June 1st - £20+£2 NL Hold'Em - Grosvenor (Luton)

Its hard work at Luton. For £20 you get 1000 in chips and with all-in fests most every hand the night can turn out expensive if you can't reload at will. Ten rebuys and one top up later (£242 spent) I have 5300 and its break time.

Of course the value is excellent if you manage to hit your hand and treble/quad up on mostly shite opposition (cards that is) but when you're not hitting...well!!!!

So anyway after all the re-buy festivities were over there was a prize pool of £4000 generated from 46 people. I needed 5th place JUST to get my money back! Argh!

The thing about these '£20 for 1000 point' events is though that those people who have played super tight for the first 90 minutes in the hope of not spending any money generally have small stacks come the business end of the game and with antes increasing at 20 minute (12 - 15 hands) it doesn't take long for them to have to go all-in and pray. For us 'bigger' stacks thats the time to enjoy the benefits of this and look to call these smaller bets in the hope of catching some cards!

Luckily for me I started to accumulate chips. No big pairs, a rob here, a steal there but hey if it gets you there?!

I reach the final table with a chunky 35k after taking out several of the desperate small stacks along the way and immediately I'm all-in with my nemesis hand at the moment in A-K.

I'm in LP and with antes at 800-1600 its been raised already to 6k. I push all-in and my opponent calls with Q-10 (he has me covered big-time). The flop contains two Aces and I'm suddenly chip monster with 70k out of the 200k in play and there are STILL 9 players!

For the next 40 minutes though I get good cards which I get involved with but can't make win. My all-in call with A-7 versus Mr 'Home Time' with 9-6 was a case in point. A SIX on the flop and I had to ship 18k! Doh!

The blinds were catching up though and players WERE starting to fall...slowly...8,7,6,5 (wee I get my money back).

My stack size continues to shrink. I go all-in with K-7 for 16k and get 2 callers. One has A-Q, the other A-J. The flop is 3-6-7-8-4 and my pair of 7's triples me up!

We're down to 4. Blinds are now 3000-6000 and I'm on the BB when I call and all-in bet for 8k with 5-2 o/s. I'm against A-9 but no worries...the flop beings me two-pair and now there's 3!

I now call an all-in bet of 22k with my Ac-8c and I'm against 7-7. No worries...the flop brings TWO Aces and we're heads up.

We agree a deal that we both take £1100 and play for the odd £200 - 'to make it interesing'.

I'm all-in first hand, after the deal, with As-Qs. My opponent calls with Kh-8h. The flop is 9-10-7-6-J and he's made the straight!

So I make a profit of £858 and two final tables in my last two visits to Luton means my form is continuing...kool!

Entries -> 46 - Place -> 2nd - Win -> £858 ($1587) Profit/Loss for 2006 -> +$13799