blonde poker

 

Monday afternoon saw the completion of the travel preparations for 'Team Primate's' assault on the Main Event of the 2006 WSOP with the arrival of the plane tickets. Confirmation of entry into the tournament and hotel room at the Monte Carlo had already been received in previous weeks, and so the final piece of the jigsaw was added.
 
Tuesday saw the arrival of a new member to 'Team Primate' at the Circus Casino in Manchester. I had arranged to meet Mel (londonpokergirl) to play a £20 rebuy tournament as she was flying to Las Vegas from Manchester airport early the following morning. She told me she had a present she wanted to give me to take to Las Vegas with me but as she was going there herself this would be the only opportunity to pass it on. When we arrived at the Circus we discovered that it was actually a £50 rebuy but as there seemed a decent turnout we paid the entrance money before heading off to the cashpoint 'just to be on the safe side!'. 81 runners played the tournament and with a starting table containing the likes of Lawrence Gosney, Ali Mallu and Mel, it wasn't going to be an easy ride...
 
The new arrival to 'Team Primate' was 'Monkey Minder' (right), normally monkeys can be very awkward when it comes to 'territory' so it was good to see that 'Mystic Monkey' did not mind when our new member took to the table along side him - the omens were good that 'Monkey Minder' would fit seamlessly in with the rest of the group as he took to guarding an ever increasing chip stack during the course of the tournament and, even with the absence of 'Monkey Butler' from the proceedings, 'Team Primate' still managed to make the final table with an average sized stack.
 
A few big hands at the beginning of the Final Table saw 'Team Primate' build up a decent size lead over the rest of the table as one by one competitors fell by the wayside, but, when down to 4 players, one of our opponents managed to knock out the other two meaning that when we got to the heads up stage the chip count was virtually even. I must admit, I'd never played heads up in a live tournament before, every time I'd got down to the last 3 or 4 a deal was usually struck but with Vegas and the WSOP looming large on the horizon this would be an ideal opportunity to brush up on my heads up play.
 
It was a struggle, every time I seemed to move in front I ended up being pegged back, but after a 40 minute battle and with only 5 minutes to go before the casino would have insisted on doing a chip count, came the final hand. Holding the Q-7 diamonds in the big blind, my opponent flat called on the button, I checked and the flop came down 5-8-9 with two diamonds. First to speak with both a flush and gutshot draw I bet the pot, 30k, and my opponent quickly called.

 

 

The turn bought a 10 of diamonds giving me the third nut flush. At this point I had about 240k in front of me compared to my opponent's 180k. His quick call on the flop led me to believe he had a piece of it and so, instead of slowplaying it, I led out with a 45k bet. After thinking for a moment, my opponent announced 'all in' and, after taking a deep breath and hoping he didn't have one of the two hands that had me beat, I called. He turned over J-10 o/s for top pair with an up and down straight draw, a Q on the river made him a straight but it was immaterial as 'Team Primate' had won its first ever outright live tournament.
 
Hopefully this is a sign of things to come, we've stopped virtually all online play in preparation for this year's event - the only online action being the occasional blonde tourney. Next time we'll write about our preparations for this year and compare them to last year. Also our thoughts on this year's event and how hopefully using the experience from last year will stand us in good stead. For now though, take a look at the profiles of the members of 'Team Primate' that are spread throughout this initial blog entry!!!

 

 

 

[Ed Note - Matt flies out to Vegas on the 27th of July]