A decent start to the week...

After a few near misses over the weekend, and STILL running like shit I didn't have particularly high hopes for the GUKPT £300+£300 event starting on Monday, and i was right. Sort of.

I arrived and sat down at my table and for the first 30 mins or so it was pretty easy going. I picked up a few chips here and there, but nothing too dramatic. Then two younger chaps sat down and all hell broke loose. Raise, re-raise, re-re-raise was the order of the day from the end of the first level onwards. The more aggressive of the two was plonked directly on my left. The worst position to have an aggressive player! I tried raising, but was 3-bet every time, and as it was early on i mucked average hands. I starting limping in mid to late position to call a small raise with pairs, and occasionally 4 betting. This seemed to work out OK and i gradually increased my chips to around average. I didn't make any major hands, and my biggest pot came from a standard hand with KK. I was facing a raise and call already and was out of position so put a small raise in. The original raiser (a LAG) 4 bet me, i dwelled for a few secs before pushing all in. He dwelled for an age before mucking JJ. What took so long!

Around 3 hours in the table broke and i moved to a new table which was far easier to play on. There was obviously some very good players on the table, but they played hands in a predictable fashion. I picked up AK 3 times on this table winning twice without showdown and once losing a big pot to AA (FML). I managed to win a couple of flips with pairs and was back up to average before moving to my final table of the night. Nothing interesting happened here really. I raised the odd pot to keep my chips around average, but I wasn't seeing any cards and the short stacks were pushing to double or bust before the end of the day..

By the end of the days' play I'd not hand a hand better than bottom two pair. No sets, flushes or straights. This continued for the whole tournament. Hopefully I'm saving them up for the main event!

Day 2 i was expecting a slow start, and it was for me. Within the first 3-4 hands we'd had players all-in who were sitting on 70-80 big blinds. The same guy was involved in 2 of the hands and about 6 hands in he open pushed from early position. it was a 70x raise and needless to say everyone folded. He flipped AA. I'm pretty sure he extracted the maximum there!?! He busted about 45 mins later when he raised with JQ in early position, I 3 bet from the button with KK and he shipped it all in. I won the hand was and left me wondering how he made day 2 in the first place.

30 players had come back for day 2 and we lost 15 of them pretty quickly. With 15 left and 13 getting pair deal talk started to happen from the very short stacks. I wasn't keen, but before people on our table had even decided whether or not to consider it the bubble had bust. We had a 3 way all in on the other table and lost 2 players. Players busting continued at a rapid pace and no more than 40 mins later we were on the final table. I was pretty card dead the whole final table, but managed top rep hands a few times and slowly edged my stack up keeping in line with the average. There were plenty of interesting hands, but unless people desperately want to hear about them i'm not going to bother posting them. I eventually busted in 4th after getting it in as a small favourite (A10s) against a young chap who was running uber hot with (J9). He flopped trips and that was that. He'd already won about 9-10 hands all in preflop with the worst hand. On one hand knocking two players out with A7 vs AK and KK. He made a straight on the river of course. Must be nice.

I was gutted not to win it and the £20k first prize, but 4th paid £5,700 which will keep me in clothes, buy-ins and maybe odd drink for a few weeks.

I'm playing the GUKPT Main event London tomorrow, I'll try and make the odd post during the day. If not you'll have to wait until I get home at the end of my day.