Aug 8th - £100+£10 NL Hold'Em - Western Club

It takes an awful lot of things to go right on any given night of poker for the winning post to appear. Good cards have to just better than other players holdings, draws have to get there and sometimes even the 6/1 shots have to come home. Tonight was one such night for me!

After suffering crap form since my return from holidays things had started to look up on Monday night when I found myself with a nice stack of 20k before being cruelly knocked out by the ubiquitous 6/1 shots getting there for my opponents.

Fifty seven runners chimed up £100 each giving a prize pool of £5700 (rounded upto £6k by the club) down at the Western Club for the £100 NL Hold'Em freezeout event. With 5k in chips to start and a 30 minute clock this would turn out to be a long night!

With so many chips to start you could afford to take time. Luckily for me my chip count doubled virtually every time I played a pot!

First time I held 2-2 in LP and, with blinds at 150-300, I raised to 1500. Both the SB & BB called. Flop was K-Q-8. Check. Check. I bet to 2k to indicate strength but the SB called. I was pretty much done with the hand! A lovely 2 fell on the turn. Check. I bet another 2k and my opponent went all-in covering my last 4k. I, of course called, and the SB was no doubt gutted to see my set as his K-Q holding hit the muck in disgust once a 9 had appeared on the river!

Next up I doubled through an opponent holding 7-2!! Holding 7s-6s, in LP, I limped in for the 400 blind. All passed to the BB who checked. Flop was 2s-3s-7h. The BB checked. I threw a 1k chip out. The BB re-raised me to 4k. I then went all-in and he called for 10k flipping his 7-2 (two pairs) for all to see. The 8s fell on the turn and no 2 came to save his soul and I was upto 24k!!

Down to 2 tables and I'd got my chips upto 30k when I look down at K-K. A player, with slightly more chips than me, had already raised to 4k. I went all-in and after much hoo-ha he called flipping A-Q. At any time during the past three weeks he would have been a guaranteed shoo-in with an Ace likely to have appeared on the flop. This time no Ace appeared and I was chip-monster with almost 70k!

With 10 players left (9 got paid) I look down to see J-J. I flat called the 1200 antes in LP only to then hear David Young, an aquaintance of mine from my days playingg poker at Reading in the early 90's, raise it up to 7k. All passed to me!

Now to be honest I'd really no intention in getting involved here but it looked so much like an ante steal bet that I decided to put him to the test and go all-in. He'd surely pass!! Er...no...he called and joyfully turned over A-A! Oops!

The flop came 9-4-3-JACK-7 and poor Dave was left cursing his luck as 9th paid £181 and was better than a swift kick between the legs! Man...I couldn't miss!

It was 1.30am when the final table started. Players dropped slowly but by 3.05am there were 4 of us left. I had 97k, over a third of the chips in play, whilst the remaining 2/3rds was shared amongst the other three players.

I offered them a deal whereby I took £1500 and they got £1k each which they accepted!

Nice to be back in the winners enclosure :)

Entries ->57 - Place -> 1st - Win -> £1390 ($2571) Profit/Loss for 2006 -> +$12251

(As from 7th August rate of exchange is calculated at £1 = $1.85)