THE MASTERS 2008

Winner Brendan

2nd John

3rd Paul

4th Jordan

5th Tatter

6th Mike

7th Mark

Venue: Marks


After 12 long months of poker slog the year’s winners gathered together at Mark luxurious cassa to see who would be anointed champ of champs. Fearing that the night might be over quickly, what with the array of normally aggressive players in attendance, it was decided that this would be a relatively (in TPS terms) deep stack game with each player starting with 80 chips. The flurry of expected early all-ins and overbets failed to materialise as the game got off to a cautious start. It wasn’t that long however before Jordan pushed all in against Paul with 2 Aces on the board. A long stand off ensued whilst Paul considered the prospect of either an early bath or an early double up but after much deliberation he folded his straight much to the relief of Jordan who would have only had trips.

Another long deliberation followed this time involving Tatter and Paul when Paul put in a big raise after a low value board with a J and a Q as the only high cards. but Tatter, in an amazing show of discipline folded his pocket Aces- Paul had JQ in his mits and the two pair would have won it.

Host Mark was the first to fall when his KJ lost to another set of Jordan’s trip aces and Brendan and Mike played chip tennis back and forth across the table, seemingly the only two players ever to end up in the pot, but Mike came off the worse only to end up being knocked out by John who’s AQ paired up with the flop. Tatter and Paul then faced off again, this time with Tatter holding pocket Kings only to lose to Paul’s Full House 3’s full 10’s.

Jordan who was playing in a much more reserved style than normal (only going all-in every other hand), managed to make it to fourth place until eventually being kicked to the curb by Brendan with a pair of Queens.

By the time it hit midnight fears of a quick conclusion had disappeared and with the ‘big money’ now to play for the last three of Paul, Brendan and John knuckled down to some serious pokee. Despite his big chip stack going into the final stages Paul was the eventual surprise bronze medallist when his QJ got shafted by Brendan’s two pair of Aces and 10’s. This left John in yet another heads up position and yet again miles behind his opponent as far as chips where concerned, but a few deftly played hands later he was in the lead by a county mile. With the game now entering its 5^th hour of play John could almost taste the victory and decided on a swift resolution, putting Brendan all in on every hand. Alas the poker gods must frown upon such impetuous avidity and John lost every hand. Brendan eventually won the title with A 4 against John 5,6, suited.