Genting Poker Series Leg 2 – London

Although I was never in doubt that the GPS Leg 2 in London was going to be the most popular stop of the Genting Poker Series, still I would have not have predicted it to be a total sell out!!

Genting Poker Series580 players entered the main tournament, which created a whopping prize pool of 232k and a sweet 50k for the winner:) Not a bad pay for a weekend’s work!

Daiva Barauskaite

I decided to play day 1 a – Wednesday and was in high spirits when heading to the Fox. It’s my favourite poker club in London where I spend the most time and usually end up playing 7pm daily tournaments. The staff and players alike are very friendly there and welcoming and even if you are a new member you would be made to feel at ease.

Day 1a attracted 143 runners and the place was buzzing with excitement & familiar faces. I needed to get through at least 100 of them in order to make it to the day 2. My plan was pretty simple for this ; with 25k starting stack & 1 hour levels in place I was going to avoid huge pots with potential flips and concentrate on post-flop play instead.

My first major pot I got involved in was with 8h,9h. I believe it was a second level of the day, with 50/100 blinds.

I raised it up UTG and received a 3bet from a player in late position. So far my table notes on this particular player were nothing out of line; he played a few hands, had a tendency to continue with the goods after the flop and I haven’t seen him bluffing yet. So then I received a re-raise from him at that point in time, I was pretty sure he had a genuine hand.

Baltic BlondeI decided to stick around and see the flop with a good hand to bust a biggie, so I called. The flop brought Kh,Qh,4h and I decided to check for deception with my made flush.

The guy seemed to be happy with the board and very quickly made a decent size continuation bet. I called.

The turn was a 5 of clubs and a good card for me. I checked again with an intention to make him feel like I was on a drawing hand like J,10 or Ace of hearts.

He put in the second barrel which I flatted again. The river was kind to me and brought an irrelevant 3s.

I was pretty confident I had the best hand then, of course unless he 3bet me pre-flop with Jh10h or Ah10h, but considering the type player he was and the fact that I raised UTG and had pretty tight image at the time, it was very unlikely.

I was also pretty certain that he had AK, KK or QQ and needed to extract max value from this. I decided to bet around 80%-90%, which was a very polarised bet considering the texture of the board – it’s either I had the goods or a missed draw.

I was in for a big surprise though, when my opponent after some thought decided to move all in for an extra 18k. I called and was in for an early double up when he tabled AK for a top pair.

From there on I never looked back and continued on building my stack without premium hands. I made the dinner break with a little above average in chips and maybe I could have done even better if Chuck Clark (who is a very good, aggressive player) was not sitting on my left;)

It was a fun table whilst it lasted but I was off to do some damage on a feature table after the break;)

Poker kitteh tinks u be bluffin

In one of the hands I ended up taking down a big pot on the river when representing a made flush and subsequently forcing the guy to fold the best hand.

It stimulated some lively debate once people found out what I had from the delayed online stream. Maybe a bit too lively at one point…!

Apart from that it was all going to plan and I even managed to get aces for the first time and knock out Charles Chatta with them before the last level of the night.

I have easily made it to the day two and was looking forward to coming back on Saturday to fight further for the title.

I had my parents over from Lithuania that weekend so me going deep in this tournament and winning would have really meant a lot, especially with them being able to come to the Fox to watch it live and rail for me.

No such luck tho! Day 2 of the main event started with 170 players and although I was in a good shape with my 40bb stack, I was running pretty bad from the very start.

I lost my first pot when calling a short stack’s (8bb) all in with Qd,Jd from the big blind just to see him tabling Ad,Kd. Sigh.. Then I missed couple of draws and also had to fold a small pocket pair when 3 overcards showed up on the flop…not much was going my way. The next few hours saw little improvement in both cards and spots and I was scrapping to stay alive.

I was getting no premium cards and was just looking for good spots to make some chips. In the end I made a yet another move and ran into a genuine hand for an exit -117th/572.

Needless to say I was pretty disappointed with the result, but most importantly happy with my play, that’s what count the most I guess… with a bit more traction, and run-good -I go pretty deep.

Big congratulations to Albert Sapiano who ended up shipping the tourney and taking 50k for his efforts and very well done to all GPS Leg 2 organisers and attendees who made this event a huge success!

Next stop is Edinburgh and I look forward to seeing you all there 😉