EPT London

I think this time last year if I’d finished 10th in a tournament and picked up £38k whenever first place paid over £800k, I’d have felt pretty disappointed at ending up with a relatively small amount after getting so close to such a huge score. This time my circumstances were very different though, and when I busted out of the London EPT in 10th place I was just delighted to have had some kind of return to form after the way things have gone for me this year.

I’d already had a disappointing couple of weeks, with a bad beat in Nottingham close to the money and two early exits in the WSOPE tournaments that I played. So I really wanted to get some kind of result over the EPT schedule to get me back on track.

Things started pretty terribly though. I busted in the first two tournaments that I played with A-A (in Omaha), once all in preflop, and once with most of it in preflop and the rest in on a flop where I’d flopped the nut flush draw. Then about two hours into the EPT main event this hand happened…

With the blinds at 100-200, a guy raised to 400 in first seat. I called with A-5 suited as did the player behind me and both blinds. A flop of K 5 3 was checked around and the turn brought another 5. It was checked to me again, I bet 1,500 and was called by the played after me. I’m 99 percent sure I’m ahead at this point, as I don’t think he’s going to call preflop with a hand that could have me beat except 3-3 or possibly 5-3 suited, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have checked the flop last to speak if he had either of these hands.

The river brought an off-suit 4. A straight is a possibility if he had A-2 and had decided to check the flop with a straight and flush draw, but from what I’d saw of him I thought he would probably have semi-bluffed on the flop with a hand like this. I thought it was more likely he had something like K-J, or if I was lucky 6-5 or 7-5 suited, and if I was unlucky 5-4.

I bet 3k which he min-raised to 6k, and I immediately got a sinking feeling. I knew this size of a bet probably wasn’t a bluff, but I wasn’t sure if maybe the guy would value raise me with 6-5, 7-5, or A-5. I didn’t like it but in the end I called and he showed me A-2 (off-suit) for the straight, meaning he’d called a 3/4 pot-sized bet on the turn with a gut shot on a paired board.

Stuff like that doesn’t usually bother me, but because of the way things have been going for me, after this hand I just wanted to leave the hotel, preferably via a third floor window and never see a deck of cards again. Luckily there were no windows though and I managed to compose myself after a few minutes. If I’d busted shortly after that hand my head would have been well and truly destroyed, but I managed to get back into it again and went into the last half hour of the day with a short but playable stack.

I got it all in with 20 minutes of play left against one of the other short stacks in a hand which played itself given the chips we had. His 9-9 held up against my A-J and I took out my phone to text Karen and my shareholders the bad news. After starting the text I realised that my opponent had had less chips than me and I actually still had a couple of thousand left, but I was going to be practically all-in on the big blind next hand, so I just finished the text, saying just busted on a 50-50, and sent it anyway.

It’s funny how things go. The EPT was being held in the very same room that the Poker Million live party was held last year, when 20 of my friends and family watched me come back from 1.5 big blinds to win the tournament. This time I had 2.4 big blinds, but there were a hell of a lot more chips in play, so it was an even more hopeless situation. Unbelievably though I went from 2,400 chips to 115,000 chips in less than one hour and even more unbelievably I only played three all-in pots in the process…

Everyone passed to me the next hand when I was BB, then I doubled up the hand after with Q-2 v 7-9. I moved all in three hands out of the next four and got through every time, then won the last pot of the night when I took a flop off the BB and flopped trips. I (stupidly) bet out thinking that my opponent had a genuine hand and that I would make my hand look weaker by betting, so I may have lost out on another 6k or 7k here, but I still managed to finish the day on 21k with the average at around 65k, after being down and out just 15 minutes from the end.

The next day I got off to a flyer, winning an early 50-50, and after some blind stealing and a K-K v Q-Q double up I somehow found myself with 115k less than half an hour into the day. I have to admit, that at this point I was starting to feel like my name may have been on the cup.

I’ll put up the second half of the post in a couple of days along with news of my Poker Million and World Open heats.