After triumphing in this month's monthly £300 freezeout, Chris Bruce has done the DTD double by taking down the inaugural Dusk Till Dawn Mini Festival Main Event.
After the £50 freezeout the night prior, 79 players stumped up the £750 buy-in fee on Friday afternoon thus creating a prize pool of £56,250. Sadly for the budding amateur, the pros were out in full force with Dave Smith, Mickey Wernick, Paul Jackson, Marc Goodwin (left) and recent WSOP hero James Akenhead making this one of the toughest pound for pound events of the year.
As has become the trend with DTD events, players were a pleasant mix of locals and non-locals, with former Gala boys (and gal) Richard Berridge, Greek Jack, Tony Nicholls and Fran Creed flying the East Midlands' flag, whilst the likes of Ali Mallu, Tony Phillips, James Dempsey and Rick Trigg zipped up the motorway to grab their taste of the action.
Although originally advertised as a three day event, the compere without compare, Simon Trumper, opted to make it a two day affair with 18 returning for day two. Of those, Mickey Wernick was the short stack, and although known for his dogged short stack skills, he would suffer an early exit when his A-K was rivered by Neil Giblin's A-Q, before K-J on a K-J-Q-7-6 board lost out to pocket ducks which made a cheeky flush on the river.
With the likes of Jim Reid, Steve Jelinek and Paul Lammas (the latter seeing aces cruelly cracked by A-J on a 7-4-T-8-9 board) also falling by the wayside, the final table look as such:
Seat 1: Andrew Andreou -- 35,900
Seat 2: Marc Goodwin -- 165,600
Seat 3: Jon Omara -- 70,300
Seat 4: Chris Bruce -- 83,800
Seat 5: Richard Berridge -- 188,100
Seat 6: Richard Stanley -- 52,100
Seat 7: HWCBN -- 48,600
Seat 8: Shahnawaz Randera -- 102,600
Seat 9: Neil Giblin -- 43,200
In what was to prove an epic final, in which many outrageous outdraws were witnessed, it was Neil Giblin who would fall first, his pocket fives no good against Marc Goodwin's A-4 on an ace high board. He was then followed by Richard Stanley whose K-Q failed to fend off Richard Berridge's pocket sixes, before HWCBN departed in seventh after a succession of bad beats.
After Jon Omara snapped up sixth (A-3 versus Andrew Andreou's 8-8), it was Marc Goodwin's turn to feel the wrath of the Poker Gods. Not only did he see his flopped set of fours viciously outdrawn by Shahnawaz Randera's gutshot draw, but he also witnessed his A-T lose out to Berridge's K-T when a second king hit the flop. A later failed K-9 versus A-3 encounter, and he was gone in fifth.
With four left it was anyone's game, until Richard Berridge ran A-J into the pocket queens of Shahnawaz Randera to leave us with three. Moments later, we were heads up, Andrew Andreou (pictured) pushing one too many times, his J-8 being looked up by Randera's pocket tens on the big blind and subsequently failing to improve.
Without too much hesitation (it was 4.30am, after all), the two remaining Trojans agreed on a DTD style chop and it was all over, Shahnawaz Randera performing miracles to take home £16,300, whilst serial final tablist Chris 'Brucie' Bruce continued his fine form by lapping up £16,700 and the all important winner's trophy.
In the aftermath, Brucie happily confessed "I run well", but also attributed much of his July success to his lucky card protector Moshi, a small toy that he bought in a newsagents for just 99p. "There are a hundred of these, but this chap has been lucky for me ever since the DTD 1-2-3" Didn't he do well!
As for the good people at Dusk Till Dawn, they treated us like kings and queens, and proved yet again that they are major contenders not just in the world of top class hospitality, but also in organising poker festivals. I don't recall hearing one complaint, which certainly bodes well for their upcoming deepstack event in August. I'll certainly be there, and so should you.
1st Chris Bruce -- £20,738
2nd Shahnawaz Randera -- £12,443
3rd Andrew Andreou 'Greekfish' -- £8,295
4th Richard Berridge -- £5,333
5th Marc Goodwin -- £4,148
6th Jon Omara -- £2,963
7th HWCBN -- £2,370
8th Richard Stanley -- £1,778
9th Neil Giblin -- £1,185