Stants Wins EMS Championships

I arrived at DTD on Saturday feeling under a little pressure, self imposed pressure. I didn’t expect miracles but I did want a good run in one of the two tournaments I was playing over the weekend and the Friday game hadn’t gone well.

The main thing for me was to enjoy the event and have some banter along the way but doing well wasn’t far behind and I wanted to stay in for as long as possible and give myself a chance. I knew the majority of the field well and there were four players in particular that I wanted to avoid.

• Jagz – incredible online results and I had no idea what he’d be like live. Aggressive obviously but to what extent was an unknown factor. Young and fearless, two things I am not.

• Jag – Not just because I’m too vain to wear specs and may mistake him for Jagz’s name but also the fact that he seems to read me very well, has a host of live experience as well as being a fine player overall.

• Bas – another online enfant terrible who I knew would be a potentially lethal opponent. He’s done ok live before so I have heard.

• Dean – he’s not that great but he thinks he is which can be just as dangerous…..again, if you get in a hand with Dean it’s not going to be played gently.

You can imagine my delight when I saw the seat draw….Jag on my right and Bas two to my left. Right then I decided it was no nonsense, primary hand poker for me in the early (and I feared, the only) stages of my tournament.

As if to put my nerves to the test, I was dealt KK second hand but uneventfully took down a small pot post flop. From then on for the next hour I just played primary hands strongly pre-flop and backed off if I missed. I dawdled around starting stack until the blinds began to squeeze and just waited for an opportunity to commit my stack. This wasn’t an easy task, my table (now devoid of Jag and Bas) was still packed with solid players with good live records and I knew that I just had to make a dash for it, I dashed with 44. My initial raise was shoved by a new member to the forum and I called hoping for a 50-50….he flipped AQ and the dealer answered my prayers by flopping another 4. I was off the critical list at last with an 8k stack and 15 runners left. I then managed to increase my holding further when my AQ did for Cheva’s K10. Now I was on 18k and around the stack size I wanted to get to the final table.

I watched a series of players go out and before I knew it, it was the final table. I sat between Joe Legge, the Virgin Bounty and my favourite git in the world, Ian8144. Determined to enjoy it at first just I played my cards and didn’t try any moves to see who was doing what. One by one the others were knocked out, leaving just me, Joe and the woman who knocked me out of the previous EMS live event, the formidable Baglady. To be honest I have little recollection of how I survived to this point. I am sure I didn’t knock anyone out but just managed to accumulate some chips with some timely raises. Sometimes my reputation of being tighter than a Lehman’s banker’s Christmas budget can pay dividends.

I thought we were approaching the end-game, how wrong I was.

With 192,000 chips in play we were all pretty evenly matched, there were just some mild fluctuations over the next hour and no one seemed ready to commit. I reflected on this as we took a break and decided that soon I would be the one to commit, one way or the other. The moment came when I was dealt A7 on the button. I raised and Pam (Baglady) re-raised me, as Joe dwelt over his decision I decided it was time and as he folded I did my best to look Pam in the eye and announce as coldly as I possibly could “I’m all in”. My heart pumped, my mouth went drier than Death Valley and my facial expression utilised it’s experience of looking as docile as humanly possible. Pam eyed her cards, then looked at her chips, back to the cards and again to the stack to her left……please, please fold I prayed, knowing she must have me either crushed or at best a 20-80 dog. “I have just enough left fold, sadly” she said…..never have words aroused such relief, somehow resisting the temptation to punch the air and run around the card room I sat and watched and she mucked 88. I now had a decent lead and felt for the first time that I could go on to win. We had now been three handed for two hours, it was challenging to say the least.

The next big hand came when I had 99, this time Pam shoved over the top and I called her AJ. My hand held and I went heads up with a 2-1 chip lead over Joe. I made full use of that lead by shoving A3 the very next hand into Joe’s A10…..deep breaths as we were back to parity. Back and forth we went for nearly an hour with me trying to be selectively aggressive and brave, well, as brave as I can get and managed to put Joe’s stack on the line twice but to no avail. Finally I called him with K7 of diamonds, not a great holding but I sensed Joe was ready to gamble and I was happy to take a small edge into the board. He showed Q10 and despite a 10 coming down second card I made the flush to cripple him to such an extent that he only had one blind left.

The next hand was pure comedy, we decided to deal the cards face up as Joe was all in anyway and Joe pulled a J but I got an A, “hope here” I thought but then Joe got a K to make him a decent hand, the dealer then flipped me another A, the first time all day. I just looked up disbelievingly, “Done it” I thought to myself. I really should have known better; after flopping Q10 the river came 9 to make Joe the straight, much to the amusement of the watching gallery and to an extent to me. However it couldn’t last and after one more double up I found a winning hand in the mighty K10 and it was all over.

I have a deep respect for many of the players who lined up for the event but I really cannot finish without saying how highly I regarded the play, character and decency of Pam and Joe as we battled on for over two hours. The atmosphere was a mixture of tension, camaraderie and respect and it was a pleasure to play against them both. My unbound joy was obviously matched by the watching forum members, more for the fact that it was over and they could go to the bar at last rather than that I had won but I deluded myself for a few minutes and enjoyed the congratulations hugely.

It’s always a great feeling to win a tournament but to do so amongst players that you hold in high regard and can call your friends made it immeasurably more so and I’d like to thank everyone who was there and who posted on the forum for the kind words, especially as they must have feared the consequences of such a modest man claiming victory.

Roll on 2009 and another great tourney.