After the relief of watching the national football team scrape a one nil victory in their opening World Cup game, 106 players took their seats for the Midlands Meltdown Main Event at Grosvenor Casino, Walsall.
Plenty of familiar faces; Carlo Citrone, Steve Vladar, Paul Jackson, Mickey Wernick, Tim Flanders, to name just a few. There was even a TV celebrity amongst us in the form of Only Fools And Horses star Patrick Murray (aka Mickey Pearce), but, the now hatless actor would finally fall foul to a kings v aces run-in.
When the little hand had reached the three, and all the smoke had cleared, it was Welshan Iwan Jones who led the way with a rather impressive 121,000, surpassing even the mighty Ali Mallu who was the early chup leader.
But how did Buzz Lightyear get his chips? It certainly wasn't a gradual process. In fact, it pretty much came in one hand when his set of jacks were paid off by John Hewston's second pair and Eric Barkers pocket aces, leaving Iwan to scoop a huuuuuuuuuuuge pot of 110k.
So, with the Welshan leading the way, the overnight chip counts are as follows:
Table 1:
J Conlan -- 32,400
L Hirons -- 8,700
P Moss -- 26,500
R Rudling-Smith -- 20,300
Dan Samson -- 41,200
John Shipley -- 41,800
Alan Armatige -- 52,4000
Kevin Price -- 41,400
Ian Woodley -- 33,500
Table 2:
N Whiten -- 24.8k
J Osbourne -- 104.5k
N Potts -- 16.3k
T McCready -- 34.8k
R Yong -- 42.2k
S Rutter -- 48.5k
E Katzi -- 22k
M Wernick -- 34.4k
S Nowab -- 67.1k
P King -- 43.8k
Table 3:
P Singleton -- 12k
C Cronin -- 80.5k
J Falconer -- 16.k
A Mallu -- 71.5k
A Goldie -- 48k
D Sami -- 17.6k
N Allen -- 44.8k
M Irvine -- 32.4k
S Jelinek -- 88k
Table 4:
Ed Arees -- 26,200
Iwan Jones -- 121,000
P McFadden -- 40,800
O Ayegun -- 8,800
A Saberi -- 50,400
A Johnson -- 47,900
P Dobson -- 24,500
R Mulla -- 66,000
M Libertini -- 45,400
Good luck to all the players, but especially to the blondeites; Rudders, saphire, nickw, RED-DOG, chubbs, robyong, Paul King, Jimmysue, Dannypoker, easy pickings, and Burnley John.
I'll leave you to match up the names.