This is an H1

London cabbie Alan Mansbridge has beaten a field of 172 players to take the title at GUKPT Walsall, along with top prize of £50,000! 

Having been the lowest stack in the tournament the night before, he staged the most dramatic comeback ever seen on the tour to climb from the very bottom of the chip counts to end up as the last man standing.

“I hadn’t booked a hotel – I wasn’t expecting to make it,” admitted the soft-spoken poker enthusiast, as he was waiting to collect his winnings.  Happy to be improving and taking on the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour in the future, he posed for photos in his cab before driving it back to London where he plans to play the very next day.  He beat Martin Holmes heads up after nearly six hours on the final table, which also featured Nick Hicks, Simon Deadman and Ryan Spittles.

The £1,000 GUKPT Walsall Main Event started twice on Friday 29^th April.  The first flight took their seats to the incongruous strains of the Royal Wedding music. There were 97 runners in all playing at midday, including Dave Colclough, Mike Hill, Paul Jackson, Sunny Chattha, Allan Mclean and GUKPT sponsored pro Stuart Rutter.  Rutter’s friend Ben Jenkins was also playing Day 1a, and they were noticeably more sharply dressed than normal.  It turns out that side action is underway on the circuit revolving around which of the two will make the top three in a £100+ buy-in tournament first (and only when one has done it can they retire the suits and ties).  While Rutter narrowly failed to cash, Jenkins made it all the way to the final table, winning £6,450 for his 7^th place finish, and nearly winning his bet too.

The second flight starting at 6pm on the same day attracted 75 players, including many previous GUKPT champions.  Among them were Jerome Bradpiece, Mike Ellis and Praz Bansi who all made deep runs into Day 2.  The latter especially was responsible for some of the most spectacular pots (and outdraws) and came close to making back-to-back final tables, finishing 15th winning £2,150.

Eight levels were played by each starting group, and when the dust had settled a total of 65 players remained.  The biggest stacks emerging from the two flights belonged to Daniel Stanway and Steven Warburton, both just shy of 100,000.

Day 2 combined the field and quickly dispersed it – the eliminations came thick and fast until the three-table stage; with the prize money in sight play slowed for a level or so.  The leaders at the end of the first day did not make the final table - however four of the eventual finalists started the day in the top ten and never looked back.

Once he’d reached the giddy heights of the chip lead, Simon Deadman proved difficult to knock back down.  He was responsible for many an elimination late on Day 2, wielding his stack like a sledgehammer, taking on short stacks without fear of a real dent.  Picking up a good number of hands didn’t hurt – in his own words, “I’m just a card rack.”

Card rack or not, the accomplished Deadman was firmly in control after the bubble burst (Sen Man Ung finishing in unpaid 18^th spot) and ended up leading the final table when Day 3 started with a 666,900 stack.   Just prior to this, Greg Hunt had busted out in 19^th place, disappointed to have just missed out on a cash, but having won the GUKPT Online Shoal Survivor contest by being the last online qualifier standing in the tournament.  He won a £1,500 GUKPT tournament prize package to spend playing at other stops on the Tour.

The final table began at a sprint, with Nick Hicks enjoying the first of what were to be multiple double-ups while Craig Burgess ran nines into Martin Holmes’ queens preflop to finish 9^th.  Thereafter, however, it ran like London buses: quickly, efficiently and with regular progression.  Just kidding – three whole levels passed before Adrian Eley, Ben Jenkins and Ryan Spittles exited in quick succession.  Eley and Jenkins were shorter stacks, losing preflop confrontations (Jenkins actually to Spittles), but Spittles himself ran one of the boldest bluffs of the final table – called by an equally fearless Alan Mansbridge. 

Mansbridge called all three streets with Kc-8c (top pair on the flop) and although the turn brought an ace and the river paired threes, he found the call for over 200,000 when Spittles gave it his last shot all-in with 9c-7c – no pair, nine-high.  This postflop tenacity characterised Mansbridge’s rise from the short stack at the start of the day to the chip lead five-handed. 

Fighting through several all-ins and hairy moments as the aggressive short-stack, Nick Hicks finally exited in 5^th place (£10,320) when he lost a race with AQ vs. the JJ of Martin Holmes.  Danny Toffel, who’d once built ramparts of chips, finally exited, forced to move all in by his shortness of stack.  He won £13,330 for his efforts and 4^th place finish.

Three handed, the final table reverted to doubling the all in short stack each time he was at risk.  While Alan Mansbridge sat on his million chips, Simon Deadman and Martin Holmes passed a half-million chunk of chips back and forth no fewer than three times.  In each instance Deadman had the best hand when the money went in preflop (two dominating aces and on 88 vs. A3) but only won when he was all in. 

In his final hand, Deadman threebet all in over the top of Alan Mansbridge who took a long, hard thought time to make the call with A9.  Deadman’s KQ suited failed to get there after an intriguing 7-J-T flop, and he finished 3^rd, taking home £21,930.

Heads up, Mansbridge had the chip advantage, and one hand turned it into an insurmountable one for his opponent Martin Holmes.  The bare minimum of chips had gone in until the turn of a Kh-Th-Jd-Kc board, when Holmes’ check-raise prompted a threebet, shove and call, Holmes’ Ks-4d failing to improve beyond the flopped straight (Qs-9d) of Mansbridge.

Now with a 4:1 lead, Mansbridge picked off Holmes with K-7 vs. A-J, spiking a seven which ended the tournament, awarding the £34,830 runner-up prize to Holmes and £50,000 to the London cabbie who came back the day before without bothering to extend his hotel booking, so low was his stack.

Making the final, he still felt no pressure. “I wasn’t nervous – I hadn’t got enough chips to be nervous!”  By the time he’d gone from ten big blind short stack to second place, momentum carried him calmly onwards to the win. 

Expect to see a newly-confident Alan  Mansbridge gracing the London clubs in which he cut his teeth, and perhaps at the next GUKPT event – the Brighton and Dundee Summer Series running from the 11^th-15^th of May.