The Devilfish Cup

Dusk Till Dawn casino in Nottingham recently held the WPT festival which included, what I hope will become an annual event, the Devilfish Cup. DTD held three £1 million guaranteed events: the WPT500, the £5300 Devilfish Cup and the £2,200 WPT Main Event. To their absolute credit they managed to hit two of the three guarantees and only missed the third by a small margin.

I made day two of the WPT500 with 5 big blinds and busted the first hand, but that left me free to have a nap, get some food and play a satellite into the Devilfish Cup. I had already decided that it was too good a competition to miss, but I qualified in the satellite which saved me forking out the £5,300! I sold action for this one and am happy to say I made my backers a few quid as I managed to make the final table of this prestigious event finishing in 9th place for £30,000. It’s the first time in a long time I have been guilty of a touch of jealousy towards a fellow poker player, but when Lucas Blanco Oliver walked away with the win he also got to take home a guitar signed by Brian May! This was such an excellent touch by DTD to honour the Devilfish’s love of playing guitar.

There was more than one interesting hand throughout the tournament, the first of which came up mid-way through day 1. My first table was my toughest table of the tournament aside from the final table itself. After a table move I found myself on tables with recreational players and satellite qualifiers until the final 9 players were announced. At my first table I looked down at AsJc. My active opponent on my immediate right 3bets to 3000, not for the first time I might add, and I decide I have a good spot to cold 4 bet bluff to 7,800 from my 50,000 stack. Unfortunately my opponent calls my 4b and I am very sure he is slow playing a big hand. The flop comes down JsTc2s and despite having top pair top kicker I’m pretty sure I am still behind in the hand. We both check and the turn card comes the rather interesting Ts. My opponent bets 7,500 and my small chance of being ahead, my nut flush draw and two J outs entices me to make the call. I also have the potential to make a rather devious bluff after the last card. The river comes a blank and my opponent bets 9,500. Had my opponent checked I would have happily checked down and hoped for good news at showdown. When he bets he almost certainly has a very strong hand. Now, it is extremely hard for him to have JJ, only 1 combination of that hand still exists since I hold one J and another is on the flop, and the same goes for TT. That leaves him with likely 6 combinations of QQ, 6 of KK and 3 combinations of AA because I have an ace blocking 3 of his combinations of that hand. He can’t have the nut flush because I have the As. I can credibly represent JJ, AT and the occasional nut flush as I do check the nut flush draw on the flop sometimes. I can also have AA or KK. I announce all in and my opponent tank folds letting me pick up a sizeable pot.

Hypothetically we need to be able to have bluffs in every situation, as if we can’t our opponents cannot pay us off. This hand is an ideal candidate as the As stops him from having the nut flush and the J we hold stops him being able to have jacks full as often.

One of the hands at the final table highlights just how crazy this game can be. After some pretty fierce pre flop action 3 of my opponents found themselves all in pre flop. The hands were AK, JJ and the other JJ. If any ace or king lands, two of my opponents get eliminated and we get a £20,000 pay jump! If the two players with JJ split the pot, then the player with AK is crippled and we almost certainly get a £10,000 pay jump. The board ran out 45687 giving all players a straight! It’s one of the many twisted reasons I love this game. I eventually got my last 20 big blinds in with JJ but ran into KK and that was that. I was supremely happy with the result and the celebrations at the party afterwards were a lot of fun. I travelled home from the festival the next day, missing the main event to celebrate my dad’s birthday. Some things are more important than poker and we had a great two days celebrating. We saw a Queen tribute band on the Friday night (making me all the more jealous of Lucas’ bonus prize!) and gambled on the Breeders Cup horse racing festival with our bellies full of beer and food on the Saturday night. Bliss.

The last couple of months of the year are going to be really interesting ones for me. First of all I’ve got the Party Poker Caribbean Poker Party in November which I qualified for earlier this year. The lovely Emma is a tad jealous of me getting a week in a 5* all-inclusive resort in the sunshine while she is stuck in the cold back in England! After that I get to attend the Unibet Open’s event in Bucharest. The Unibet Opens are some of the best run festivals I’ve ever attended and I’ve never visited Bucharest so I’m really looking forward to it. After that I’m attending EPT Prague for the last ever EPT. Normally I wouldn’t be at all bothered about attending an EPT given how far downhill they have gone, but David Lappin has invited me to spend the festival sharing an apartment with him and the rest of the Irish Firm. It is always good to see how other pros approach the game and I’m looking forward to learning a few tricks from them.

So that’s a busy end to the year ahead of me, including some really exciting big buy in competitions that I cannot wait to sink my teeth into. Here’s hoping for a run of good variance and good decisions to finish off the year with.