Goliath18 will go down as one of the biggest, most enjoyable, amazing pokerfestivals ever held in the UK.

The event will also be streamed live right here on PokerNews from start to finish, from noon on August 24. Make sure you stay tuned on Thursday August 25 as UK PokerNews editor Barry Carter will be. Goliath Poker Live Stream 2018 when determining if a brand is worthy of inclusion in our guide. While our vetting process is very in-depth, the following summarized elements make up the foundation of what we – and you!

The side events were massive, the casino and poker rooms were buzzing throughout, and of course the Goliath Main Event, the star of the show, had more runners on each of the seven days compared to last year as it broke its own record as the biggest ever live poker tournament outside of Las Vegas.

In total there were 11,377 entries over the eight day Festival, with 7,584 the record setting final number in the Goliath itself; what a week of poker at the Ricoh Arena.

You’ve got to hand it to Ian Bryan, whose hard work behind the scenes is so ably carried out on the floor by Janis, Dena, Raj and their team, just imagine planning to get 11,000 people sat to play poker over 16 events.

As the dust settles on an amazing week in Coventry, I caught up with Ian having a well deserved beer, and already his mind was turning to how next year’s Goliath will look, how the increase in numbers year on year can carry on, how we’ll get 8, 9 or maybe even 10,000 runners and a £1million prizepool next year.

I’ve been with Grosvenor since before the first Goliath in 2011, but this year the build up was different, with so many people talking about the Goliath, when it started, how to win a seat, tactics for how to play it and more.

There were 750 seats guaranteed on GrosvenorPoker.com, ideal to get in cheaply and spin up a small investment, pennies in fact, into life changing money.

For the pros though, we had non playing matters to deal with that take precedence over actually playing, at least on occassion.

A couple of months ago we were asked if we’d be the trainers for a 2018 version of the David v Goliath promotion Grosvenor had run a couple of years back.

The idea was we needed six grassroots, inexperienced players with ‘Dav’ somewhere in their name, be it forename like David or Davina, or surname like Davies or Davison.

The Training Camp

Either way, we weren’t privy to any more information and we had to get on for planning our work with our six winners, Moyra, Kelly, Nicky, Dave, Dave and Dave.

Two days before the first of Goliath’s seven day ones, I headed to Coventry with Katie Swift and Joe Beevers and we set about planning four sessions of training over two days of Bootcamp, plus a couple of sit n go’s to let our students put their new found knowledge into practice.

Our Daves had mixed experience, but with Kelly playing her first ever game of poker and needing to start with just learning hand rankings and what beat what, we started at the very beginning, something the others probably found useful too.

After a morning spent on basics – hand rankings, starting hands, blinds, position, bet sizing – and an afternoon looking at c-betting, extracting value, realising equity and other more, our Daves were ready for the first SNG.

Fixing the Leaks

Blackpool grandmother Moyra had been cured of her limpness, entering pots with raises instead.

Kelly quickly learnt not to check her hole cards before the action was on her, to three-bet in position when the time was right, and to play tight and patiently to start with.

David Dale learned the hard way not to cold call three-bets from the blinds in a tough hand where Joe flopped trips and Katie held an overpair, while David Cook also found himself making life difficult by playing big hands slowly and finding ugly runouts.

David Mak and Nicky Davison both played pretty solid SNG strategy but got coolered early, and we all headed for dinner happy that plenty had been learnt on day 1 of Bootcamp and we’d laid some solid foundations for day 2.

With the basics covered, we looked at situations that are good or bad to run a bluff, spotting and concealing tells, as well as looking back to when we first started to play, and also previous Goliaths, and some of the rookie mistakes that we wanted our Daves to avoid.

An afternoon of analysing 10 big hands from previous Goliaths and GUKPTs on video and spotting the mistakes and we were ready for the finale, a sit and go featuring the three pros and six Daves where the winner would receive a Summer Sizzler seat.

After a top quality tussle, where our Daves showed just how much they’d been listening, Moyra ended up heads-up with David Cook, with Dave just getting the better of her to claim the seat, though Moyra did get the last laugh by lasting longest in the Goliath the next day to claim to £560 GUKPT seat which we’d added as a prize.

With the Dave v Goliath Bootcamp done, we could turn our attention to the famous sports star and prepare to announce him to the world.

The three of us had been asked to coach him and appear at the unveiling news conference before the final day 1 of Goliath.

Rather than get to actually play, I headed back to London as TalkSport had asked me to appear on their Sports Bar show in the perfect for poker midnight to 1am slot.

After some fun on the radio it was back to Goliath, but an early morning, a couple of hours travelling to the Ricoh and registering really late turns out not to be optimal, and after turning by 25k into 35 quickly, I lost a succession of pots and eventually decided I’d had enough of being 3bet and 4bet pocket deuces all in, straight into a pair of kings.

With Friday already close to selling out, I’d decided it wasn’t the day to be sat grinding only to miss out on getting to play again, so an early bath and a visit to the bar was the order of the day.

Thursday was our bounty comp, the Joker is Wild, and with £2k added by GrosvenorPoker.com, like most things in Goliath week, it was bigger than ever with 428 entrants!

All of the side events exceeded expectations – the women’s event, hosted and promoted so well by Katie, had 205 runners, which we think is the biggest ever ladies comp in Europe, the PLO had 289, the 25/50 had 657 and the £335 Super High Roller had a massive 321 (shout out to Katie’s Mum Sue O’Connor, who like her husband Dean last year, took second place!).

The Joker is Wild is always fun, though somehow I managed to play for three hours without ever getting dealt the joker, eventually going out with QQ against Joker5, a match up that was very confusing and pretty hard to win!

Late Thursday we were still discussing and finalising the 10.30am press conference, what we’d be asked, what was expected and with a 7am meet up, it was time for bed.

As always in Goliath, I joined a proper friendly table, and after the morning’s Press conference, With a 25k starting stack, even four levels in I was super deep, and after testing the water with a couple of raises with not much, I was lucky enough to not only find the aces, but find a shortish stack behind with AK to 3bet all-in.

No accidents and we were off building a stack to make day 2. Press conferences, training Daves, documentaries are all good, but at heart I’m a poker player and I love Goliath, one of the THE best tournaments of the year, so it felt good to be back to the day job.

It soon became evident that the fella two to my right was on a sponsored play as many hands as you can effort! He seemed to be playing every single one, raising every now and then but generally limping into every pot.

He wasn’t averse to a big bluff, and whether he got caught or got it through, had a great big smile and was loving the game.

We played two hands back-to-back which showed how hard it was to put him on anything and what a fun challenge he was to go up against.

In both hands he limped, I isolated him and we saw a flop.

In the first the board ran out 843Q5 and I checked my A4 on the flop, bet the turn and my opponent check/called, and we both checked the river. His 83 won.

In the second hand, the preflop action was the same. A 995 flop looked lovely for my pocket tens, I bet and he check/called. The turn was a beautiful 10 giving me a full house and definitely the best hand. He check/called a half pot bet.

The river was a jack, he checked again, I went for the lot, shoving for just under pot and he called, said nice hand and threw two queens into the muck face up!

This guy definitely had some leaks in his game – he somehow got to the river (despite action on every street) and first to speak shoved all in on a 77586 run out with Q9o to double me an

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