11/05/2010 5:35:37 PM
Grand Final Day 2 Overview

The 37 remaining grand final players returned on Sunday to battle it out for the Grand Champion title and top 11 prize positions!

With over 1.15 million chips in play, and 3000/6000 blinds, the tournament saw many of the lower stacked players bust out quickly and head to more poker entertainment for the day at the cash tables or Deep Stack event.

After a hectic 2 hours our 5 starting tables were down to 2, and shortly after we had a break as we reached the final table of 8 players!

Each of them would be winning over $1000, with the winner taking over $17,000 cash, the $2000 Grand Champion bracelet, and the championship trophy.

The standard of poker throughout the event was very high, with most players adjusting to the slower paced poker easily in day 1. Final Table emphasised the talent of our members, seeing some great moves and cautious play by all players as we got closer to the top spot.

Patrick Healy (WAPL Macau 09 Team Member) shot to a dominating chip lead early on in the final table action, but after making a couple of calls on shorter stacked all ins which held up, found himself in a big hand with the second chip leader, Colin Wilford. After a raise from Colin, Patrick looked down to pocket 7s, re-raising all in. Colin took a long time to consider his options, and eventually pushed all in stating it was time to gamble. He was overjoyed when he turned his pocket 9s over as the dominating hand, and they held, leaving Patrick with very few chips with which to continue. Patrick went down in 5th place, leaving Adrian McFarlane, Eunice Slater, Colin and Karen White to battle out the top 4 positions! Colin, having taken the chip lead at that point, sat back a little and let the other players fight over the remaining chips. Adrian, who had not seen many decent hands on final table, made his move and his cards didn't hold, finishing him in 4th.

Eunice and Karen were involved in several big hands at final 3, with Karen ending up on top! Eunice was knocked out in 3rd place after staging a great comeback earlier on final table, and upon having a short break, a chip count revealed that Karen had in fact taken the chip lead from Colin by less than 20 thousand in chips. They both had over 550,000 in chips at this point, so it really was neck and neck for heads up!

With an awesome display of back and forth heads up play, we were able to see some strategic moves by both players. Very few pre-flop all-ins, with some great raises and re-raises made this heads up very exciting for players and spectators alike!

Finally, after a prolonged heads up, we saw Karen's A-9 suited triumph vs Colin's K-J offsuit on a board of 9 4 7 5 5, her 2 pairs holding and securing her the title of Season 12 WAPL Pro Grand Champion! Congratulations Karen, a fitting end for a great season that saw her end up 4th overall on the Pro Ladder!

Here's the list of players who made the money at the Grand Final -

Congratulations to all players who made the money, and we thank the many of you who have commented on how great a success the new Grand Final format is!

Thanks again to our staff who, as usual, put in a tremendous effort in setting up and coordinating such a logistically difficult event. Without such professional displays by them we couldn't put on such great tournaments for our Members. Please don't forget to thank them yourselves when you see them next.

We look forward to bringing you another season of great fun, high quality poker in Season 13, starting the monday after the grand final, 10th May.

Your WA Poker League Team