Naturally I wanted a piece of the action and started trying to qualify for the £1k ME straight away. I got through to the first weekly £240 final on Sky for £5 and thought I was gonna luckbox my seat first go but it wasn't to be. I then won 2 of the £110 tokens from the freerolls for playing the DTD live cash games but couldn't convert either of them into a seat. Took my foot off the gas a bit trying to qualify and didn't really start up again until late January/early Feb where I won my seat into the last £240 final that Sky were running, this time for £11, but again it was not to be and I didn't get my seat. I drove down to DTD on Tuesday, the first day of the festival, to meet up with a few mates and give myself one last shot at the ME by playing the live satellite that evening. The live sat was a £50 rebuy (that played VERY quickly), I was only in for £105 (just the BI + add on) and it got 147 with a prizepool of 22 seats + £900 for 23rd. It started at 8pm and took me until 3am to eventually bust in 25th place and just miss out on a seat again. Someone didn't want me to play the main!
Rather than spend any more money on trying the next night's satellite (because it was pretty crapshooty) I decided I was just gonna BI direct to the £550 6max side event and sell a bit of my action, so I played Day 1a on the Friday.
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6-max Day 1a
It was a swingy day literally from the very start to the very end. I
started the day playing 3 handed (because of late arrivals) with Matt
Perrins but thankfully that didn't last long! Pretty early doors I
dropped from 30k down to about 22k before getting an absolute gift of a
double....
Macmonster (a Sky reg) opens UTG, SB peels and
I peel the BB with ATss. Flop comes KQJhh (WAL). The SB leads out
pretty big, I call and so does Mac. Turn is an offsuit 6 and SB just
overbet ships (WAL!!!), I call and Mac folds. SB has KJ (and I
later find out Mac folded KJ too) and I hold.
Things
were quiet for a while after that, Rupinder Bedi got sat to my direct
left and he took the role of table captain, hero'd me down a couple of
times pretty light when I'd bricked. Then I had a pretty sick like 5
minute heater where I won 3 decent pots...
1) I open, Macmonster 3bets, I 4bet ship and my AK > his JJ.
2) I open AQ and fire 3 on AJxQx to see opponent showdown AJ
3) I open QQ, shorty in the BB peels then shoves over my cbet w/ 77 on 356r and I hold.
That took me up to 100k which was pretty insane when average was still like 35k.
That took me up to 100k which was pretty insane when average was still like 35k.
Quiet period again then a proper massive pot kicked off where I ended up basically flipping for a 300xBB pot...
Villian
opens, I 3bet with QQ and he peels. Flop comes 456cc, I cbet and he
makes a ridiculously big raise, I think I bet like 5k into 8k and he raised to
25k. This guy had been pretty 'wild' to put it kindly but I was pretty
confident by his sizing that he had a pretty strong draw and wanted to
just end the hand now if possible. We both started the hand with 80k
each which was around 150xBB and I just decide to ship the flop. He
turns over Q8cc for a GS and the FD and I manage to hold to go up to
about 170k (average at this point was 50k)
Really
annoying hand happens where I peel KJ pre, flop TP on J84, c/c
flop, Q turn and I'm gonna c/c again but dealer mistakenly thinks he's
checked behind and deals the river (offsuit 3). Floor gets called cos he
wanted to bet, loads of messing about and the 3 gets put back in the
deck and deck is reshuffled. He does bet and I do call, turn is a 9 this
time and he's just got there with KT. Was not impressed.
The only other massive pot of the day is just more proof that it was clearly my day to be a complete luckbox. Someone UTG, 3-4 people flat and I come along with
77 in the BB. Dream flop of A72r, SB leads, I flat, and there's 1 more call
behind. Turn another 7 (wow), SB leads again, I flat, the guy
behind me clicks it back, SB flats and I'm just like
'wow wtf, this is amazing'. 9 river, SB
checks, I check too to allow the turn clickbacker to bet, he bets pretty
big, SB calls, I ship obv. The guy to my left who clicked back
the turn tanked for ages and folded (showed 22 after the hand) and the
other guy called off the rest cos he had so little behind with AK. This
took me up to about 280k when average was 70k which was just a dream
come true for day 1.
The rest of the day was a
bit bleurgh, especially after Simon Deadman joined the table to my left.
It was really frustrating to lose a lot of what I had earlier but I still
managed to take 165k into day 2 when the average was 150k. 38 runners made it through from 197 entrants
6-max Day 2
I came back to day 2 with 165k @ 2k/4k which was above average and
plenty to play with. Ryan Spittles had told me I had a pretty good table draw
(as per the table draw on the Sky's forum) then DTD decided to redraw the
tables - no idea why - and I end up changing from a good table to one
with Simon Deadman, the guy who came 2nd in the high roller and a couple
of other good players (from what I could make out). Despite that the
day started really well, and I got up to about 330k really quickly,
pretty much all of which came from 3-4 small pots against Deadman.
So I got off to a flying start, but then a table move and a combination of things saw my stack start to dwindle away, and I was down to 180k @ 5k/10k. Just through a continued lack of spots and I think losing 1 small pot I ended up with about 90k then the blinds went up to 6k/12k and at this point there were 28 players left. From that points onwards I don't mind saying I think I played the best tournament poker I've ever played. It was a proper grind from there, I stayed super patient and didn't allow myself to think that I HAD to shove ATC in some spots or call off certain spots where it would be 'standard' to do it. I was well below average, like 25-50% of average for a lot of the way, but it played so deep that even 1/4 average was still 10-15xBB most of the way. I never actually made it back to average stack again until I reached the FT.
I was just picking my spots really well and holding well. My first double was AK > K5, then I 3bet shipped KQs as I was still short, got tank called by KJ and held again to get to around 300k. Stayed around that mark for a while grinding away, keeping my head above water and then the first (and only) time of the tourney where I handed out a bad beat... I open shove 99 and another guy snap reshoves AA.... the runout is 8T276 and I'm on about 600k. The guy who lost with AA was left short and shoved the next hand with QJo and walked into AA himself but couldn't do a lambo escape and we were down to like 14-15 players.
It was all pretty straight forward from there, didn't do anything major just a lot of blind stealing and nicking small pots until we went to the 7handed FT and what a sick FT it was. There was me, Ian Simpson, Ben Dobson, Thewy (nuff said) and a few other players I'd met along the way that I knew were good.
A few people on the FT went pretty nuts early doors and we saw 77 v AJ aipf for a pot of about 100xBB. The Irish Open winner (Ian Simpson) made his set of 7s to take a big CL having like 4-5 million of the 12million in play still with 7 left. Can't remember all the details but there were like 3-4 big flips in the first maybe 30-45 mins of the FT so I just sat back a bit knowing I was likely to get paid off by one of them when I had a hand. I won a very decent sized pot off the CL with AK on KQxQx that took me to just over 2mil and then just chilled out until we got down to 4handed. When we got 4handed there was 1 guy on <1mil @ 30k/60k and all the rest of us had at least 2.5mil each so obv we're all trying to take him out and get an extra £6k before going to war with each other too much. He bust and then stacks were all within reach of each other and the aggression picked up again. I lost a couple of small pots to drop to 2mil and then my exit hand happened
Blinds at 40k/80k with a 10k ante, I've got just over 2mil, 2nd in chips has maybe 4mil and CL has the other like 6mil.
CL is very loose aggro and he opens the button, I just peel the SB with KQo because I don't really wanna 3bet/fold or 3bet and have to call it off this deep (and he's mostly gonna be 4b or folding)
K72r - He bets about 175k, I call
2s turn which brings in a FD - He bets 350k, I call
As river to compete flush - He sticks me all in, I call
I think it's a really good spot for me tbh and thought I was almost certainly getting the double before I called river, he's more than capable of having air here and river is a really good card to bluff imo. This time he had A8o though.
So my 2nd hendon mob flag, my first ever live FT, at the first ever UKPC and a pretty nice £18,000 to boot, not bad considering I've only played about 10 live MTTs ever. Needless to say I enjoyed this festival :)
CL is very loose aggro and he opens the button, I just peel the SB with KQo because I don't really wanna 3bet/fold or 3bet and have to call it off this deep (and he's mostly gonna be 4b or folding)
K72r - He bets about 175k, I call
2s turn which brings in a FD - He bets 350k, I call
As river to compete flush - He sticks me all in, I call
I think it's a really good spot for me tbh and thought I was almost certainly getting the double before I called river, he's more than capable of having air here and river is a really good card to bluff imo. This time he had A8o though.
So my 2nd hendon mob flag, my first ever live FT, at the first ever UKPC and a pretty nice £18,000 to boot, not bad considering I've only played about 10 live MTTs ever. Needless to say I enjoyed this festival :)
Thanks Rob
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