Festival Report: The Western Festival

May 30 2006, Mel Lofthouse

After the great success of the P4C event held at the Western I was asked, whilst I was there, if I could deal for the whole of their festival from Monday to the Saturday.

They had a great line up of events and from a poker players prospective. It looked like a good set of tournaments, good structures and great chips.

The line up of events were :-

Mon 22nd – Tues 23rd May £200 No Limit Holdem with re-buys and add on
Tues 23rd- Weds 24th May £750 No Limit Holdem Double Chance Freezeout
Weds 24th – Thurs 25th May £300 No Limit Holdem Freezeout
Thurs 25th – Fri 26th May £500 Pot Limit Omaha Freezeout
Fri 26th – Sat 27th May £500 No Limit Holdem Freezeout
Sat 27th – Sun 28th May £1500 Johnny Chan No Limit Holdem Freezeout

The big names were, as ever, in attendance. Jeff Duvall, Stuart Nash, Ian Woodley, Jim Reid, Willie Tann, Dave Barnes and a couple of celeb' poker players including Ed Giddens (cricket) and Matthew Stevens (snooker) were all ready for action.

Mondays event had 65 runners and 88 rebuys for a prize pool of £30k

The results were:-

1st Jon Wong - £12,240

2nd Mark McCluskey - £5,508

3rd Warren Wooldridge - £2,754

4th Theo Dalton - £2,448

5th Jim Reid - £2,142

6th Sam Patel - £1,836

7th Dave Binstock - £1,530

8th Dave Barnes - £1,224

9th Chandra Khajuria - £918

Tuesday saw the £750 double chance Freezeout take place and what good fun it was! 52 entrants generating £39,000 in prize money. I can certainly say it was a pleasure dealing all 12 hours from 6pm to 6am and at 6am we still hadn’t got down to a final table! I’d been dealing quite a few bad beats to people all day long and I acquired a new nickname because of the action flops I was dealing. Needless to say it’s the name of an online poker site….ahem!. At about 5am the blinds were 800/1600 and players are slightly punch drunk but also alcohol drunk but, hey they were having fun.

I deal a bit of an action hand. Matthew Stevens is on the big blind with 10’s, it gets folded around to the button who moves all in. Matthew looks down and says I’m all in too, then bless his heart falls off his chair, cracks his cheek on the supporting post and the whole table goes into uproar of laughing and supportiveness. After asking him if he's ok I deal a bit of a speciality. The guy on the button had A10, Matthew had 10’s so was pretty much strangling him. The flop is 5 6 7, turn 8, river 4. Both players chop the pot. Absolutely amazing and I bet you’re saying it only happens online!

The result the next day was:-

1st Des Jonas - £15,600

2nd Matthew Stevens - £7,020

3rd Ed Giddins - £3,510

4th Jim Reid - £3,120

5th Dave Yeardley - £2,730

6th Ashley Hayles - £2,340

7th Keir Fitzgibbon - £1,950

8th Andy Mills - £1,560

9th Jeff Buffenbarger - £1,170

A deal was done when 4 players were left. Des Jonas took £8000 with 2nd, 3rd and 4th taking £6000. The winner took balance.

Wednesday saw the £300 freezeout which had 73 entrants and over £21k in the prize fund

The winners were :-

1st Alex Nzeyi - £8,760

2nd Dave Copus - £3,942

3rd Peter Gould - £1,971

4th Clive Bealing - £1,752

5th Dennis O'Mahoney - £1,533

6th Tom Barnes - £1,314

7th Zac Lever - £1,095

8th Chandra Khajuria - £876

9th Keir Fitzgibbon - £657

Thursday was a real shocker. The £500 Omaha Freezeout only attracted 35 entrants for a prize pool of £17,500. The poor turnout really surprised me. I'm not sure whether it was because the A40/M40 was a complete nightmare as per usual, or if it was because people wanted a rebuy Omaha event. The line up, though, was everybodys worst nightmare. The best Omaha players turned up. There was certainly no dead money in this event.

The winners were :-

1st Kerry Taylor - £6050

2nd Terry Burke - £3270

3rd Lalit Khajuria - £2350

4th Ruth Sherman - £1700

5th Richard-Gardner Brown - £1360

6th Paul Murrell - £1020

7th Ronnie Debeaulox - £750

8th John Burberry - £500

9th Jac Arama - £500

Friday’s £500 No Limit Holdem Freezeout had 55 entries and prize pool of £27.5k. Players were ringing from 6pm as they were stuck in traffic, either the culprit being the M25, M4 or M1. I think it was just Bank Holiday traffic hell!

The result from this one :-

1st Stuart Nash - £11000

2nd Ian Woodley - £4950

3rd Alex Nzeyi - £2475

4th M Blank - £2200

5th K Langcake - £1925

6th Ismail Yusuf - £1650

7th Dave Binstock - £1375

8th Peter Gould - £1100

9th Chandra Khajuria - £825

Saturday was the £1500 Johnny Chan No Limit Holdem Freezeout, with an incredible 15000 starting chips and 1 hour blinds. I have to say people were either stating it’s a fantastic structure or its too slow! I guess you can’t please everybody but hey that’s poker for you.

The final result was

60 ENTRIES

£90000 PRIZE MONEY

1st Luke Patten - £36,000

2nd Jules Adamson - £16,200

3rd Jeff Rogers - £8,100

4th Ryan Frondu - £7,200

5th David J Lloyd - £6,300

6th Javed Abrahams - £5,400

7th Shane Reihill - £4,500

8th Willie Tan - £3,600

9th Jim Kerrigan - £2,700

Whether I’m poker dealing, tournament directing or poker playing it's so nice when you get a room full of excited players all eager to start a game.

Be lucky and hopefully see some of you UK Poker News readers at Walsall for a few events soon.

Ed note: Download Poker770 for a huge £500 deposit bonus

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