Today saw the official start of the SportingOdds London Poker Masters Festival held at the Gutshot Club in Clerkenwell. As so often happens, it kicked off with the inevitable press launch at 2:30pm today, which I was lucky enough to represent blondepoker.com in, shirt and all. Dazed by the humidity, the appetizing buffet and free bar, the various representatives of gaming journalism in all its forms sat down with 2000 chips and a fifteen minute clock to play for the extraordinary £10,000 allocated to the final table. No, that's not a misprint – with £5,000 guaranteed for first place, the atmosphere, at least to begin with, was unusually quiet for a press freeroll.
My table (one of only three) started off tight as wetsuits, with some chips available for whoever raised preflop first. Those who had most benefited from the free bar seemed to be less fortunate in the early stages of the poker, and before the tournament had been running an hour and a half we were down to two tables. The tables, incidentally, were rather posh affairs, newly baized with the SportingOdds.com logo (I want to say ‘embaizoned' but know it's not a word) and comfortably sat nine or ten journalists.
I started off well, as did Tikay, but by the time I was moved two to his left he had “had an accident” and I had to watch him go all-in on the button with 24off and be knocked out by a lady's A6. This, I must add, was a necessary move as the blinds fairly rocketed (the whole thing took less than three hours) and everybody found themselves short-stacked when the blinds became 700 – 1500. So we don't need Tikay's excuse that the QQ he thought he had miraculously became 24 in the time it took for him to be called.
So before you could say, “how many players still left in actually work for SportingOdds?” we were approaching the bubble. Paul Kealy from the Racing Post raised one time too many and bubble or no bubble I threw in my remaining chips in a last-ditch effort to go to the final less short-stacked than everyone else with pocket 6s. Another player was more or less all-in on the big blind, so I found myself dodging Q7 for the main pot and A4 for the side. Except I didn't dodge it and the Ace knocked us both out. It turned out, bizarrely, that four players had gone out at exactly the same time, so I found myself coming in 8 th on chip count, rather than 11 th . That's just weird.
So the final table was seven-handed, with 10 th place (£100) going to Mark Stuart, 9 th (£125) going to Shenaz Aziz, and 8 th (£150) all mine. There was, as you can imagine from this data, a fairly steep gradient on the prizes, with an added bonus of two seats in Saturday's £500 main event up for grabs for the top two finishers. I should clarify: the top two finishers who don't work for SportingOdds – Both Mark Blandford and Ben Walton found themselves on the final unable to play in the main event, so the tickets were to go to the highest placed finishers other than them. So that's clear.
Here was the final lineup:
1 Simon Young (The Sun) 3,150
2 Ed Hawkins (Racing Post) 500
3 Mark Blandford (SportingOdds) 4,200
4 Paul Kealy (Racing Post) 22,200
5 David Lloyd (Sporting Life) 2,200
6 Matt Norris (Gutshot) 4,100
7 Ben Walton (SportingOdds) 11,400
What happened next was not what you might think; Ed Hawkins was indeed all-in on his small blind first hand, but doubled up with J9 and the first casualty was David Lloyd whose 33 were called by Ben Walton with 10 J suited. The flop was harmless, as was the turn, but a 10 came on the river to send him out in 7 th , winning £225. Ed Hawkins proceeded to go all in two more hands in a row, doubling through on the first, and losing the lot on the second to Mark Blandford's flush draw which he let him see on the big blind for free. Not passing for Ed's remaining chips, he knocked him out in 6 th for £300 when a fourth spade gave him the flush.
Next out was Matt Norris whose relatively short-stacked all-in with A9 was nipped off by the unstoppable Ben Walton with K2. The King appeared leaving Matt 5 th place and £400. One of SportingOdds' players then took out the other (his director it appeared) Mark Blandford, without blinking an eye. Mark pushed all-in on a 5 6 J flop and Ben Walton rather slowly, in my opinion, rolled over the AA and knocked him out in 4 th , with a consolation prize of £700.
Third fell Simon Young, who had been spared earlier having raised all-in on the button for 2200 – 700 more to the big blind, Paul Kealy who amazingly passed. Now all in with a bowl of rice, his A5 was up against Paul's AQ, and with AAQ on the board it was all over (tournament director Barry Martin was announcing the all-ins over the mic and found nothing to say in this instance save, “Oh dear.” He took £1,000.
So it was heads up between SportingOdds' own Ben Walton, and the Racing Post's Paul Kealy, the latter being leader. There were a few cagey hands played, before a series of all-ins, the most notable being Ben's K 10 vs Paul's A 4. The board came 3 5 6 2 and then, after a suitable tension-heightening pause, a 4 to split the pot. Cries of “fixed!” and, “You never see that online!” rang out as they went all-in a further three times. Now with Paul the new short stack, Tikay's helpful comment to Ben “if you pass you're a girly” must have spurred him on to his eventual victory with K2 (again) against Paul's Q7clubs. With no help for either of them, Paul has to content himself with one of those £500 entries to the Main Event, as well as £2,000, while Ben took the £5,000 first prize.
“Is that allowed?” bystanders joked. Of course; the other seat, however, went to 3 rd place Simon Young, and they'll be back at the shiny new tables this week. So will sponsor-brand-sporting Tony Kendall, for Wednesday's £150 No-limit hold'em freezeout, and Thursday's £200 Pot limit Omaha freezeout, too. This was only my second foray into the strange world of Press Events, and I have to say that anything with a buffet floats my boat, and sizeable freerolls more than most. An interesting end to the tale is that the £5,000 won by the personable Mr. Walton is going into Saturday's prize pool, making a total of £10,000 added by SportingOdds.com. I expect it may sell out.