Ok, firstly ill wrap up the end of the WCOOP with Friday 24th September being another very good day for me online as I made 3 more final tables, all on FTP (burn stars lol). They were the $20 rebuy (7th) $500 Friday fight night (5th) and the $200 turbo where i managed to luckbox the win for $16564 :-) Unfortunately I was unable to muster any finals over the weekend but one of my horses managed to get 3rd place in the brawl for $54k so we had truly broken out of the slump and was back in high spirits again about poker just in time for EPT London!
As far as the charity goes the total was at $1788 so add 3 finals and 5% of the win and I finish on a grand total of: $2916 to be donated. After some suggestions from people that read this blog I have decided to split the money evenly between MIND (http://www.mind.org.uk/) and a homeless shelter in my home town of Doncaster (http://www.m25group.org.uk/) The donate link on their site isn't working at the moment so will try to contact them but if that fails ill choose another charity.
Right, a quick recap of EPT London saw lots of drinking as well as me losing a 300k pot at 1k/2k on day 2 of the main event which was pretty frustrating especially after villamoura. I had AKs and had been caught 3 betting light on 2 separate occasions where a short stack found a hand behind and I had to call and failed to hit either time. So since my rep was in tatters I had found the immortal nuts vs an aggressive player who i later discovered was Femi Fakinle who won a UKIPT earlier in the year. A short stack sandwiched between us with KK and my AKs was against Femi's QQ for a bigger side pot but not only did we not spike an A for all the gold, QQ flopped us all dead on Q33, lol gg EPT! Quick commiserations to matt perrins who busted in like 12th place which was pretty gay, but I'm sure he will bounce back soon and put up a huge result.
Played 2 side events in London and was going quite well in the £1500 freeze but eventually busted in 20th position for 80k pot at 1200/2400 when JJ
Onto the £1k main event and it was split into 2 flights starting and 12pm and 6pm. Since the night before I had welcomed in the sunrise with a full english on brigton seafront after a night on the booze it was an easy choice to play the 6pm flight. Had a pretty soft starting table and didn't get any tough spots early and then was on the right side of a cold deck to double up with AA vs AKs :-) Rest of day 1 was pretty uneventful and I finished on 55k and blinds would be 500/1000 when we returned.
Day 2 also started with a pretty soft table apart from 1 seat two my left which happened to be Flushy and he had more chips than me. He bashed me up pretty hard for most of the day and really put me in shitty situation. I wasn't getting any spots and when I did, people took them before me or if I was raise/calling vs some1, someone else would cold4 all in behind etc... Toby Lewis moved to the table later in the day and some good banter was flying around, mainly at my absolute bowl of a stack. I got really short at one point and jammed 18k otb at 1200/2400 after looking at just a J, Toby called me int he BB with K4 and things looked bleak after AKQ flop and Toby stood up with his hand in the air (fatal mistake) as a T snap rolled off on the turn to seal the lucky double up I needed. After this I started re-shoving on some of the guys to my right and managed to get all the way up to 100k with no showdowns. Despite being my friends I was glad to see Toby and James get knocked out just before the bubble as they were both on my left and 2 of the better players left in the tournament.
The stacks were really short on our table at this time but I was going ok until I lost QQ vs KQ for 160k at 4/8k leaving me with around 85k. I managed to shove the button and then the next orbit I found KK in the SB and everyone who folded to the button who jammed all in covering both of us in the blinds. I call, BB folds and I hold vs J5s to get to 200k. The J5 guy then loses another decent size all in and only has like 48k left when it folds to him on the button next orbit and he jams K8, I call with A9 and hold in order to set the 10 handed final :-)
Ok, this post is starting to go on a bit now so will try and rap up the final pretty quickly. I had position on John eames (I thought me and him were the best players on the final) as well as position on 2 other people with big stacks. I won flip early vs a guy with 10bigs and then prob the most crucial hand of the final for me took place. A guy i played with a decent amount on day 1 opens the hi-jack to 16500 (4/8k) and I make it 40k otb with AQ. Back to him and he quickly jams like 340k total. I was almost certain I had the best hand but purely from an ICM standpoint I should be folding since I would be left with 9bbs if losing. However since it wasn't the biggest tournament in the world and the relatively quick structure I decided to call and try to pretty much secure a top 3 spot if i won making this a £20k hand. He rolled over 67cc and after the flop of 9c8cx I was the underdog but as is usually the case when u have so many outs he couldn't find one on the turn or river and I hold to become the big chipleader with over 700k. I managed to get to 1m chips without showdown and things were in cruise control at the first break. The 3rd level of the day was pretty bad one for me though and didn't win a pot throughout and soon found myself back with around 700k going on dinner with 6 players left.
Regained my composure after dinner break and got a light 4b through almost immediately and the confidence came flooding back, as did the chips :-). Quick mention about how sick bad John eames ran on the final though, losing two 80/20s to the same guy and then iso'd a short stack all in with A6s only for the same guy again to find AA behind. Again was happy to see him leave as he is a v.good player but he will making many more finals and will not run so bad everytime...
After that we were 4 handed and one guy was short and bust quickly and the stacks were like me 1.1m, and the other guys had like 600 and 700k respectively. I was winning most pots 3 handed and had taken significant pots off both of them when I flopped a set vs a guy who i had been getting the better off and he jammed 2nd pair on be for a fairly large pot. This left me HU with a 4:1 chiplead, nothing silly happened and when he was down to like 12bbs i set him in with QJs and he called with QT and since I had ran golden all final it was no surprise I held again to take the title and the £46k, Boom!
Really pleased with how I played on the final, and was nice to run good and have hands hold up at the right times since tournament poker is such a fine line. Right time to stop rambling for now. Got like 2 weeks back in the mighty DN5 then its off on the road for another month again with EPT Vienna, APPT Cebu (won seat on stars so will be staying an extra week or so in Philippines to do some diving and have a much needed break from poker) the EPT Barcelona and GUKPT grand final in London......
