This is an H1

Handy Andy Hammers Bumper Field at Blackpool GUKPT

The 6^th leg of the 2011 GUKPT found the popular seaside venue with packed tables at both side events and the £1,000 Main Event at the Sandcastle.  The 237-runner £100 event which kicked off the week’s poker festivities was a harbinger of the juicy £262,000 Main Event prizepool which would eventually hand a £72,020 first prize to Andy Peters, the 2011 champion.

Unusually on the modern GUKPT, the Blackpool Main Event was split not into two same-day flights, but subsequent starting days, with 1b being traditionally the better attended.  Still, nearly 100 players stumped up the cash or turned a satellite victory into a Day 1a seat, including the steamroller of (most of) the previous leg Rick Trigg along with its winner Julian Thew, GUKPT stalwarts Peter Wigglesworth, Tim Blake, and Mark Mccluskey plus dangerous veterans like Alli Mallu, Joe Grech and Bambos Xanthos. 

Just 27 of the starting 93 made it through the slow and deep (1 hour clock, 15,000 stack) first starting day, with Terence Owens at their head holding just over 200,000 chips.  Of the previously mentioned pros and regulars giving Day 1a a shot, Rick Trigg ended the day in 5^th position, while Bambos Xanthos lay in 8^th and Peter Wigglesworth towards the lower end of the surviving stacks with 32,400.  Also comfortably stacked were Jack Ellwood and Daniel Corbett (who was to go on to finish 5^th overall).

The overarching story of Day 1b was the double rise of father and son Paul and Ben Jackson to the chip leader and second place spots.  By level 8 they were dominating their own tables and the field, the former a long-time pro with over $1.3 million in tournament winnings, the latter an up-and-coming live player in his own right.  Ben’s previous biggest live cash had been at GUKPT Coventry where he won the £300 side event for £7,910, a record he smashed with his eventual runner up finish.

The starting field of 167 made Day 1b one of the busiest on the calendar this year, and it was liberally peppered with seasoned players.  The 2010 GUKPT Leaderboard winner Dave Johnson was in attendance, as was the current 2011 leader Steve Vigor, along with Mickey Wernick, Matt Perrins, triple-crown holder Jake Cody, Ash Hussain, Rupinder Bedi and Stuart Fox.  The players were seemingly unfazed by the quality of the opposition and the action heated up right from the first level.  The field devoured itself leaving just 44 remaining at the end of the day, led by Trevor Reardon with 161,900, chased closely by Barry Grime and Ben Jackson. 

Jackson the Elder went on to be eliminated on Day 2 (racing AK vs. the QQ of Mark Livesey) with around 50 players remaining, but Young Jackson, at the opposite extreme of the spectrum, continued riding high.  His chip leader status at the dinner break was clearly something he wasn’t keen to relinquish – although he wasn’t in immediate danger since 2^nd place Andy Peters had 60,000 fewer chips – and he continued busting players left and right until securing his final table spot with 580,500, a whisker in front of Mark Physick and Daniel Corbett.

One of those who fell to the relentless Jackson was very unfortunate (but much shorter stacked) qualifier Arkadiusz Sinkiewicz, who’d come all the way from Poland to finish on the bubble in 26^th place when his Kings were cracked by Jackson’s flushing 9-6 of hearts. 

Once in the money, the pace of elimination slowed for what seemed like the first time on Day 2, as first Steve Brown, then Ash Hussain and Paul Bracken doubled up.  Andy Peters, too, received a crucial double through Dave Johnson, who was soon thereafter eliminated (15^th for £2,620) at the hands of newly-stacked Bracken.  Interestingly, this was a match-up between two previous GUKPT Blackpool champions, only one of whom would have a shot at a double title.

A three-way all in bumped up Mark Physick to a healthy 230,000 stack when his pocket sevens held against two big slicks.  Physick, now in with a real shot at the top spots, made the final in excellent shape after eliminating both Barry Grimes in 12^th place (£3,280) and Jeff Hemmerman in 11^th.  It seemed as though he merely pressed ‘pause’ overnight, as when the ten-handed final commenced he was instantly in the thick of the action, nearly doubling his stack to a million chips within the first level.  He also sent the first finalist to the rail in the form of Jamie O’Connor who was forced by shortness of stack to get it in preflop with T-9 (against, as it turned out, A-6).

Ben Jackson, meanwhile, appeared to have lost the golden ticket he’d seemed to have on Day 2, dropping to under 300,000 as he doubled up Dan Corbett.  He could only watch while Physick took a hefty lead seven-handed.  Adrian Eley had finished in 9^th place (winning £5,240) and Jack Ellwood in 8^th (£7,200) and Jackson’s tournament was on the line next – all in blind-on-blind with 9-9 vs. the Q-J suited of Physick.  His pair held up, as did the 8-8 of Dan Corbett shortly afterwards.  Corbett busted Mark Livesey in 7^th place (£8,910) whose A-J similarly failed to hit.

Exciting though the prospect of a second title at the same venue may have been for Bracken, he couldn’t quite pull it off, falling in 6^th place as a missed-flush bluff on the river was picked off by Corbett holding a set of deuces.  He took home £11,530 for his efforts, however must have been disappointed not to join the likes of Julian Thew and Priyan de Mel as a multiple title-holder.

It was then Dan Corbett’s turn in the move-making driver’s seat, four-bet shoving preflop with J-4 of hearts after Mark Physick had repopped him luring in Jackson for good measure.  Physick snapped him off with A-9 (same suit) and somehow picked up a giant pot to keep him in the running for the trophy.

The quietest player on the table up until this point had been Rupinder Bedi, a man with a succession of deep tournament runs under his belt in the last two years.  Even he couldn’t resist a good spot for a steal holding the reasonable K-8 (he was now the shortest stack) but Andy Peters woke up with pocket tens and was not folding, even to the tight-seeming Bedi.  This meant Bedi was 4^th (winning £19,000) while the stacks came as close to level as they’d been all day, Physick ahead of his rivals by just 200,000. 

Three-handed it was Ben Jackson who took the lead, picking up many of those now huge blinds and winning a hand at showdown against Andy Peters.  Peters then found himself in the excellent situation of holding Jacks on the button at the same time as Mark Physick found a three-bet all in from the big blind with A-2.  No help for Physick and after a great two days he found himself on the rail in 3^rd, having won £31,440. 

This elimination left a newly-revitalised Peters heads up with the chip lead against Jackson.  The latter fought back, drawing level and then, without any major confrontations, surging ahead.  Peters then clawed back to even, and this game, heading towards midnight, could have gone either way. 

In fact it went to Peters, who picked up his second deadly pair of Jacks, beating Jackson’s threes all in preflop to hand him the title and £72,020 while Jackson must surely have found some consolation in his £47,820 second place prize.   Put that alongside his £20,980 win in the £500 freezeout earlier in the week and Jackson nearly equals the mighty cash of the eventual Blackpool Champion himself.