows at me as if to say, "lucky get." It literally took me two hours to get my head back into shape, and to continue playing as solid as I had been doing prior to this crazy 15 minutes.
I"ll be honest, from here is a bit of a daze till we"re down to 36 players. Probably because not a deal affected me and it got a little ABC with some short stacks around. There was one hand were I made a reraise on the turn with no pair no draw and got it through. What I do remember however, is how long it too to get down to two tables. Once down to two tables, this is where I made my first miss step. A mis-step that would prove to be costly, but strangely had a positive effect on me.
I"d raised a little too much for my liking from the button with 89os and the BB jammed. I realised I was getting around 6/4 and should probably be making the call but knew it was 1/3 of my stack. I tanked for a bit and made the reluctant call only to shown JJ. Here we are then 70,000 chips which was quite short, deal with it! I was a bit miffed to say the least as I should have had a better idea of how many chips the BB had, but also I shouldn"t have made such a large raise. But after winning a few pots back, I got it back together.
In my mind from here, it seems really quick to the point where we"re on the FT bubble with 10 left. It wasn"t long after though until the bubble burst and I was once again filling in my WSOPE chip sheet for the bagging up of my chips.
What a roller coaster day! Chip leader of a WSOPE event for nearly 5 hours I think. However, I had a new task at hand. A WSOPE final table with only 77,000 chips, 8th of 9, with the blinds at 4000/8000/1000.
We headed back to our hotel knowing I was guaranteed around £10,000. I hoped to get some much need rest as it was 3am. However, I don"t think I went to sleep till after 4am and was up at 9am. Very rare for me indeed!
Final Table:I spoke in my last post about that 89 vs JJ hand how it strangely had a positive affect on me. Firstly because it grounded me a little, but secondly it made my play on the FT less tricky. If I"d have had say 220,000 coming into the FT my play would had have to have been more calculated. Now though, I was just looking for good spots to stick it in!
There were three shoves straight away that got me over 120,00 within a very short period of time. First the SB limped my BB where I held 89ss. He won"t be doing that again in a hurry! The second was from the cut off with KQcc and the third was AK from middle position which I of course show to reassure everyone I"m not doing it all lightly! Believe it or not, 120,000 of the 1.7 million chips in play is basically average stack as two players had around 400,000 each.
My image on the final table must have been good. My raises were hardly ever contested and my re-raises got through every time. I basically ABC"d my way into 4th if I"m honest. I"d love to tell you how I bluffed my way to 4th but I just played rock solid, nothing fancy. Because day 2 had ran so long, our stacks were quite shallow and that took some of the play out of it.
As players dropped out the money jumps were massive. I could hardly believe the amounts of monies involved. One thing was certain though, I had my eye on that bracelet the entire time. At no point was I content with a £20k, £30k or £40k finish. I so badly wanted that bracelet. Don"t get me wrong, I"d be a liar if I said I wasn"t bothered about the money, £40,000 is a life changing amount for me, but the number one concern on my mind was that little sparkly bracelet.
I"m only going to talk about my exit hand on the final table as it was only my real thinking hand. I"d played with Jeppe Bisgaard for most of day 2 and most of day 3. You could tell he plays online a lot because he had the game but you could see he wasn"t 100% accustomed to live play. He"d stack his large chips at the back and hide his cards from view so we couldn"t see his cards (not on purpose though). As I say though, he had the game.
As it folds around to me, I have A6 on the button and 4 handed I"m raising 90% of the time here unless I notice something before it gets to me. Jeppe sticks it in! I"ve seen him put people to the test like this before with QJ, KQ and J5 if I remember rightly. This was a perfect spot for him to stick it in with anything in the middle of his range or better. He only has 12k less than me so essentially, this decision is for my tournament life.
I thought about it for some time but ultimately the maths and reads came to the conclusion that I have to call. My stack is ~210,000 and his is ~190,000. The blinds are 8,000/16,000 with a running 2,000 and I have raised to 42,000. Also I have to take into account that If I fold, I"m immediately put under pressure with the ante"s coming through me two hands later and may never recover. At least here, in this situation, I"m at worst live to 3 aces and in my mind have to call.
The rest as they say is history. I entered the event as an amateur. Played with and knocked out some of the best players in the world. Won £40,862 and finished 4th of a WSOPE event. All off the back of a freeroll essentially! Who knows how it goes from here?!
So that"s it. My WSOPE experience is over. But my, what an experience. On my way out last night, I caught a glance of Scott and JP playing heads up for the bracelet. I hope I get a chance to be in their position some time in the future...
