blonde poker

“They assembled from all sides, one after another, with arms and horses and all the panoply of war...”

Ok, maybe not with arms and horses, and Monte Carlo isn't exactly Constantinople, but it certainly witnessed a similarly large influx of peoples from a smattering of different countries, the UK and the US making up (as per usual) the largest proportions of the invasion. Yes, with over 700 players entering and the EPT being forced to add an extra day, this was the largest tournament in European history (until the following Irish Open, that is), and no doubt the third biggest event of the calendar year behind the WSOP and WPT main events.

We had previously arrived the afternoon of the day before, joining the long queue of famous Scandies and not so famous qualifiers. Room sharing would be interesting, with the three of us and only two beds, we had to arrange a rotating sleeping method, using the traditional method of scissors/paper/stone that naturally I ended up losing and spent the first uncomfortable night on the chair. Although Jen and Snoopy had won at this game, it seemed the hotel was going to be the real winners over the week, a quick perusal through the room service and bar menus showing that despite there being no cash games allowed at the resort, it wouldn't take much for a player to go broke here. Most meals were in the €20 or above category, whilst even with soft drinks they managed to drive a hard bargain.

Having had a brief sojourn at the Pokerstars welcome party, our intrepid triumvirate made they way to an organised media tournament in the main hall which featured a mixture of bloggers, reporters and Team Pokerstars players. Having hastily agreed a last-longer between myself, Jen, Snoopy and French updater Ben, we made our way to take part in the most star-studded crapshootacular freeroll I have ever played. 1K chips, 15 minute clock with the blinds doubling every time... Actually, it was a complete riot, I was lucky enough to be sitting next to Lee Nelson (right), the author of 'Kill Phil' (who actually went on to win the comp!) - he was a complete joy to play against, laughing at numerous suck-outs and generally having a good time. Somehow, I managed to make it past the initial 80 players or so to the final table, winning the last longer (which all went on our food anyway), before my A-Q utg push for 5 BB's ran into A-K and T-T. Still, I was given $25 from Pokerstars which was a nice gesture on their behalf. Probably only enough to buy one beer though...

Arising for a 2pm start the next day, we made our way to a hugely spacious press room, though with Lee Jones sitting at a separate desk facing us, it looked very much like I was there to do exams instead. A quick scour of the main hall for the tables led me to directly overhearing the announcement that the starting stack would in fact be 15k chips to go with the 90 minute clock instead of the usual 10k. I'm pretty sure many of the mouths in that gigantic hall began to salivate at the mere prospect of having so many chips to play.

Of course, many of them would find ways to lose such huge stacks fairly quickly. EPT Dublin winner Roland De Wolfe managed to get it all in with top two pair only to run into the 9-high flush draw of his opponent, whilst Marcel Baran also exited sharpish holding As-5s on a 2s-3c-4s board only to find mateyboy sitting pretty with 5-6. Elsewhere, Harry Demetriou had a great start, flopping a straight against a set and doubling up sharpish, but cardrack Ben Grundy was having trouble, saying after the first couple of levels, “I've had Aces twice, Kings twice, flopped three sets, flopped the nuts three times and I've still got less than my starting stack.”

Brit Steve Jelinek (left) was the early pace-setter, hitting 55k within three levels and managing to stay up around the top for the whole week, but the most eye-opening pot of the first day was a 3-way all-in between Ben Grundy, holding Kh-Kd, an American kid who had Ac-Ah and Christopher Ulsrud the big stack with Ks-Kc. Predictably all the chips ended up the middle with the American youngster looking in great shape, but this was tempered when the board came out Ts-Tc-6s-4s-8s, four flushing to the king of spades was the only way for Ulsrud to scoop (except if the board had come Qc-Jc-Tc-9c-x).

Day 1B was much the same for early action, Joe Hachem ran A-A into A-Q on an Q-Q-2 board whilst Phil Ivey went out to fellow heavyweight Patrik Antonius holding top two pair against the Fin's monster straight and flush draw. Challenging my previous statement for most interesting hand was when Patrick Antonius had 3-bet Adam Junglen preflop and then pushed in on a Qc-2s-4c board and Adam called... with Ace Jack high. An astounding call it turned out to be, because Patrik could only show 3c-5s but a rivered Ace took the pot to Patrick and Adam would depart soon after.

Less than half the field would return for Day 2, the big stacks looking to dominate their tables whilst shorter stacks searched desperately for the right time and place to push all-in. Bad Girl was one of the latter, but managed a perfect tripling up moment when she pushed with Queens against two sets of Ace King and the board all coming with lowish cards.

But sometimes even the big stacks would collide on certain flops with unavoidable consequences. Chad Brown (right), William Thorsson and an unknown short stack saw a Kc-Qs-9c flop only for all three to get their money in without any of them holding the nuts at that point, though they were all pretty darn close. The short stack held Ac-Qc, Thorsten held 9-9 but Chad Brown had the dominating Q-Q for the overset which held true knocking both the other players out.

Of the name players, both Ram Vaswani and Andy Black were both accumulating chips steadily, the latter knocking out both Barry Greenstein and Chris Moneymaker, whilst Carlos Mortensen and Josh Arieh were also building big stacks.

The next two days would see us reach the money and the final eight, the unfortunate bubble being Christer Bjorin whose A-J failed to improve against Soren Kongsgaard's 4-4. The blinds and antes began to take their toll, as we quickly whittled down to the last 32 players, casualties including Joe Beevers, whilst Gavin Griffin's set of Threes knocked out Thomas Wahlroos and Bluff Magazine's Player of the Year Chad Brown (7-7 vs Dean Sander’s K-K).

Sanders himself would exit in 18th place to Marc Karam, holding 7-8 against the Canadian's T-9 on a T-9-6 board, Sanders looked in great shape to double through but the board came with running sixes sending the gutted Gutshot player home. Carlos Mortensen just missed out on the final table, exiting 11th whilst Soren Kongsgaard's four-flushing A-5 would knock out Eric Van Der Berg for the final table bubble leaving us with our line-up for the huge and undoubtedly fabulous cash prizes, chief amongst those being the €1.8 million for 1st.

The final table looked like this:

Seat 1: Ram Vaswani (UK) -- 432,000
Seat 2: Steve Jelinek (UK) -- 758,000
Seat 3: Marc Karam (Canada) -- 1,742,000
Seat 4: Andy Black (Ireland) -- 683,000
Seat 5: Soren Kongsgaard (Denmark) -- 1,612,000
Seat 6: Josh Prager (USA) -- 1,593,000
Seat 7: Gavin Griffin (USA) -- 2,597,000
Seat 8: Kristian Kjondal (Norway) -- 1,203,000

Ram was the first player forced to do that horribly annoying 'have to take my microphone off in full view of the world after I've just busted' walk when he pushed holding Jd-Td on a 4d-5d-5c-Ts board against Marc Karam's K-T which held. His wife and daughter were waiting in the pressroom, and despite going out in such a big competition, Ram was remarkably unconcerned, heading straight to entertain little Holly. Snoopy was slightly more worried, he'd had a US/UK last longer and was already one man down.

Andy Black (left) was next to go, the entertaining Irishman coming unstuck with Sevens against Norwegian Kjondal's Jacks, as he exited, so did a lot of the humour and atmosphere that he brings with him. The table became akin to a monastery as the players seemingly took a vow of silence from here on. The last sentence I can remember was when Steve Jelinek pushed against Marc Karam's re-raise, the Canadian stating, “You've got A-K I call,” flipping over Jacks, but Jelinek could only show Nines, knocking the last UK player out and losing Snoopy €20 in the process to Pauly of Tao of Poker. Jelinek wouldn't be the last player to go out finding his pair dominated, Josh Prager would find that his Sevens were no good on an 8-2-2 flop, especially with Soren holding T-T.

The four handed play would go on for a while with numerous big pots swapping left, right and centre before something eventually gave, that something being Kjondal, pushing with 9-8 on a 9-6-4 board, except that Snoopy look-a-like Gavin Griffin was sitting pretty with trip fours leaving him and Marc Karam pretty strongly stacked with Soren being left behind. Soren tried to continue to pick off smaller pots to aid his depleting stack, but he made one move too many, pushing on a board containing a turned Ace which had given Gavin Griffin a pair. No hel meant we were left wit a US vs. Canada showdown for the trophy, the Canadian holding the chip lead with 6 million to Gavin’s 4.6.

With the blinds at only 20k/40k, there was enough time for multiple moves pre- and post-flop with both players having over 100 BB's. Unless it got cold decky, it was going to take a while whilst these players felt each other out. Eventually, with these two aggressive players being prepared to raise and re-raise each other preflop with highly marginal hands, it was going to get to a point where they both would hit enough of something to move in on a big pot. On a 2-3-4 rainbow board, both players ended up with all their chips in, Marc held 7-4 for top pair while Gavin was holding K-5 for overs and a straight draw. A coinflip. A €1.8 million Euro coinflip. The turn was a 3 helping neither but the river was the King of hearts, breaking Marcs' and soothing Gavin's...

And with that, we were given fireworks, an over-sized trophy for our winner, and John Duthie's hope that next year we would have “1200 or maybe 1500 runners...”, mostly meaning even more days.

For the sake of our food bill, I really hope not...