Hucknall 2nd In Sky DTD Qualifier!

SKY POKER UK TOUR DTD - 13^th Sept 2008

Saturday afternoon finds myself and Bill (Bill4343) sitting down for a shot at qualifying for the Sky UK Tour National Final to be held at DTD next June with a guaranteed prize pool of £25K.

Among the 120 pre-qualifiers are a selection of pros and celebrities including Maria Demetriou, Tom McCready, Richard Orford, Norman Pace, Dave Compton, Michelle Orp and several top amateur champions. We shuffle up and deal at 2pm and battle commences with a 5000 chip stack. I am on a really tight table which includes Tom McCready (the guy who plays the ‘baddie’ on the Sky Dictionary videos) with little action in the early stages which actually suits my style and after just collecting the blinds with AA and KK the first hour finds both myself and Bill with average chip stacks. I finally get some action with QQ on a raggedy flop and increase by 2000 chips just before the first break. During this period, quite a few go out including Richard Orford.

The next 2 hour section, I see little action but manage to stay around average by ducking and diving here and there. Bill has a crash when his AK runs into TT on a ATx flop and loses half his stack and at the Dinner break the field is down to around 60 with more big casualties including Michelle Orp.

We return after dinner and it starts getting serious – unfortunately Bill departs soon after the break as he is forced to make big moves with the blinds and antes kicking in. I have my first ‘big’ hand - with the blinds at 300/600 and only 8500 chips I pick up A9 suited in the big blind and hear the button raise to 2400. By this time I had decided that I wasn’t going to try and limp into the money but battle for the final table to secure a place in the Grand Final, so I shove and get an insta call with KK against me. I am fortunate to hit 2 aces on the board and I double through to just shy of 20,000 chips which is just above average with 40 odd left.

Thirty left now, I have Norman Pace on my table – the blinds are 800/1600 plus antes and I call an all-in with AK suited and find find myself in a race with JJ which I lose. Disaster, I am left with just 2000 chips so I shut my eyes and shove blind and leap to a massive 8000 chips when my T9 sucks out! Down to 24 with 20 paying and everything tightens up with the small stacks winning all the all-ins as usual, but after a further 45 minutes, somehow I find myself scraping into the money with a small stack.

For the next hour I play solid poker, shoving in position and at 11pm I am fortunate to have made the final table with second shortest stack. The final table comprises Maria, Tom McCready (who has been on my table the whole tournament) and mostly a host of DTD regulars.

The next hour I have 2 big hands which takes me to chipleader. I shove a raise with AK which wins the race against JJ and then I attempt a steal with 97 club suited only to be called with 66. The flop comes J85 with 2 clubs on board giving me loads of outs and I am fortunate to hit a 4c on the river to put me on 200,000 chips. Another 45 minutes of grinding, we reduce to 5 players including Maria and Tom and I find myself with 2^nd biggest stack. We dont see a flop for around 30 minutes before Maria sucks out a couple of times knocking out Tom and Scott Winnard. Its 1am and down to three.

I have second stack (about half of Maria’s) and we all grind a bit longer with the blinds at 10000/20000 and antes 1600. I’ll be honest and tell you that I dont have a great deal of heads up experience and didnt want to make a fool of myself against Maria so when a chop was suggested at 1.25am, I was happy to take second place. I was shattered by this time and was really happy with my performance and, of course, the £1200!

I would like to end my saying that Sky and DTD put on a flawless performance as usual and I must thank the Sky team who railed me pretty much the whole tournament offering support and encouragement and they were at least rewarded with a genuine Sky player in the top three.

Best thing about the day was the numerous new aquaintances made!