Played the Bolton leg of the GUKPT the weekend. You know your close to Manchester when you sit down at your table and Kevin Webster from coronation street is the first person to greet you. Bit of a non event for me as I never really got going. I lasted until level seven when I lost a race but it was just one of those tournaments where I saw very little action. I was down to 7,500 in chips after the first two levels. In the third level I thought I might get something going but I peaked for the tournament at around 13k.
I lost about four thousand of my chips when I played AQ three hands close in succession. A guy kept limp calling me and then betting huge when I missed the flop on each occasion. A bit frustrating but there wasn't much I could do as his bets were so big a move by me basically cost me my tournament if I was wrong and this guy wasn't folding any one pair hands. Actually I was surprised at the amount of limping that went on in this tournament even by supposedly good players and even when the blinds were like 300/600.
Through level five and into six I saw no hands of consequence and eventually got my last 6,200 chips in with AK Vs JJ. This was my first time playing in Briton and as such was a learning experience for me. I was a little surprised at how bad the general play was, although there is obviously many excellent players in these tournaments the amount of terrible players makes them huge value and I would recommend anyone to give them a shot. Having said that there's lots of bad players on show its generally good tables late on as the value gets weeded out and the final table was a good one with my good m8 Kevin O'Leary going a close fifth; would of loved to see him bring it home but he wins one of these soon without doubt.
I played the £300 side event on Saturday and bubbled the final table. There was to be nine paid but a bubble payment was agreed for £300 for tenth. At the the time I was a very bad third in chips as two players held 250k of the 400k in play between them. My exit hand doesn't sound great but TBH I'm happy with my call. Were five handed and I raise A8s playing a little over 40k and get two callers, flop comes 4 7 8 with two diamonds, I bet 5,500 and chip leader goes all in. Now generally its an easy fold but against this guy I'm 100% my call was fine. He had made the same move with third pair into me holding the nuts earlier and was making this move with any flush draw any eight or pair gutshot combo. Unfortunately he actually held 56os for a flopped straight.
If I hadn't lost that hand it meant rearranging my flights and staying in Bolton for the final table the next day which wasn't appealing to me but this didn't effect my decision to call and at least I got my entry for the game back. I'm a bit of a Bergkamp when it comes to flying and I was however really regretting that call when on the flight home to Waterford when the Capitan uttered the terror inducing words " we are diverting the flight to Dublin due to a slight technical error ". I'm going by boat for my next GUKPT event.
