Down to two tables, I was on the same table as Noel ‘Big City Banker’ Hayes, Ricky ‘the Chopper’ Cosgrove (who had a big stack!)and Vera Duffy and I slipped under average stack for the 1st time in the tournament. It was a few painful hours of being completely card dead, painful stuff! I hoped we would play on until the money if possible, not wanting to come back again on Monday to play for a few hours for not even money back! However, the decision was made to finish up around 3.15am and come back at 2pm the next day….without Noel unfortunately, who was knocked out by the Chopper on the final hand of the night.
Day 2: I had about 70k in chips, with the average stack being about 75k, not too bad, but was starting on the more difficult of the two tables of 8 I think, with three big stacks (including Yuletired and the Chopper) on the table. 12 of us were being paid and knowing we would probably pay the bubble their money back (we actually decided on €500 for lucky 13th) it was ninja shortstack play if I wanted to survive and have a chance at a run on the big money….5th €2000, 4th €2500, 3rd €3500, 2nd €6500, 1st €11000. I would have taken 8th for €1000 if you had offered it to me at start of play on Day 2 actually, felt like I was up against it. On the plus side, there was a player at our table with only 16k, he allowed himself to be blinded away the night before, which was crazy.
So 16 players were vieing for 13 paying places and €32k in the prizepool…if the blind structure hadn’t been changed it would have been a crapshoot for the 1st time in the otherwise excellently structured tournament…to JP Poker’s eternal credit, however, the poker player comes 1st and they altered the structure for us without being pressed! The last blind level of Day 1, 1500/3000/300 was repeated for us and the blind levels increased to 60 minutes! Wonderful, I wasn’t in as much trouble as I had thought I would be and could play a bit.
Another iffy hand for your delectation; with blinds of 1500/3000/300, I was big blind and the shortstack was small blind with only 9.8k after posting the ante…it was folded to him and finally he found a push…I looked down a 
Within two hours the bubble had burst and then soon after we were on the final table. I was shortstack with 50k+, the blinds had just moved to 3000/6000/500 I think, not sure. Yuletired had a big stack, the Chopper was healthy too, a few others with 150k and the rest with between 65k-80k. Time to make some moves for ionapaul!
I had drawn a good seat in Seat 1, I had position on a player I thought I had a good idea of his play, and Jude Ainsworth and the Chopper were in seats 3 and 4, where I preferred them to be honest! I doubled up the 1st hand to over 100k when a player raised in mid position, I pushed in late position with 
Jude was playing well I thought and making interesting sized 2.5 or 2.8 times the big blind raises when he decided to get involved in pots, he must have missed a lot as he was subsequently check raised off a few pots and his stack was really depleted. Yuletired also suffered greatly from being re-raised, it seemed every pre-flop raise of his was met with an insta-shove, he must have lost over 1/3 of his big stack in less than two hours in this way, it was almost funny (but a little sick). He had some bad luck I am sure, lots of raising hands but no calling ones, just once if he had a monster he would have won a big pot and jumped into a big chip lead.
My next installment will cover the rest of my time on the final table of this two-day tournament…hopefully it is not too boring for the action junkies out there!
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