Maybe it’s post World Cup fallout, maybe it’s the WSOP effect, but it was a bit of a quiet night last night for Freeroll 6 of the Betfair Grand Prix.

Only two rancheros from the PokerPlayer posse, ‘Shafty78’ and ‘darklord5’ made it, the other cowpokes not absent from the hoedown for various reasons.

500 other players made it though, meaning a big field of 502 runners, out of 800 places available.

‘Darklord5’ struggled to get into it from the start on a tight table. A loose set-up and no cards and no draws meant the chips were soon steadily dripping away, with only a couple of steals stemming the tide.

Too often middling hands were folded before flops paired both cards. With the blinds going up pretty sharply, and a just respectable 815 left in chips, ‘darklord5’ went all-in with KK on the button. He had one caller, ‘Spelly’ with AQ, an Ace flopped and that was that.

When your luck’s not in, it’s not in and it was goodnight cowboy after only 30 mins play and a lacklustre 370th place finish.

The other member of the posse ‘Shafty78’, who has had some good results in this competition, followed shortly after in 329th.

He decided to make a move early on, due to the quicker blinds. ‘Shafty78’ was dealt A-J, raised it up, and got one caller.

Flop came 4-J-2 rainbow. ‘SmallGod’ bet out 300, and with only 1000 chips ‘Shafty78’ pushed all-in. His opponent thought about it for a while, then called with pocket Queens. Another Queen came on the turn and just to rub the salt in an Ace came on the river..

Congratulations to ‘Kicker1’ who wins an automatic spot in the live final, and nice work to ‘runadrum’, ‘cupring’ and ‘pokerfool’, who scored big points which catapulted them into the top 25 – and strong contention for the live final.

Final table results:
1. Kicker1
2. SandraLay
3. cupring
4. runadrum
5. pokerfool
6. theworzel
7. Taxi4bren
8. west four
9. gazza271
10. mcfc66