| Game Type: | No Limit |
| Buy-in: | £5000 |
| Prize Pool: | £225,000 |
| Entries: | 45 |
As everyone and their uncle starts to look across the Pond to Las Vegas for the World Series, the last highest-level buy-in tournament in the UK before all that was the Grosvenor World Masters £5,000 No-limit hold’em tournament held at the Victoria Casino in London. Not pocket change by any means, and the field of mainly British players was almost entirely known to the update team of myself and tikay. This meant that there wasn’t going to be just one table vying for the Table of Doom-type moniker, but you could get drawn with, say, Dave Colclough, Jeff Buffenbarger, Alan Mclean, Jim Reid and Mark Teltscher, or how about Iwan Jones, Mickey Wernick, Alan Smurfit, Scott Fischman, Julian Gardner and Willie Tann? With just a handful of less well-known players, one might be forgiven for thinking there wasn’t a whole lot of value in the Vic cardroom.
But play they did regardless, 45 runners in total, who got the full effect of the generous structure (starting at 90 minutes per level, then reducing to 75 minutes). 10,000 in chips go a pretty long way with a structure like that, and although Day One went at such a pace it was announced that it was changing to a two-day event, it became clear late on Saturday that the last four players would get their Day Three after all…but that’s a ways on yet.
To start at the beginning, as is customary, and Marc Goodwin got probably the lousiest start, having
his AA beaten by Surinder’s set-hitting 88. He took a kind of break, reluctant to go out in the first level again after Paris, and when he came back he played his half stack all the way through Day One, with his eyes not only on the top-heavy four-person payout, but on the top of the European Rankings. It was actually Ian Frazer who went out first, with confident online qualifier Ryan Fronda taking the last of his chips and in fact storming into an early chip lead.
Only one Frenchman appeared to have made it to the World Masters – Paul Testud, who had a shaky start and was down to just 3k in level Two, while there was a total absence of Scandies (although a few young Americans seemed to have gotten lost in Europe and decided to hang around). One of these, Hellmuth-baiting Roman Yitzhaki, played strongly through two days, gaining and losing the chip lead on a couple of occasions in what turned out to be a near-miss kind of tournament. It appears that Paris struck the group of travelling poker friends (too young, as yet, for Vegas) as particularly fun, and he’s decided to hang around for a while. I think that’s great – so many poker players move to Vegas like cats toward tuna, it’s good to see the UK is so saturated with festivals now that it’s appealing to those either full of adventuring spirit, or underage for gambling in their homelands.
Large pots during the first day were won with big and little hands alike – take Mark Teltscher’s suited 10 3 which rivered a wheel straight with the same Ace which gave Dino Brivati Aces up. Then for the other extreme, how about Julian Thew’s AA on a board of K 3 3 A 10 – Stephen Pearce’s 5k call on the end, saying, “I have to call, I have a three,” gave him an early lead on his table. But it wasn’t Julian’s day – with the exception of Willie Tann, who got hold of a big stack early and just held on to it, the players who were looking healthiest early on were gone long before the final table, let alone the prize money.
You can always trust tikay to put the players at their ease, making them actively want to help you create an informative and entertaining update. Like when he told Marc Goodwin, Thewy and Jules Adamson that their hair all looked “ridiculous,” and that Marc’s outfit was a “brown gardening suit.” In actual fact it was Stephen Pearce’s nearly-inconceivable yellowy-lime-green paisley silk shirt which took the player dressing award, in my book, with no challenger. The tournament was, however, to have him present for just two levels, before he headed for an “early night” and it was Roman Yitzhaki, Julian and Dave Clayton who held the big stacks on that table.
Elsewhere, veteran Liam Flood had an early bit of fortune against John Kabbaj, who saw a flop with both a Queen and a Jack on it, and holding QQ must have been delighted to find John with JJ and an inescapable situation. John didn’t look as disheartened as Jules ‘Hartwith’ Adamson, whose pocket Sixes hit one of those happy sort of flops (with a Six on it) and got it all in against the overpair (AA, in this instance) only to have an Ace pop out on the turn and send him home. “Well, there goes five grand,” he said, heading for the bar where he proceeded to bang his head repeatedly against a table.
Around this time some chips started making their way towards Ivar Rivenaes, as he took the majority of Mike Magee’s stack in a strange hand involving his calling all the way to the river (the board now being 5 6 Q 3 3) and then pushing in with QK, being called, and winning. El Blondie’s chips were at their peak around now, too, after a couple of sizeable pots including a tough call of a check-raised river with the second nut flush (on a paired board, no less) – the correct decision in which kept him in the thing. But it was Dave Clayton who got the Day One Climber prize, beating Scott Fischman on a consistency tiebreak, playing aggressively and steadily to end the day a comfortable chip leader with nearly 50k. Interestingly, of the six shortest stacks (under 9k) at the end of play on Friday, two of them would go on to make the final nine, and the eventual winner lurked amongst them.
Early Day Two casualties were Sid Harris (Southampton Champ) and Julian Gardner, who ran JJ into Willie Tann’s QQ to give the Mr. Miyagi of poker a stack to be reckoned with. Ram Vaswani looked in contention for Most Aggressive Chip Gatherer (well, he usually is, I suppose) but after flopping the nut straight against Ian Woodley and sending him to the rail, and then busting Iwan Jones’ AK with his AQ, the wheels came off and he was gone in 20th. One of the only stacks capable of busting him (Liam Flood) somehow raised to the point of committal preflop with 88, and Ram went for it with his AQ. Despite rivering a Queen, the Gentleman’s flopped set stopped Ram’s extraordinary run cold.
Down to two tables, and this is where the short stacks started making their comebacks. Firstly Marc Goodwin found Aces against Roman Yitzhaki’s Eights, while second-shortest-stacked Osman Mustanoglu managed to get out of the Dangerous Level and chug along pretty much under the radar of the big stacks. Dave Colclough, unfortunately, found himself sat right between two of these – Liam and Willie, which can’t have made Day Two particularly plain sailing. It was Scott Fischman who took out El Blondie, however, as he’d turned top straight while Dave’s top pair re-raise all-in found him out just before the dinner break.
There was some confusion early on about exactly how many places were to be paid – first of all it was four, then briefly six, then around now confirmed as being four again. Here they are then:
1 £90,000
2 £67,500
3 £45,000
4 £22,500
So with nothing to be gained simply by making the final (apart from the Ranking Points, which concerned, for the most part, Mr. Cool) there was a good deal of action in the later stages of the day. Dave Clayton, who looked suitably intense throughout, took out early leader Ryan Fronda, when the board brought Qh Th 3s – top set for Ryan, but the straight flush draw for Dave. The majority of the money went in on the Ac turn, however, and a dispirited Ryan headed out while it looked like Dave would surely cash.
A fairly subdued Jeff Buffenbarger was 13th, a very amiable player, who, in tikay’s words, “runs a business which salvages "dead" mobile phones & photocopiers, plays golf off 12, & made a tidy living
at the Poker Tables prior to being coached by Colchester Kev.” Then it all sped up, with Roman Yitzhaki taking out Jim Reid and Mike Magee in quick succession, while spotty-tie sporting Liam Flood was beginning to look unstoppable after he removed Scott Fischman and comfortably headed for the final, which he made as chip leader, after Mark Teltscher burst the bubble.
While tikay proved online that he’s seen at least one movie by Quentin Tarantino, the action slowed as players realised that there may not be any deal forthcoming, and fewer than half of them were going to get in the money…but somehow, newly top of the rankings Marc Goodwin managed to outchip Bob Ballou and knocked him out in 9th (QQ vs. 88). Then pair vs. pair finished off Roman Yitzhaki (KK for Dave Clayton, QQ for him) and it looked like Mr. Clayton was headed into the top spot. It also looked like the only player with similar chips was Liam Flood, while Michael Greco, Osman Mustanoglu and Keir Fitzgibbon were in trouble.
The table looked like this:
Dave Clayton 140,000
Keir Fitzgibbon 58,000
Osman Mustanoglu 36,300
Liam Flood 125,000
Michael Greco 18,000
Marc Goodwin 20,500
Willie Tann 75,000
But instead of the short-and-getting-shorter stacks going for it (with the exception of Keir who did move in rather regularly), a huge pot between Liam Flood and Dave Clayton developed which swung the chip lead back toward the former – there was no showdown (unfortunately for the watchers) on this one, but after Dave bet heavily until the river on a 7 2 J 3 6 (three hearts) board, it was Liam’s final bet which swung a lot of chips his way.
A rather frustrated Michael Greco finished 7th, and judging from his exit interview with Rhow, he’d enjoyed Day Two as much as having a root canal, while it must have been slightly worse for 6th place Dave Clayton. To have played strongly for such a long time and then miss out … but he really seemed remarkably sanguine about the whole thing. I think he might have gone to play online fairly sharpish, though. Someone told me that he’s one of those gifted online players who can handle many multiple cash tables at once, for hours.
Finally, although tikay had been repeating, “Deal or no deal?” for what seemed like hours, a sort of saver was created for the fifth place finisher - £1,000 from each of the four left in. Normally this would have meant that fifth place only lost £1k, but in this instance it was shortstack Keir Fitz-gibbon who auto-moved in with, as it turned out, 72off, and was eliminated by Osman. He’d satellited in, and was therefore less disappointed, having made a profit and all. He also quashed rumours later that the Saver had perhaps affected his play: “I already knew I would push with any two cards if nobody raised in front of me. Not because I was comfortable with 4k for fifth place but because it's my best shot to avoid being blinded away and have a shot at first place.”
And with that, play stopped, bringing back just four players to fight for the prizes. These were:
Marc Goodwin (low stacked all the way, hanging by nails at points, currently European #1)
Liam Flood (Big stacked all the way, confident veteran)
Osman Mustanoglu (Very low stacked until very recently, couldn’t be gotten rid of)
Willie Tann (Always decently stacked, often looked asleep)
Day Three took a lot longer than one might have imagined – play was scheduled to start after the football was shown on a kind of drop down screen, and so it did, with few lurkers, watchers or recorders, despite the size of the comp. Marc Goodwin finally succumbed in 4th place, while Osman Mustanoglu took out Willie Tann shortly thereafter with the same hand match-up which had given his opponent a good stack earlier: QQ vs. JJ. It must be said that I am abbreviating, as there were lengthy slow patches in play, and the incidental detail which often makes these late stages interesting has faded. We experienced a total blonde technical hitch – no server meant no updates, and I discovered it to be less fascinating to watch for multiple hours with no means of communicating any of the action. There was in fact a deal done four-handed, which guaranteed £40,000 for fourth place, and £50,000 for Liam Flood, should he so finish (due to his chip advantage at the time).
What was interesting were Willie Tann’s closing comments to Rhow, and anyone who was listening – the tournament with its super structure and lengthy play was “quite boring,” according to him, obviously not such a big fan of what he described as “an endurance test.” It was undoubtedly in part this slow, slow structure which enabled Osman Mustanoglu to patiently outlast his bigger stacked 
opponents, before taking on Liam Flood heads up (a match up that could not have been predicted a day earlier).
I’m sure Osman won’t remember this, but I actually met him years ago while still at university – he attended one of the then-fledgling Oxford Cup events, and I was sat on his table. Remembering him from, you guessed it, Late Night Poker, I found him a down to earth advocate of the professional poker lifestyle. After sneaking onto the final table, he made no obvious errors, and took the chip lead (360k to 150k) for the first time in the whole tournament. It was several hours later that Osman Mustanoglu finally took out Liam, with most of the chips transferring when he had KK against Liam’s J8 which hit top pair on the flop, and the rest going all-in automatically the hand following.
A lengthy and slightly frustrating day for me as an updater, but a satisfyingly profitable one for those four out of 45 who made it that far. There seemed to be more debate online about whether comps of this size are really viable when placed in close proximity to other ones – the World Masters had prohibitively expensive satellites and the turnout, although not insubstantial, was fairly low. It will be interesting to see how the EPT at the Vic in September fares – I for one predict a near-maximum field for this one, coming, as it does, after the excitement of Vegas calms down.