Both the bounties have now been won in The Hendon Mob Championship. The first to go was Hans Kleinsman, who exited in a fairly standard race with AT versus AQ. He was taken out by Emil Simonea, who wins a €250 seat into the next THMC event at The Festival in Bratislava.
Andreas ‘Wiseguy’ Hoglund was the second to go, in the latter stages of level 10. He had been whittled down to just 1.5 big blinds and went all in blind. He was called by Didier Darracq in the big blind and looked to be in good shape with 8-7 offsuit versus Didier’s 3-2 suited. A three on the turn sealed the deal, sending Wiseguy to the rail and Didier to the Slovakian capital.
The tournament is now in level 10 and late registration will close after the next break, which is coming up shortly. The field has grown to 119 players and at this stage the chip leader is David K Lappin. The Unibet Poker sponsored pro was going strongly yesterday, but it all went wrong in level 12 for him. Will he make it further on this bullet?
Joining David Lappin in the field today is fellow Unibet Poker ambassador and Chip Race podcast co-host Dara O’Kearney. Another player competing today is Joe Grech, a Maltese Londoner, who splits his time between the UK and Malta.
I’ve known Joe for as long as I’ve been playing poker, as he’s been a regular on the UK poker scene since the late 1990s, when I first encountered him in Saturday afternoon tournaments at the Vic. A few years later in 2006 he participated in a challenge that I ran while I was poker manager at Blue Square Poker (RIP), which was an experimental sponsorship challenge called 'The Unusual Suspects'. Joe didn’t win this challenge, but it was not long after this in 2007 that he took down the €5,000 Diamond Championship at the Euro Finals of Poker in Paris for €132,000. That's not even his biggest score as he came 2nd in an event at the Belagio in 2005 for $244k.
With over $1.5m in live cashes, Joe is the number one ranked player on the Malta all-time money list on The Hendon Mob database.
