Just a couple of hours before we land at Gatwick from Las Vegas. It’s been an eventful visit but ultimately fruitless. Ten days in Vegas again culminated in three way disappointment in the Main Event. All three of us made it to Day 2 but I was the sole survivor to Day 3. And the money wasn’t until the end of Day 4!

Only 198 signed up, well below last year. It was easily the toughest tournament I’ve played (eclipsing the WSOPE in October) despite the 100,000 chip starting stack, the 90 minute levels and the fact that we only played five levels a day. The standard was high from the outset. No soft spots on ANY table! The Coach and DC complained in every break about how tough their tables were. DC had Scotty Nyguen and Prahlad Friedman, The Coach had various internet luminaries whose names were unfamiliar to both DC and me.

Things started relatively well for me. I quietly built my chips to around 130k. But in level 4, I ran into trouble when I raised in early position with AJ offsuit (ace of diamonds) and was called in a couple of spots, including the button who was a loud Arabic guy who had played a lot of pots and shown a few bluffs. I led out on the Axx (two diamonds) flop and only he ‘flat-called’. Having a player flat call behind you (ie he acts after you in the order of betting) is always dangerous because the better players will often just call with a very strong hand to try and deceive you further down the road. The REALLY good players sometimes do this with nothing because they know you will think they might have a big hand. A third possibility was that he called with a draw (probably to a flush). Mindful of all of this, I wasn’t delighted to see a third diamond but I still needed to bet to try and keep control of the hand. Now he re-raised to 20k, not a good sign. The pros like to bluff on the turn because there is only one card to come and opponents are less likely to have favourable odds if they’re drawing. I decided to call to see what he did on the river and just in case another diamond came to give me the nuts. It didn’t so I checked (I might have done even if it had!). Now I got the full treatment, “how much do you have left…” etc etc, and HE SET ME IN! I didn’t expect that and was thrown by it. I was even more thrown when he showed me a pair of tens after I mucked. Doh!.

I came back for Day 2 with around 80k, well below average but fine considering how small the blinds were. The rules let you buy in during the first eight levels which meant until half way though Day 2. By then the entries were up to 198 as a steady stream of pros appeared for last minute entries. It was annoying that they could buy-in and get 100k in chips when I had less than that!

Day 2 started like a dream for me. I doubled up early when I flopped a straight flush draw with 9T clubs against KK and made a straight. Then, a few more juicy hands later and I was sitting proudly on a stack of 250k, nearly double the average!

But by the close of the buy-in period my relatively easy Day 2 table had become a nightmare. I’d joked on Twitter that John Duthie on the table next to me had an easy time of it with Phil Ivey and Hassan Habib on his right and Billy Baxter and Daniel Negreanu on his left. They broke this table and Phil Ivey and Hassan Habib drew the seats on my table which was now the table from hell (we also had David Chiu and Tony Cousineau).

I lost a biggish pot to HH (who came second in this event a few years back) when my AK flopped a flush draw and I called to miss the river and lost to his small pair. After that I slipped and slid down to 123k when average was up to nearly 200k. Unfortunately both The Coach and DC had exited quietly during the day. No doubt they will tell their own stories!

On Day 3 I was luckier with the table draw. No really big stacks or well known faces. I looked everyone up on the Hendon Mob player database (standard practice these days) and found out that a few of them could either play or, like me, had got lucky a few times in big comps. The most interesting player at the table was Cliff Josephy, aka JonnyBax, a well know online pro who is now a legendary staker of top internet players! I tangled in a couple of pots with him early on but nothing too drastic. My first biggish pot was with the “internet kid” in seat 9. He didn’t seem to know JB so he couldn’t be any good. He raised in early position (he did this a lot) and I was the lone caller on the button with 55. The flop of 934 looked pretty good for my hand so I figured I could at least “peel one off”. He led out, as always, and I called again. An innocuous looking 4 came on the turn and he checked. Maybe I could take this pot away from him with a decent bet if he only has overcards? I bet 15k and annoyingly he called. Even more annoyingly he led out for 25k on the river which was a 6. I should certainly fold to this river bet but I greedily called to see him whip over 64 for a full house. What do I know?

Foolishly I let this hand linger in my head for the rest of the day which wasn’t that much longer. With 15 minutes to go before the end of the day The Internet Kid raised again in early position and was called in three spots including the small blind. I look down to see A6 offsuit. Not a great hand at all. However, the situation looked juicy. 30k of “dead money” in the pot (I had 110k), an early position raiser with a very wide range of potential hands and three weak looking limpers behind him…hmmm, how could I resist? In a $50 online comp I wouldn’t even think about it, it would be second nature to push all-in in this spot. But in the WPT Final? I should at least give it some thought (and then fold!!) but I didn’t. I instinctively pushed in my 105k expecting them all to fold which they did apart from the rather suave looking Frenchman on the button. He had only marginally more chips than I had and it would effectively mean he would be all-in too. But he would need a massive hand to call; at least JJ or AK and he would have re-raised on the button with those hands, no? Eventually, after the world’s longest “dwell-up” during which I tried my darnedest to look upbeat and confident, he called with AQ. At the time I thought he was an idiot to call with this but now I sense that it was a well thought out and clever call for all his chips and that I was in denial. I might have had AK which must have been his biggest worry, but I didn’t. An A came on the flop but so did a Q and that was that.

At least I got to play with Phil Ivey.

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