In the short handed No Limit Peter Costa was the highest finishing Brit but did not make the final , in fact since Dave Colclough made the last Pot Limit Omaha final the Europeans have not done so well , Noah Boaken managed a 9th in the $2500 Limit Hold-em and AL Ruck of Germany made the final of the $1000 Stud Hi Lo finishing 3rd and has made the second day of the $2000 Stud Hi lo as well , finally however we have another Brit in a final Paul Maxfield who came 2nd here in the $25000 WPT championship is 3rd chip leader in the $1500 Pot Limit Omaha .

The winner of the short handed No Limit was Anthony Reategui who when there were 8 players left was gifted half the chips by the other chip leader Allen Goldstein . Between them they had over 600,000 and the next player had only 114,000 with the lowest stack 15,000 .

Allen raised to 12,000 with 99 and Anthony reraised to 30,000 with QQ , rather than flat call the one player who could break him Allen reraised another 300,000 and was quickly called , he ended up 8th for $25,000 , after this hand Anthony totally ran over the table and won $269,100.

In todays Pot Limit Omaha it became obvious very quickly that you had to play a little faster than normal as in just 2 levels we lost half the field . My table had Kirill Gerasimov and Surinder Sunar and later came Jeff Duval , Paul Maxfield , John Juanda and Neil Channing so not much dead money .

I virtually played no hands in the first level but with a couple of blinds picked up ended up only 150 down when Paul Maxfield joined the table , Surinder was already out and replaced by Jeff Duval who had approx 4000 , Paul had about 2800 when this hand occurred .

I was in the BB with QQ J8 , Kirill limped in as did Alan Boston and Paul , SB completed and we took the flop which was Q 9 5 with two spades , SB and i checked , Kirill bet pot , Alan called and Paul reraised , SB passed i went all in for 1350 , Kirill put his last 250 in and Alan also went all in , Kirill had TJ of spades in his hand for an up and down and flush draw , Alan had A2 of spades for the nut flush draw and Paul had a set of 9's , turn and river were the 7 and 2 of hearts and i was up to 4600 .

Alan had been trying to get knocked out or amass chips as he wanted to play the Stud Hi lo starting at 2pm , on an earlier hand he called a preflop raise with Q 9 T 2 then on the turn with flop showing 2 3 7 6 he went all in for 950 and was called by a player with 6 8 9 T , river was a 2 , maybe things will work out he has made the second day of the Hi Lo with 31 left out of 279 .

One round later and again in the blinds i have 9T K5ds , Jeff raises to 175 and both Paul and I call , flop was 6 J Q rainbow , i have a straight wrap and 2 back door flush draws , Jeff bets out 500 and Paul reraised all in for 1350 , i put Paul on at least top two therefore Jeff either has similar to one of us , if i flat call he may raise to get it heads up with Paul but if i raise i am the one player who can knock him out so hopefully i can achieve that , i reraised and Jeff called .

Paul did have JQ for top two and Jeff had no redraws holding 3 spades but had the higher straight draw holding AK T , neither of us hit , a J fell on the turn to lock up the main pot for Paul and Jeff won the 5000 side pot with AK !

My only alternative was to pass but in this event i feel i made the right play and Jeff obviously had a similar game plan as it is tough to call an all in raise and reraise with his hand . No matter how much you play it is good sometimes to get a second opinion and i asked Dave Colclough what he would have done and he said with the number of players dropping out so fast rather than pass knowing Jeff will call the extra 800 he would have done the same in either of our positions as if i win the pot i could dominate the table in the later levels .

The next arrival on my right was John Juanda with 8000 chips and eventually i was forced to move in when i flopped 2 pair , unfortunately my opponent had a bigger 2 pair .

Many Brits have had successes here already and i am certainly not despondent at 2 blanks from 2 events , i am now fully over jet lag and expect to do well in at least one of the next 9 events i play , to put things in perspective the Hendon Mob have played up to 19 events each and have only cashed 7 times between them with Barny closest to a final .

There have been many new names winning bracelets but i have noticed a statistic that speaks volumes . On the Hendon Mob Database is a record of who has won the most at the WSOP so far , in first place is Alan Cunningham who won the $1500 No Limit for $725,405 , second place T J Cloutier who won the $5000 No Limit for $657,100 and in third Eric Seidel who won the $2000 No Limit for $611,795 , this proves without a doubt that No Limit Hold-em is the game that the true Champions of Poker excell at , it will be interesting to see if this trend continues and i would love to add my name to that list!

My next event will be the $2500 Omaha Hi Lo , i played it once 3 years ago and with 5 tables left was chip leader till i ran into Chris Bjorin with the nut flush to my second nuts ,figured he had the low , i won't make that mistake this time . I think there will be a big field with a lot of inexperienced players playing for half the pot and chasing draws , i hope to capitalise on this .