This is an H1

Daniel Haglund from Tibro in Sweden has taken down GUKPT Walsall 2012, winning £45,100 and finishing his first GUKPT event as the last man standing.  Runner-up was GUKPT regular Steve Holden, who qualified for the £1,000 Main Event for just £10, and turned a Day 2 short stack into a run for his first Main Tour title.

Leg 2 took place at the G Casino, Walsall with a full range of side events and cash games circling the £1,000 Main Event which ran from the 16^th-18^th March.  Three levels of late registration meant a steady increase in players after kick-off taking advantage of the relaxed entry timing (and 20,000 starting stack) to swell numbers to a total of 153 entrants. 

Many of the UK’s top tournament players and prior GUKPT champions tried their hand at Walsall’s Main Event, but the likes of Chaz Chattha, Julian Thew, Dan Carter, Jeff Kimber, Sunny Chattha, Jerome Bradpiece and Stuart Fox all found themselves on the rail before the curtain fell on the first day.

GUKPT Leg 1 winner Lewis Hunter also reappeared at the felt in Walsall, unmissable in a lurid pink and blue striped cloth sombrero due to a lost prop bet.  He sneaked into Day 2 as one of the shortest stacks, but was not to repeat his performance in Manchester, finishing outside the money like all the other previous champions.

It was Chris Gavriel who led the field at the start of Day 2; his stack of 170,375 was more than four times the average.  His momentum held all the way to the final table, but for sheer stack growth on the second day it was Steve Holden who wins the ribbon (and did, in fact, eventually win a hefty £31,750 prize for finishing as runner-up).  With just over a 20,000 starting stack in the early stages of Day 2, his rise to dominance came late, after Suketu Patel, Dave Clark and Sam Grafton had already begun to rise up the ranks.

Holden busted player after player, hitting a flush to eliminate Matthew Perry and spiking a nine against Balwant Mistry’s all-in pocket Queens to add to what was already becoming a formidable stack.  By the time the bubble rolled around, only Swedish youngster Dan Haglund had gathered a larger stack.  It came about after a preflop raising war against Chun Law ended in favour of his K-T - Law’s pocket Jacks were no good after a K on the turn.  In the same unlucky near-miss boat was actual bubble boy Priyesh Jani, whose A-K was outdrawn by Simon Deadman’s A-Q.

Big Slick proved more reliable for Chris Gavriel once in the money, however. He took down a huge pot, busting Suketu Patel who’d made a stand with A-T and regaining the top spot he’d held at the start of the day.  The battle for a final table position now took less than a level as Sam Grafton (making his 4^th GUKPT final table appearance), Jonny Z, Pete ‘the Bandit’ Evens’ and finally Chun Law and Anthony Gaughan hit the rail.  All but 10^th place Gaughan (£2,650) took home £2,300 for their efforts in the Main Event.

Play paused overnight with the chips unevenly distributed, Steve Holden at the top:

Steve Holden - 683,000
Chris Gavriel - 603,600
Daniel Haglund - 456,800
Martin Holmes - 356,300
Simon Deadman - 309,700
Terry Owens - 239,000
Arulmaran Sivaguru - 201,500
Dave Clark - 137,800
Jonathan McCann - 82,400

For Day 3, GUKPT pro Stuart Rutter joined Phil ‘The Tower’ Heald on the live stream analysing the action as it happened.  Rutter himself had been one of the very first players out of the Main Event back on Day 1, but presented the fast-paced final with enthusiasm and aplomb as the rich got richer and the five shorter stacks were the first to hit the rail.

Simon Deadman, 9^th place finisher (£3,060), deserves an honourable mention for his consistency in large-scale Main Events – Walsall was his third GUKPT final table (including a 4^th place finish at the 1,765-runner Goliath).  Following Deadman, Arulmaran Sivaguru and Jonathan McCann both took shots at doubling up by moving in preflop, but both of their races were won by opponents.  Sivaguru won £4,210 for his 8^th place finish, while McCann took home £5,740 for 7^th.

The early stages of the final table were active ones for Chris Gavriel, but his fight for the trophy ended abruptly in a hand that propelled Dan Haglund up just behind Steve Holden with over a million chips.  Gavriel flat called Haglund’s preflop raise with pocket Queens, only to find Terry Owens moving all in and Haglund making the same decision.  He called all in and found himself in good shape against the young Swede’s A-T and the 8-8 of Owens – but an Ace on the flop changed everything and removed a third of the remaining finalists in one blow.  Shorter stacked Owens finished 6^th (£7,720) while Gavriel took 5^th (£9,560) – not the result he’d been hoping for since his rise to dominance on Day 1, but a good payday nonetheless.

Dave Clark, desperately needing to double up to be in with a shot at the title, moved in when he found a preflop Ace – twice – and both times was called by a dominating one.  He survived his first all-in with a chop, but Dan Haglund won the second and Clark exited in 4^th place (£12,240).  Martin Holmes, now also a short stack, got it in with A-9 vs. the Q-J of Haglund, but did not survive a Queen on the flop, taking home £19,980 for 3^rd place.

Heads up play was divided by a 40-minute dinner break, but even so was a swift affair despite Haglund and Holden starting out with nearly even stacks.  Although their battle started out as small-pot poker, when a rare preflop three-bet from Haglund came about in the second hour of play, Holden announced “all in” and, called, tabled 4-4, up against 9-9.  The board declined to save the underpair, and Holden, a frequent casher on the tour, had to content himself with 2^nd place (£31,750), narrowly missing out on a seat in the 2012 Champion of Champions event – a tournament in which he also finished 2^nd back in 2010 netting himself a bonus £31,125.

Dan Haglund, a predominately online player from Sweden, modestly said that he, “Ran pretty good,” and having made the final, didn’t spend too long thinking about his strategy.  “I wasn’t thinking too much, to be honest,” he admitted to Phil ‘The Tower’ Heald live online, “I just tried to play decent poker and hoped to run OK!”  It’s not the first time this has happened: Haglund already has a cash at EPT San Remo and a World Series final table under his belt.

Although Haglund was not sure when his next appearance on the GUKPT circuit might be, the next events on the tour will be bound to appeal to more online players from across the country and beyond – new £500 +£50 Deepstack and 6-max Main Events will be held in April in Stockton and Thanet respectively.  See the ‘Events’ tab for further details.