Another day another no dollars!

I headed for Blackpool on Sunday for the £150 + £15 gukpt tournament and was feeling pretty confident. I picked up Brian who won the draw via the Cumbrian Poker web site to take him down to play his free seat and talked pretty much bollox for the 2 hour drive to the casino!

We arrived, got parked and booked in to the B&B before heading to the G Casino for some much needed food and a drink or two to help settle in, the tournament started at 8pm and we we’re there at 4.30, nothing unusual as i seem to spend most of my live games waiting for them to start anyway and i know there’s no need to be there so early; i just like it i guess!

By 7pm the place was buzzing and the atmosphere was really excellent, around 220 runners in the game making a good prize pool and something to aim for! 8pm came and we we’re seated and away we go. My table was pretty good, a couple of loose players and a couple of useful players, what happened for the first 2 hours was pretty brutal by any standards.

It was a case of worst hand wins most of the time and i was guilty of being on the receiving end of both. After about 50 mins i looked down to see aces in the small blind, blinds 50/100, early position raised to 300 i made it 800 to go, he calls. Flop comes 9 – 5 -4 I bet out 1100 he moves all in for around 3000. I worry but call if i lose i’ll be left with 2200 from my 6000 stating stack. He shows Ace 9 but hits another 9 on the river…oopps!

Next up was 2 horrible hands for Local player Danny Hook, he was sat to my right and is a really nice guy and a quality player, here’s what happened. First was a flop of 4 4 5 with 2 players seeing turn which was a Jack, both Danny and another were all in – Danny showed 4 – 9 Vs 4 – 8 to be in good shape for a win or split at worst you would think… until of course an 8 lands on the river!

Next it was my turn, being pretty low now I’d got back up to about 3200 and check raised all in with k 10 of diamonds on a flop that gave me a flush draw and nothing else, Danny calls and shows ace 9 of diamonds only for the turn to bring a 10 and give Danny back to back beats which to be honest he didn’t deserve at all!

After this point it all seemed to calm down a little and i got a lot more in to my stride, I played pretty solid with a mix of well timed bets and a couple of good hands to boot. By the end of level 6 the average stack was 13000 and i was sat with 26500 and was very happy with the table i was on.

After the break I was very confident really but was sad to see Brian was out and kicking himself for a bad call he made earlier, my table had a player called Norman Gold on about 30k me on 26500 and the rest on 8k to 12k max. Excellent position to be in as no one can really damage me too much.

2 hands in and i look down at Ace Ace again and limp as I know it will be raised round the table, sure enough it makes it to Mr Gold who’s the small blind and he makes it 3500 with blinds at 300/600 + the ante’s. I make it 8500 and he flat calls. Flop brings K – 8 – 5 with 2 diamonds, checked to me and I move in for around £18k more, Norman calls and shows me the pocket kings and I don’t improve and bust out in nice style!

Although it sounds stupid i kind of knew it was kings even though it was very strange to flat call my reraise, i pretty much gave away what i had by limping then making the move. I asked him later why the flat call and he said ” I had to put you aces so just called to see what the flop brought, if it comes low i’ve got a tough decision” hmmm not to sure about that really but hey ho!

Apart from that it was an excellent night and I played very solidly and was pleased overall, obviously i got lucky against Danny but i deserved it, unfortunately he didn’t! Revenge on someone else would have been nicer for me. I’ll be back down at some point this week and Yesterday there’s was 3 of our players in the £330 game, no updates yet as i had to come back and bring Brian home and wasn’t in the mood to play again after that anyway.

Relevant news