My opponent was a young confident Canadian Charles Mailhot , i had looked him up on a database and found his best result was a second at last years Masterclassics in Amsterdam , great i thought he lost when heads up lol .

We started with 5000 in chips and blinds were 50 100 then increase each hour to a max of 150 300 after 3 hours , in my bracket not one game went to the 150 300 level , mine was the longest at 2 hours 26 minutes .

Basically Charles played a game i easily adapted to , after some slow early play , he raised most times he had the button but made the mistake of allowing me to limp and see too many flops .

During the first level he had a rush of hands and hit a couple of river cards that saw him enjoy a 7400 to 2600 chip lead , i never felt under pressure as i've been here before and twice i got back level before finally taking a lead on a couple of decisive pots .

I found early on that he respected my raises so when i had TT and AQ i only won the blinds , i therefore decided to slow play big hands to trap , this backfired on me once when i limped with 99 to his 9T and he flopped a T and waited till the river to bet .

The key hand that got me back to level was 73o , i limped in the SB and he checked , flop was A 7 7 , both checked , turn was a T , he bet 275 and i raised to 550 , he reraised 1000 more and i moved in for 2400 total and he passed for the extra 1400 .

The other key hand that got me the lead for the first time was 45s , i called a raise and the flop was 6 7 8 with two clubs , he bet and i flat called for 300 , turn was the 2 of spades giving me a flush draw to go with my straight , he bet 1000 and i moved in , he passed , there were too many draws on the turn to play the hand slow .

Once i took a lead i could see he was under pressure , twice he raised and i reraised and he passed , he started to throw hands in the SB , i had decided to limp with many hands waiting for an opportunity , this came quite quickly in the third level , i made up the BB to 200 and Charles raised to 700 , i called with KJo , flop was K 5 2 rainbow , Charles checked and i deliberately overbet for 2000 , Charles moved in for a total of 3400 and i called , he held KT and with no T i was through to the second round . He said i couldn't put you on a King .

This was a good one to win especially coming from virtually a 3 - 1 deficit and i will now be playing Albert Alshamn a big internet cash player who disposed with Luca Pagani in less than an hour today so will be full of confidence , could be interesting !