Hi Everyone,

What a fantastic weekend we all had at the season three national finals in Liverpool circus casino! We now have 20 people booked on that plane to Las Vegas, a full report on the day is featured below.

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Poker in the Pub 

National Finals May 2009

On May 16^th 2009 Poker in the Pub held its end of season 3 national final at the Liverpool Circus Casino.

When we arrived at the casino at 11.30 and saw a queue of excited poker players waiting patiently outside the casino we knew we would be having a fun filled day!

The tournament kicked off at 13:00 with 96 runners and a starting stack of 10,000 chips. The atmosphere was very excitable as all of the players took their seats, especially as each table had a dealer which went down really well with the Poker in the Pub players.

The first casualty of the day was Glen Murphy, followed shortly by Scott Pennycock, after a short while Mark Stuart was also eliminated from the tournament.

After about two hours of play runners were starting to drop out a bit quicker, the first of our PITP agents to be taken out of the game was Ally Mooney from the North East. I'm sure he wasn't too disappointed though as his very generous wife had already brought him a ticket to join the PITP group out in Vegas! He was playing on the day for the chance to take her with him, possibly a tactical move on his behalf then!

David Carroll from The Talbot was knocked out of the tournament when his J's ran in to Si Thompsons A's.

Mark Mitchell was also eliminated at the same time when his pocket Q's were not enough to beat another players pocket A's.

We were all shocked when at 7pm we were down to only 15 players! With some familiar faces still going strong we were getting very excited to see who will be jetting off to Las Vegas in three weeks!

Still in the game at this point were Raine Hilson and Len Stokes from the South East, Jason Turney from the South West, Paul Polland and Kerr Harris all the way from Scotland.

At 7.45 we were down to our final table, the mood started to get a little bit more serious as people started to realise that they had a real chance of winning those sought after holidays to Vegas.

The final table was as follows:

Seat 1 - Jason Turney 136,000 chips

Seat 2 - Niki Robinson 76,000 chips

Seat 3 - John Mullen 270,000 chips

Seat 4 - Paul Polland 83,000 chips

Seat 5 - Tom Sutton 48,000 chips

Seat 6 - Kerr Harris 63,000 chips

Seat 7 - Lewis Grady 108,000 chips

Seat 8 - Paul Hiatt 44,000 chips

Seat 9 - Len Stokes 140,000 chips

The first player to be knocked out from the final table was Paul Hiatt from the Brendon Arms pub, again Emily got stick for the 9^th place prize which was a Hibatchi portable barbeque, I think from now on we will just be giving £75 cash!

Paul Polland from McClures bar was next to be taken out and walked away with an Ipod touch which he seemed happy with as a consolation prize.

Jason Turney from The Duke of Cornwall in Ivybridge came 7^th in the tournament and left with a new laptop.

Unfortunately there always has to be someone that finishes on the bubble and this time it was Len stokes who was knocked out by Nicola Robinson when lady luck shined on her and the J that she needed came out on the rivercard. He did walk away with a PS3 which is a good consolation prize.

As the final 5 realised that they had won those golden tickets a huge cheer erupted from the table, the top 5 were as follows:

1^st - John Mullen  403,000 chips

2^nd - Tom Sutton  276,000 chips

3^rd - Niki Robinson  124,000 chips

4^th - Lewis Grady  117,000 chips

5^th - Kerr Harris  53,000 chips

Unfortunately John Mullen could not make it to Vegas and ended up selling his ticket to one of our well known faces, Graham Perrin (Whirlers).

All in all we had a fantastic day and have had brilliant feedback from loads of our players. It was great to meet everyone including Mr Anthony Butcher who received his Online League trophy from last season.