Black Belt Blog: Day 5: Less Is Moore

Last month, iPoker hosted a mega satellite for the $10,000 World Series of Poker Main Event with an incredible 30 guaranteed seats up for grabs. In the end, just 586 stumped up the $500+35 buy-in fee, meaning that there was an overlay of almost $100,000.

If that wasn't enough to stop you going out for the evening, we offered a mouth-watering offer exclusive to Black Belt Poker players: if you qualified through the satellite and cashed in the Main Event, we'd buy you into next year's event, absolutely free.

Greg 'Porjas' Moore did exactly that.

Married with one daughter, Greg Moore is a poker dealer from Sutton who's likely seen more hands than Doyle and Hellmuth combined. Despite spending most of his time watching hands, that night, he was receiving them, as he became one of three Black Belt Poker qualifiers to earn entry into the 2011 WSOP Main Event.

A few weeks on, and Greg was the last man standing in the biggest poker event of the year, cashing alongside Vegas 11 members Jamie Burland and David Docherty, before becoming the only player to progress into Day 5. After a hard-fought battle, he fell on the final level of the day, cashing in 157th place for $54,851.

Greg entered the final day with 305,000, just over half the average and with 378 remaining. Sandwiched between November Niner Joseph Cheong and former Poker Million runner-up Eoghan O'Dea, Greg was in for a tough day, but it initially appeared as though the Poker Gods were smiling upon him as he doubled up with T-T versus A-K after being cold-four bet behind.

Life would become even rosier soon after as a short stack pushed all in for 200,000 and Greg once again looked down at T-T. He quickly made the call and duly survived a raggy board against A-9 suited. After being as quiet as a nun in a library for the opening couple of levels, Greg suddenly found himself up to 600,000 and in with a great shot of making it through yet another day.

Unfortunately, Greg's fortune made an unwelcome U-turn, and after losing a pot with A-9 versus Q-J on a K-T-x-A-x board (he check-called bets of 40,000 and 125,000 on the turn and river), the cards dried up and the blinds caught up. Eventually, he found himself down to just 10 big blinds and in desperate need of another double-through.

With the blinds at 10,000 and 20,000, Greg played his final hand of the 2011 WSOP, moving all in for around 10 big blinds with Ad-Jd and being looked up by As-Ts. The Qh-Qs-Td flop was a heartbreaker, and despite the deceptive flush draw on the Qd turn, Greg was left drawing to an ace from space or a king of diamonds for the Royal Flush. Neither arrived on the 9c river, and Greg's incredible journey had come to an abrupt end.

For his first World Series, Greg's performance was incredible, surviving 97.7% of a 6,865 field and leaving Vegas with his meatiest payday to date. Prior to this, his biggest result was £657 two years ago in a £200 event. This was slightly more, and Greg could cross the Atlantic knowing that he'd officially defeated Vegas.

Today marked the end for Black Belt Poker's WSOP venture. It's been two months of ups and downs, with cold cards and bad beats saved by the occasional moment of magic. Overall, we took away $734,962, with the two shining moments being Richard Ashby's consecutive final tables, and Warren Wooldridge's third place finish in Event #54. We didn't get the gold, but we came mighty close.

The final Main Event results were as follows:

Alex Rousso -- eliminated on Day 2A
Ben Meredith -- eliminated on Day 3
David Docherty -- eliminated on Day 4 (424th, $27,103)
Gareth Alder -- eliminated on Day 2A
Greg Moore -- eliminated on Day 5 (157th, $54,851)
Hasmukh Khodiyara -- eliminated on Day 3
Jamie Burland -- eliminated on Day 4 (525th, $23,876)
Jeremy Rickard -- eliminated on Day 3
Jerome Bradpiece -- eliminated on Day 2A
Kevin Williams -- eliminated on Day 2A
Neil Channing -- eliminated on Day 3
Nik Persaud -- eliminated on Day 3
Owen Robinson - eliminated on Day 1D
Sam Razavi -- eliminated on Day 3
Sean Fennessey -- eliminated on Day 3
Tristan McDonald -- eliminated on Day 2A