Virgin Festival 2 - Bas 4th For £2000

The second Virgin Poker Festival was a big success for me personally, as well as an even bigger success for EMS. With 230 runners, and a £28,000 prize pool, it was definitely worth qualifying and turning up for! I played, quite possibly, the best poker I have ever played across the two days, and one hand probably cost me the victory. I started off playing a very tight game and just gradually built my stack up, until I won a big pot with aces and got myself up to 22,000 chips (10,000 starting stack, 40 minute blinds), I then spent about 4-5 hours around that stack, dwindling, playing very patiently, just making the odd steal. Then I finally got all in for the first time, with 44 vs AQ, which held, and I was up to around 40,000, I then turned on the style and went to my normal game, very aggressive, I ended day 1 in about 6th in chips, with 49 remaining, EMS still had 10 members in the tournament. I started day 2 very very tight, and my only moment of madness was re raising all in with 96s vs Lucy Rokach, although she eventually folded after a long delay. I then built my stack up to around 200,000, with 2 tables left. I then knocked 2 or 3 players out, and was raising almost every hand, and ended up with almost 500,000 going into the final table.

I was sat to the left of Lucy, who had me just about covered, between us we had around a million of the 2.2 million chips in play, so everyone else was playing catch up, two other EMS’ers made the final table, Chris Baylis and ramchip, who managed to go out the very first hand of the final table as he only had 4 bb’s and it was folded to him, so had to go with it. I then won a huge pot off Lucy Rokach which put me up to around 950,000. She limps in the small blind, I check in the big blind with Q2 of spades, the board comes 9 7 2, with one spade. She bets around ¾ of the pot, I call as I know she is very aggressive and is likely to take a stab at any pot. The turn is another 2, giving me trips. Lucy checks, I thought that was quite a strange play as that’s really unlikely to have helped my hand, and I thought if she had nothing, she may stab again, so I decided to bet around half the pot as a tempter, she announced all in and I instantly called and fistpumped, she had 95 for top pair, the river was a blank and I was huge stacked. I then spent the next few rounds getting constantly re raised, apart from when I had kings and everyone managed to find a fold…!

Then the crucical hand, this is taken from my blog entry on the situation, which can be found at http://eatmystack.co.uk/bas/

I had K4 on the button, and raised to 55k at 10k/20k still, the SB flats (really unusual), Chris B folds. Board comes JT8, he takes an age before leading 60k, whilst betting 60k, I spot his hands shaking, and the way he said his bet made him sound really weak, and I didn’t feel he was a very big thinker so wouldn’t be pulling off some kind of tell bluff. The turn was an Ace, and I was expecting him to check, and I was going to bet 100k, instead he starts to shake even more, and then announced 80k. I had 3 decisions going on in my head, I knew he wasn’t happy about the situation, I could either fold, let him pull off this weird donk-bet move, move on and still be happy, my favourite option which was to raise to 180k, a small raise that didn’t commit me, and showed serious strength, or just to shove and make him have a huge decision. I started counting 180k of my stack and then for some reason announced all in, he looked across at me and just said call, I could not believe he called so fast, as you could tell by me slamming the table in the video which you can see here: http://www.thenutz.tv/videodetail.php?video_id=66521

I then got into a couple more tangles with this guy and went out in 4th after trying to make a hero call on the river with 3rd pair, and ended up around £2000 richer, but I couldn’t help think I should have taken it down. Still there is plenty of time in the future, and it was a great weekend.

I hope to see everyone in Nottingham in June for the next one