Ben Young: World Amateur Poker Champion

The prestigious World Championship of Amateur Poker (WCOAP) has concluded at Europe’s premier poker club; Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham.

Players came from all over Europe and further afield to compete for the 7 Championship titles and every event was sold out.

Ben Young took the blue riband World Amateur Poker Championship main event, outlasting a 425 runner field to take home the £9,000 first prize plus a seat in the GUKPT Grand Final worth £2,700 courtesy of APAT sponsors Betfair Poker. Heads up play was an all Welsh affair with Young seeing off Stephen Roderick after 20 minutes of two-handed play. The final hand virtually played itself with Young claiming the title after his flush beat Roderick’s set.

In addition to the Main Event there were a number of other titles up for grabs in Nottingham. Dave Howard took the heads up championship, beating Germany’s Michael Koenig in the final with Ian Thompson taking the Stud championship beating David Llewellyn heads up. Colin Young pipped Andy Overton to the six-max No Limit Hold’em title with Dutchman Max Kruis taking down the PLO event after beating Craig Johnson.

Wales: World Amateur Poker Team Champions

The Welsh contingent took the prestigious World Amateur Team Championship, beating Canada in an extremely tight finish by only a single point. Northern Ireland finished third, just a point ahead of the fourth placed finishers from Spain. France were fifth with Holland taking sixth place.

England’s Paul Pitchford secured an unprecedented second consecutive ‘Player of the Championship’ award by virtue of fourth and seventh places finishes in two WCOAP side events. Paul will represent APAT and sponsor Betfair at the World Series of Poker Europe later in September.

The next APAT event takes place in Dublin on 24th & 25th of September when the Irish Amateur Poker Championships takes place. Qualifiers are up and running at Betfair Poker.

Bristol Poker Club Captain Suzanne Hayward

Bristol Poker Club; under captain Suzanne Hayward, have won Division One of the APAT National Online Poker League. At the end of a ten match season, only one match point separated Bristol from runners up Cardiff and 2009 Champions Walsall. South London, Glasgow and Leeds were relegated to Division Two. Four members of the Bristol team will now go forward to represent APAT in the GUKPT Champion of Champions Tournament later in the year.

Division Two was won by Solent Poker Club, by one match point from Stockton-on-Tees with Birmingham in third. All three clubs have won promotion to Division One. Brighton, Dundee and North London Poker Clubs have been relegated to Division Three.  Sunderland Poker Club took the Division Three title and will be joined in Division Two next season by Luton and Nottingham.

Four members of the successful Solent club will play in the APAT Professional League in Nottingham in August, while four members of the Sunderland club will play in the World Amateur Championship main event in Nottingham in August.

For a full summary of a dramatic last night in the League, read the seasonal review with comments, in the forum.

National Online League Seasonal Review

As with all APAT Online Championship events, players started with a 10,000 chip deep-stack and 15 minute blinds.

As the bubble burst, and ‘cashman00’ finished in 10th place, we were left with a usual high class and experienced APAT final table.

The final table lined up as follows:

staffieboy1 (231k)
totalpants (79k)
kazzka (68k)
Walwyn (93k)
claw1975 (64k)
adidap (54k)
CAVALLO22 (42k)
TONYTRIPPSS (82k)
slaterboy (33k)

With blinds at 1.5k/3k/300, it didn’t take long for a clash of players.

‘slaterboy’ ,makes a move with AQ, and got looked up by ‘claw1975’ with pocket three’s. The three’s are good and ‘slaterboy’ finished in 9th place.

Finishing in 8th place was ‘Walwyn’ who ran into the flush of ‘adidap’. These two had clashed in an earlier hand when ‘Walwyn’ was holding Q7 against the pocket kings of ‘adidap’. On a queen high flop, the chips went in. Another queen on the turn looked good for ‘Walwyn’, but a king on the river gave ‘adidap’ a much needed double up.

A few hands later, and ‘adidap’ was receiving another double up, this time courtesy of ‘staffieboy1’. Kings versus Jacks, and ‘adidap’ was very glad to see another jack fall on the river.

Next to get in the action was ‘claw1975’. She raised it up to 10k, and ‘kazzka’ shoved allin for 34k in total. ‘claw1975’ insta calls and shows pocket jacks, up against A8. The jack on the turn ended the hand and meant ‘kazzka’ exited in 7th place.

Another of the shortstacks made their move. ‘CAVALLO22’ shoved allin for 30k, and was called by ‘adidap’. K5 v AQ, meaning the AQ was just ahead, but by the time the board had brought two more aces and another queen, ‘CAVALLO22’ departed in 6th place.

Blinds were now upto 2k/4k/400 and there was plenty of action between ‘adidap’ and ‘totalpants’, but the next player to exit was the chipleader when the final table started. Allin preflop with pocket eights, ‘staffieboy1’ was up against the AJ of ‘adidap’. An ace on the turn was enough, ‘adidap’ continued his good run, and ‘staffieboy1’ finished in 5th place.

Soon after, ‘claw1975’ made a move from the button with Q9, and was called by ‘adidap’ from the small blind holding pocket fives. The fives held, even though after a flop and turn of A88 6, ‘claw1975’ had plenty of outs, and ‘claw1975’ exited in 4th place.

Down to three players, the chipstacks were, adidap-476k, totalpants-182k, TONYTRIPPSS-90k.

‘TONYTRIPPSS’ was having a very quiet final table, but early on got a double up with AJ v A7 of ‘adidap’
A few hands later though, and the roles were reversed when he ran his A3 into the AK of ‘totalpants’ and ‘TONYTRIPPS’ finished in 3rd place for another bronze medal for the APAT regular.

It was another short heads up, after a few small tussles, blinds were 4k/8k/800 and ‘adidap’ had a small chiplead. The players then clashed pre flop. ‘totalpants’ had pocket queens, and ‘adidap’ had AJ. The chips were in the middle and the cards would decide the fate of these two players. An ace on the flop put ‘adidap’ in a strong position, and when the river card had fallen, and not shown one of the two remaining queens, ‘totalpants’ would finish in 2nd place and collect the silver medal.

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

The final prize allocation was as follows:-

1st – adidap– $1,125 – Gold Medal – APAT Northern European Online Title
2nd – totalpants– $750 – Silver Medal
3rd – TONYTRIPPSS– $450 – Bronze Medal
4th –claw1975– $375
5th – staffieboy1 – $300
6th – CAVALLO22– $244
7th – kazzka– $206
8th – Walwyn– $169
9th – slaterboy– $131

The top 18 players received Online Championship ranking points.

The top three players were Paul Haycock (‘adidap’), Jason Jones (‘totalpants’) and Tony Trippier (‘TONYTRIPPSS’).

The Pot Limit Omaha event saw 44 players start the tournament, each with 5,000 chips, aiming to take down the Northern European PLO title and gold medal, in addition to the $352 first prize and added value of an APAT Professional League Seat.

The event was won by Charles Mason (‘StoneCLM’), with James Barber (‘ninjaHooOOo’) in silver medal position and Linda Iwaniak (‘linziwan1’) finishing with the bronze medal.

The APAT World Online Championships will be played at Betfair Poker on Friday 23rd July – Sunday 25th July commencing at 8.00pm each day.

Courtesy of Betfair the winner of the Championship wins an entry to a GUKPT main event as part of an overall sponsorship package where APAT members have the chance to win thirty three seats to GUKPT main events and twenty three seats to APAT Professional League tournaments. In addition, each of the season’s seventy five amateur, professional and online tournaments are run completely registration free for players.

In addition, the winners of the Online and National Amateur Rankings will join the 17 Amateur Champions from season four and the player with the most points finishes across Amateur and Online events, to compete in the APAT Champions Final, to play for a second APAT £20,000 sponsorship package in 2011.

In the Professional League Event James Edwards from Wolverhampton beat Don Roberts of Surrey to the Victory with the other cashers being local player Eddie Gaines and James Eccles.

In the Amateur event approximately half the field were players from Aberdeen, Dundee and surrounding areas with the other half regular APAT players who had travelled to the event. In Day One action the key hand occurred in the last level where Shug Cairnie found Aces, with two players both holding Kings beside him, namely Scott Wilson and Blair Chalmers and all three were all-in pre-flop. A flop containing the other two Aces to give Cairnie Quads propelled him to the end of Day Chip leader as follows:

Shug Cairnie 138,800
Scott Maxwell 95,300
Omeed Farzin 90,500
Kevin Wallace 77,000
Neil Petrie 75,000

Day Two began with 24 players remaining and 13 paid. As well as the overnight chip-leaders the player making the most progress on the run down to the final table was Donegal’s Timothy Boyle who hit a number of hands and won several “50-50″ confrontations. Elsewhere Scott Wilson was always comfortably placed, helped by hitting Quad Fours to eliminate his opponent on one hand.

The final table chip counts were as follows:

1 Kris Buckley from Aberdeen 176,000
2 Jack Prime from Leicester 98,500
3 Kevin Wallace from Dundee 197,000
4 William Hanratty from Aberdeen 49,000
5 Timothy Boyle from Donegal 239,000
6 Scott Wilson from Edinburgh 167,200
7 Shug Cairnie from Dundee 191,000
8 David Blacklaw from Whitburn 111,800
9 Omeed Farzin from Aberdeen 51,500

William Hanratty was first out, King-Ten losing a race against Scott Wilson’s Pocket Nines, followed by the other short-stack Omeed Farzin. Farzin ran Pocket Sevens into Wilson’s Pocket Queens.

Scott Wilson was by far the most aggressive player at the table, wielding his large stack with effect. After Timothy Boyle had suffered a few setbacks at his hands he took Queen-Jack Suited against Wilson’s Ace-Jack. The better hand held and Wilson was in a commanding position.

In sixth we lost Kris Buckley, Sixes against Wilson’s Ace-Jack, Ace on the flop. Inevitably a few of the other runners were by now short-stacked and in fifth departed David Blacklaw, button-shoving with a suited connector and missing against Kevin Wallace’s Ace in the blinds. Wallace then won a big race against Cairnie with King-Queen against Pocket Nines.

Three handed Prime and Wallace trailed Wilson, but with plenty of play any of the three were still potential winners. Eventually Wilson called in the blinds to a Prime raise, flopped the second nut flush draw and hit on the turn, check-calling Prime’s push to knock him out in third.

Heads up Wilson had a three-to-one chip lead and the battle only lasted two hands. Wallace with King-Jack, Wilson with Ace-King, which held to give him the tournament victory.

So Eighteen year old Scott Wilson from Edinburgh became the 2010 Scottish Amateur Poker Champion winning £3,000 and a GUKPT seat courtesy of Betfair Poker. APAT now moves on to Tallinn, Estonia for the Northern European Amateur Championships in July, followed by the World Championship of Amateur Poker at DTD in Nottingham in August. Details of both these events and how to become a member of APAT can be found on www.apat.com.