blonde poker forum

wow,

what a sick weekend!

What began on Friday as me travelling down to Gutshot on Friday to play the £200 Omaha Freezeout turned into a very memorable weekend and something that i have gained a lot of experience from!

Friday afternoon and i got a phone call from a mate who was unable to play a qualifier for the poker million on laddies, "can you play it?" ermm yeh i say. "no pressure, its only a $2,500 single table satellite qualifier" GULP.

So i think for a bit and decide to play this online qualifier for him instead of playing the £200 omaha at gutshot myself. 5,000 starting chips and a 20 minute clock. The 9 other players were tough, Surinder Sunar, Jani Sointula and Pokergirl amongst the runners.

I'll cut a long story short, i won it :). Im chuffed to bits about that and phone my mate to tell him the good news straight away! hes happy as larry and says to me, "ok, your in the £3,500 showdown tour tomorrow" WTF?!! So in return for qualifying, he's put me into the showdown event. Im in shock and phone my mum at 1 in the morning and wake her up to tell her. I think she was so sleepy she didn't quite understand the meaning of what i said until the morning when she phoned me to wish me luck! His reasoning for buying me in was if i could beat 9 other decent players in a sit and go then i can cut it with the big boys in an event like this.

Anyway Friday night around 2am i was so happy and thought id play on the 1/2 omaha table at gutshot to wind down a bit before i head off to my mates house for the night. Andy Black was there and was playing very loose so i believed there would be value in me playing!

sit with £300 which dont get me wrong is a fair bit of cash and im soon sitting with £550, i am greedy, so i play on and end up winding the night down by losing a £1200 pot to Andy Black to a 6 outer! OUCHHHHHHH!!!. That put a bit of a dampener on the night and i headed off to my mates at 4am still in high spirits.


Saturday and me and me mate turn up at Gutshot with Ben Grundy and Ruru and he buys me in. The field is top class, with Dave Colclough, The Hendon Mob, Mats Gavatin, Matt Tyler, Ben Grundy and a few other very good players who i cant remember right now.

We get ready for the seat draw, the tourney director, Matt Savage only calls out 23 names, WTF? A huge £3,500 event and only 23 runners? Pretty awful marketing by the Showdown team in my opinion, 23 runners for an event this big, with a fantastic structure is terrible.

I sit down, not fazed, not scared at all, despite having Barny, Matt and Dave C on my left and Mats Gavatin to my right!

It was always going to be tough ride, but i was confident that i could grind away, i had the advantage of knowing everyone at the table, and seeing some of them play on telly, but no-one knew me or how i played which was a huge advantage.

The first few 90 minute levels were hard, very hard. I had very little i could do with the cards i was being dealt, i became obliged to try and win chips with no hands, which became very frustrating when i wasnt getting my bluffs through easily.

I took a chill out at the dinner break and settled down and thought about things and how i would proceed. I also got moved to the TV table which made me really proud as was mum and dad who i kept phoning in the breaks.

I was with Dave C and Barny the whole way until i got knocked out and i learned so much from them, we had some banter, had some fun and they made me feel comfortable at the table.

Every time i sit down at a table im sure i know everything about poker, but im always proved wrong, i always learn so much from players much better than myself.

I was knocked out in 12th when i was trapping Barny Boatman when he was in fact trapping me! I am proud of the way i played and i think i played solid tricky poker, i even made a few moves on the TV table which hopefully they will show on the edit to be show on Eurosport in July :):):)

Sunday night and i decided hanging around for the £50 freezeout which was the finale of the Gutshot European Series of Poker. Its weird all of a sudden playing a £3,500 comp deepstack comp with 23 runners then playing a £50 fast paced comp with 123 runners!

I came 5th and i played great until the final table, i was pretty tired by then and a few hands into the final table where im 2/7 in chips i accidently flipped my cards over in first position when i passed. The ruling was a 10 minute penalty, i was furious!! the blinds were huge and despite being 2nd leader i only had 7 big blinds!.

I expressed my disgust at the rule and calmly explained to the Gutshot management that this worldwide ruling was designed for deep stacked comps like the WPT's and the WSOP events where you are basically penalised by having a small slice of your stack taken away. Not for £50 crapshoot comps where you lose half of your stack. I got back 4th out of 6 players left and eventually went out in 5th making a donkey like move with Q2 when i misread my opponent! Still £360 covers the weekends expenses and made sure that i was going home with something in my pocket!

Anyway thats my weekend and i thought id write it up for the benefit of you guys! It certainly was an experience and ill be having  go at qualifying for similar events in the future for sure, id also like to thank el blondie and Barny for making me feel very comfortable at the table and helping me enjoy my experience!

Hope you enjoyed reading as much as i enjoyed playing,

Ben

Well played T.G ;)

hehe. you like that 1?

briliant post mate sounds as if you had a ball.

nice one sunday,
maybe i could get you playing on the yoyo account ;o)

Well done Sunday......what a weekend!!

I was on a table with Barney at the Vic a couple of months ago,...as you say, very friendly and approachable......bit surprised El Blondie was too ;)

Nice one Ben

xx

Very well done mate

nice report Ben


Out of interest I am told that the £500 that ran concurrently with the £3500 at the Gutshot had 160 runners


Why is it that the buy in for the main event was so high? surely this is a huge error...if you are going to compete against the EPT you need lots of runners to make a splash, the buy in should have been about half to a third of that decided upon shouldn't it?

and why set the date to clash with a major Grosvenor festival, perhaps the field would have doubled in size without the competing attraction of a £1000 160 runner comp elsewehere with media attention diverting from the Gutshot?

I'm not entirely sure there's a huge amount of clear thinking in the Showdown Poker Tour. They had 240 spaces for their London event, and filled under 25. If they get this many for a €5000 in London in May, can you imagine how many they'll get for a €7500 event in Trouville, France in the middle of the main event of the WSOP. (6-10 August - good luck with that fellas).

The Gutshot knew registrations were low and so had the foresight to run the £500 at the same time. The fact this got 160 runners shows they got the entry fee absolutely right - they know their audience.

It sounds like the real value this summer will be in France!!

I first hear about this showdown lark a few months ago and just couldnt see it working €5k in the gutshot?!?!! are they joking?

There are even 1 or 2 events of similar buyins in Eastern Europe.....i do not see it happening.

The Gutshot are more than capable of holding a tournament of this size now they have larger premises. The event was obviously badly promoted by "showdown"

Read some of the previous posts on this thread

I agree with Russ, no problem with the venue, but the marketing and buyin strategy needs serious work.

Yes - the "extension" at Gutshot is breathtakingly good.

I look foward to checking it out.

I have my own thoughts seeing as the last main event i played there i starrted in a bar down the road......that to me showed that the whole mentality at gutshot was not setup for serious poker.

...but the extension is superb. Everyone has to start somewhere.

Maybe so Tikay, and i do like the gutshot. Good food, good people fun games, internet access.

Just if i want to play for more than £200 i wont be doing it there!

Back to Ben....sounds like a crazy weekend...and it was a pleasure playing with you