Donkeys, a Tower and some Blackpool Rock

After a last minute change of plan I find myself heading over to Blackpool with the Pokerevents Irish Poker Team to cover/maybe play the Grosvenor Casino Bonanza Main event whilst Tom runs the Green Joker €250 Freeze out in Drogheda.

I meet up with the team at the airport; everyone is buzzing with confidence and looking to bring a huge amount of sterling back to the Emerald Isle. Along for the ride are Dave O’Callaghan, Eoghan ‘Value’ O’Dea, Dave Masters, Thomas ‘Bomber’ Nolan, Leslie McLean, Paul Corrigan, Fintan Gavin and Simon Kelly from A World of Poker who is also covering the event. Simon lets me know that the Casino does not have a wireless connection so covering the tournament without a mobile card is going to be a problem so I ended up playing.

The Casino in Blackpool is an excellent place for a poker tournament. A spacious card room can accommodate up to 180 players on good large tables. Plasma TV’s all around the walls display all the vital information. The system they use automatically does the draw and displays the seat assignments on the screen, levels up announcements and breaks are announced automatically by the software too. Pre tournament I spot some more Irish contenders. Mick McCloskey, Ivan Donaghy, Paul Leckey, Jim Reid and Bill White have all made the trip and confidence is even higher for a good result for Ireland.

When I arrive at table 10 I find that I only know two players at the table, one is Thomas Nolan and the other is the fast talking Paul Parker from Brighton. With a 10,000 starting stack and a one hour clock there is plenty of time to settle into the game, or as I like to look at it, plenty of cheap pots to mix it up in and gather chips. Things went to plan for the first couple of levels; I made it up to 16000 without going to the river in any of the bigger pots. I did have my chips in the middle with AA on a low flop but my young English opponent had only called my pre flop re-raise and bet on the flop because he thought I was at it. Thomas was building nicely also but unfortunately the rest of the Irish were not having such a good time. Dave O’Callaghan played one round of the table before making a great call against Carlo Citrone for all his chips with KK, Carlo had a pair and straight draw but tripped up on the river to send Dave to the rail.

I was feeling confident I could build up a good stack at the table when I ran into a little trouble. First I found top pair weak kicker from the small blind and tripped up on the turn after check raising the flop against Paul Parker who was in late position. Luckily my show of strength slowed him down and I lost the minimum against his better kicker. Soon after a short-ish stack moves to our table and moves in from early position. I have AA and raise to isolate, it works and we see five cards. He has Ace King with the Ace of spades. Four spades on the board and he takes his jacket back off and I am down to 8000.

Tables are breaking fast and soon we are down to less than 90 players and my table is broken. My new table sees me sat in between London poker open champion Iwan Jones and Trevor Reardon, both well respected players. Tom 'Red Dog' McReady has the button on my big blind, a Jack Daniels fuelled Rob Yong is next him and also at the Table are Steve Jelinek and The Nun from Blondepoker. I manage to keep my stack constant for what seems like an eternity. The structure was so good that at most points I was less than half the average stack but did not drop below ten big blinds until late in the day when the blinds hit 500/1000.

An inebriated Rob Yong made the table very entertaining but also dangerous. The first hand he sat down at the table there was a three way All In when he challenged Des Jonas to move in blind and he would call blind. A short stack in between them saw some value and came along for the ride. The hands? 9 3, 7 8 and 8 2, Des winning with 9 3!

Finally it was getting to the point that I was going to double up or go home. I was in the big blind with 5k left after putting out the 1k blind. All folded to Rob Yong who took time out from his Jack to raise to 3k. I look down and see the tips of two lovely black Aces, shove all my chips in and double up against his 56 off. I steal my way up to just over 20k when Tony ‘Tikay’ Kendall arrives at the table with a similar chipstack. Also in the place of Rob Yong was Norwegian Henning Gradstad, a good friend but formidable poker player. David ‘Doubleup’ McGeachie from Scotland had replaced Tom ‘Red Dog’ McCready two to my left and I was still sandwiched between Trev and Iwan. I had now been at the table for 5 hours and the only hands I had shown were AK, QQ, AQ and of course the Aces. My image was of granite rock and this had helped me build up to a third of the average stack but still having more than ten big blinds. Blinds were now 800/1600 and I look down at my second AK of the day. The standard raise on the table had settled down at 4200 for this left so that was what I raised. It was Henning’s big blind and I had shown AK last time I raised it, he had a monster stack and I was looking for him to disbelieve this time. Before the action got around to him, Tony Kendall had re-raised All In from the small blind. Tony has me covered by about 1k so I am facing a decision for all my chips. Usually with less than a third of the average it is an auto call with AK but I would still have 10 big blinds left if I folded. Tony’s range here I reckon is TT-AA with a small possibility of AK/AQ. After some deliberation I decide that he would more likely want action with AA/KK and therefore would not have moved all in. With my read being at worst a race I decide that it was time to make a stand. He turns over TT and I need to hit to survive. The bells of doom were chiming when a ten arrived on the flop but hope was there with two diamonds to match my suited AK. The turn was a black queen giving me more outs and the river was the most beautiful jack I have ever seen in my life to put a cruel beat on one the nicest guys in poker.

I finished the day with 41k which was below average of the 28 remaining players but with the clock being reset for the current 800/1600 level there was plenty of play left for me to challenge the leaders.

Preparation for the second day involved playing killer pool ‘Galway’ style in our hotel. Fintan ‘You can beat them, they are only muppets’ Gavin being the TD and the players including Ivan, Paul, Dave O’Callaghan et al. I threw the game in mid position and ventured off for some sleep whilst they played on until lunchtime!

3pm Sunday and cards were in the air again, within a few minutes Paul Parker hit the rail and we were down to three tables. Johnny ‘Texas’ Hewston did in his stack with amazing speed and others who started the day with a lot less than his 100k plus also fell by the wayside in the next few levels to leave us with two tables of 18. It was my table that was broken, my new one consisted of from left to right, Trevor Reardon, Gareth ‘The Nugget’ Jones, Mickey McCloskey, Reyaaz Mulla, Nigel Turver, John Exley, Julian Adamson and Chris Johnson. For the next two levels I hovered between 27k and 45k after reaching a peak of 81k earlier in the day when my Aces held up against KQ on a Queen high flop. I had lost a few chips trying to knock Iwan Jones out with the best hand but was outdrawn and was finding my blind hard to defend against Dave McGeachie’s constant raising from the button. I got some back off him but lost some fighting back at the wrong time. Eventually the 18^th place finisher was eliminated and all agreed to take £1k off the top for the 17^th place finisher. This loosened proceedings up and the short stacks began to fall.

My card deadness was terminal, Eventually I found KQ in the cut off and shoved my last 24k in to find Mick McCloskey willing to call with AQ, very lose I thought but what the hell we had swapped percentages so it was going to a good cause! So 13^th place in my second UK event is not too bad and I made some new friends along the way. Credit to the Grosvenor Casino, they ran a fantastic event which was eventually won by John Exley although Reyaaz Mulla got the biggest payday in a deal. Mickey McCloskey played superb to finish third for the second time in the festival.

In the £100 Double chance on the Sunday night both Simon Kelly and Thomas Noland made the final table finishing 7^th an 8^th respectively and Leslie McLean and Dave Masters also went deep but missed out on cashes by a short margin.

Next year I will back for more and hopefully go on a place a bit higher.

Mike