Sky Poker Tour - Grand Final

I've played a lot of events on the Sky Poker Tour over the last 18-24 months but have never managed to play the £330 Grand Final main event. This year I really didn't want to miss it again but I also didn't feel in a comfortable position to brick too many £20 quarter finals or £72 semi finals. I had a really small 'roll' sitting unused on Winamax so decided I'd play 2-3 MTTs on there alongside each cash session for a couple of weeks to try to grind up my SPT BI and just buy-in direct.

That plan went very well, I got the 3 FTs below (and a few small cashes) in €2-5 comps over the course of maybe 25 MTTs and that was my £330 buy-in locked up.

The grand final was held at Dusk Til Dawn which is always a great cardroom to play in and widely considered to be the best in the country, if not Europe. The only downside being that it's usually so busy that it can be a nightmare getting any food/drink at the tables. The tournament got just over 200 runners in the end resulting in a 1st prize of just over £17,000

Prior to the event I was talking to a mate and my girlfriend about how in the past I've always wanted to have a few 'big names' on my tables at SPTs and never get them, but that this was the first time I really didn't want that to happen, so sod's law it would do.

Well what dya know, I sit down to my first table to see Julian Thew, Dan Carter, Dave Nicholson along with a few good Sky regs... Adam Bromley, James Rann, and Simon Allen, so not the greatest of starting tables.

It was a bit up and down at first (mostly down) and I dropped to about 22k from a 30k starting stack by level 2 before getting an absolute gift... An unknown guy who has been opening big pre with all his hands makes it 800 @ 100/200. I 3bet to 2100 with AA, he pretty quickly 4bets to about 4.2k... I think for about 10 seconds, announce all in and get pretty much snapped off with TT to double up.

One of the perks of being in Priority (basically if you pay enough rake on Sky to earn 10,000+ points per month) was that they were giving complimentary massages to Priority members.

But anyway, after that early double, things were very slow and steady for the next few hours and I was pretty happy to see our table break and leave with a little over 50k. My next table seemed pretty soft in comparison to my previous one... it was the first time all day I'd seen someone limp. Pretty quickly spun it up to 70-80k by just nicking a few small pots. Then it all went downhill pretty quickly, one too many mis-timed bluffs and 3bet pots I had to give up on post flop left me back down at 40k @ 500/1k... frustrating but still plenty to play with.

Shortly after this downturn I got another table move and was sat to the direct left of Mclean Karr. I spent a couple or orbits mostly folding until blinds were 600/1.2k and I had about 32k left. Then someone opens the cutoff to 3300, Mclean Karr flats on the BTN and I look down to see KK in the SB (both players have about treble my stack). I toy with all options... peeling to check/jam any flop, 3bet/calling or just shipping now. I'm still not sure what is the best option is but I went with a 3bet to 10k, the original opener folded and Mclean Karr after a bit of a dwell up shipped on me with ATo so it worked out exactly as planned...

Runout is 892JQ

And that was that, the dream was over... until next time.

How it all started... (Pt. 2)

After a few of years of playing them 'SnGs' with my mates, I eventually moved out of my mum's house so the games stopped, as did all of my pokering.

Years later, I made my first deposit online of about $20 with Fulltilt Poker when I was 19. I was the ultimate bankroll nit in these days and used to play nothing but the $0.10 BI MTTs each night after I got home from work. Up to this point my poker knowledge was entirely what I had been able to pick up from Late Night Poker years earlier (so not much). I had a rough idea about hand selection and that was about it; I literally had no idea what position even was, no idea how to play a <20xBB stack or a million other things you learn along the way.

Somehow (I must have ran insanely good for one night) one of the nights I was playing the above MTT, it had around 4000+ runners and I managed to luckbox my way to 2nd place to turn 10 cents into a little over $200. It took me from 8pm until about 6am the next morning, which meant I got about 2 hours sleep before having to go to work. That was my first big win and it was a long time to come before I'd make any score like that again.

Circumstances changed again, I moved house again, and I stopped playing poker for a really long time.

It wasn't until years later when I was 23-24 and living with my girlfriend Emma that I first saw an advert for Sky Poker. I think we'd accidently stumbled across the Sky Poker channel and straight away it re-awakened my love for the game and I was struck by the great sense of community the site seemed to have.

I deposited shortly after seeing the first show and being the life nit that I am, only deposited £20. Again I started off playing the smallest games possible, mostly cheap DYMs. I must have ran pretty good in the early days because I was still rubbish when I first joined Sky and to this day I've still never needed to deposit again.

It was on Sky where I first started putting work into improving my game. I flittered between pretty much every game possible, DYMs, HU SnGs, MTTs, but always really wanted to be a cash player predominantly. I posted a ton of hands in Sky's Poker Clinic for analysis and with the help of Dohhhhhh's guide to beating micro stakes cash, I started to become a winning player at 4NL. Over the years I've improved every aspect of my game, built a roll, played at least 10 of the live Sky Poker Tour events all around the country including Newcastle, Cardiff, Brighton, Stratford, and Dusk til Dawn, have earned my first Hendon Mob flag and am now attempting to play poker for a living.

So there we are, pretty much caught up.