Steve Bayliff Wins APAT Welsh Online Championship

Bayliff: APAT Welsh Online Champion

The first Online Championship event of APAT’s fourth season featured a high quality field and provided a final table packed with some long standing APAT members.

One hundred and forty four players entered the APAT Welsh Online Poker Championship. The $50 buy in gave them all a shot at a $2,500 first prize, Championship title, Gold Medal and an entry to a £1,070 buy in Grosvenor UK Poker Tour event. As normal in Championship events, players started with a 10,000 chip deep-stack and 15 minute blinds.

Within fifteen minutes of the start we had already lost one player as ‘Robmc01’ had fallen foul to the kings full of jacks of ‘Miiiiiikeee’ and after four and a half hours of play, ’Roscopiko’ burst the final table bubble and exited in tenth place. This left the final table line up as follows:

Ayendell (256k)
Adidap (249k)
Squirrel69 (204k)
Marmite3465 (200k)
Bobyrabit (137k)
Suzy666 (131k)
Thinker28 (129k)
CH3LS3A (68k)
SJW1970 (53k)

The first exit on the final table saw ‘SJW1970’ depart in 9th place. Short stacked to start with, the rivered straight of ‘adidap’ won the all-in pre-flop pot, moving ‘adidap’ to over 300k.

‘Bobyrabit’ finished in 8th place as the action continued, with most three-bets were enough to take down the early pots. ‘Squirrel69’ then doubled through off of ‘adidap’ when pocket jacks won the coin-flip against AQ. Those chips didn’t last long for ‘Squirrel69’ as next hand ‘CH3LS3A’ got the same result when 77 came up against AQ of ‘Squirrel69’.

Out in 7th place was ‘Ayendell’ who had lost over half their stack on an earlier coin-flip and was now the short-stack. ‘CH3LS3A’ raised it to 25k, ‘Ayendell’ shoved all-in from the big blind and ‘CH3LS3A’ made the call. A flopped straight was more than enough for ‘CH3LS3A’, leaving ‘Ayendell’ drawing dead.

Down to six players, and by far the quietest player on the table had been ‘Thinker28’. He had played aggressively leading up to the final table and made the most of the bubble situation to build his short stack. He got his double up when his AK came up against the AJ of ‘Squirrel69’ and the flop of TKK sent him up to 240k.

The short-stacked ‘Squirrel69’ then calls the 30k bet of ‘marmite3465’ from the big blind and finds their AQ in good shape against the K2 of ‘marmite3465’. However a deuce on the flop is enough to finish ‘Squirrel69’s game in 6th place.

With five players left, the chipleader was ‘marmite3465’, who had 650k of the 1.4m of chips in play. Quietly going about his business, he had built up the stack gradually. With the blinds at 10k/20k/2k, the action was becoming quick. ‘CH3LS3A’ min raised and was called by ‘adidap’ in the big blind. On a flop of QAJ, ‘adidap’ goes all-in and eventually gets called by ‘CH3LS3A’. The A3 of ‘adidap’ was enough to knock out ‘CH3LS3A’ and his Q9 in 5th place.

A few hands later and ‘marmite3465’ is raising up the pot with a 4 and a 5. The King Ten of ‘Thinker28’ was looking good until the river card completes a straight for ‘marmite3465’ and ‘Thinker28’ departed in 4th place.

The three way battle saw chip stacks fluctuate dramatically, eventually ‘suzy666’ who had been chipleader earlier in the tournament, went all-in with King Jack and got a caller in ‘marmite3465’ with Ace Eight. An ace on the flop meant that ‘suzy666’ finished in 3rd place, collecting the bronze medal.

Heads Up, ‘marmite3465’ had a 2:1 chiplead over ‘adidap’. Both players had gone all-in a few times before a hand where ‘adidap’ raised from the small blind. ‘marmite3465’ went all-in, putting ‘adidap’s tournament live on the line and after a short pause, he makes the call.

‘marmite3465’ showed A3, whilst ‘adidap’ showed A2. The hand had split pot written all over it, but it wasn’t to be for ‘adidap’, as the three on the flop meant that he finished in 2nd place and picks up the silver medal.

That meant ‘marmite3465’ took the APAT Welsh Online title for this season, along with the gold medal and GUKPT added value seat.

Peers: Welsh Online Omaha Champion

The final prize allocation was as follows:-

1st – marmite3465 – $2,160 – Gold Medal – APAT Welsh Online Title
2nd – adidap – $1,440 – Silver Medal
3rd – suzy666 – $857 – Bronze Medal
4th – Thinker28 – $576
5th – CH3LS3A – $468
6th – Squirrel69 – $360
7th – Ayendell – $252
8th – bobyrabit – $187
9th – SJW1970 – $122

The top three players were Season 2 Online Rankings winner Steve Bayliff (‘marmite3465’), from Liverpool, Paul Haycock (‘adidap’), from Kenilworth and Suzanne Hayward (‘suzy666’), from Bristol.

Elsewhere, the Pot Limit Omaha Championship had 82 competitors and was won by Chris Peers (‘gomarrahh’), with Linda Iwaniak (‘linsiwan1’) taking Silver and Pete Rodgers (‘Buck Pete’) taking Bronze. In addition to the Welsh PLO title & Gold medal, Chris won $492 and an APAT Professional League seat.