What started out looking like a poor turnout ended up being the best of the year so far with 13 players. Martin made a rare but welcome appearance and brought along a friend which added an air of uncertainly to the proceedings
As ever, I seemed to be on the sensible table, as Sean was on the other table and Bill wasn’t playing 
It started out OK enough anyway, as I made a couple of hands and got to around 3500 from the 3000 starting stacks. It all started going wrong when I checked the BB with T-8o and four of us saw the 8-4-3 flop. Although it looked OK for me, I checked and saw the 6 turn for free. Deciding to bet, only the new boy Cliff called me from SB and I think he bet out the blank river, which I decided to call… only for him to show 4-3o to take the pot
Andy then started to get rolling as he was calling raises with pretty much any two and then started to hit flops hard. It seemed Jon was always on the receiving end as well, so much so it became comical… but Andy was the one laughing as he had a huge bucket load of chips (and Jon was among the highest buy-ins!)
My fortunes were a bit up and down before the break, as I needed two double buy-ins but then hit a hand and doubled up, getting me to around 3500 chips on the break. The other table had seen a whole load of buy-ins (mainly from Sean ‘all-in with any’ ) Average chips were around 4.7k, but on my table we had Andy on about 15k and everyone else relatively short. The other table had a huge amount of chips!
Once we restarted, play settled down a bit, but as the blinds started to go up Andy got going again. Martin had been playing tight but aggressive, and stuck his chips all-in but Andy called… I can’t remember the exact hands, but am sure it was pretty much all over for Martin on the flop and he was out first man down.
On the other table, Derek was getting busy and did a double bust out, so we lost Karen to the other table and were playing 5 handed but it was to last as Lee, who was our short stacked bounty, shoved… Cliff called, but then Andy shoved all-in. After a brief dwell Cliff called. I think Lee had something like JJ, Cliff Ax and Andy A-Q I think an A came but the end result was certainly that Andy won the hand and we had our final table!
I seem to remember Alex, Jon and myself were fairly short stacked… Karen was about middle and the rest were relatively large stacked. (really must start taking notes during the game!!)
Jon struggled to get through the blinds and was very short after having to fold both blinds. The next time Jon was in SB and I was BB, it folded to Karen who limped, Jon shoved for a small amount more and I looked down at K-Qo and decided to call… and Karen also called. The Qxx flop looked good for me, so just shoved my 6k into the pot of around 4k… luckily for me, Karen had Q-J (rather than the feared A-Q when she called) and I took down a big pot, took out Jon, crippled Karen and was on average chips.. phew, certainly a key hand for me.
Being so low, Karen got it in next hand but Jock took her out and the numbers are starting to dwindle.
It was only a matter of time before the Andy stream roller came back to the table, and sure enough Jock was the next victim. Jock had A-7 against Andy’s K-8….. but although Jock hit his 7, Andy took him out with a K on the river. As the blinds increased, Derek got in against Andy…. with Derek way ahead with 6-6 against Andy’s A-4 on a 625 board so all the chips went in… the turn was a blank, but then Andy hit his 4 outer on the river to take another player out, leaving just 4 remaining to battle the money bubble.
At this stage, Andy was huge chip lead, I was on around 20k, Darren and Alex were around 10k each
I can’t remember the details now, but I managed to knock out Alex, but then got all-in against Darren with my K-x against 9-8. Darren hit the 9 on the flop and doubled up, leaving me short stacked. Despite a valiant effort (even though I say so myself) I got all-in against Andy with my A-7 ahead of his K-8, but of course the first card down on the flop is a K and it’s all over for me in 3rd
There were around 5 hands left, with Darren about 2:1 chip deficit to Andy. Darren put in a good battling performance, but on the last hand, Andy was way ahead in chips still and should’ve folded for the win… but elected to play. The betting was very cagey, but bets were going on on every street. By the river the board read something like K-5-5-J-J and a quick count revealed that Andy had just over 50k left behind… so could still fold for a victory… but elected to go all-in with his A-T which was firmly trounced by Darren’s J-T !!
Despite Andy’s slightly weird play, both had played well to get to that point, so well deserved the top places. The rest of us have just got to step up our games (and run better 
)
Can’t wait until next months game !!
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