European Poker Classic 2006

Thu 23/Mar/06 - Sun 26/Mar/06
London, England,
By Jen Mason
Submitted by: jen on Wed, 29/03/2006 - 3:31am
Game Type:Limit
Buy-in:£1,500
Prize Pool:£387,000
Entries:248

Ah the Vic, with its multiple tournament areas, moody lighting and scant spectator seating, perilously just over the edge of the Central London Congestion Charging Zone. Probably my local, distance wise, although I seem to have spent a lot more time in Walsall. 

But the London tournaments always bring together a lot of players familiar to me and blonde, and even without a seating list it was apparent that it wouldn’t be hard to find early tables to hover around.  Marc Goodwin stood out from the crowd first, mainly because he was being filmed holding a shiny trophy (product of victory in the Omaha the previous day) but others soon gathered: Nick Gibson, Bambos, Devilfish, Jac Arama, Surinder Sunar, Richard Ashby, Joe Grech and Stuart Fox among the first. 

Dubai (Dave Shallow) and Dpommo (David Pomroy) were not among the early risers, having had a bit of an intoxicating evening the night before (according to Ben) but they were definitely among the first to generate action – Stuart Fox got the sharp end: losing having flopped two pair with his AK to Dpommo’s 4-high flush draw which came right in.  Something told me that a few players might be playing a little loosely early on…part of this had to do with the relatively fast structure everyone was whispering about – “No 75/150 or 150/300 levels?  Then what are we waiting for?”  I couldn’t have predicted what would happen with regards to the clock over the next four days, however – more on that later.

Having failed to spot El Blondie right off, we eventually noticed him playing on a table with Devilfish to his left, followed by James Akenhead (remember him from Cardiff?) while to his right lurked Bambos and the charming Lauren Szidak who despite a shaky start went through the day in confident form, with much support from her other half ‘ostlers’ on the forum.  More blondeites popped up in the form of the indefatigable RED-DOG, along with Simon Zach whom we would end up following short stacked for an extraordinary length of time.  Joe Grech, Mickey Wernick and Paul Jackson (to the left of the dapper Tony Bloom) were also spotted, but many of these big players were not destined to make Day Two – add to that list Roland de Wolfe and Norseman Torstein Iversen. 

John Gale fell too with AK against a suited AQ which hit a flush draw on the flop.  “And whose flush draw was that?” you might ask.  Why, none other than Woody Deck’s, who built up a large stack rather quickly (much to Snoopy’s delight) and, fresh from winning the Omaha Hi-Lo event earlier in the week, looked to be heading for further success, ending the day with 75,000.  Still, no one could touch Marc Goodwin, whose 117k put him at the top of the pile after the full 248 runners had had their Day One.  We were calling the second-in-chips, a rather wild player in a red shirt “German Matey” for a while, but the name Jan Heitmann was on everyone’s lips by the end of the tournament.

The big story from the second Day One flight has to be the unexpectedly dramatic Legend of Trevor Reardon.  Down to 350 chips right near the end of the night, he turned that grain of rice into a bowl with a triple up, then a small hill with another couple of doubles, ending the day on over 25,000!  But that is after a whole fresh batch of players tried their hand at the 10k starting-chipped event, including tikay himself.  Kevin O’Connell described his (tikay’s) early play as, “a bit crazy,” and I am sure that Pippa Flanders would agree, after she re-raised him preflop forcing him to give up an early 2,000, and he let another lot of chips go with Q 10… in fact, his was a fairly quick exit, sparking a brief dwell around Update Corner and an abrupt disappearance to “do work.”  We took that to mean playing more satellites to events like this online, at which he seems worryingly successful.  It was previous Vic champ Mark Teltscher who knocked out the elder blondie, with a flopped set of Nines vs. tikay’s nut flush draw, just for the record, and when I took a photo of him he said something along the lines of, “I don’t know why you’re even following me.”  I told him I thought he’d won something, once.

In any case, it might be a good time to mention Ben ‘Sunday8pm’, who filled in as Updater for Snoopy, glued to his computer back in Birmingham.  Thrown in at the deep end – a four dayer packed to the rafters with well-known names – he showed true blonde grit and determination, along with an admirable sense of calm.  When I got all flustered over using one laptop between us on the first day, it was Ben who was the admirable peacekeeper and generally let me fuss over it when it looked like that would placate me.  He also has unusually clear handwriting.  Tikay’s looks like it might be Aramaic, while Snoops writes one number down per piece of paper.  Whole forests have suffered because of him.  Thanks Ben.

Back to the action, and we found more early eliminations in the form of John ‘Texas’ Hewston who was initially sat next to Rob Yong (wearing his bright blondepoker outfit, I was pleased to see), also Kevin Daly and Steve Bovis.  Meanwhile chips were moving back and forth between Burnley John and EPT-Winner Mads Andersen, while Paul King (after valiantly doubling up within the time period he allotted himself) raced his way out of the comp with AQ vs. 88. 

It was about this time that a rather loud handful of Full Tilters showed up, and somehow Ben got Mike Matusow to pose for a picture outside the tournament area, although he didn’t manage to snap Kristy Gazes (sorry Kev).  It appears that they were in town for the televised Poker Open heats, and just kind of dropped by for a little while.  In fact, there was an odd spread of people in the tournament too: Vic regulars like Neil ‘Bad Beat’ Channing and Vicky Coren, whose speciality is cash but somehow can’t resist the comps, quick though they can become, to the ubiquitous Frenchmen Paul Testud and Pascal Perrault, to the odd-ones-out like Robert Varkonyi and continually talking narcissist Stephen Pearson.

This last gentleman, who finished Day One fifth in chips, claimed to use his persistent, un-ignorable chat as a “system to gather information,” which undoubtedly has some effect as he grew and maintained a healthy stack throughout the time he was playing.  But at one point John Kabbaj and Tony Chessa decided to clarify the ruling on table talk when Stephen insisted that as long as your actual hole cards aren’t shown face-up, any and everything goes.  It does seem a fairly standard anti-collusion device to prevent anyone correctly revealing their holding, but the cardroom’s rules agreed with Mr. Pearce’s and there was a no-holds-barred talkfest occurring until he was eventually eliminated late on Day Two.

El Blondie started the day low-chipped with just 15k or so, but while other short stacks (and not so short) went up in smoke – Ram Vaswani, the Mad Turk and Dan Samson for starters, Dave got his first double through courtesy of tablemate Marc Goodwin, whose 8 9 connected with the 6 7 2 flop, just not as well as Dave’s 7 7.  tikay remarked, “That must be the first hand Marc has lost all week!”  But it wasn’t to be the last – he missed out on the final table by a hair’s breadth.

RED-DOG found himself short-stacked and committed to launching the rest of his chips in a three-way pot with pocket Eights, but he was up against 99 and QQ, the latter being Ian Woodley’s hand which performed a double takeout and sent RED home.  He’d played consistently throughout, and there were several race situations on Day One which in a parallel world sent him on to the later stages with a more playable stack… But back to El Blondie, and Mr. Colclough couldn’t put a foot wrong.  Slowly but surely, he played right through from his return on Day Two to the final table, demonstrating how a short stack needn’t be anything other than a temporary situation when in the hands of a proper player.  My hat’s been off to the way Dave’s played in several of these comps I’ve updated, whether or not he’s made any money, and it’s just that little bit higher this time seeing as he eventually finished third.

Play stopped on Day Two when 27 players remained – the money cutoff – in spite of the fact that it was fairly early and leaving three full tables to play through ensured a late night for the final stage.  All the pestering in the world couldn’t induce a budge on that; it had been decided and written in stone.  Unlike the blind levels, which, unless I am mistaken, went from one hour to 90 minutes (with a level repeated), to one hour again with a potential decrease to 45 minutes late on the last day.  I’m no Thomas Kremser, but this did seem slightly odd.  There’s already been a lot of discussion about it, so suffice it to say that there was surely an easier way of ensuring smooth running.  Not that it was all bad – complaints only ever tend to surface after players are out; if you enter a competition, just check what the structure is going to be, and if you don’t like it, don’t play.  I know it’s not as simple as that in reality (what with ranking points and all) but complaining can only get one so far.  About as far as the car park.

The final day started an hour early.  OK, the clocks went back during the night, but it felt early to us updaters and Marc Goodwin sauntered in late.  He was more punctual than Pascal Perrault, however, whose chips sat unattended for a good long while before he showed up.  Marc didn’t have too much to worry about at that stage, being chip leader by nearly 100k.  His closest rivals were Bambos, Tim Flanders, who seems to be on quite a run this year already, and Jan Heitmann, the young German lad who played a no-holds-barred game which stirred up a lot of fun debate, as well as some enthusiastic supporters under the screen alias ‘MunichAces.’  Jan got chips in just about every way imaginable during the final day, and it was no surprise to his friendly railbird George that a final table appearance awaited him.

It might be a good idea to show you what these last day players were competing for (with all of them guaranteed at least the bottom prize and small profit):

1st - £135,000
2nd - £72,500
3rd - £44,300
4th - £26,200
5th - £20,200
6th - £16,100
7th - £10,100
8th - £7,100
9th - £5,000
10th - £4,000
11-14th - £3,000
15-18th - £2,500
19-23rd - £2,000
24-27th - £1,750

John Kabbaj started the ball rolling towards the final table with a double up with AJ, and continued his accumulation throughout the day, overtaking a somewhat dwindled Marc Goodwin in chips by the first break.  A special mention also has to go to Bluesquare qualifier Mark Herron (Marky147) who had been nursing a shortish stack, but having played with him in Helsinki, I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t just accept his fate, but went for it early in the day, doubling with a suited A 6 off Pascal Perrot’s pocket Threes, and then almost immediately knocking Pascal and Angelo Besnainou out at the same time with his own 3 3!  The three overcards against him missed by a mile and young Marky was looking confident.

Finishes in the top 18 awaited Jim Kerrigan, who’d looked like one of the Men In Black through the earlier days, and played a solid game throughout.  Keir Fitzgibbon’s AQ fell to the Camel’s AK, but Keith just missed out on the final too.  Young Nik Depala sort of lost the plot about halfway through the day, and played an unsettling hand against Jan Heitmann where he open passed two pair on the river (3 spades on board) after flat calling Jan all the way.  The forum went bananas, and it looks like Nik did too, not recovering after that, but having made a profit out of the Main Event nonetheless.  Jeffrey Rogers and early bully Ian Woodley finished tantalisingly close to the final, while Marc Goodwin’s eleventh place must have been a tad frustrating (as any final table finish would have lifted him to the top of the European Rankings) but he should be pleased with his performance.  You can’t win them all, Mr. Cool – like you said, “It doesn’t matter if you win or lose.  It’s whether you look good.”

After Pavlo Iacovou hit the bubble, the final table looked like this, and I refer you to Julian’s post: “Cream.  Rises.” 

1.  Dave Colclough       260,000
2.  Mark Herron           190,000
3.  Colin/Robert Kennedy  130,000     
4.  Tim Flanders           570,000
5.  John Kabbaj            340,000
6.  Raymond Nicholas    155,000
7.  Bambos                  157,000
8.  Kevin O'Connell       180,000
9.  Jan Heitmann          470,000

It was Bambos, never in trouble chipwise, who eliminated Karabiner’s friend Colin ‘The Scholar’ Kennedy in 9th, but trouble was soon to come after he raced Jan’s pocket Tens with his AJ, unsuccessfully, and then busted in 8th.  Then John Kabbaj took a big chunk out of Kevin O’Connell, making a cutoff move with 9 7 suited which Kevin called with AK.  The nine falling kept him in the tournament, and left Kev to double off El Blondie with 99 against AJ, then take out Tim Flanders, whose Mrs. wasn’t entirely happy with her play that day, but must have been pleased with the total Flanders’ performance. 

The chips drifted back and forth, with a slowplayed full house adding some of Kevin’s chips to Dave’s stack, but it was with the back to back eliminations of Raymond Nicholas (6th) and Mark Herron (5th) that John Kabbaj started to make his bid for victory.  Both times his pocket pairs stood up and he was suddenly looking a bit more threatening.  There might have been talk of deals at this point, but with Mr. Colclough still in (whose policy on deals is widely known) they weren’t going to get anywhere.  And even at this late stage, with so much money on the line, there were some amusing moves to be made – Dave raised all in at one point and then, uncalled, waved his 7 4 offsuit in the direction of Kev, who couldn’t make it over to the Update Corner fast enough.

Then a real hand of sorts for Dave on the button – 88 – sparked an all-in from Kevin O’Connell in the blind with AK off, as one might expect.  No help, and Kevin was the 4th place finisher, leaving El Blondie, John Kabbaj and (smiley) dark horse Jan Heitmann to battle it out.  The latter caused the downfall of Dave, however, with Q 10 which hit second pair on a blind vs. blind flop, seen after the young German called a preflop raise Dave had made with no-longer-good pocket Fours.  “Nice hand,” said Dave as he was called and forced to throw in the rest with 7 9 on the following hand.

So heads up were Jan and John, and at this point business was done in the form of a chop for £90,000 each, leaving £27,000 extra to the eventual winner.  Jan lost a pile calling John all-in with King high on an A A 8 4 board, and John must have been a tad surprised that his 4 6 stayed good…after that John picked off segments of Jan’s stack with a well-timed check-raise and another all-in (this time uncalled) before rather swiftly tilting the chip lead in his direction and then finishing Jan off. 

I have to say that Jan and his friend George were very friendly, and seemed far less disappointed by Jan’s finishing second than over the fact that alcohol seemed pretty hard to come by that time on a Sunday night.  It had been a final table packed with players recognisable from tournaments all over the place, played without a second’s tedium for us lucky reporters.  John Kabbaj got his giant cheque and a rather lovely trophy (in one piece, this time) and the 45 pages of update just show how support for Dave and interest in this tournament in general just ballooned in a most gratifying way.  I thank Sunday8pm for his efforts, and look forward to watching more top notch poker at the next festival.


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