APAT.com Live Event Number 2 - Aspers Newcastle

by Mel Lofthouse 11th December 2006

Our first event for APAT held at the Broadway was a roaring success, so in my eyes event 2 has to follow just the same!

I drove to Newcastle the day before the event on the Friday, checked into the hotel and then walked up to Aspers Casino (The Gate, Newcastle). I went for their evening freeze out tournament, but when I got there, found it to be already full as their usual capacity of 210 had to be chopped to 100 as their was a Christmas party about to be in full swing.

Aspers have 2 of the new “Pokerpro” machines which are in effect a great idea to somebody who’s only really played on the internet, but to a seasoned cash game player (i.e. someone like me who likes the feel of chips and cards and chatting to people at a poker table) it's not a great concept. It’s more like playing online and the beats are the same, whilst I was there a straight flush was dealt and you don’t see many of them.

Our tournament was due to start at 2pm on the Saturday but 210 newly registered people to Aspers we anticipated that it was better to start at 2.30pm so that they could all get registered on time. Bang on 2.30pm, Tikay and all 210 runners did a countdown timer from 10 to 1....."Shuffle up and deal".

We had sold all our seats to the tournament about 4 weeks before the event and could have probably sold about 200 more. Our event is a 10k chips and 40mins clock 25/50, 50/100, 75/150, 100/200 etc, so encourages creative play early on in the event.

First person out was after just 3 mins and 25 seconds a guy who had run his AK into Aces but had a flush draw too. However he wasn’t to know the aces would have hit nut flush.

The 1st and 2nd rulings were identical. They were on different tables but within about 3 minutes of each other. Basically the scenario was that one person raised, the rest all folded around to the original raiser. The original raiser had thrown his cards to the dealer and dealer had mucked all cards, however there was a person to speak who’s cards were still live and still to take action, so the person with the live cards after making the appropriate action won the pot. It's an easy mistake to make, and I don’t think that the people involved will make the same mistake twice.

Level 14 which was the last level of the day and which surprised me and my colleagues was that from 210 runners we only had 24 runners coming back to day 2.

Day 2 started and 24 runners to 20 runners only took an hour.  I asked dealers to stop dealing as we were breaking for 2 tables, but a dealer didn’t hear me and 2 players had got involved in a hand however the hand shouldn’t have been played in the first instance and the hand had to be voided and chips given back to players.

20 runners down to 10 runners and final table took longer than I had anticipated.

·    Leon Rossiter (Liverpool) -- 237,000
·    Max Ward (Manchester) -- 135,500
·    Tom Hunter (Birkenhead) -- 141,500
·    David Groom (Scarborough) -- 123,000
·    Ben Passantino (Worcester) -- 310,500
·    Steve Lacey (Gosport) -- 212,000
·    Ray Norton (Wallsend) -- 354,500
·    Adam Spratt (Cambridge) -- 269,000
·    Steve Talbot (Blackburn) -- 169,000
·    Vicky Glynn (Edinburgh) -- 160,000

The heads up was a cagey battle between Steve Lacey and Max Ward and chip leads were going back and forth. The final hand was Max Ward’s A3 v Steve Lacey’s A10  for the 3 to hit the flop.

It was a great battle between the players and good luck to Max Ward who in addition to winning £3750 but also received a seat to the World Series of Poker 2007. Not bad for a £75 entry fee!

See you all at Event 3 which will be announced in the next few weeks

Merry Xmas and a Prosperous New Year to you all!

Mel Lofthouse