PartyPoker 2026
I’ve reached that point in my life where I’m old enough to have been everywhere I wanted to see (and most places I didn’t particularly want to see but went anyway), but have not yet reached the point where I don’t want to go anywhere new.
Sheffield is one of the few places in the UK I hadn’t already been, not because I was avoiding it, but just I never had a compelling enough reason to go there. However, I’ve always been aware that a lot of great things come out of Sheffield besides the steel, like the many great bands it has spawned such as the Human League and ABC when I was growing up, Pulp when I was starting my own family, and Arctic Monkeys more recently. Additionally, The Crucible theatre is central to the snooker world and created so many iconic memories for those of us who love snooker.
Our initial impression of British rail transport wasn’t great
The time to visit Sheffield finally arose this month for the PartyPoker 2026 Tour stop in the city. I met my Chip Race cohost David Lappin in Manchester airport where he’d just flown in from Malta. Our initial impression of British rail transport wasn’t great: after buying our ticket we couldn’t get through the turnstile. The helpful ticket attendant explained this was because the train was leaving in less than ten minutes, and “the machines stop selling tickets ten minutes before departure,” which seems a little nanny state given any reasonably healthy person could get from the machine to the platform in under two minutes. That meant spending an hour longer in the airport than we intended. It also seemed a large number of trains were either delayed or canceled, which meant an unpleasantly long wait on a cold crowded platform while overzealous employees screamed at us to stay behind the red line. As we waited for the train, David and I eyed up the other stops that included places like Stockport, Scunthorpe, and Grimsby, places we both agreed we had no real desire ever to visit.
When the train arrived it was of course very crowded but David showed an unexpectedly impressive turn of foot to beeline through men, women, and children to secure us two seats. The view at least from the train of the Pennines was very scenic, and we both got a giggle out of the ticket inspector’s response to complaints about the delays:
“This is what you get when you privatise.”
Sheffield
As two complete newbs to Sheffield, we were both very pleasantly surprised. It’s officially the second greenest city in Europe (after Oslo), with more than 60% of its land area green spaces, and with 2 million trees and only half a million inhabitants, that makes it the city with the highest tree to people ratio in the world. It’s pretty much a scientifically proven fact at this stage that green spaces, trees, and nature have a pacifying effect on people (someone stuck in a traffic jam in the Phoenix Park is much more likely to be chill than someone stuck in one in a concrete jungle), and you can definitely see this in Sheffield, where the people are a lot more relaxed and welcoming than in most other English cities I’ve been in.
the doors were a considerable challenge to squeeze through for a man of David’s girth
This is a plus most of the time, except when you’re in a rush for a coffee, as we were on Sunday. Local lad Barry Carter had recommended a New Zealand coffee shop near our hotel as the best coffee place in Sheffield. It didn’t look much from the outside (looking more like a store house), and the doors were a considerable challenge to squeeze through for a man of David’s girth, but the coffee did sound amazing. After being told there would be a 25-minute wait for a table if we wanted food, we decided to stick to the coffee. There was quite a queue for reasons that quickly became clear: one machine, one barista.
David is not a patient man at the best of times, and before he’s had his morning coffee is far from the best of times. He started innocuously enough offering unsolicited sarcastic business advice (“Might be an idea to invest in a second machine”) which fell on deaf hipster ears. He was about to pull out the big guns, nationality insults:
“Thought you Aussies were speedier than this.”
“We are New Zealanders, sir.”
“Same thing.”
When the barista finally caught his eye.
“You guys are the latte and the flat white, right? You’re next after this one.”
This pacified David for a few seconds until the barista did something David later described as “the world’s slowest milk pour followed by even slower barista wankery pattern draw.”
The coffee was exceptional though.
Results
We both got to the Genting Club Sheffield in time to max late register the Main Event flight that had started at midday, and we both bagged on one bullet. David bagged healthily above average while I put my customary two starting stacks half average into a bag.
I had one of those tournaments where I survived rather than ever thrived, navigating my short stack just about into the money for another inglorious min cash, but David got unlucky and bust early Day 2. With Barry not even making Day 2, that meant my company for the day and the bubble came in the form of my close friend, super vet Siddharth Sudunagunta. Sid was short on the bubble too, but we both got through it. Unlike me, he didn’t bust quickly though.
I also made the final table of the final thirteen turbo side event, bowing out in fifth just in time to hop into the Main Event winner’s photo after Sid took it down.
Sid
After busting the previous night I went back to my hotel room and got updates from Sid on his progress. He spun it up after the bubble and ended up making the final table 9/9 with what he thought was 9 big blinds (it turned out to be more because one of the many great features of the Party live structures is that they roll the blinds back on the final table).
Sid kept the spin going and while I was notching up another round inglorious min cash in the side, he was getting headsup and overcoming a considerable deficit to take it down, all the time sporting a Simplify Poker patch (he’s a founding member of our Academy).
Sid is primarily a mixed game player, and is definitely the type of guy we describe in Ireland as “someone you’d take home to your mother.” Cultured, gentle, kind and effortlessly easy going, he is not exactly your typical poker player, and not just because of his profession which has seen him doing open heart surgery on a gorilla. So he was a universally popular winner.
Back to back final tables is an accomplishment in itself
Shoutout also to runner up Max Burney, who impressed me when we first played together at the London stop (where he knocked me out in 19th en route to the final table). Back to back final tables is an accomplishment in itself, and his day and winner’s photo will surely come.
Finally, a shoutout to all the Party staff and dealers who really do go the extra mile to make all these stops such fun, and foster a real tour experience where you make new friends and see the same faces every stop. Next up is their first foreign stop in Seville, another place I’ve never been before but am very much looking forward to visiting. Weekly satellites are running now on Party, and you can feeder in for as little as 20 pence. See you there!
