Rhinoneil and the Ladbrokes Poker Million Final Live Event

Published on 15 Aug 08 12:38 by SoyCD

Rhinoneil's blog about two trips to the Ladbrokes Poker Million Finals in 2005 and 2007 is currently one of the most popular reads on the forum due to the author's excellent story-telling ability.

It all started as an incentive to a Battle of the Donkeys staking giveaway in which rhinoneil promised to give an account of his experiences in the Ladbrokes Poker Million tournament. In return for giving a report on the two tournaments in which he played at the same table as reknowned pros such as Patrik Antonius, Howard Lederer, Phil Laak, Alan Smurfitt and this years WSOP final-tablist Peter Davidsen, he would receive a chance of beating TribunCaesar in a HU match. Tribun accepted the challenge and thus rhinoneil started writing down his immensly interesting experiences in a continously updated blog.

My Poker Million Experience

written by rhinoneil

I first found POKER in March 2004. I, like a lot of people it seems, watched Late Night Poker one night and was immediately hooked. As it happened, a friend had received a CD with Ladbrokes Poker software on it so I loaded it up and opened an account.

I tried play money for a while and then deposited $100 and started playing micro no-limit ring games. I didn't even look at the tournamnets tab for the first 6 months, then in the build-up to the Poker Million Final 2004 which was being televised on Sky Sports, I noticed that Ladbrokes was running a series of freeroll qualifiers to the following year's event.

This seemed worth a shot. So I entered one of the daily freerolls having never played a stt or mtt before. Amazingly, not really understanding what I was doing, after 6 hours of play I managed to finish in the top 3 out of several thousand entries, to qualify for the final.
On the Sunday, a few hundred of us sat down to the final, dreaming of a place in the 2005 televised stages of the Poker Million.

There was only one main prize, plus an additional 2 or 3 places paid a cash prize.
I remember one significant hand after about 2 hours play when my stack had shrivelled to the all-in or fold stage. In the big blind with 77, there is a middle position raiser so all my chips go in and the raiser flips AA. Turn card was the 7 I needed and I doubled up.
From that point I didn't look back, hitting everything, getting paid off with the best hand and, crucially, no bad beats. After about 4-5 hours we are down to 3. I am chip leader, closely followed by a player with a similar stack then another with about a tenth of our stacks.
I managed to take out the other big stack with another big hand and the last player then said he was happy with the cash for 2nd place ( about $2000 ) and sat out while I blinded him away.

What a high!! I couldn't sleep. I poured myself a beer and celebrated winning a $17,000 seat into what was going to be the biggest poker tournament in Europe. And I was the very first person with a seat.
A couple of weeks later, in the 2004 final, Donacha O'Dea and Dave Devilfish Ulliot are heads up with roughly even chips. Devilfish is dealt QQ in the big blind and slowplays it. The only problem is that Donacha has limped in with AA! In the end, all the chips go in and Donacha walks away with the first prize which then was about $100,000. Donacha joins me as 2nd qualifier for the 2005 finals.
The only problem then was that I had to wait for over a year before I got to play at Sky Studios.

Continue reading in rhinoneil's blog.... My Poker Million Experience