Sunday, Lovely Sunday

As Sundays go, 23 July 2006 didn’t look likely to be anything out of the ordinary – the daytime, I recall, was spent cycling up and down the Lea Valley in East London and drinking Magners amid the trendy bars and Nathan Barley impersonators of Hoxton Square, before returning home with the expectation of an early bath and a tournament or two.

This lack of preparation had become indicative of my form in recent Sunday Millions on PokerStars, where I had not managed to get within a country mile of the final for well over a year despite at one point managing three consecutive (and heartbreaking) top 50 finishes, including a 12th place, before that. However, much as doctors have the Hippocratic Oath to guide them, most decent poker players live by the maxim ‘thou shalt not murder thy chips’, and so it was with an open mind and good grace that I set out on another quest to beat 6,000 odd hopefuls for a prize of around $173,000.

Things began quietly, but as always happens in these things at some point you hit the wall of the structure and need to start playing aggressively and making a few moves. Fortunately, most of my tables featured relatively passive players and so I was constantly able to pick up the valuable blinds and antes to stay ahead of the curve, despite suffering a rollercoaster of ups and downs deep into the event, three or four times building up a decent stack only to lose a big 70/30 shot and having to start over again.

But each time I was knocked down and assumed this was to be another near miss (often opening up a few other games in disgust whilst back to all-in mode) I seemed to claw it back by stealing the blinds or finding a favourable all-in spot, finally building up again and winning an enormous all in with A-Q against a weaker ace inside the top fifty. This, at last, allowed me to assume a dominating position that would take me to the final as second chip leader to the maniacal ‘elcubanito71’ who had essentially won every all-in he played for the previous seven hours.

The final too was a rollercoaster with my initial 2.35 million chips rising to over 4 million after a victorious all in with A-K v Q-Q and then sinking below 2 million after a bad run and a loss in the blinds with 6-7s to A-J, only to recover to the average at that point of around 2.7 million - at which discussions for a deal were finally agreed to by all, which ultimately resulted in a five-way chop and yours truly receiving $74,176, with $20,000 staying on the table for first. It was just as well, as only a few minutes later I elected to smooth call with A-A in the big blind against a button raise, and ultimately lost to 9-9 on a board of 2-3-9.

Tournament poker is a fascinating beast that can enrapture and spurn you in the space of a few hours, and coming through any reasonable field can often feel like guiding a camel through the eye of a needle in retrospect, but to do so with a field of 5,884 is something extra special that I won’t forget for a long time. I just hope that I get a shot at repeating the feat this side of the 2012 London Olympics.

May the flop be with you,

Phil Shaw aka Jackal69

17 November 2006