It’s early June 2006 and I have just qualified online for the Blue Square Poker 6 tournament in Bolton. Unfortunately, I now have to tell my wife that we have got to change our holiday plans as we are already booked to go to the Costa del Sol for our jollies on the 25th of June for a week. Luckily for me she is fine about this and with the new arrangements made I look forward to what promises to be a great new tournament.On Saturday the 1st July my wife and I arrive at our hotel at about 13.30. We check ourselves in and I decide to book a taxi to take us to the Grosvenor Casino for registration at 15.00. Whilst making the telephone call another guy by the name of Kev asked me to book him one too. It turns out that Kev is another poker player who also qualified online for the Poker 6 event.
We met up with Kev again in reception whilst waiting for our taxis to arrive, I offer him a lift in our cab as he is on his own. During the short ride to the casino he tells me that he normally plays on a different online site to me and that he’s been rather successful recently, he’s already won 5 WSOP main event seats - WOW, he must be different class to do that. As we arrive at the casino to register I say to Kev that we are bound to end up on the same table and that if we ended up heads up we would make some kind of deal.
Registration went smoothly and instead of hanging about for hours we had a quick drink with Kev and then went back to the hotel to watch the footy. I had already planned not to stay at the casino as I tend to watch out for all the big name players arriving and this makes me a little nervous so, with another couple of hours till the start of the comp, my wife and I head back to our hotel. England get knocked out of the World Cup so it's time to head on back to the casino and, after a short delay in starting the comp due to some technical difficulties, I get my seat draw and head over to table 8 seat 1. As I take my seat I hear a voice from across the table say, “Well that was always going to happen”. I look up and sure enough it's Kev sat straight opposite me.
During the lead up to this comp I had several objectives and here are some of them:
1. Don’t worry about any of my opponents, let them worry about me for a change (hence not watching the big name players arrive).
2. Make my wife proud of me in a poker sense as this was the first big comp that she had been to with me.
3. Try to adapt better to how the other players are playing.
Kev was obviously a really good player to win his 5 WSOP seats, but I was going to play my own game and let him worry about me as per my number 1 objective.
Shuffle up and deal is announced, I put my sunglasses on and it’s down to business. I have a couple of really aggressive players on my table so I decide to sit back a little to begin with and try to just play a few small pots. This works and I slowly start accumulating chips.
During Level 1 (blinds 25/50), the makings of a big pot develop and three players are involved - Kev limps under the gun and so does the lady sat next to him. One of the aggressive players then makes it 300 to go, I pass and it's back round to Kev who re-raises to 1,200. The girl next to him then re-re-raises to 3,000, the aggressive player passes and Kev goes into the think tank for maybe 5 or 6 minutes. He eventually passes, but very reluctantly, saying that he’s too embarrassed to go out this early. He told me that he passed K-K, I think he was behind to A-A but she didn’t show. At the end of the first couple of levels - just as we were going on our first break - Kev told the lady that he had passed K-K - she said "Good fold, I had A-A", and I believed both of them.to be continued...