London UKPT

London UKPT - By Julian Thew

With a new £2500 sixteen runner heads-up comp added to the London schedule it meant the festival ran for eleven days. This was a little too long for me to be away at the moment, so I arrived on the Saturday & pencilled in five events, concluding with the 1500NL main event.

The 500NL was the first one & I built up nicely from the off. I was picking my spots well & was fortunate to benefit from one or two loose/passive types who only ever called & usually gave it up by the river. I ended the day with a little over an average stack.

Fifteen of us returned & my J-J holding up against Rumit Somaiya’s A-J meant I finalled with average chips. Six handed I opened with Q-9, led out on the 4,8,9 flop & felt sufficiently pot committed not to fold when my opponent shoved on me. He had J-10 for the up & down draw & in it came straight away.

I wasn’t too disheartened & was happy with how the two days of play had gone. Furthermore, this was my first final table since November so it was a welcome boost to my confidence.

Jumping from a final table straight into an evening tournament is something I’ve never been too successful at & perhaps given that the comp was a 500 PLO I should have slapped a restraining order on myself. Lets just cut to the chase & summarise this one very quickly - pre-flop calls cost me half of my 8k stack & I got the rest in with a combo draw that missed. Early night.

I had a good shot in the 200 re-buy when after plodding with no hands or situations for the first five levels, I finally found a wee rush. I managed to spin my paltry 5k up to a double average 40k. The big hand was a set of kings that I checked on a very dry 2,4,K flop allowing a pair of threes to hit a set on the turn. I maintained that stack & with two levels to go I was confident about bagging up a nice stack for a Day 2 attack.

Finding kings again I re-raised Peter Gould from the SB but this time the flop wasn’t so kind, A,Q,Q & I did something that I haven’t done for many years; I didn’t fold, I called off my stack on every street & got shown A-J. Yeah, I really couldn’t have played that hand worse if I tried, I don’t know, for some reason I just couldn’t release & felt pretty stupid about it afterwards.

Down to 15k I raised with tens & the button gave it the full routine & eventually pushed; it was pretty obvious that he had a huge hand but I’m afraid to report that my wheels had well & truly come off & I stuck it in losing to his aces.

I hung around in Tuesdays 300+1NL till late but never really got a head of steam going. My undoing was racing 8-8 against Joe Grech’s A-Q & then I got my 5xBB stack in with 9-9, running into Joe’s 10-10 & Jeff Kimber’s J-J. No surprises were forthcoming.

I had a day off on Wednesday mooching around the capital & felt fresh for Day 1a on Thursday afternoon. 12k starting stacks meant there was a little more room for manoeuvre & by the start of Level 3 I was grateful for the additional 2k as I sat on my slightly depleted 10.5k stack.

At 75/150 I found Ad-Ac under the gun & brought it in for the slightly inflated price of 500. Five callers later (sigh) we got to see a 4d,9d,Ks flop & the SB led out 1500. Not really the action I was hankering after but I went ahead & raised it up to 5100. In hindsight this raise was just a little too large & kind off got me stuck to the pot, had I made it 4100 or something, maybe I can get away. Anyway, back to the flop, it got around to Chufty & he pushed all-in for 7300 & then the SB pushed his bigger stack in. Ugly. There was 25k in there & I’d got 4900 back. I know many who can fold in this spot but I’m afraid I’m not one of them. I called & the SB’s set of fours held off the aces & Chufty’s Jd-10d to scoop a big one.

It’s one my favourites up next, the annual trip to Dublin at Easter for the Irish Open. It promises to be another huge event & I wouldn’t be surprised if they got a thousand runners. Tune in here soon for all the gory details.