Oct 26th - £20 NL Hold'Em - Cavendish Club (Belfast)

Back to some 'live' play tonight and it was a virtual warm up for Friday Nights big €350 event to be held in Dublin.

With 2 hours of rebuys and a starting stack of 1500 its quite difficult to get through this period WITHOUT having to stick your hand in your pocket and pull up! Of course some people here on Wed nights see it as a divine right that any 2 cards can win and therefore take every opportunity to put you to the test whenever they get the vibe that a holding of 2-3 is worth a £20 gamble!

Tonight I avoided all these temptations and so sat and patiently waited for cards.

The aim is to really have around 10k in chips at the break. I got lucky on two occasions. First my AQ beat up a pair of 9's and secondly my QJs beat up A-K on a flop of J-4-4. Man holding A-K wouldn't let it go so at the break I have 20k in chips.

A top up is mandatory here as for only £20 more we all got an extra 5k in chips so at the start of the 'business side' to the night I have 25k to play with.

Blinds rise rapidly from then on, every 15 mins, and before you know where you are its 1k-2k already. I was pretty much stationary and circled around the 30k mark for a good while.

The highlight of the night for me was undoubtedly my first ever 'Royal Flush'. Holding Qd Qs I raised the blinds to 5k and got an 'all-in' from the bloke next to me holding 5d-5c. The flop came Ad-10d-5h. Just as I was thinking that that was me done for the hand the turn card came the Kd and the river card the Jd giving me the Royal and a big smile!

Duh Duh....final table. Ten cash prizes ranging from £100 upto £1000 but once you got byond 3rd place the increments in prize money were negligible. One other problem though was the blinds...5k-10k and I had only 35k in chips.

One player gets busted with 88 v A5. An Ace hit! Then its my turn!!!

I get 4-4 in MP and its a pretty much all-in bet regardless. I get called, after a long dwell, by player close to the button with 8-8. Oh well!

I make a £70 profit as 8th place paid £110 and it was a good workout for Friday night...where the REAL money is!!

45 entries - 8th - Win $126 (£70) - Acc. Total - +$2726