Bristol CBMPT Result

John Gardner is the Bristol champion of the 2009 Coral.co.uk British Masters Poker Tour, after winning the £500 NLHE Main Event at the final and biggest leg of the tour.

John, a businessman and ex-army bomb disposal expert from Swindon, beat 149 other runners in the sell-out Main Event to take £13,400 and the trophy after the top three did a deal.

Arriving at the final table with 131k in chips, he was trailing chip leader Richard Lewis who had a third of the1.5m total. Remarkably, just an hour before the end, and after doubling up Tom ‘FezioJnr’ Piccirilli, John was down to less than one small blind, but doubled-up through with A-8 and then continued to build his stack through a series of bold all-in plays.

With John in third place in chips, the remaining three did a deal and agreed to play for the trophy and end of season play-off seat.

Soon after John found Aces, which held-up against Chris Brice’s Kh-Jh, to secure at least second. Going into heads-up with Richard Lewis the chip stacks were fairly even before John flopped top pair and a big hand ensued. Richard paired his 5 on the river and moved all-in, with John calling to take the hand and title down.

John, 44, has been playing for two years and plays every Sunday at the Gala Harbourside where he prepared well for the British Masters by winning the £50 Sunday freeze-out twice in the last month. He is a regular at his local poker club where the final was streamed live.

Congratulations from the regulars have been pouring in since.

John said: “I’m under no illusion they will bring me back down to earth and stop me getting big headed. But I think they will let me have a day to bask in it and then it’ll be back to normal.”

So what’s next for John? He said: “I’ll be back down the club so they can teach me some new moves until the play-off final in November in Blackpool. You can never stop learning at poker because every opponent has a different style so you have to learn to adapt to that.”

Coral.co.uk’s head of poker, Mark O’Donnell, said: “It was a fantastic final leg event of the 2009 tour. We always get a good turnout in Bristol. The online satellites were packed, but we didn’t expect every event to be sold out.”

Mark added: “It was an amazing Main Event final table. At one point Richard had nearly a million chips but John put in the greatest comeback I’ve ever seen, and really deserved it in the end.”

As Bristol champion, John takes the sixth seat in the end-of season play-off for the £10,000 Coral.co.uk sponsorship in 2010, which will take place on November 19 in Blackpool. With Richard Lewis winning £20,000 he also qualifies for a seat as biggest money winner on the tour (excluding event champions). He snatches the place from Eddie Lundon who held top spot since the first event in Edinburgh (details). John ‘Loopy AWOP’ Littler takes the eighth and final seat after amassing an impressive 265 seats in the online satellite league (details).

Mark said: “The play-off final will be really interesting and well worth watching. It’s like a dream final table and everyone has a chance. We’ve got a growing following online so I’m sure the final will have a big audience.”