An Interview With WPT Ireland Winner Dave Shallow

Dave Shallow burst onto the UK poker scene in 2006 where he quickly built up a notoriously aggressive image playing online. Back then he was one of the local poker heroes but he has been absent from the main tournament scene for quite some time making it a nice surprise to see him at WPT Ireland.

His €222,280 win also includes a $25,000 seat in the WPT World Championships to be held at the Bellagio next year and it easily ranks as his greatest poker achievement. Back in 2006, in a Pokernews interview, he said that one of his ambitions was to one-day win a WPT title. Who would have thought he would have had to travel so close to home to finally win one!

His name may be Shallow but at the start of the day his stack was anything but. He started the day with a monstrous looking 6,115,000 chips, nearly two million more chips than the rest of the combined field! Poker fans and poker experts were predicting one of the quickest final tables in WPT history and they were not disappointed.

As it turned out Dave Shallow actually started in the worse possible way. In only the third hand of the day he doubled up the PKR online qualifier Patrik Vestlin after moving all-in over a Vestlin button raise. Shallow had the lowly looking [3s] [3c] and Vestlin [Ah] [Tc]. The [Ts] on the flop handing Vestlin the coin flip win and a new chip stack of over two million in chips.

The next player that Shallow doubled up was the shortest stack at the table, local lad, Ronan Gilligan. Shallow moved all-in from the small blind with [Kh] [5c] and Gilligan called with [8d] [8s]. Gilligan faded the king and also moved close to two million in chips. Shallow was hovering just above the 4 million mark.

The first player to be eliminated was the chatterbox Steve Watts. Wattsy, as his friends on the rail kept shouting out, ran pocket tens into the ace-king of the resurgent Gilligan and Gilligan hit a straight on the river on a board of [Qh] [Jh] [7s] [9s] [Td] to ease himself into second spot whilst taking the first scalp of the day.

Patrik Vestlin was next to go and once again it was that man Gilligan doing the damage. All of the money went into the middle of the table on a flop of [9s] [7s] [3s]. Vestlin held [As] [Qc] for two over-cards and the nut-flush draw and Gilligan [Js] [9d] for top pair. The board bricked for the Swede and Gilligan became our chip leader for the first time in this competition.

With his new found confidence and new chip stack, Ronan Gilligan, started to loosen up and eventually it would be to his cost. Charles Chattha and Dave Shallow are two very good players and peeling out of position is always going to be a dicey strategy. He started to lose chips and all of a sudden it was Shallow back in the driving seat, Gilligan in second place being chased hard by the ever-improving Chattha.

When Gilligan met his demise in 3rd place is was another one of those pots that Gilligan seemingly lives or dies by. Dave Shallow raised from the small blind holding [Td] [9d] and Gilligan called with the meager looking [4h] [3d]. The flop brought top pair for Shallow and an open ended straight draw for Gilligan and after all the money went into the middle Gilligan missed and we were heads up.

Chaz and Dave are usually heard singing, "Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit," and are more likely to be seen in the 1980s music scene than the final of a WPT event but this is what we got. Typically, the encounter didn’t last that long, and it rested on two crucial hands. In the first crucial hand, Shallow doubled Chattha up after five-bet jamming with [Ks] [3s] while Chattha was holding [Qs] [Qc]. That double up handed Chattha the chip lead for the first time in the tournament but it still remained very close.

Shallow then won a few back-to-back inconspicuous pots to slightly regain the chip lead before the final hand of WPT Ireland. When the end came it was a cooler with the aggressive Shallow finding pocket queens in an all-in pot against the pocket nines of Chattha.

So does this mean that Dave "Dubai" Shallow is back on the scene? Not likely, as his significant other is 7 months pregnant! Well at least he has a few bob to create a nice new bedroom for the forthcoming little Shallow.