Betfair Grand Prix Freeroll 7 Final Results:
1. chipgrabber
2. wilkie76
3. woodyz
4. LEXUS2
5. niahcyram
6. XrayEye
7. tigerwing
8. edgeU2
9. pokerram
10. crumble52

Freeroll 7 saw a delayed 9pm start, due the beginning of British Summer Time, but that didn’t put anybody off and 643 runners rocked up to do battle.

Competition was intense, and with the Grand Prix heading into the final straight, only an outright tournament victory will be enough for many players who do not have the requisite leaderboard points.

A strong PokerPlayer contingent numbering eight also reported for duty, and with the Mini-League provding some white-hot rivalry for the guys and gals in the office, fireworks looked likely.

And fireworks we got, with Mini-League leader and reigning champion Shafty78 exiting the tournament in the very first hand.

“In my finest display of Grand Prix play ever I went out on the first hand to borr, when I limped UTG with Aces” Shafty78 confirmed.

“I saw a five-way flop of J-9-4, re-raised two players, then got min-raised by a third, who had made a set of Nines. I called, the turn brought another 4 which I thought could well be a good card because it counterfeited any J-9 two-pair possibility.

“Anyway, no excuses from me, I knew I was behind but got it all-in with the guy who had flopped trip nines in a kind of ‘I’m past caring’ kinda way.”

“I should say I was STEAMING from having my Aces cracked in a Full Tilt tourney literally moments before when we got it all-in pre-flop and he made quads. What can I say, I guess I ran bad last night.” So congratulations to borr for winning the bounty, by no means an easy scalp to take from such a luckbox.

Two other early departures saw KillHill go in 502nd and HillyFish in 469th, who had a tough night, overplaying A-Q while facing a constant stream of chatbox abuse.

darklord5 supplied an entirely forgetable tournament. He managed to miss the first half an hour, but still log on to find a very playable stack of 1,700 with the blinds at 50/100.

That stack lasted precisely four hands though, firstly folding A-K pre-flop and post-raise to an all-in, before running Nines into A-K and A-J with the very first community card down, of course, an Ace.

A special guest apprearance from MrSmiles ended in 270th when his A-K was downed by zolmot’s A-2, leaving K_Unknown, Dicey and derbyred to forge on.

Dicey was first to bite the bullet in 187th following, by his own admission, a ‘pedestrian’ performance, and K_Unknown dipped out moments later in 175th as his middle pair was crushed by a flopped straight.

That left derbyred to grind on to 143th place and collect maximum Mini-League points. After some less than stellar showings, derbyred gave up adjusting his game in the face of eager bounty hunters and played to his strengths, which clearly worked.

K_Unknown regains top spot in the PokerPlayer Mini-League after Shafty78’s flame out, but there’s a long way to go, with three Freerolls, of which the final is a double-point deepstack spectacular, still to come.

A big old well done must go to chipgrabber who won the Freeroll and the automatic spot at the Live Final. Look out for more details on that soon, and the full leaderboard update in due course.