byronkincaid
10-08-2004, 06:57 PM
I only entered the Satellite for this tourney because I read somewhere on 2+2 that it was going to be shown on Channel 5. I left work a couple of months ago to try to make a living playing SNGs so apart from the wanna be on TV thing I think I wanted to show my parents, grandparents and the GF’s family that I’m not some muppet sitting at home playing on the computer all day there is actually a chance that I can make a living out of this. As most of them haven’t got a clue how to play poker this seemed like a good way to show them.
I played about 5 $39 sng’s and finally won an entry to the Sat. It started at about 4am UK time. I have recently read somewhere that there may be benefits to playing tourneys when you’re tired and it worked for me. No multitabling, no reading 2+2 and no getting too excited and pushing with 72o. It was an 88 player tourney and the top 2 went through. I was short stacked all the way through but managed to get to the final table double up a couple of times and was the big stack by the time it got to 3 handed which was great fun bullying away at the other 2. So anyway I won that and woke the GF and our 8 month old daughter up jumping round the bedroom shouting “Daddies gonna be on TV” They didn’t seem too impressed…………
If anyone from Party Poker ever reads this I would just like to have one small moan. I kept on going to my inbox for hours after the tourney expecting a congratulations email or something but it took about 3 days before I got one. I was starting to think I was dreaming it or something. Anyway that is the only thing I could complain about everything else was very well organised.
The Euro Open was filmed at the TV Studios in Maidstone, about 40 miles away from where I live, so I thought I was laughing with the $2K travel expenses but unfortunately my old work place screwed me on my final pay packet. I was expecting about £1000 for untaken holiday pay and the last few weeks that I worked but they only paid me £69. So I had to use the $2K for general living expenses but at least I still have a fair bankroll for the level of sng’s that I’m playing.
I turned up at the Studios on Monday morning not knowing what to expect except that there were only 36 players which seemed very small but as I was about to find out the whole thing was very much set up for TV. The set up was six one table six player tourneys with the winner of each table going on to the final table. Sixth place at the final table paid $20K going up 30k, 40k, 50k, 70k, 150k. On the positive side as a sng player this should be a very good structure for me but on the negative side there would be 2 pro’s on each table mine being Marcel Luske and Sean Murphy. I googled both of them and Marcel’s record is just plain scary (thank you PokerNeal for the PM). Anyway first off there was a celebrity freeroll for a place in one of the heats. I doubt many people outside of the UK will recognise many of them and it wasn’t the greatest game I’ve ever seen, I’ll just say that Teddy Sheringham ain’t a bad player and John McCririck is superb at sucking out on people. All the rest of us could watch the games we were not in, live in the green room down the corridor from the studio. The only one I missed was the next game which Barry Hearn (the promoter of the event) won. I met one of the players in the bar that night and he said he only lasted about 18 hands but in those hands he had AA, KK and AK.
The next morning I went in to watch the next game. The pro’s in this one were Brian Johnson who apparently is a cash game player who hasn’t been playing tourneys for very long and the firm favourite Dave Colclough who the commentators were saying is a very good 1 table sat player. We were getting live commentary in the room and I thought they (Jessie May and Gary Jones) did a superb job. I’ve seen criticism of Jessie May here before, I think mainly for his commentary on Late Night Poker but he seems to have calmed down a lot since then and in the brief conversations I had with him he seemed a genuinely nice guy with a deep love for poker. Anyway this is the hand Brian Johnson lost most of his chips on (any hands I talk about may well be completely wrong cos I’ve got a crap memory, sorry). He’s got AQ so he raises and is called. Flop comes A 10 5. He bets and is reraised. What would you put the other guy on? AK A10 10 10 55? I honestly think I could have laid that down but it’s obviously easy for me to say that when I know the other guys hole cards, which were 55. One of the guys was called Stan Garber, some 2+2ers may know him cos he’s meant to be a very good chess player. Unfortunately he doesn’t know how to steal so he was always short stacked and just trying to survive. I’m not trying to pick on Stan cos he’s a nice guy but in his exit interview he was complaining that he didn’t get any good cards. I don’t think that’s a good excuse but perhaps I’m being too harsh. The only reason I’m bringing it up is that I heard a few other people (including pro's) saying the same thing. I didn’t tell any of them but they really need to read a few posts here don’t they? It ended up heads up between 2 very large blokes, now I love poker and find it fascinating to watch but these guys just made me fall asleep. They played for what seemed like hours, a little bit weak tight maybe.
Next up was my game, I was seat 4 and I had Sean Murphy to my right and Marcel in seat 6. I started off quite well when I got AQc so I raised 3* marcels BB. He called and the flop came Kxx, I bet out and he folded. Cool. After that though it all went bad. I played tight, I limped in on the SB once or twice and Ami in the BB raised me. I folded but swore to myself that I wouldn’t let that happen again. I had slightly below average chips when I raised 3* BB utg + 1 with AJ. The short stack went all in with 44 and although I flopped an A he got the wheel on the river. I next made a stab at a pot with nothing and got raised so I had to fold and I was soon down to around 36k chips. We started with 100k. The short stack dude was out by then so we were down to 5 when Sean raises and gets reraised by Marcel who goes all in. Sean calls with K7h and flops the K to beat marcels AQ. So I’m short stacked but happy that the best player on the table is out. It’s definitely time to start getting some chips. I forgot to say that Marcel and Sean are both very funny guys. I don’t know how loud the chat will be on TV but a lot of the time I’m just sitting between the 2 of them laughing my head off. They both were trying to get tells by talking to their opponents in the hand, cracking jokes and seemed to me to be super confident. Up till now of course I had only ever played on the internet so when I’m getting all this in my ear “What hand you got? You got the J? Do you want me to call? I’ll fold if you want me to” etc especially from Sean who doesn’t just talk for Ireland he talks non stop for the whole freaking universe, I just shut up and stared at the flop. I don’t think there was anything else I could do.
Anyway at some point (these hands could all be round the wrong way) I picked up A2 or A3 in the small blind and without thinking limped. Ami miniraises me and I suddenly go on tilt and reraise all in. Luckily he folded cos he thought I was trapping him. I don’t like that play at all really. At some point I got J6s utg, I’m short stacked and seriously thinking about going all in. If I had done I would have lost cos ami went all in with a couple of diamonds K or A high anyway he was called and knocked out by Dan Fisher who got a nice stack off marcel early on with JJ and then sat back and didn’t do much. I can’t remember if I raised or limped but I had Q5d and caught bottom pair. I went all in and he called with an open ended straight draw and I think 2 overcards as well. Luckily I won that hand and I was heads up with Sean. I steal a few pots from him one memorable one was calling a 60k raise with 3 6d the flop comes Q10x and I go all in. Every time he folded he was saying “ahh I’m just letting you off cos you’ve got a baby” and stuff like that. I’m not proud of the final hand either. I got raised preflop with K9d and went all in Sean had 77 and I rivered the K to win. I am now of course buzzing my nuts off and probably come across as a grinning idiot on the interview. Oh well it’s on channel 5 nobody’s gonna watch it anyway /images/graemlins/smile.gif which brings me up to the present moment. I came home after the game cos the GF was having trouble getting Amber off to sleep. I got her off but couldn’t get to sleep myself so I got up at 5.30 came second in a $50 sng and started writing this. Although it’s tempting to stay at home today I am going to go down there to watch today’s two games to see how the winners play. The final is on Thursday. I’ll finish this off after that.
There were 3 more heats after mine the main pro’s were Devilfish, Tony G and Surinder Sunar. They all busted out. The most interesting hand for me was Surinders bust out. He was short stacked, blinds I think at 2K 4K raised to 8K and called by a guy with AQ, Surinder goes all in with KQ or KJs and the AQ guy says hey it only cost me $10 to get here and called. Surinder looked shocked. Horrible call IMO but great ad for internet poker. Gary Jones who came around 16/17th in this years WSOP was in Devilfishes heat. He laid down AJ to an all in raise from Ulliot but it left him short stacked and he went out 3rd. We were all cheering him on in the green room because we had got to know him as he had done the commentary on the previous games. I was shouting for anyone to bust out Ulliot and a huge cheer went up when Jason Grey busted him out to win the game.
There was in general some horrible play from some of the internet qualifiers but I think you have to remember that for a lot of us it was first time playing live which makes you nervous to start and then you have all the pressure of pre game interviews, TV cameras in your face and you’re playing some of the best players in the world.
I think I was overconfident going into the final. It started at 4 pm; I woke up at 5am and was just on a total hyper buzz for the rest of the day. I had had a great time watching some fantastic players get knocked out of the competition and I thought I had a great chance against the players still left. My GF came to watch the final along with Amber and my parents. A lot of people came up and said they wanted me to win the thing and Mad Marty Wilson said the odds on me winning were 5/2 doubt if I was favourite though.
I drew seat 4 again which I was happy about with Barry Hearn to my right and two pro gamblers Neil Channing and Jason Grey to my left. In the pre match interview I slipped in the name of one of my favourite posts on 2+2 and said thanks to a couple of posters who really helped my game. I hope they show that. I also hope that everyone else realises that I couldn’t name every one of the hundreds of posters who have helped me and I ain’t gonna educate the fishes by mentioning 2+2 directly. I can’t find that favourite post now-it was aimed at beginners and gave me one of those light bulb moments.
I thought I’d start off playing tight and just try to play solid ABC poker. It all went horribly wrong unfortunately. I found KK and was raised to 3 or 4 BB by Michael Shaw a 24 year old who’s only been playing poker for a few months. I found it very hard to understand his game which seemed to me to be fairly erratic, maybe he’s the new Gus Hanson or maybe not but I made the wrong decision to slow play my hand and called. Two diamonds on the flop so I check raise, I can’t remember how much but it was a fairly large amount designed to get him off the draw if he had 4 diamonds. He called I was thinking [censored] he’s got Aces, I think I checked the turn another mistake and bet a small amount into the pot on the river trying to represent the flush when the 3rd /images/graemlins/diamond.gif arrived on the river. I got miniraised and called. He had A 10d and I was down to around 25k chips. I went all in with 1010 and doubled up made a steal at a short stack and folded to a raise and then went all in with AK to lose to 10s. I went out fifth and I just felt completely crushed. Not because of the money but because I really and truly thought I could win the thing and I lost it on one stupid slow play which went wrong. The commentators were really cool when I saw them at the break saying I was unlucky and was right to make that play. That made me feel slightly better but I still felt like someone had hit me in the stomach with a sledgehammer. I won’t say who won it you can watch it on TV but I will say that he was very generous in the hotel bar that night, I have never seen my mother so drunk and I just realised this evening that I have left half my clothes back at the hotel. Hope I can get them back tomorrow.
Most embarrassing moment was in my heat, I’m UTG but don’t realise it, I’m sitting there wondering why everyone’s looking at me, then everyone’s laughing until finally someone tells me. Also my GF reckons I looked like something out of the Bluesbrothers with my dark jacket and shades (hey if fossilman wears em....) Best moments were the commentators after the heat telling me how well I played and it was the most exciting match so far etc. I wonder how popular the programmes are going to be, they are on at midnight. I suppose most UK poker players will watch, it will be interesting to see if anyone comments on my play. It was a fantastic experience which would not have been possible without all the help I’ve had from you guys over the last year and a bit. Thank you.
Just realised I didn't say where I came-I got 5th place.
I played about 5 $39 sng’s and finally won an entry to the Sat. It started at about 4am UK time. I have recently read somewhere that there may be benefits to playing tourneys when you’re tired and it worked for me. No multitabling, no reading 2+2 and no getting too excited and pushing with 72o. It was an 88 player tourney and the top 2 went through. I was short stacked all the way through but managed to get to the final table double up a couple of times and was the big stack by the time it got to 3 handed which was great fun bullying away at the other 2. So anyway I won that and woke the GF and our 8 month old daughter up jumping round the bedroom shouting “Daddies gonna be on TV” They didn’t seem too impressed…………
If anyone from Party Poker ever reads this I would just like to have one small moan. I kept on going to my inbox for hours after the tourney expecting a congratulations email or something but it took about 3 days before I got one. I was starting to think I was dreaming it or something. Anyway that is the only thing I could complain about everything else was very well organised.
The Euro Open was filmed at the TV Studios in Maidstone, about 40 miles away from where I live, so I thought I was laughing with the $2K travel expenses but unfortunately my old work place screwed me on my final pay packet. I was expecting about £1000 for untaken holiday pay and the last few weeks that I worked but they only paid me £69. So I had to use the $2K for general living expenses but at least I still have a fair bankroll for the level of sng’s that I’m playing.
I turned up at the Studios on Monday morning not knowing what to expect except that there were only 36 players which seemed very small but as I was about to find out the whole thing was very much set up for TV. The set up was six one table six player tourneys with the winner of each table going on to the final table. Sixth place at the final table paid $20K going up 30k, 40k, 50k, 70k, 150k. On the positive side as a sng player this should be a very good structure for me but on the negative side there would be 2 pro’s on each table mine being Marcel Luske and Sean Murphy. I googled both of them and Marcel’s record is just plain scary (thank you PokerNeal for the PM). Anyway first off there was a celebrity freeroll for a place in one of the heats. I doubt many people outside of the UK will recognise many of them and it wasn’t the greatest game I’ve ever seen, I’ll just say that Teddy Sheringham ain’t a bad player and John McCririck is superb at sucking out on people. All the rest of us could watch the games we were not in, live in the green room down the corridor from the studio. The only one I missed was the next game which Barry Hearn (the promoter of the event) won. I met one of the players in the bar that night and he said he only lasted about 18 hands but in those hands he had AA, KK and AK.
The next morning I went in to watch the next game. The pro’s in this one were Brian Johnson who apparently is a cash game player who hasn’t been playing tourneys for very long and the firm favourite Dave Colclough who the commentators were saying is a very good 1 table sat player. We were getting live commentary in the room and I thought they (Jessie May and Gary Jones) did a superb job. I’ve seen criticism of Jessie May here before, I think mainly for his commentary on Late Night Poker but he seems to have calmed down a lot since then and in the brief conversations I had with him he seemed a genuinely nice guy with a deep love for poker. Anyway this is the hand Brian Johnson lost most of his chips on (any hands I talk about may well be completely wrong cos I’ve got a crap memory, sorry). He’s got AQ so he raises and is called. Flop comes A 10 5. He bets and is reraised. What would you put the other guy on? AK A10 10 10 55? I honestly think I could have laid that down but it’s obviously easy for me to say that when I know the other guys hole cards, which were 55. One of the guys was called Stan Garber, some 2+2ers may know him cos he’s meant to be a very good chess player. Unfortunately he doesn’t know how to steal so he was always short stacked and just trying to survive. I’m not trying to pick on Stan cos he’s a nice guy but in his exit interview he was complaining that he didn’t get any good cards. I don’t think that’s a good excuse but perhaps I’m being too harsh. The only reason I’m bringing it up is that I heard a few other people (including pro's) saying the same thing. I didn’t tell any of them but they really need to read a few posts here don’t they? It ended up heads up between 2 very large blokes, now I love poker and find it fascinating to watch but these guys just made me fall asleep. They played for what seemed like hours, a little bit weak tight maybe.
Next up was my game, I was seat 4 and I had Sean Murphy to my right and Marcel in seat 6. I started off quite well when I got AQc so I raised 3* marcels BB. He called and the flop came Kxx, I bet out and he folded. Cool. After that though it all went bad. I played tight, I limped in on the SB once or twice and Ami in the BB raised me. I folded but swore to myself that I wouldn’t let that happen again. I had slightly below average chips when I raised 3* BB utg + 1 with AJ. The short stack went all in with 44 and although I flopped an A he got the wheel on the river. I next made a stab at a pot with nothing and got raised so I had to fold and I was soon down to around 36k chips. We started with 100k. The short stack dude was out by then so we were down to 5 when Sean raises and gets reraised by Marcel who goes all in. Sean calls with K7h and flops the K to beat marcels AQ. So I’m short stacked but happy that the best player on the table is out. It’s definitely time to start getting some chips. I forgot to say that Marcel and Sean are both very funny guys. I don’t know how loud the chat will be on TV but a lot of the time I’m just sitting between the 2 of them laughing my head off. They both were trying to get tells by talking to their opponents in the hand, cracking jokes and seemed to me to be super confident. Up till now of course I had only ever played on the internet so when I’m getting all this in my ear “What hand you got? You got the J? Do you want me to call? I’ll fold if you want me to” etc especially from Sean who doesn’t just talk for Ireland he talks non stop for the whole freaking universe, I just shut up and stared at the flop. I don’t think there was anything else I could do.
Anyway at some point (these hands could all be round the wrong way) I picked up A2 or A3 in the small blind and without thinking limped. Ami miniraises me and I suddenly go on tilt and reraise all in. Luckily he folded cos he thought I was trapping him. I don’t like that play at all really. At some point I got J6s utg, I’m short stacked and seriously thinking about going all in. If I had done I would have lost cos ami went all in with a couple of diamonds K or A high anyway he was called and knocked out by Dan Fisher who got a nice stack off marcel early on with JJ and then sat back and didn’t do much. I can’t remember if I raised or limped but I had Q5d and caught bottom pair. I went all in and he called with an open ended straight draw and I think 2 overcards as well. Luckily I won that hand and I was heads up with Sean. I steal a few pots from him one memorable one was calling a 60k raise with 3 6d the flop comes Q10x and I go all in. Every time he folded he was saying “ahh I’m just letting you off cos you’ve got a baby” and stuff like that. I’m not proud of the final hand either. I got raised preflop with K9d and went all in Sean had 77 and I rivered the K to win. I am now of course buzzing my nuts off and probably come across as a grinning idiot on the interview. Oh well it’s on channel 5 nobody’s gonna watch it anyway /images/graemlins/smile.gif which brings me up to the present moment. I came home after the game cos the GF was having trouble getting Amber off to sleep. I got her off but couldn’t get to sleep myself so I got up at 5.30 came second in a $50 sng and started writing this. Although it’s tempting to stay at home today I am going to go down there to watch today’s two games to see how the winners play. The final is on Thursday. I’ll finish this off after that.
There were 3 more heats after mine the main pro’s were Devilfish, Tony G and Surinder Sunar. They all busted out. The most interesting hand for me was Surinders bust out. He was short stacked, blinds I think at 2K 4K raised to 8K and called by a guy with AQ, Surinder goes all in with KQ or KJs and the AQ guy says hey it only cost me $10 to get here and called. Surinder looked shocked. Horrible call IMO but great ad for internet poker. Gary Jones who came around 16/17th in this years WSOP was in Devilfishes heat. He laid down AJ to an all in raise from Ulliot but it left him short stacked and he went out 3rd. We were all cheering him on in the green room because we had got to know him as he had done the commentary on the previous games. I was shouting for anyone to bust out Ulliot and a huge cheer went up when Jason Grey busted him out to win the game.
There was in general some horrible play from some of the internet qualifiers but I think you have to remember that for a lot of us it was first time playing live which makes you nervous to start and then you have all the pressure of pre game interviews, TV cameras in your face and you’re playing some of the best players in the world.
I think I was overconfident going into the final. It started at 4 pm; I woke up at 5am and was just on a total hyper buzz for the rest of the day. I had had a great time watching some fantastic players get knocked out of the competition and I thought I had a great chance against the players still left. My GF came to watch the final along with Amber and my parents. A lot of people came up and said they wanted me to win the thing and Mad Marty Wilson said the odds on me winning were 5/2 doubt if I was favourite though.
I drew seat 4 again which I was happy about with Barry Hearn to my right and two pro gamblers Neil Channing and Jason Grey to my left. In the pre match interview I slipped in the name of one of my favourite posts on 2+2 and said thanks to a couple of posters who really helped my game. I hope they show that. I also hope that everyone else realises that I couldn’t name every one of the hundreds of posters who have helped me and I ain’t gonna educate the fishes by mentioning 2+2 directly. I can’t find that favourite post now-it was aimed at beginners and gave me one of those light bulb moments.
I thought I’d start off playing tight and just try to play solid ABC poker. It all went horribly wrong unfortunately. I found KK and was raised to 3 or 4 BB by Michael Shaw a 24 year old who’s only been playing poker for a few months. I found it very hard to understand his game which seemed to me to be fairly erratic, maybe he’s the new Gus Hanson or maybe not but I made the wrong decision to slow play my hand and called. Two diamonds on the flop so I check raise, I can’t remember how much but it was a fairly large amount designed to get him off the draw if he had 4 diamonds. He called I was thinking [censored] he’s got Aces, I think I checked the turn another mistake and bet a small amount into the pot on the river trying to represent the flush when the 3rd /images/graemlins/diamond.gif arrived on the river. I got miniraised and called. He had A 10d and I was down to around 25k chips. I went all in with 1010 and doubled up made a steal at a short stack and folded to a raise and then went all in with AK to lose to 10s. I went out fifth and I just felt completely crushed. Not because of the money but because I really and truly thought I could win the thing and I lost it on one stupid slow play which went wrong. The commentators were really cool when I saw them at the break saying I was unlucky and was right to make that play. That made me feel slightly better but I still felt like someone had hit me in the stomach with a sledgehammer. I won’t say who won it you can watch it on TV but I will say that he was very generous in the hotel bar that night, I have never seen my mother so drunk and I just realised this evening that I have left half my clothes back at the hotel. Hope I can get them back tomorrow.
Most embarrassing moment was in my heat, I’m UTG but don’t realise it, I’m sitting there wondering why everyone’s looking at me, then everyone’s laughing until finally someone tells me. Also my GF reckons I looked like something out of the Bluesbrothers with my dark jacket and shades (hey if fossilman wears em....) Best moments were the commentators after the heat telling me how well I played and it was the most exciting match so far etc. I wonder how popular the programmes are going to be, they are on at midnight. I suppose most UK poker players will watch, it will be interesting to see if anyone comments on my play. It was a fantastic experience which would not have been possible without all the help I’ve had from you guys over the last year and a bit. Thank you.
Just realised I didn't say where I came-I got 5th place.