
Tuesday saw the arrival of a new member to 'Team Primate' at the Circus Casino in Manchester. I had arranged to meet Mel (londonpokergirl) to play a £20 rebuy tournament as she was flying to Las Vegas from Manchester airport early the following morning. She told me she had a present she wanted to give me to take to Las Vegas with me but as she was going there herself this would be the only opportunity to pass it on. When we arrived at the Circus we discovered that it was actually a £50 rebuy but as there seemed a decent turnout we paid the entrance money before heading off to the cashpoint 'just to be on the safe side!'. 81 runners played the tournament and with a starting table containing the likes of Lawrence Gosney, Ali Mallu and Mel, it wasn't going to be an easy ride...

A few big hands at the beginning of the Final Table saw 'Team Primate' build up a decent size lead over the rest of the table as one by one competitors fell by the wayside, but, when down to 4 players, one of our opponents managed to knock out the other two meaning that when we got to the heads up stage the chip count was virtually even. I must admit, I'd never played heads up in a live tournament before, every time I'd got down to the last 3 or 4 a deal was usually struck but with Vegas and the WSOP looming large on the horizon this would be an ideal opportunity to brush up on my heads up play.

The turn bought a 10 of diamonds giving me the third nut flush. At this point I had about 240k in front of me compared to my opponent's 180k. His quick call on the flop led me to believe he had a piece of it and so, instead of slowplaying it, I led out with a 45k bet. After thinking for a moment, my opponent announced 'all in' and, after taking a deep breath and hoping he didn't have one of the two hands that had me beat, I called. He turned over J-10 o/s for top pair with an up and down straight draw, a Q on the river made him a straight but it was immaterial as 'Team Primate' had won its first ever outright live tournament.
Hopefully this is a sign of things to come, we've stopped virtually all online play in preparation for this year's event - the only online action being the occasional blonde tourney. Next time we'll write about our preparations for this year and compare them to last year. Also our thoughts on this year's event and how hopefully using the experience from last year will stand us in good stead. For now though, take a look at the profiles of the members of 'Team Primate' that are spread throughout this initial blog entry!!!

Team Primate:
(1) Matt 'Matt674' Doyle (aka Monkey Boy) - They say every group has to have a token 'good looking member'. Well, as you can see, 'Team Primate' shatters that rule! Apparantly, he's only part of the team because it's his laptop we use to play online - so we also let him move the chips when we play in a live tournament.
(2) Mystic Monkey - The brains of the outfit makes all the key decisions when it counts.
(3) Monkey Minder -- The friendliest member of 'Team Primate', but try taking any of our chip stack and he turns into a feocious beast.
(4) Monkey Butler - The anonymous member of the team, ensures all the off table details run smoothly and to plan.
[Ed Note - Matt flies out to Vegas on the 27th of July]