| Game Type: | Limit |
I eventually arrived in Barcelona on Thursday night after flying out of Coventry mid-evening - Coventry is a real strange Airport, but that's another story.
Booked in at the H10 Marina - bumping into Rory Liffey, and blondeites Royal Flush & Ginger in the lobby, before poodling across to The Gran Casino de Barcelona to see what was going off.
The William Hill crew were all in good heart - Thewy with a glass of red wine in hand, Bad Girl busy handing out William Hill CD's to all and sundry, & Smokin Steve grinding it out with a short stack. Nothing changes, eh?
But the shock was to see so many Scandies present - must have been over 100 of them and they are great fun, every one of them. Lovely to hook up again with Norway's Sverre Sundbo, he's a great lad. But the talk of the Casino was that the Main Event had sold out, & there were dozens of players trying to obtain tickets. There was a super-sat in progress, and there were folks offering €8,000 for seats to those who won one - unbelievable, the value of a seat was €4,000! Roland de Wolfe and Kevin O'Connell were amongst those who failed to obtain a seat (by fair means, I hasten to add), and when John Duthie eventually arrived, the poor fella was besieged by those without seats.
He did everything he could to organise extra capacity, including pressing into service the "mini-tables" used for Heads-Up Poker, and that caused problems in itself, with most of the field 11 to a table, and some at 8 to a table. Poor John could not do right for doing wrong! Yeah, he under-estimated the likely size of the field, but all those who entered early enough got their seat, so there is a moral there somewhere.
The comp got under way eventually, and it was carnage - players were busting out left right and center. Tony G started to run up a nice stack, but his Aces got cracked, ditto Pete Singleton. Julian Thew was another to have a big hand cracked, and he never recovered, same with Bad Girl, but Smokin Steve, as ever, was hanging in there. Devilfish was another early exit, and he entertained us, if that is the word, on the piano, on which he played both the notes he knows rather well.
Gus Hansen had (coincidentally?) found himself on the TV Table, along with Pascal Perrault, and it was Gus who set the early pace, busting one unfortunate soul on the very first hand. He ended the day as Chip Leader, and I have to say, he plays a deep stack awesomely well - this IS a man you do not want on your table, believe me.
Day two was remarkable for the speed at which players were busting out. But the structure had been accelerated to accommodate the huge field, & these things have a habit of biting back eventually, & we saw the field drop from 45 to 9 in less than 2 hours!
Sadly, there were no Brits at the Final Table, but we did have Gus Hansen, Christer Johansson & Jan Boubli, as well as a handful of Scandies.
Christer Johansson began the Final as Chip Leader, and soon increased this when he busted poor Romain Ferioli with a Full House, with Dario Alioto falling to Patrick Antonius shortly after. In fact Patrick was by now chip leader, by now having relieved Gus Hansen of most of his huge stack, but you can't keep a good man down for long, and Gus was soon on the comeback trail, busting Anton Bergstroem to double up. By now, the good-looking Christer Johansson & young Patrick Antonius were vying for the lead, with French hope Jan Boubli starting to make his move, and he soon improved even further when he busted out Gus Hansen. Gus is a breathtakingly exciting player to watch, and he had thrilled his huge army of fans from the very first hand, but 5th was to be the best he could manage on this occasion. Christer then took out Patrick Mortensen, and the Swede joined France's Jan Boubli and Patrick Antonius from Finland to battle for the victory.
The momentum swung to and fro for an hour, with Jan Boubli down to the felt as low stack for most of that time, but suddenly he started hitting cards, and after the players had taken a short break, the action became fast and furious. Jan then won two big hands, knocking out Patrick Antonius on the second, and so now it was heads-up. Boubli, the French ex-dentist, then extracted the remains of Christer's chips, and we had a winner of what had been a magnificent competition.
Jan is no stranger to major competition Final tables, with runner-up spots in Paris in 2003 at the Grand Prix de Paris (€178,000) and this year's Hall of Fame Classic (€59,000), but at €418,000, this was far and away his biggest success, and he looked overwhelmed afterwards. But he was a worthy winner, and not one of the watching crowd could begrudge him his astounding victory. Runner-up Christer Johansson is a world-class player, winner of the Paris WPT in 2003, and the famous E-WSOP in Vienna as far back as 2001, so this was no easy win for Jan.
Memo to the Brits - must do better at The Vic. See you there!
Booked in at the H10 Marina - bumping into Rory Liffey, and blondeites Royal Flush & Ginger in the lobby, before poodling across to The Gran Casino de Barcelona to see what was going off.
The William Hill crew were all in good heart - Thewy with a glass of red wine in hand, Bad Girl busy handing out William Hill CD's to all and sundry, & Smokin Steve grinding it out with a short stack. Nothing changes, eh?
But the shock was to see so many Scandies present - must have been over 100 of them and they are great fun, every one of them. Lovely to hook up again with Norway's Sverre Sundbo, he's a great lad. But the talk of the Casino was that the Main Event had sold out, & there were dozens of players trying to obtain tickets. There was a super-sat in progress, and there were folks offering €8,000 for seats to those who won one - unbelievable, the value of a seat was €4,000! Roland de Wolfe and Kevin O'Connell were amongst those who failed to obtain a seat (by fair means, I hasten to add), and when John Duthie eventually arrived, the poor fella was besieged by those without seats.
He did everything he could to organise extra capacity, including pressing into service the "mini-tables" used for Heads-Up Poker, and that caused problems in itself, with most of the field 11 to a table, and some at 8 to a table. Poor John could not do right for doing wrong! Yeah, he under-estimated the likely size of the field, but all those who entered early enough got their seat, so there is a moral there somewhere.
The comp got under way eventually, and it was carnage - players were busting out left right and center. Tony G started to run up a nice stack, but his Aces got cracked, ditto Pete Singleton. Julian Thew was another to have a big hand cracked, and he never recovered, same with Bad Girl, but Smokin Steve, as ever, was hanging in there. Devilfish was another early exit, and he entertained us, if that is the word, on the piano, on which he played both the notes he knows rather well.
Gus Hansen had (coincidentally?) found himself on the TV Table, along with Pascal Perrault, and it was Gus who set the early pace, busting one unfortunate soul on the very first hand. He ended the day as Chip Leader, and I have to say, he plays a deep stack awesomely well - this IS a man you do not want on your table, believe me.
Day two was remarkable for the speed at which players were busting out. But the structure had been accelerated to accommodate the huge field, & these things have a habit of biting back eventually, & we saw the field drop from 45 to 9 in less than 2 hours!
Sadly, there were no Brits at the Final Table, but we did have Gus Hansen, Christer Johansson & Jan Boubli, as well as a handful of Scandies.
Christer Johansson began the Final as Chip Leader, and soon increased this when he busted poor Romain Ferioli with a Full House, with Dario Alioto falling to Patrick Antonius shortly after. In fact Patrick was by now chip leader, by now having relieved Gus Hansen of most of his huge stack, but you can't keep a good man down for long, and Gus was soon on the comeback trail, busting Anton Bergstroem to double up. By now, the good-looking Christer Johansson & young Patrick Antonius were vying for the lead, with French hope Jan Boubli starting to make his move, and he soon improved even further when he busted out Gus Hansen. Gus is a breathtakingly exciting player to watch, and he had thrilled his huge army of fans from the very first hand, but 5th was to be the best he could manage on this occasion. Christer then took out Patrick Mortensen, and the Swede joined France's Jan Boubli and Patrick Antonius from Finland to battle for the victory.
The momentum swung to and fro for an hour, with Jan Boubli down to the felt as low stack for most of that time, but suddenly he started hitting cards, and after the players had taken a short break, the action became fast and furious. Jan then won two big hands, knocking out Patrick Antonius on the second, and so now it was heads-up. Boubli, the French ex-dentist, then extracted the remains of Christer's chips, and we had a winner of what had been a magnificent competition.
Jan is no stranger to major competition Final tables, with runner-up spots in Paris in 2003 at the Grand Prix de Paris (€178,000) and this year's Hall of Fame Classic (€59,000), but at €418,000, this was far and away his biggest success, and he looked overwhelmed afterwards. But he was a worthy winner, and not one of the watching crowd could begrudge him his astounding victory. Runner-up Christer Johansson is a world-class player, winner of the Paris WPT in 2003, and the famous E-WSOP in Vienna as far back as 2001, so this was no easy win for Jan.
Memo to the Brits - must do better at The Vic. See you there!
