Well i finished 29th of 158 outlasting the other three but still out of the 16 that got paid so the ribbing will continue.

I actually had a chance until a period of dead hands and one setback .

Starting with 10,000 , after a very quiet start i waited patiently for a premium hand and eventually was rewarded with AA which arrived to keep me around average with 14,000 then came my biggest pot of the day which i will describe fully to give you the chance to see if you think i could have got more.

There had been a FP raise , having seen no hands let alone a pair for an hour i looked down at 22 in the cutoff and decided to take the raiser on in the hope he had AK , i called hoping for a favourable flop , the button passed but the SB called , didn't want to take on two but maybe the flop will be good.

It doesn't get much better , flop was A 6 2 with two spades , the SB went all in for 5500 , now the preflop raiser counted out the call and if he had AK i was expecting a reraise to get me out for heads up , obviously i was going nowhere , i assumed the SB had flat called with AQ or even A6s preflop , but now the original raiser just called , i now put him on the flush draw and decided to reraise for a side pot , he passed saying he had AT ! The SB had the flush draw with KJs but missed . I thought about this for a while afterwards wondering if i should have flatcalled and maybe he would have pushed on the turn , but he only had 8,000 left and i thought was pot committed.

Anyway this pot gave me momentum and i quickly went up to 40,000 chips in great shape . The next time i called with a pair preflop in late position i yet again flopped a set but it cost me half my chips . There was no raise and two off the button i called with 66 , the SB made up the BB and 4 of us saw the flop of 4 5 6 rainbow , the SB bet and all passed to me , i raised and he reraised all in , ok he may have flopped the straight with 78 but i was pot committed and willing to gamble knowing i would still have 20,000 if i lost , i actually thought he had 45 for bottom two pair , i showed my top set and he turned over 23o which stood up . Now of course i was cursing myself for not puting in a small reraise preflop to prevent giving the SB value to call.

The best hand i saw was against the same player who was a little unorthodox in his play , very rarely raising . Against any other player i would have won far more chips .I made a small raise with AA , he had been flat calling all day with AK AQ and AJs , flop was A high , i bet small again and he showed QQ and passed .

From then on it was downhill , blinds were catching up and all my moves were being made by other players before me , to be honest i didn't play as aggressively as normal as i wanted to prove a point and make the money , something i would not normally allow to effect me and it wont happen again , but the cards were uncooperative as well , i had Mickey Wernick all in SB v BB , he had 99 i had 44 , from that double up he went on a rush of AA , KK twice JJ beating AK and AK beating JJ to go from 4,000 to 95,000 , while i had 77 which i laid down to his AK raise as the player beside me had already gone to move all in , Mickey called and the all in had TT which won but i would have got the side pot.

With two hands to go for the end of day one i was forced to move all in with K3 on the button and the BB found AK , overall my performance was average , i should have done better once i got to 40,000 chips .

The DTD crew have gone to Barcelona for the World Heads Up , even though i came 9th last year i decided to give it a miss and Simon who came 2nd last year will fly the flag there while i go to The Western in London for the £1500 on Saturday 27th .

I used to make a final once in every 4 events so i am due , ( that was 9 years ago lol ) hopefully this will be the one.

All the best