Jeff Kimber says...

Jaffacake's Blackpool GUKPT Review

Monday 3 Dec 2007
Day One

Professional poker is all glitz and glamour as we found out recently at the penultimate leg of the GUKPT on the beautiful Blackpool coast, the famous illuminations lighting the way to the casino like the yellow brick road led Dorothy to the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz.

In reality, a gale force wind, the waves crashing in and the rain driving into your face makes you realise that Blackpool in November is not exactly Vegas in July, but all the more reason to play well and stay inside that nice warm casino once it has been reached.

As usual, I was drawn onto what looked like the table of death, with fellow sponsored pros Kevin ‘Lovejoy’ O’Leary and Julian Thew either side of me, and Jeff Duvall sat just the other side of the dealer for good measure.

While I can grumble about tough draws every time I play a GUKPT, I can’t bemoan the loose play that seems to see me do at least 25% of my stack before I win a hand, and I did that again, getting over-involved with J-10 suited that flopped top pair and a straight draw (J-9-7) and picked up a flush draw on the turn.

Obviously I missed my half of the pack that would have given me the winner, and my opponent’s J-Q was good.

There was a jovial atmosphere at the table, with me, Kevin and Julian winding each other up when winning and losing pots, and speculating on just how one of the others could have connected to the raggy flops, but after Julian got down to 3k by flopping two pair against a set on a harmless looking board, it slowed down his play and allowed me to get a bit more involved without Thewy coming over the top.

Playing my usual tight game after donking off the first quarter of my stack, I cracked kings with 6-4 suited from under the gun, then flopped a flush with 7-8 of clubs against Jeff Duvall.

You definitely have to adjust your play to the class of opponent you are facing at any given time, and I thought I played my flush against Jeff (a top class player) pretty well, raising his flop bet from 300 to 1,000, then betting almost full pot again (2,000) on the non-club turn, trying to make it look like just a big club draw.

Unfortunately for me, just as I readied the third barrel, a fourth club hit the river and I was relieved to pick up the pot when Duvall showed a flopped set.

By the first break I was sitting on a healthy 17k stack, but if I thought things were going to get any easier when I returned to find 'Lovejoy' had been moved I was wrong, with Praz Bansi moving into the vacant seat. I’m all for playing with the best, but to find yourself sandwiched between an EPT winner and a WSOP bracelet holder on day one of one of these domestic events sums up my luck.

"Mad" Marty Wilson was holding court on the table behind us to such a degree it was sometimes difficult to hear my table mates above Marty’s banter from the other table.

Given my precarious seat I was pretty pleased to be asked my the TD to gather up my chips and moved tables, only to turn round to see Marty, already with a mountain of chips in front of him, welcoming me into the seat to his right. Marvellous….sat with the loudest man in poker to my left, and just to round it off he was also the chip leader.

Depending on how long you’ve played poker, Mad Marty could be seen as one of the old fellas off Late Night Poker, the guy who does the Thomas Kremser bit on most of the made-for-TV poker shows these days, or the host with the most of the Ladbrokes Lounge who can talk the hind legs off a donkey.

All of these descriptions of Marty are incorrect though - Mad Marty is a poker player through and through.

He may not play so much these days as he uses his knowledge of the game to perform tournament directing roles, and you may see him on the rail cheering on his better half Katherine Hartree more than sat in a game himself, but when Marty comes to play, boy does he come to play.

You may think you have to be 20-years-old, have boy band looks and come from Sweden to play hyper-aggressive loose poker, but Marty, who is definitely at least 21 and could just about sneak into a boy band if the Eagles were included in that bracket, played that style to perfection in the six or seven hours I sat with him to my left proving to be an absolute pain in the neck.

Every single hand Marty raised. Not a big raise, usually just double the big blind with a 25 chip thrown in on top for good measure, but every pot was raised. Half the time the rest of the table just folded up shop for him. Sometimes they’d call, miss the flop, check and Marty would take it with a small bet on the flop.

On very rare occasions someone would play back, and having invested just over twice the blind, Marty would umm and ahh, think about it, tell the guy he would let him have this one and give it up.

Everyone at the table seemed to be having great fun being part of the Mad Marty show, listening intently to his anecdotes and quizzes, and loving it when he called the action if any player was all-in. What they didn’t seem to notice was that Marty was gradually disappearing behind a mountain of their chips!

I’d basically drawn the worst seat in the tournament, and things weren’t going to get any better when a pretty well chipped up WPT champion in Surinder Sunar two to Marty’s left.

Straight away it became evident that, while these two old poker warriors have a grudging respect for each other, they won’t exactly be on each other’s Christmas card list, with Marty greeting Surinder with the words, " Surinder Sunar, he’s come all the way from Wolverhampton on his pushbike and Sunar or later I’m going to send him back there without any chips.".

The first pot they played together was therefore going to be interesting, and it was one of the best bits of play I’ve witnessed first hand; like watching a beautiful painting being created by a master craftsman.

With blinds at 150/300, Marty made his standard raise to 625, and Surinder repopped him to 1,625. Marty made the call and checked the ace-high flop. Surinder bet around 2,000 and Marty thought and called. A small card came on the turn and Marty checked again. This time Surinder bet big, just about the full pot, and after some thought, Marty called again.

The turn was another blank, and Marty quickly bet 10,200 into the nigh-on 20k pot….Surinder only had about 25k left (I say only, the average this stage was under 20,000, just showing what a huge pot these two were playing) and eventually he looked frustrated and folded.

Marty coolly flipped over Q-5 offsuit, no hand no draw at any stage, and raked in the huge pot. Suddenly the jovial fun table had become super-serious and the silence was more deafening than any of Marty’s earlier anecdotes had been.

It became evident that this hand was going to change the table dynamic, and so it proved, with Marty an even more dominant chip leader getting involved in everything, and Surinder intent on revenge calling nearly every raise in position and determined to meet the challenge heads on.

A few hands later Surinder asked the rhetorical question, "Who’s blind is it?", before ‘realising it was Marty’s' and copying his usual raise, making it 625 to play. It was passed round to me in the small blind and I look down to find two old friends who I’d been missing for a while, pocket rockets. With an average 20k-ish stack I reraise to 2,100, and of course get called by Marty and in turn Surinder.

Now I know I have to be careful because these two, steamed up and ready to play each other with anything, could be dangerous, but thankfully my 5,000 bet on a dry flop took it down.

I then got embroiled in a hand which, having experienced the fun side of poker, showed the less nice side, as prescribed by Surinder Sunar.

Marty had lost a couple of pots and said to me it’s time to start playing properly again. Obviously this could be a line, but Marty’s not one to pull strokes, although it did make me smile when from under the gun, he raised my big blind.

The small blind called, and after thanking Marty for adopting this new tight tactic, I called his raise with 7-8 off suit. By Marty’s reaction I could see losing a couple of pots had affected him a bit, but whether he was tilty or just determined to get back to playing as well as he had be was really anyone’s guess.

A flop of 8-9-10 fitted nicely with my hand, so when the small blind bet out half the pot I quickly called in position. However, big stack Wilson decided we’d seen enough cheap cards and boshed in a tower of thousand chips, around 20k, which forced the small blind to fold.

Now I had a decision. I had only 27k, around average, and obviously it was an all in or fold moment. What I needed to do was piece the hand together again and try and work out what Marty had and why he’d played it this way, from the pre-hand chat about tightening up, to the reaction to my call, to the massive over-bet on the flop.

What could he have? I thought he had a big hand, aces or kings perhaps….now I need to work out how big my hand is, how many outs I have, whether he has any redraws (with Q-Q perhaps), and really whether given the stage and my position in the tournament, whether I needed to gamble, and what I could do on this table should I double up here.

Then I had to consider the other hands Marty may have. I may be winning - unlikely, but maybe he’s had enough and wants to gamble with A-J perhaps, opr maybe just a couple of big cards like A-K which given the flop play Marty thinks he can bully with to win the pot.

There was also the possibility we have similar hands, with mine then obviously being crushed, maybe something like 10-J, 10-7, something like that.

As I thought for my tournament life, I noticed Dena, my mate who I had been winding up all week after finding out she’d be tournament director in this leg rather than dealing, and she was telling me I had a minute to act.

Having told her all week I was going to be asking for tricky ruling after tricky ruling to test her, I thought surely she wouldn’t have called time herself as a ‘joke’…not the time for jokes now. Obviously she wouldn’t do such a thing, not only had I not asked for any rulings from her (no point, she knows the rules far better than I or any player, like most women she knows everything), she wouldn’t do such a thing.

Now from counting outs I’ve gone to wondering what’s going on. I ask the dealer who called the clock on me. The gentleman in seat seven was her reply….Surinder. Why would he do that, he’s not even in the hand, I’ve been thinking for two minutes on a hand that is for my whole tournament but which would put me around the chip lead if I won, and he wanted to call time?

In truth I don’t think I was ever going to call, but I just wanted to be sure I’d considered all my options, put Marty on a hand, thought through how he’d played and how he was currently doing, and was happy to have made the correct decision.

Either way, I had no time, Dena counted me down and my hand was dead. To say I wasn’t happy was an understatement, I’ve never had a clock called on me, or called one on anyone else for that reason, and for someone not even in the hand to feel like they want to get involved is, in my opinion, bang out of order. I thanked Mr Sunar for his input, and told him I hadn’t had more than two minutes for a decision for my tournament life, and he said I’d had plenty long enough. What a nice man.

Marty, ever the gentleman, showed me a pair of aces, which was kind of the hand I thought he had, and the kind of hand I was in a good position to gamble with should I have wanted to, but I think I got the right decision, even if it was forced. Marty also added I could have sat there for 10 minutes as far as he was concerned, but not everyone has the scruples of Marty.

To say I was upset with this was an understatement. It was time to channel that energy and not tilt. I got up for a quick stroll, ordered a pint, put the ipod on and sat back down determined to not tilt and to play my absolute best.

Any time I get wound up by something, whether it’s someone being abusive, rude, or lucky online, to something action in an ungentlemanly way as Surinder had here, I feel I’m pretty good at using that to focus me to play my absolute 'A-game'.

I didn’t really get any big hands or any good situations in the last level, but I focused, played as well as I could and made day two with 22k in chips, just below average.

Day Two

Early on day two I picked up a couple of pots uncontested before finding A-K of hearts, with which I raised to 3,600.

I got one call and when the flop came down Qh-10h-x, my hand was sufficiently big enough to go all the way with, whatever my opponent had. I moved all-in, happy to pick up what was there, but with A-Q he had out-flopped me and made the call. We were still in a coin flip and luckily for me the heart came on the turn, and I was in a lovely position with 50,000 chips, confirming I was right not to gamble with Marty the previous night.

Progress was slow, but I managed to catch a guy who continually over-raised when I picked up queens in the big blind and he had to call my re-raise for all his chips with Q-J.

I was now comfortable, but one player on my table was annoying me with his wild play that kept getting rewarded, but as he was a bit of a calling station when he had anything but would just check and fold if he missed, having him two to my right was a problem.

I decided to play with him in position; I needed to raise from early position, so when I looked down at 7-5 suited it was time to go to work. With blinds at 1,500/3,000 I made a small raise to 7,500, trying to look like I had a big hand.

Mickey Wernick called from the small blind and the target called from the big. With position I fancied I could win this pot anyway, but with a flop of 5-5-2 it was time for plan B, now I had a monster!

Both blinds checked to me and of course I checked behind. The turn was a six and Mickey bet 8,000 into me, which I smooth called.

The river brought a blank and Mickey checked. I knew there was no way he could put me on this hand given I’d raised from early position, so it was just a matter of getting the bet size right, and after a brief dwell it seems I did just that, extracting 11,000 on the river against a bemused Legend, who later said he had 9-9.

I quite enjoyed that table but I got moved to a pretty horrible spot on another table as we got down to four tables.

Neil Channing had amassed a monster stack and was playing really well, while I had young online pro Andrew Feldman directly to my right.

When Paul Murrell joined us beside Channing, it became evident this was going to be a struggle, with Murrell, (or "Muzza9" as the Laddies regulars will know him better), the chip leader in the whole competition.

To round it off, Julian Gardner, arguably the best hold ‘em tournament played in the UK, came and sat the other side of Muzza with a stack that was close in size to both of those to his right, and between them these three held half the chips in play.

Not exactly ideal but I managed to find a few spots to pick up chips, finding A-K against Muzza on an ace-high board and then getting the full double up with 10-10 v Muzza’s A-K.

I had a real rock to my left, so any time the three big stacks did all fold, Feldman would take his chance to have a pop at the blinds, and after letting him get away with that once or twice, I decided the third time his button raise was a bit of liberty, so I pushed all-in from the small blinds with 6-3, and he eventually passed his pocket eights face up.

"Good fold," I told him. Still, with the bubble approaching people are supposed to play tight, right? Well, it depends who they are, whether £2,000 is going to change their life, whether they satellited in, whether this is their first tournament, and generally how they are playing - to get to the money or to make an impact on it and take a shot at winning.

As another player got knocked out we were on the bubble, 28 left with 27 paid, and I was moved tables again, away from all the big stacks to a table all nursing shorties, bar Ben Vinson to my right who had double my average stack, about 220k.

We played a couple of uneventful hands as everyone waited for one more to go out, I was sitting pretty probably in about 12th spot with 110k when I got my usual slap in the face from the poker gods.

Vinson received a walk in his big blind (this was a table of rocks desperate for the money) and as I put my big blind in next and we waited for the signal to play (we were hand-for-hand) I told him I was very much looking forward to my walk next hand.

Unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be, as Ben decided that as the rocks had passed to his small blind it was his duty to move all-in with his K-7 off and risk half his big stack to pick up my 8k blind.

I looked down at A-Q and insta-called. The flop came all diamonds, giving me the nut flush draw, but also contained that all-important seven, putting Ben in the lead.

Any ace, any queen, any diamond…no chance, and after a day and a half of making almost no mistakes, getting my money in good and making good poker decisions, instead of moving into the top five with 27 left I was out on the bubble.

It’s a marvellous game sometimes...!

Muzza made the final as chip leader and I was rooting for him to take it down but it wasn’t to be, although ‘the Lemon’ as he bizarrely became known took him a none-too-shabby £28,000. Ben Vinson used my chips wisely to pick up £39,000 in third, before Paul Bracken beat Paul Gardner heads-up to take the £110,000 first prize back to London.

Later I joined, Mad Marty, Skalie, Muzza and a few others in the bar for a couple of sociables, (and a couple of Mad Marty stories of course), and the new champ Paul Bracken came in and joined us.

Evidently Paul and Muzza go back a long way having played at The Vic in London together for years, and after Paul had ordered a few bottles of champagne for our table we toasted a deserving winner.

Chatting to Paul about his win afterwards, he was really chuffed to have landed the GUKPT title, but while the victory was both personally and financially rewarding for him, he had another agenda that he hoped his win would help bring to the fore.

Paul has two close family friends who have relations affected by cerebral palsy, a brain disorder which at its worst leaves sufferers severely disabled and requiring round-the-clock care.

Rather than sit back and do nothing, Paul has taken it upon himself to organise a charity poker tournament to raise funds for the cerebral palsy charity, Scope.

The tournament will be held on Wednesday January 23rd at 8pm in the Palm Beach Casino, Berkley Street, London. It's a £330 freezeout with £100 going to charity from each entrant. Let’s hope Paul’s efforts are rewarded with a big turnout and his success in Blackpool is replicated in his charitable efforts.

Who says nice guys never come first?

Jeff "Jaffacake" Kimber, World Heads-Up Champion, and Ladbrokes-sponsored professional