UKIPT Coventry Final Table

Hey!

As some of you may well know, I managed to final table the third leg of the Pokerstars UKIPT Coventry leg finishing in 8th place out of the 328-man field. Finally a live score!!

It may not be massively impressive coming in 8th and stuff, but you'll just have to trust me. It's a huge burden off my shoulders. Not in the monetary form. But all the hours I've put in at the live-felt to pay-off and finally get a deep run in a big tournament.



I started play on day 1A on the Thursday and battled hard through day 2 to reach the money bubble whereby I had about 3.5x average chips. The bubble was beautiful. People were just so scared of finishing just shy of the money and there was so many chips to be had. The structure in these tournaments are great; 15,000 starting chips with a 1 hour clock. The structure in the late game is also really impressive with the average chip count staying around 50bbs until we reached the final table and it dropped to a still very decent 30bb.

I was picking up chips easily with surprisingly soft table draws. That was until we reached in the money. Then things changed. I think it's fair to say, I'm a way off being a gboro780 or moorman1 just yet...

As our table broke after the money bubble burst, I got put onto an incredibly tough table in comparison to the remaining field. I had EPT winner Jake Cody, online player David 'LeKnave' Jones and Daniel Carter on the same table with me. And to be honest, they all ran over the table, putting immense pressure on all the other players, themselves included. Coming from tables where I felt I had a significant skill edge and could pick up chips easily, these guys just would not let a raise go through. There were constant 3bets, 4bets, bluff raises, double floats. You name it, no pot was going down uncontested. This made picking chips up not only much more difficult but with much higher variance as everyone's ranges weren't nearly as polarised as had been on previous tables.

I think it just goes to show how good some of the top young grinders are these days. I have a lot to learn. But I feel I'm capable of getting there. They were all very loose aggressive picking up a lot of chips and I felt I learnt a lot from playing vs. them at the same time. It was a challenge and fun and it's sometimes hard not to level yourself into making ridiculous post-flop plays.

As reported by Pokerstars, this hand kind of sums up my table quite a bit:

1.25am: Dobson dodges diamonds to double
Sam Grafton opened to 25,000 in early position, next to act Ben Dobson flat called, it folded to Dan Carter on the button who three-bet to 85,000. Grafton responded by four-bet jamming for around 400,000. Dobson called to put his tournament at risk and Carter folded.

Grafton: 3♦9♦
Dobson K♠K♦

The board was A♠J♠T♦7♠2♥. Dobson doubled to 600,000 and Grafton slipped to 150,000. --NW

See what I mean about the high variance comment ;)

I don't think I ran too hot on the final table but whatever. I'm really happy I made it and can't wait to start grinding more of the UK tournament scene next year. Such good fun!

From now on though, it's work work work. Exams are looming just round the corner and I've been slacking all year on the work front. So catch up time is required. That does mean unfortunately I won't really be putting in proper sessions until Vegas now in June. That also means no UKIPT Nottingham. Bit annoyed about this one, but it's placed slap bang in the middle of my exams. So no can do! Got to get my priorities straight on this one.



Gl at the tables all!