| Game Type: | No Limit |
| Buy-in: | £1,000 |
| Prize Pool: | £80,000 |
| Entries: | 80 |
It was my first trip to the Largest Casino in the UK, and while I was prepared for the sprawling anonymity of a Vegas convention centre, the Grosvenor was a welcoming sort of place, moodily lit in reds and blues, with a nicely-sized card pit at the back. Being the newest gaming establishment in the area, cab drivers told me that it had already been absorbed into many weekend evenings out as a sort of first stop – there were certainly no tumbleweeds in the casino, and the £1,000 Main Event attracted 80 runners, with quite a few blondeites among them. Paul ‘Pab’ Foltyn, Dave Gent (left), Julian Thew, Matt Tyler, Womble, Jim Reid and Iwan Jones were just a few spotted taking their seats as Snoopy and I got out our torches and set up camp in a corner of the casino illuminated only by four dim purple lights. Once these had been found not to be the UV sort which make one’s teeth glow green, we lost interest and spent most of the time ringside where we could see enough to write down what we observed.
There was certainly a lot to report on Day One, with the action setting off at a frantic pace, with Alan Mclean exiting early on, unfortunately flushed out when his AK ran into the same hand suited…Barry Neville too, despite confidently wearing a T-shirt proclaiming, “I’m Barry From Sheffield, Who the F*** Are You?” fell at one of the first hurdles when his Pocket Queens were busted by a set-flopping pair of Deuces. Queens also sent the infamous RED-DOG to the rail early, when they found Ash Hussain (table bully) with the Aces. Not usually an early exiter, we were momentarily sad to see him go, before remembering that Mr. McCready had been getting the cake and a half online that week.
Here was a table which deserved some hovering round:
Marc Goodwin
Mickey Wernick
Richard Herbert
Wasim Akhtar
Derek Malone
Andrew Johnson
Julian Thew
Simon Cawley
Lee Rich
John Exley
Within half a level, Mickey Wernick had doubled through off YoYo, flopping the nut flush and coaxing Julian in with his two pair. Marc Goodwin was, however, the most successful early on of his starting table; although he was quickly moved, reporting him out would have been a gross error as he was sat with 35,000 at the first break. He busted AA with good old 67, calling Chris Huyton all in on a 3 5 6 board and hitting a helpful 9 and then an even more helpful 7 to add to his early monstrous stack. I should probably mention now that Marc’s immediate neighbour on his second table was none other than Tikay, who spent the time leading up to the dinner break moaning about how he was being outplayed…
Nick ‘vodkaredbull’ Hicks (left) received some early fortune and some well deserved commendation on the forum, as he calmly built his stack during the first three levels, and others steadily climbing included David ‘Geeforce” Gent, Dave Colclough and John ‘Texas’ Hewston. Ascending in large leaps were Iwan Jones (whose JJ spiked a set against KK and AQ) and Richard ‘Strummer’ Herbert. The latter won an interesting pot, seeing firstly an all-heart flop of A 5 7. The three players in checked it, and the 5d turn card too. It went crazy on the Qh river, with Richard’s QQ beating the slowplayed house of Sevens! His end-of-day stack was a reasonable 26,000 with 26 players remaining, but there were a few players who’d edged out in front – Iqbal Patel was overnight leader with the ominous-sounding total of 66,600, while following were Marc Goodwin, Bernard Litman, Mick Fletcher and John Huckle.
Mick Fletcher was raising rather a lot, and hitting cards when needed –
Pocket Aces did a lot of damage one way or another on Day Two – Tikay paid off Gerald David’s with his 89off on a 6 7 9 flop (well, could be a lot worse), while short stack David Gent’s got their call all-in preflop from Glenn Ashworth’s 88, but an Eight on the flop finished him off. Ash Hussain ran into Reyaaz Mulla’s Aces, and this time they held up, knocking Ash out and propelling Mulla into the final.
There were outdraws aplenty for John Hewston (right), whose larger pairs didn’t seem to be able to hold up, and perhaps more memorably, he found AK when W. Akhtar made an all-in steal with 34off. The flop: 7 K J. Turn and river 5, 6 for the runner-runner straight. A fair bit of steam releasing later, he’d turned his fortunes around, only to end up finishing a disappointing 14th. Another runner-runner saved Mr. Kendall’s bacon, after he’d already doubled up to around 25k and decided to move in on Mick Fletcher holding Qs 9s on a Q 5 7 rainbow flop. A quick call later, and Tikay saw he was up against trip Fives! Luckily the Seven was a spade, and so were the turn and river cards. A narrow escape, but not a huge dent to Mick Fletcher, who proceeded to iron out El Blondie with 83. The board was 8 8 3 10 and Dave was unlucky to find his A8 in bad shape when the money went in.
This all happened with only two tables remaining, and after flopping another house and eliminating Gerald David, Mick was the firm chip leader, although Iqbal Patel had increased his stack over those hours to over 100k, as had Richard Herbert, with John Huckle close behind. This Mr. Huckle suffered from the same name-spelling problem which affected quite a few on the printout we received from the casino, so Snoopy, having called him Hockle (as printed) for a good while, just changed the vowel every time, knowing that sooner or later he’d get it right. What a professional.
There was no stopping Mick Fletcher as it approached the bubble – he eliminated both Mark Raymer and Bernard Litman (who’d been comfortable in chips throughout the first half of the tournament) with AA, and approached the final table with 250,000, over 130k more than his nearest rival, Iqbal Patel. The prizes were set out as follows:
1 £28,300
2 £17,400
3 £10,300
4 £6,300
5 £4,700
6 £4,000
7 £3,200
8 £2,800
9 £2,000
A saver was agreed, however, for the tenth and eleventh place finishers, who turned out to be Paul Hatton and Andrew Douglas. It must be said as an aside at this point that of two last minute changes applied to this tournament, one was excellent and one was not. The extending of the blind levels from the slightly unreasonable half hour to first 45 minutes and then an hour was a very good decision, welcomed by all the players. The extending of the final table from 9-handed to 10-handed was a bad decision and was accepted rather too calmly by the players – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – final tables should be of an odd number. This is because a) when playing hand for hand it is a noticeable disadvantage to the short stacks to be on the table of five where your blinds will circulate faster, and b) it is a decided advantage to be the big stack short handed and to just lump all ten on one table takes it away from you ‘early.’ If savers were put up for the final eleven, then let them all go on the final, or wait for the tournament to take its course and provide the final nine as per the original plan, and most Grosvenors’ rules.
In any case, the final was not to be one of those soporific fold-fests – the lineup pretty much guaranteed it:
1 Glenn Ashworth 49,500
2 Richard Herbert 90,000
3 Brian Medley 30,500
4 Mick Fletcher 250,000
5 Tikay 86,000
6 Andrew Douglas 12,000
7 Iqbal Patel 120,000
9 Paul King 30,000
10 John Hockle 63,000
After Andrew Douglas, Glenn Ashworth (right) was the next to fall, running an unlucky pair of Tens against Reyaaz Mulla’s A5, which spiked the Ace and gave Reyaaz the momentum and the chips to outlast the quick-falling Brian Medley (8th) and Paul King (7th) as well as Richard Herbert (6th). Paul King, incidentally, had had a rollercoaster of a tournament, coming back from being nearly at the felt to make yet another final table appearance, while Richard, a strong and quite intimidating player, found some good hands which weren’t good enough – he doubled up Mulla’s AK with AQ, and was out soon thereafter after his JJ missed the 7 A 4 8 board which Iqbal’s A4 had hit squarely. Despite having a flush draw on the turn, he missed and they were five handed.
John Huckle moved all-in a couple of times over the top of chip monster Mick Fletcher, securing him a few flopless pots, and proving that he wasn’t prepared to sit quietly, short stack or not. Meanwhile, a somewhat dwindling Tikay pushed in with 8c 2c on a 7c 9s Ac board, called by the K10off of Iqbal Patel…a flush came and that strange hand gave him a double up and got him over the 100k mark. After Reyaaz Mulla finished 5th, however, it was Tikay’s time to make an unsuccessful move – all in with pocket Eights, he can’t have been overjoyed to find two callers – one of whom was Iqbal with AK, which promptly hit two pair and sent him out in fourth.
Now with two stacks around 350k against him, John Huckle looked to be in a bit of a tough spot, and although he doubled through with 89 against Iqbal’s K10, it didn’t leave him with enough to push the same opponent off K4off(!) when he reraised all-in on the big blind with Ac Td. A rivered King, and it was heads up. We heard that business had been done, which explained, perhaps, the final hand which put Mick Fletcher’s KK against Iqbal Patel’s J5. An unnecessary set meant that Mick was the official Champion, and one of the fastest final tables I remember covering drew to a close with the presentation of the inevitable glassware. Snoopy and I hardly knew what to do with ourselves at the early hour of 1am, but we found a beer at the bar with deputy updater Jon Raab to be an excellent solution. For only their second festival, the Bolton Extravaganza was a fun, orderly comp with some great action from the players, and we look forward to repeating the experience.