Poker News

Phil Shaw

There may be a $25,000 heads up challenge in Vegas for the elite, or the lure of another rematch between Andy Beal and “The Firm”. But the World Heads Up Championship, a ?2,000 no limit hold’em affair sponsored this year by PartyPoker. com, takes place in Barcelona (and formerly Vienna) as all European circuit players know, and over the years has played host to many of the biggest American names as well as all of the European ones.

This year was another sell-out (lending expectation to a higher buy-in next year) and in the 128 player knock out draw were many old hands, such as defending champion Angel Blanco of Spain, Bruno Fitoussi of France who won the inaugural title in 2001, three times WSOP bracelet winner Dave Ulliott, all four members of the Hendon Mob, England’s Dave Colclough and dual tournament winner John Falconer also of England. High profile Irish players Padraig Parkinson and Rory Liffey were also present. But the winner was a virtual unknown - Swede Peter Gunnarson, one of the large band of Scandinavian players who have joined the circuit in the past two years who have become noted for their skill, focus and lack of fear. He beat the UK’s Simon Nowab in a tightly contested and highly aggressive final.

The last hand came after an hour and 13 minutes play with the Swede slightly ahead in chips. After a flat call on a flop of K-5-2 (two diamonds) Simon moved all in when the Js fell on the turn. Peter spent five minutes considering his move and eventually called with K-10 and no diamond draw. He found his opponent with K-6 and when a T fell on the river it was all over. Peter collected ?100,000, the trophy and the title, and Simon took away a very nice ?50,000.

As might be expected in a knockout event though there were a number of shock results early on. Holland’s Rob Hollink, who has racked up over ?1 million in tournament earnings this year, crashed out in the first round to England’s Derek Baxter; Roy Brindley, runner up in 2002 lost out to Pascal Perrault in round two; Hendon Mobster Ram Vaswani was a first round casualty against another mobster, Ross Boatman; and last year’s runner up Mark Banin also made a first round exit against Dave Colclough.

Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott, who greeted opponents with the recommendation to book on the next flight, did better and progressed to round three where he must have thought he was into the money with A-7 on a 8-7-7 flop. But his opponent Stephen Pearse had pocket 8s so it was goodbye to the Devil. Since your faithful columnist also exited on a cold deck against Barny Boatman, might I suggest best of three for next year?

Despite a few ruffled feathers though, it has to be said that the TV coverage of this event has been one of the most impressive poker productions in previous years and with the introduction of a specialist Austrian firm this year - “Sports TV Production International - this year should be even more impressive. Watch out for it on America One in the US, and TSN in Canada through June and July.

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