Four years ago, when Ryan Bradley competed at the world figure skating championships for the first time, hardly anybody in Tokyo cared that he was the national runner-up, that his crowd-pleasing routines had catapulted him to his most productive season.
Nationals was the only stop of the season for Bradley, who was contemplating retirement while he traveled the country performing in shows before he beat Richard Dornbush and Ross Miner, the other U.S. men headed to Moscow. A broken right foot that plagued him in an 18th-place finish at the 2010 worlds - he underwent surgery last spring - prevented him from appearing on the Grand Prix circuit, and he wondered if his career was over.Featuring stunning real-time 3D graphics and a uniquely engaging and immersive gaming system, PKR brings an unparalleled and previously unseen level of realism to online poker.CAPTION(S):Cramlington Spartans are runaway winners of Division Three, with second place between Cramlington Magpies and Cramlington Knights."I got really lucky with the way this all panned out," Bradley said about the relocation of worlds, adding it "gave me the opportunity to catch my body up to where my mind was. I can't tell you the gains I've made since nationals. I feel like a much more solid skater."Hosted at the Fox Poker Club in London's West End, this latest tournament in the popular PKR Live series was opened to the public for the first time ever. The tournament, with a buy-in of GBP 750, attracted a 243 runner field and a prize pool of GBP 170,100. The players included the six members of Team PKR Pro and some of the UK's top professionals including Neil Channing, Andrew Feldman, Nik Persaud, Jeff Kimber, Priyan de Mel and Jerome Bradpiece.Bradley isn't guaranteeing a medal at worlds - accomplished by Lysacek with bronzes in 2005 and 2006 and a gold in 2009 and by Weir with a bronze in 2008. Then again, if you know anything about Bradley, you know he has "kind of always been under the radar," he conceded. "I've never been a favorite going into anything. ... I'm definitely capable of putting up big numbers if I hit my stuff, and I feel more than ever that I can do that."Then the newly crowned national champion, Evan Lysacek was the talk of the town. And never lacking in the flair department, Johnny Weir brought plenty of style to the table.It's a "completely different" outlook for Bradley compared to the 2007 worlds, where he marked a 15th-place finish in the shadow of Lysacek, who took fifth, and Weir, who was eighth. "I went to worlds," Bradley said, "feeling like I was the third man. ... Even if you were ahead of one of them, it didn't matter." The result? "That got in my head," he said.Victoria Casino regular Rob Angood - third in the UKIPT Manchester Main Event earlier in the year - began the final table with the chip lead, and fought off challenges from EPT Monte Carlo finalist Craig McCorkell and GUKPT finalists Darren Fuller and Guy Steel, before going on to claim the PKR Live VI title and GBP 40,420 in prize money.
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Author: BRIAN GOMEZ
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