blonde poker

It was doubly pleasant to go through the little gate at the entrance to Birmingham's Broadway Casino this weekend, both because I got to see who had turned up (like Carlo Citrone, El Blondie, Lawrence Gosney, Ian Woodley, Marc Goodwin, Bambos, Nottingham Nick Gibson and Womble, to name just the first bunch I noticed) but also as it effectively shut the door on the entire of Britain's marvellously unreliable train network. With the station closure at Euston, I was beginning to wonder if the poker gods didn't want this event covered- which would have been a shame considering how much fun it was to watch the blondeites battling all the way through.

So many familiar faces were amongst the 82 starting players that every table had at least one player who would save up the interesting stories and make Snoopy's and my job that little bit easier. More importantly, they were forever involved in big, juicy, reportable hands – note to you all – this is what makes live updating so enjoyable. Some comps seem to crawl along for the first couple of levels, but oh no, not at the Broadway.

We hadn't even had time to get a picture of Roland de Wolfe in his remarkably un-casino-y attire (WPT hoody, white trainers) before he was out in the first level. Having done half his stack in a two-pair vs. flopped flush coup, the rest went in on one of those monster straight-flush draws and he was cheerfully out the door. He was pipped to first out by Lawrence Gosney, however. While some stacks were dramatically disappearing, the Mad Turk got off to a flying start with a couple of early doubles, one of which involved the 5s 5h which made one of those straight flush things against Simon Zach, and all-star Mickey Wernick seemed to be in accumulation mode early on for a change.

Now might be the time to mention that despite rather ungenerous posts from tikay-watchers, and over-generous chip counts from the man himself, tikay had a good first quarter. Sat next to Iwan Jones (who had a bad first quarter, and kept muttering something about an “aquarium”) he got up to 17,000 before getting overexcited with pocket QQ on a board of 6 7 8 6 5, where his opponent had flat called 1,000 on the turn and then gone for a 4,000 river bet which got paid. “I probably wouldn't have called if I didn't have so many chips,” he ruminated at the break. Let that be a lesson to you – a big stack can be a temporary stack…like Woody Deck's. He rapidly accumulated chips through the first two levels before turning 24,000 to zero in two hands. One of them was like a Dave Colclough Christmas present, as he made a big old move with 6 4 against El Blondie's raise from the big blind (he had Big Slick suited) and doubled him up.

I thought Nick Gibson was chip leader around the midway point, with Bambos and Steve Jelinek close to him, until Snoopy pointed out that Jim Reid had a cool 55k (20k more than his closest rival). That was pretty good going, as the blinds were nice and slow and there was lots of play, right ‘til the bitter end (more on that later). At the buffet I ran into Willie Tann who was nursing a short stack at that point, and Red-Dog, who was in good form and equally good spirits with around average chips, as well as Joe Grech who had more chips, an ipod and a look about him which oozed confidence. And rightly so, considering his performance as the night wore on.

Now a couple of cowboys, Nick Gibson and Dave Colclough. They were both on the wrong end of some odd rag-Ace plays holding KK – Nick raised preflop and found two Aces on the flop and a check-raise all in from someone holding the (now) monstrous A5 of hearts, while Dave took a pretty tough beat with the same hand, Kings. He found not only a caller preflop, but a caller of a third raise(!), and, unsurprisingly, the same caller with A7 on the Ace-high flop, and he was out in 35 th place.

It was a slightly frustrated tikay who gave his chips to the same player he'd lost to in the previous comp, with the same hand (10 10). Mateyboy raised under the gun, and tikay decided to flat call this time. On the Q 9 6 board, he followed that up with a call all-in and found Matey with QK offsuit. “I played him twice, he hit the flop twice. Potentially he would have laid it down if I'd moved in preflop,” said tikay, displaying that post-mortem analysis we all can't help but torture ourselves with. At almost exactly the same time, famous Welshman Iwan Jones lost to QK with AK, all-in preflop. No escape when the flop came 9 10 J, and he was not best pleased. Presumably Bambos was a bit startled, too, when his AA got all-in against KK and AK, but he came third when the board arrived 2 9 10 J Q.

Snoopy put up a picture quiz round on the thread with a picture of a player's hand and the multiple choice options of:

•  Joe Grech

(b) Mickey Wernick
(c) RED-DOG
(d) Bambos
(e) Thing from the Addams family

It was, in fact, Joe Grech's hand, and focusing on him near the end of Day One, it was clear that he would be joining us for much of Day Two. Mick Jones and Dennis Troake were among those who finished ahead of him (the latter by over 100k) but he just looked so relaxed. So did Marc Goodwin (doesn't he always) but he returned with a short stack and promptly busted out. Joe, on the other hand, joined the likes of Peter Evans, Paul Jackson, M. Kazi, M. Shafiq and Bob Clarke on the last two tables and never stopped for breath. While veterans with shorter stacks like Jeff Buffenbarger and Robert Cooper exited fairly early on, young Wayne Fitzpatrick mixed it up until he mixed himself out with a pure bluff against Joe Grech. Elsewhere Steve Jelinek's AA were another victim of AK, this time the affectionate Bob Clarke's.

When they reached the bubbly number 11, they agreed to give the next player out £1,000 off the top prize, which ended up going to Peter ‘the Bandit' Evans who tried the Wayne move of making a big river bet on a paired board with a Jack on it, which Joe Grech called with his pocket Tens anyway to bust him. So all this late stage action left Joe in the chip lead, followed by early leader Dennis Troake on the final table with M. Shafiq, C. Constantinou, Ken Broad, Bob Clarke, Mick Jones, Paul ‘ActionJack' Jackson, George Geary and Z. Aslam, in descending order of chips.

1st = £32,800
2nd = £16,400
3rd = £8,200
4th = £6,560
5th = £4,920
6th = £4,100
7th = £2,870
8th = £2,460
9th = £2,050
10th = £1,640

The prizes were indecipherably odd to Snoopy and me, and we were sure that the final would result in some kind of deal, and that no way would there be a nearly three-hour battle heads up. Little we know. It all went pretty quickly at first, with Z. Aslam finishing 10 th , Ken Broad in 9 th (in a blinds battle with AK-holding Joe) and Mick Jones 8 th . In between the big and not-so-big hands, George Geary was waiting patiently, and then moving his permanently short stack in, doubling up at each opportunity. We were amazed at his tenacity; he'd been all-in several times before the final too and the other players just couldn't knock him out.

George outlasted M. Shafiq (who had made some pretty great calls earlier to build his stack) as he ran into Joe's monster 9 6 suited. To raise with that, and be rewarded with a 7 8 10 rainbow flop – the man must be living right. Also Bob Clarke's run came to an end in 6 th with the more traditional QQ vs AK shot, and even Dennis Troake was out before Geary (who finished 4 th ). That was a very interesting hand actually – the board at the end was 8h 10c Ac Qc As. Although the pot was over 200k, Joe's river call of Dennis' all in was probably still a bit scary as he only held JK offsuit for the straight. But Dennis had AK, and finished 5 th .

Three-handed and the film crew with Rhowena looked all ready to pounce on the exiters they saw, well, exiting shortly as Joe Grech had a huge 700k stack. But after C. Constantinou finished third when his AQ found (who else) Joe with AA, we were only getting started. There proceeded a truly epic heads up battle between two players who knew both the game and each other well, and as a result it was terrific to watch, and presumably fun to play. The table talk flew bewilderingly thick and fast and the chips migrated back and forth in a way we would never have predicted earlier. At one point Joe was down to just 85k, but fought back to take the title in the end.

The best part of this (for us updaters) was when the ever-so-helpful finalists let us take a seat right in between them, from which unprecedented vantage point we could see every hand taking place and also their hole cards a lot of the time. Fascinating stuff. I was, incidentally, proud to be wearing my blonde jumper at the same time as the last two players were both wearing blonde hats! (So, at an earlier point on the final, were Bob Clarke and Mick Jones). Paul insisted that he never usually wears hats, as he looks “silly.” But no, with a little gentle persuasion, his shyness was overcome and to what dramatic stylistic effect…

In the end it was Joe Grech who became Birmingham Open Champion, but it took nearly three hours to get rid of ActionJack. I would relate some hands, but there were just too many good ones and I can't choose between them. Suffice it to say that there was plenty of stealing with filth, restealing, the odd outdraw with 2 3, and lots of accusations of “sneakiness” flying back and forth. I can't think of a heads up that I found more exhausting, and more fun to watch. Congratulations to them both.

Although this Broadway tournament was quite small in number of runners, it ranks among my favourites so far. Bluewolf was on hand to provide anything except the key to the wifi, but their endless patience with our using the same computer that ran their Tournament Clock must be mentioned with gratitude. Snoopy and I got breakfast, the run of the floor and even a seat on the final – what more can you ask for?