Whooops!

It was 12months since I wrote this article on my live debut at the Broadway festival. I thought I’d give the same comp a go this year and I had a trip to Birmingham last week to buy into the £300 double chance freeze out. I wrote a long trip report last year and the critical hand that busted me late in the day was a call with AK when I probably didn’t need to. Hopefully this year could see an improvement on last years performance and offer a chance to look back to see if my live game had improved much having played 3 or 4 big buy in comps over the previous 12 months.

There were plenty of familiar faces in the crowd, lots of ‘T.V faces’ and a few of the Betfair forum regulars, Rob (highstack) had made the trip and Ben Mayhew (Sunday8pm) was also in attendance being backed by RobYongs “Dusk Till Dawn” crew who were also in attendance.

I didn’t like the look of the table much, the draw had Paul Jackson, Bambos , Sunday8pm and Rob Yong all sat at one end of the table, the chatter was constant as Sunday8pm went into re-raise overdrive from the word go… with a 6k stack, 25/50 blinds, 124 runners and one hour levels…. I was asking myself the question “Why?” but it seemed to be paying off and irritating the locals and the more ‘mature’ characters sat at the table.

Now comes one of the funniest hands I’ve played in a long time. By about level 3 I’d worked the stack up to a healthy 10k…. Sunday8pm had hit about 20K at one point but had taken a couple of hits and had about 10k as well. Not many had departed and the blinds/structure were low and slow.

I pick up Aces in an early position and raise it up to find 4 callers. The flop comes a nice Ad 3d 3c …. and I’m thinking of how to get paid on a flop that’s hit me in the face and most likely missed everyone else. I bet smallish, two pass and Sunday8pm obliges with a call. Wonderful with any luck he’s hit the three with a cute pre-flop call or on the flush draw. The turn is a blank and I double my bet throwing 2k at the now 5k pot. Ben thinks for a while, stacks his chips (I thinks he’s about to pass) but no he re-raises all in!!

Now I must admit I did dwell for about 5 seconds… simply trying to put him on a hand. I make the call and he turns over 10 J os! Nice move.

Afterwards he said he was trying to push me off AK… that was almost as funny as the move itself. Paul Jackson looked none too pleased as he’d backed him for the event. I told Ben I’d have to blog this hand… sorry mate!! :)

Not long after that I picked up another big pot when I caught an up and down on the end and the bloke who’d flopped two pair jammed all in after letting me catch. I was a huge chips leader at this point with about 34k I chips with a few other people in the late teens. But the night was still young and as the hours progressed I floated up and down between 35k and 22k taking 2 steps forward and 2 steps back. I finally caught another big hand vs Bambos who was starting to get a bit desperate on about 8k when he jammed with 88 . I called with pocket tens only to see a KK8 flop and once again I was back down with about 24k instead of 40k+.

It’s about 3:30am with play due to finish for the day at 5am and I pick up AK and make a raise, a local bloke to my left jams and he just about has me covered. Now I’m transported back 12months almost to the minute and faced with the exact same decision. I dwell for a minute or two, it’s the night of the snow storm and it occurs to me if I’m going to have to face a horror journey to get back here for the final it may as well be for a chip stack worth playing. The clock is called and I pass face up and he shows QQ .

Another hour goes by and I’m still frustrated and starting to look a little low in chips now compared to the average. The snow is coming down and I make the decision to play for the double up or busto. I get involved in a pot with Jh8h with a big stack, I’d raised early and he’d flat called despite my tight reputation at the table. The flop comes 8 high (8 4 5) and I bet out, he reraises and I’m pretty sure he’s trying to bully me off the pot so I jam leaving him sighing and having to call for a relatively small number of chips. He shows 86os. I smile and flip over Jh9h…HANG ON A MINUTE!!! WTF!!! I’m sure it was J8 a few minutes ago!! Whooooops!

My only defence was that it was 5am and I’d been up for 23hrs. I did catch a 9 on the river by the way. The only problem was he’d turned the 7 for the gutshot straight!

All in all very disappointed. Think I got a little unlucky at key times that stopped me from building on the chips I’d picked up early doors. The exit hand was pure comedy… I’ll be checking my cards on every street from now on!


Promos are all happening on Crypto again, in response to various promos by other sites Hills have also come up with a WSOP promo for the players earning the most MPPs in the next few months. I’m currently in about 14th spot with the top 10 getting a WSOP package, the next 6 playing a 6 pack for a package and then further down the ladder playing tournaments with 10, 12 , 18 and 24 runner. So if you are in the top 80 MPP earners for Hills then you have a decent shot at a WSOP package.