Having parlayed my £70 super-satellite seat in to a playable 38k stack on day 1 of the tournament, with an average of 28k I made my way down to Nottingham Gala with a spring in my step and whistling a happy tune. This may also have had something to do with reading some prose about my being young, suave and intelligent (eat your heart out Tikay) !
Play started promptly at 6.30pm with 25 hopefuls going for the first prize of £16k.
On my table Tikay wasted no time going allin with his micro-stack when he saw an A, but Adrian Swingler made the almost mandatory call from the BB with QJ and hit. Sean O'Donnell followed soon after and I saw Mpower depart early from another table fairly eary too.
I believe Greek Jack made a flush to beat his 2 pairs. Adrian then raised and I found myself with a pair of lovely ladies and set him in.
After working out the pot odds for about 1.5 seconds he called with his Ad5d and immediately spiked an A. Hmmmmmm down to 20k.
By the first break Adrian had turned his 13k starting stack into 103k ! Due somewhat to a contribution from Jim(bookisbasher) Moult who after being RR about 6 times in a row and holding a diminished stack ran his Ad9d into Adrian's AK. I had managed to grind my way back to an almost even 37k
Meanwhile we had broken to 2 tables and Greek Jack had moved into the seat vacated by Sean on my right. Marvellous !r
Raise raise raise raise raise the man is a raising machine, but I managed to stay afloat and straight after the break I doubled up with 77 v 44 and got to the final in fair shape with about 60k and guaranteed £840.
It was one of those finals where things happened fast. People were now in the money and big Javed wasted no time in launching his small stack in an unsuccessful sortie finishing in 10th position. Brian(captain) Brown had arrived at the final having survived 17 allins according to my sources on his table but when he went allin UTG and I found AQ it was an allin too far and he finished 9th.
The very next hand I made a small raise with AA and the Yongsta came back over the top at me with KQ suited to no avail
I was on a serious roll now with about 100k and starting to really believe that I could win this thing.
Mozam had arrived at the final as chip leader with 126k and when I raised his BB 4k with 15k with AQ he called. After a flop of Q65 he fired out 50k ! After not very much thought I set myself in for another 40k which he called with his Qd9d which failed to improve boosting my stack to about 200k and crippling Mozam who departed shortly after in 7th pos.
With 6 players left and Maria (chili-pepper) clinging on with the low stack Adrian made the unorthodox play of going allin for his remaining 62k in an attempted blind steal. He got called by Tony(nice fella don't know his sirname) and then by Greek Jack who woke up with KK in the BB and knocked them both out promoting Maria and her short stack into 4th pos. and a cool £3k minimum.
Maria put up a great showing but eventually succumbed, but she seemed well chuffed with her £3k payday and said that she would upgrade her impending holiday from 2star self-catering to something rather more salubrious.
Well that left the three of us. Greek Jack, Tony Cartwright and yours truly. After about an hour of fencing and failed attempts to make deal we finally agreed that I would receive £10,100 and the other two £9,500 each.
All in all not a bad weekend.
YEEHAAAA
Author