The Year of the Crossbar?

After taking a complete break from live poker after Berlin, longer than I've ever taken since I started playing, I was raring to go when I sat down for day 1a of UKIPT Marbella. Lappin wrote a great blog in the runup to this event where he spoke about the need to approach the tournament like a cricket match and "build an innings" (thereby more or less guaranteeing an early bath for himself: he spent more time on the bus travelling from the villa where he and Saron stayed for the week than he did playing in the tournament). In truth I made a bit of a ropey start myself. The only decent hand I got early on had to be folded to heavy action post flop, and the results of my assaults on pots without cards were somewhat mixed, all of which meant I made the dinner break with only 75% of my starting stack of 15k. Dinner companions Big Mick G and Peter Barrable were similarly stacked so while the more comfortably stacked Chris Dowling and Nick Newport were happy to shoot the breeze, the three of us were more focused on hustling the staff into bringing us our food pronto.

Rushing back to the rush

I did make it back to the table just in time to look down at my second decent hand of the day, tens. The big blind hadn't made it back so after a loose player opened in mid position and got threebet by the player to my immediate right, tens were clearly big enough to cold 4 bet shove for value as there was a decent chance the action to date represented a steal and a resteal. As it was the 3 bettor had a hand, AQ. Things weren't looking good when he flopped top 2 but I hit a ten on the river to stay alive.

I had a very good few levels from there to the end of the day, so when I told blogger extraordinaire Jen Mason as I walked out that I had over 90k, she figured that must be top 10 at that point.

Day 2

Day 2 saw me start pretty quickly and move up to 150k in the early going, until a bad read prompted me to make a bad river fold (top pair, dubious kicker). After my worst ever year live in 2012 I did a lot of thinking at the start of this year about what improvements I could make. One thing I decided to focus more attention on live was physical reads. I was very good at this when I started playing and in fact in the early days I had to compensate for some considerable technical deficiencies purely through proficiency in reading people physically. At the end of each trip to the Fitz with my brother, I would sit down with him and compare notes on physical stuff we had picked up on the people we played against. As I expanded my play to festivals, I continued to update the notebook with reads on regulars on the Irish tournament circuit, until it became quite voluminous. At some point, I stopped updating the book, around the same time I started paying much more attention to technical aspects like betting lines, ranges, bluffing frequencies and other such tendencies. I still think these are highly important, but I also feel that concentrating on them exclusively rather than watching people for the physical stuff means giving up an additional tool that increases your prospects live. So during my recent layoff from live poker, I went back and reread my old notebooks to remind myself of the kind of stuff you can pick up if you watch for it.

In this tournament, I had 12 relatively minor decisions (minor meaning for a relatively small part of my stack) and 2 big ones (for all my stack) that were all very marginal and where I was ultimately swayed by physical stuff. I finished 10/12 on the minor ones and 2/2 on the major ones, enough to convince me that it is indeed worthwhile watching like a hawk for anything physical I can pick up.

This particular fold was one of the ones I got wrong, although it was interesting that Jason Barton beside me (who impresses me as someone who reads people very well) also had the exact same (incorrect) read that the villain hated the turn but loved the river.

I then lost a 60/40 to knock me back to where I had started the day as the table got tougher with the arrival of James Mitchell. I wasn't unhappy when our table broke as the presence of James, Jason, Noel O'Brien and some of the more capable locals led me to believe we were on one of the toughest table. My new tables seemed a lot more welcoming initially, with Dan Willis as the only recognizable face, although when eventual winner Ludovic Geilich arrived things got a lot murkier. Initial gains at my new table drifted back in the face of card death and having to fold to 3 bets when I opened light (and getting jammed on when I 4 bet light) as the bubble loomed. There was a time when upping the aggression near the bubble was almost guaranteed to increase your chip stack, but these days more and more players are aware of bubble strategy and not as desperate to fold to a min cash, so it's a double edged sword. Things got even worse when I made a correct read and made a stand with A9o shortly before the bubble. Suspecting the villain was light having seen me raise fold quite a bit (and he looked uncomfortable as I tanked) I made the call but lost to his KJo.

Hello cold 4 bet my old friend

That left me in no position other than to play honestly til the bubble bust. Thankfully it did a lot quicker than usual (another indication I guess that bubbles ain't what they used to be) and I got through it short but not critically so with 14 bbs. Operation Spin Up got off to a good start when I doubled up immediately. When I caught the right side of a cooler shortly afterwards (my aces holding in a threeway allin versus Dan Willis' 77 and a Scandi's JJ) to almost triple up, I had suddenly gone from short to well over average with 375k. From there I worked myself up to over half a million by the end of day 2, with no cards and just the occasional well timed cold 4 bet as my only friend at a table that was playing very loose but at least respecting cold 4 bets from the tight old guy.

That left me 7/48 overnight and pretty stoked to have not only cashed in my third consecutive UKIPT main event of 2013, but also a third consecutive day 3. With something of a stack I fancied myself to go further than I had in Cork and London, hopefully all the way to the final table.

But which one is the lucky seat?

Unfortunately it wasn't to be. When I arrived for day 3 I found my bag had been placed in the wrong seat (1 rather than 2). It's funny how the mind works because as I informed the dealer of the mistake and switched seats with another player who hadn't realized the mistake, I couldn't help but wonder which seat would get the better cards and spots. As it happened, it certainly wasn't mine, as the only decent hand I got on day 3 was my exit. However, I can't really complain as I had run well to get that far, and there's more to luck than getting big hands and winning flips, there's stuff like what you run into when you open or 3 or 4 bet light.

I lost a 60/40 against a shortie early on, and had drifted further back as nothing was working for me (for example, when I 3 bet Geilich first hand after I got moved to his table aware of the fact that he knew he was opening close to 90% while I hadn't threebet him at all the previous day leading me to believe I wouldn't get 4 bet light, I had to reluctantly fold to his 4 bet), until I doubled back up to where I had started the day with three tables left. Geilich opened from the small blind, I shoved AJ from the big blind, he called and tabled A4, hit his 4 on the flop but the river again saved me.

I then tread water for a while until we were down to 19 and I finally picked up a real hand. After a Scandi min raised the button, I found tens in the big blind. After some quick pot and stack size calculations to decide whether it was better to raise and call a shove, or just shove (I'm never folding tens with 20 big blinds in that spot), I shoved, expecting it to get through most of the time and be in decent shape even if called. However, the speed of the call suggested otherwise. My opponent had kings, and after the king high flop I was drawing to runner runner quads,  tough ask even for me.

Return of a Masters

As I tweeted my demise and wished the sole remaining Irish player Dave Masters good luck, I was joined in the payout queue by Dave who busted just after me. Great to see Dave back on the scene and going deep. Always larger than life, he generated more blog coverage than anyone else in the field on day 2 and 3 with a ready stream of memorable quotes and quips. Also great to see Gavonater (and his wonderful girlfriend, another larger than life character) back on the scene and in the money, and well done to the gentle giant of Irish poker Big Mick G who underlined his incredible consistency with another deep run.

After a few hours feeling sorry for myself in the hotel room, most of the rest of the trip was given over to socialising. Stars have created something fairly unique with this tour in terms of the camaraderie between regular players, both professional and recreational. You run into the same friendly faces at different legs, so that they feel less like "work" and more like a social occasion. I was very grateful for the constant support and enquiries as to how I was getting on from not just other Irish players but a lot of English and other nationalities. On my first night there, I went for dinner with Lappin, Nick Newport, Feargal Nealon (who cashed the Marbella Cup), and Richard Evans (fresh from his well deserved Champion of Champions triumph), and the company and conversation was both fun and stimulating. Throughout the weekend, I ran into Neil Raine, Tim Davie, Bob Malvasi and Neil "Granite" Rawnsley(who provided my favourite line of the weekend, more on that later), all great guys to run into, and people who I didn't know kept coming up to introduce themselves saying they had asked someone to point out SlowDoke to them.

Scots and suits in Spain

On Sunday, the hotel delivered champagne and cake to my room with no explanation other than "on the house", and Gary Clarke arrived to help me drink the champagne and have a good natter. Monday was Scottish day, as I spent it in the company of Ian Le Bruce, and Willie and Dode Eliot, simultaneously the most dissimilar and close brothers you could ever meet. Willie, one of life's true gentlemen, is a legendary railer to the point that if you make a final table online and Willie isn't there to rail, it feels like it never happened (and on the flip side, when Willie took down the Big 22 not so long ago on Stars railed by half the Firm, it gave most of us on the rail a bigger thrill than any of our own wins this year). Continuing the theme, I ran into Fraser McIntyre in the airport, who I first met years ago in my first deep run outside Ireland (in a GUKPT in Newcastle) and we had a quick coffee before departure.

While I am much happier with my live game than I was last year, it's a bit frustrating that it hasn't really translated into real success yet. 2013 is feeling like the Year of the Crossbar so far, with three UKIPT day 3's (but no final table) and a similar run in the JP Masters. As much as I tell myself that consistency is the hallmark of class, I would gladly swap 4 crossbars for one final table, but at least the consistency is there, and hopefully it will translate into something big in Vegas. The plan now is a quick final online burst before heading to Vegas next Monday.

I must admit I was very wary of this UKIPT after previous bad experiences in Spain. Essentially what Stars have done is add the UKIPT tag to an Estrellas (the Spanish equivalent) but that's not necessarily a bad thing and Marbella is a very pleasant place to spend a week. One thing though which does need improvement is the dealers. Admittedly we are spoiled most of the time in UKIPTs with the best dealers in the world but to be brutally frank the local dealers not only weren't up to scratch, but they showed no desire to be. Other players I talked to relayed similar impressions amid tales of players being told to shush when they tried to correct dealer mistakes, dealers refusing to call the floor, or respond to anything said to them in English. I saw a lot of dealer errors myself, one of which could have cost me if I hadn't been on guard. After an allin on my table had been won by a short stack, the dealer counted down his stack, then proceeded to pull chips from mine. After my experience in San Sebastián where I lost my tournament life to a player after his hand had been mucked and then retrieved from the muck, my reaction in pointing out that since I wasn't even in the hand I couldn't be expected to cover the losses of the guy who was and lost was immediate and vociferous.

On the plus side, the floor staff (headed by the ever professional Toby Stone and Nick O'Hara) were top notch, as were the hotel staff in general, and the Stars UKIPT team led by Kirstie and Jamie are always on the ball. The blogging crew led by Jen Mason and the media team are all top class too (I recorded a short interview with the man who once compared me to a badger on national TV, the ever witty Nick Wealthall, which I'm hoping will surface at some point) .

Granite's guide to the Isle of Man

I had breakfast with Fintan Gavin too who was very upbeat about the next UKIPT on his turf in Galway so that's definitely one to look forward. One I need a bit of convincing on is the Isle of Man, so I was asking my English friends if they had ever been there. Neil Rawnsley's response was the most memorable and I ready warned him that it was going in this blog so here goes, The Granite Guide to the Isle of Man:
"You know how beautiful San Sebastián is? Well it's just like that as you come in, with the crescent bay and the panoramic view of Douglas. But then when you get off the boat and into town, it's ...... shit".

I don't believe I have many (any) readers in the Isle of Man. Hopefully not for Neil's sake at least: otherwise he runs the risk of being confronted at the port by the locals and promptly Wicker Manned.

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Jesus is it that time already?

As you get older, Christmas seems to come around quicker every year. As you become an older poker player, Vegas and the WSOP does the same. And here it is again....that time of year when Mrs Doke is dispatched to request an amount of dollars that makes her an immediate "person of interest" to our bank, guaranteeing she will be asked all sort of questions about why someone would want that many dollars by suspicious officials.

After Berlin, I was feeling pretty burned out from live poker, so I decided to take a lengthy break before Vegas, committing only to play Marbella since it became part of the UK according to Stars, for a couple of reasons. First, I figured a break from the live game was the best way to recharge the batteries and ensure I headed to Vegas raring to go. Second, and probably more importantly, I wanted to get in enough volume online to cushion me from the likely damage in Vegas (and the opportunity cost of not being able to grind online while I'm off chasing bracelets). Yes folks, just as you move from childhood to parenthood with a perspective on Christmas that changes from "What will I get this year?" to "How much is this going to cost me this year?", as a poker player you go from a state of virginity blissfully thinking only of bracelets to be won to a more realistic view that in most universes you will come home without a bracelet and without most of the cash you carried out there. That's not defeatism: I personally think my chances of success this year are higher than ever, but as a NLH player I know I'm going to have be very lucky to come through any one of the several thousand runner fields I will be in. It's the live equivalent of any given Sunday online: you're hoping it's one of those where you win a major, but usually it's one where you'd have more money on your accounts if you hadn't played that day.

One of the upsides to my break from live poker is I've been able to get myself into better physical shape, running more, and eating better.

I'm going to depart from the tradition of picking 5 to watch, because let's face it, with most Irish players being NLH specialists, you might as well be picking 5 horses in the Grand National, if the Grand National suddenly had 100 times more runners. We're all hoping to be the guy that gets the clear run and gets safely across each fence.

Instead, what I will do is pick my two young guns to watch. In so doing rather than just reeling out a list of the current established names, I'm hoping that when one or both of them does bink, I will look like a total visionary genius. So without further ado, my two to watch:

1. Padraig O'Neill

Known to his friends as Smidge, Padraig is in my opinion the pick of the younger crop of live Irish tournament players. It's odd to me that his name rarely crops up in these types of discussions, but I guess that's in part down to his (largely misunderstood) style of play, and his personal manner, both of which are unfussy and deliberately lowkey. He chooses to fly under the radar both at and away from the table, and as a result people don't pay as much attention to him as they should. If any other young player in the country had the same results Smidge has had in the past 2 years (EMOP champion, UKIPT final tableist) I think they would be universally hailed as the next big thing, but the fact that Smidge chooses not to shout his accomplishments from the rooftops leads to many underrating him. He's not on PocketFives so people don't realise how well he does online.

This will be Smidge's second Vegas. Last year he concentrated his efforts in the Venetian where he went deep in two Deepstack events. This year he will move his focus to the Rio and make his main event debut. As one of the best live cash players in Ireland, he has a wealth of experience of playing deepstacked that will serve him well there. If I had to give my last 10 grand to any Irish player to go play the WSOP main event, Smidge would be my choice, as he has both the game and the level temperament to succeed on the biggest stage of all.

2. Dan Wilson

If Smidge is a pretty safe choice, Dan is a total wildcard, as he has no live results at all. He is, however, a proper online beast, and as anyone who reads the IPB Strategy forums will know, there's nobody in the country with a better grasp of the theory than Dan. All of this leads me to believe his lack of live results to date are down to "lol sample size" grounds. Having seen him play live, I am impressed by his temperament and presence. Having spoken to him at live events, he impresses me as someone who won't need much time to adjust from online to live. This will be his first Vegas and I will be the least surprised person in Ireland if he ends up being our surprise package there.

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The world's most hateful airline

It's something of a cliche that pride comes before a fall. Recently and personally it came both before and after

When you're away on a poker trip with your closest poker friends, there comes a point where you have to be a little more creative when it comes to conversational topics. You know all their stories, you've told them all of yours, and there's only so many times you can debate the merits of the check call versus the check raise. So in London I sat mostly listening to Jason and David recount tales of flights they had missed in the past. My only contribution to the conversation was a boastful one full of pride: that I had never missed a flight in my very long life. If years were chips in our group, I would have almost half the chips in play.

Pride came before a fall as thanks to the fiendish machinations of the world's most hateful airline Ryanair I was no longer able to truthfully make such a claim 24 hours later. I was at my gate in plenty of time, where I joined the back of very long queue. When I got to the top I found it was actually 2 queues and I was in wrong one. The other gate was more or less hidden behind one I queued for. I went to the right gate and even though screen over it said Final call and I could see the plane outside the  bit... of a Madam working for Ryanair said it was closed. After a bit... of a heated debate over how tenable her position was in light of the screen saying Final call right over her head and the fact that we could see passengers still filing onto the plane before our very eyes, I realised that while I might be the one wearing the Poker Stars badge (slapped onto my shirt at the UKIPT Champion of Champions the night before) I was also the one drawing dead in this particular game of poker.

After mucking my argument I asked her how I got back out now I was plane committed but drawing dead to a departing flight. She gave me a look of disdain similar to the one Lappin gives people who try to check raise bluff him and sniffed "Back the way you came from". This turned out to be as much of a gross oversimplification as the statement you should always shove with a flush draw.  It's a nightmare getting back out. I basically had to be escorted out by security.

A long argument with Ryanair desk about how much I had to pay for a new flight ensued.  Then when I thought things couldn't get any weirder, just after I got my new ticket an Italian guy asked me if I was a professional poker player. When I said yes he said I love watching you on tv. At this point I figure he must be mistaking me for someone else as I have the Pokerstars badge still on from last night. As gargantuan as my ego is it doesn't allow me to believe that I'm "big in Italy".  I nevertheless decided the easiest thing was to play along with it and let him go on believing I was Marcel Luske or whoever he thought I was.  I chatted to him in as friendly a manner as a man who has just been gypped by the world's most hated airline possibly could, asking him his name, where he played and so forth. I figured I owed it to Marcel or whoever he thought I was and him to leave him with a positive experience and impression of his poker hero.  He asked me if he could have photo taken with me.  I said yes of course, giggling inside at the thought how easy it would be to smile in this photo thinking about the lengths he would have to go to to try to identify which particular TV poker hero he had been fortunate enough to run into. My smile widened as I thought about the fact that he was basically drawing as dead as anyone expecting a big  display of humanity from a member of the Ryanair Ground Gestapo when he got round to showing the photo to all his friends in the vain hope that one of them might recognise the not really that well known grafter in the online poker mines.

Good luck with that, Michele.  Finally, a shout out to my oldest son Paddy, the one member of the O'Kearney family who was on TV this week. Long time readers of this blog may remember that Paddy is a bit of an ecowarrior type, and his latest project, an urban farm in the centre of Dublin, came under the spotlight this week on RTE's Local Heroes. I don't know how long this link will last for, and I'm pretty sure it won't work for those of you outside Ireland, but here goes anyway.





http://www.rte.ie/player/ie/show/10152681/

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Last ever blog

After noting in my last blog that life is a rollercoaster (at least according to a very bad song), things kept looking down for me. As I got back into the online grind, a downswing (or actually more of a sideswing, that is, a prolonged breakeven patch) that  I've been going through  since the end of January continued.

In the last blog, I put up my lifetime graph for online mtts (missing a few sites like Bodog not properly tracked). At that stage, my graph for the year looked like this:

After a great start to the year (up 35k in the first 500 games, ie, January), I then hit a 2000 game breakeven stretch. I've had these before (every serious online mtter has) but that doesn't make it much easier.

It was against this backdrop that I went into town to meet David Lappin. Lappin's a great man to turn to on these occasions as apart from the fact that he understands variance better than anyone else I know, and has a similar aversion to downswings, and can offer tons of perspective and sage advice, he's also pretty much the only person I know in poker that understands that sometimes all I want is someone who will shut up, humour my complaining and whining and forecasting that the end is nigh for all of us, and let me blow off steam.

After my mental health check up with Dr. Lappin, I got home late but in time to start a mini evening session, and promptly won two tournaments, one on Stars Fr and the other on Ipoker. Over the next week, I won another three online tourneys and a few Marbella sats, and clinched my third PocketFives triple crown (but first since 2011). By the end of that spell, my revised graph for the year looked like this:

Gary Clarke wrote a great blog recently where he said, and I quote, "Life is so simple and yet we make it so hard." I've certainly been guilty of over complicating my life recently. Gary's right: life is pretty simple. It's about identifying the things you like doing, and doing them, and identifying the things you don't like, and avoid doing them.

For the past few years, the thing I enjoy most is playing poker online. Yes, I enjoy live poker too, but only as a diversion. Online poker has always been the thing. In 2011, I became the first Irish player to win a PocketFives Triple Crown (awarded to players who win three big tournaments on three different sites in the same week). In poker, the first thing people ask you when you win something is "How much?" That is the point of poker in general, but sometimes it's beside the point. Nobody should want to go through life measuring everything in money. So in poker, where money really is the scoreboard, it's good to focus on other things once in a while, whether it's a virtual badge, or representing your country.

In 2011 I won not just one but two Triple Crowns. In 2012, none. I was actually thinking about this before my most recent triple crown. Maybe the game just got harder. Maybe I focused too much on other stuff. I still did okay under the money scoreboard system last year. I got involved in staking and coaching, and found it rewarding. I played pretty much every major tournament on the Irish live poker circuit. Did I get too comfortable with the idea that these are social occasions? Probably. Did I start thinking sometimes the purpose was just to be there, not to win? Possibly. One of the worst things about experience is poker is that it makes you realistic. When you start out, you go to every tournament thinking "I could win this". That naivete doesn't last long.

I find live poker increasingly jading. Nothing makes something less enjoyable than the belief that it has to be fun. It's like the tiresome pillock at the party who goes around insisting that everyone must enjoy themselves. I enjoyed live poker more when I didn't think of it as something that needed to be enjoyed.

I've been thinking about all this recently, trying to decide what I should do going forward. The main conclusion I came to is stop over complicating everything. Focus on the thing I enjoy the most (online poker). Be more selective in what I play live, so when I do turn up to play live, it feels special. I feel like I needed a mini break from live poker before Vegas, so apart from Marbella, I won't be playing anything else.

I think when you're young you tend to think "There's a first time for everything". I guess it's natural to give the first time you do everything, anything, a special importance. Experience teaches us that we get better at pretty much everything with practise, so first times tend to not have the same importance in retrospect. They simply represent a start.

As you get even older, you realize there is also a last time for everything. Your last day in school. Your last day in a job. Your last day in another job. Your last day in a house or country. The last time you see a loved one.

The thing about last times is you generally don't realize at the time that it is the last time. Chess dominated my life for years. Gradually I lost interest as I realised I had gone as far as I could with it. But the last time I sat down to play it competitively, I didn't think "This is it. The last time". The same is true of other interests and passions. I only knew they were over well after they were over, not as they were ending. With poker I hope that it might be different. One of my most fervent wishes is that I realise when my time as a winning player has passed so that I get out with most of the fruits of my grind intact. I don't want to be one of those people who has to lose their entire bankroll before they realise it.

In a few weeks, I head to Vegas with Daragh Davey and Jason Tompkins. Lappin is again taking the sensible route and staying home to feast online at the time of year when it is traditionally the feastiest. Next year I may make the same decision (I noted on a Vegas blog once that every year in Las Vegas, it's Last Vegas for some of the Irish contingent, even if they generally don't realise it themselve at the times), but for now I'm looking forward to giving this year's WSOP my very best shot.

After Vegas, I intend to focus even more on online, and to cut back on all other distractions. I have already started cutting back on my coaching, staking and other commitments, the better to focus entirely on my own play. Like everything else, there will at some point be a Last Ever Blog, and I probably won't even realise it at the time. Who knows, this might even be it (I doubt it though: I imagine I will think of something to blog about in Marbella or Vegas).

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David Hasselhoff, graphs and.... something else

Everything just seems to make sense in Germany. Things are organised in the most logical and efficient manner. The trains run on time. People show up when they said they would. When you're in Germany it even seems to make sense that David Hasselhoff should be a major recording artist. 

According to a very bad pop song, life is a rollercoaster. I always felt that was a bit of an oversimplification, but certainly the poker life has more than its fair share of (occasional) ups and (mainly) downs. This point was brought home to me when I followed one of the highs of my poker career in Cyprus with being turfed out of Berlin Cup shortly after dinner on day 1.

Afterwards my friend Max Heinzelmann (who dipped down with Schnapps king Marco Drafehn to rail me at one point) commiserated saying I had an unusually tough table full of good regs. That may be true but I didn't play particularly well either. My timing was off, a few bluffs got snapped off and an unfortunate piece of stationing left me coming back from dinner to play 5 and a half big blinds. I did manage to more than triple my stack and then after looking down at kings felt I had every chance of getting back to starting stack. Not to be though as I ran into aces.

I met Smidge and Liam (fresh from his Tramore triumph) for some food. We went on to a place I'd been brought on my last trip that combines the German love for two things: beer, and round numbers (they proudly proclaim themselves to serve precisely 100 different types of beer).

Back in the hotel bar for "one last one" we ran into some of the German heroes including Max, Marco and Martin "moertelmu" Mulsow. If there's one (more) thing Germans like (apart from beer and round numbers) it's a good graph, and the first thing most of the young Germans said after being told who I was was "wow, your graph is very good". A little amused or perhaps bemused by the acclaim I was getting one of the Irish lads remarked "Jesus Doke, you don't get this at home". Afterwards, one of the Germans asked me if this was true. After I assured him it was, his response was "This is because Germans judge by graphs and Irish judge by... something else".

It was interesting to observe the culture among the German players, which is a strikingly supportive one. If there's one things Germans do well it's teamwork. If poker ever becomes a proper team sport the rest of us are probably screwed. It's not exactly fashionable in the English speaking world to express admiration for the Germans or to admit to supporting them at the World Cup when your own country fails yet again to qualify, but I hereby admit to both. Germans have a wonderful directness in their communication. They tell you what they are thinking and they ask you what you are thinking when they don't know, rather than trying to guess. Having created Europe's oldest and arguably richest civilisation, the Germans have a knack of owning anything they put their minds to. So it's no surprise to me that the Germans have established themselves as one of the world's strongest poker nations in such a short time.

The following morning I relayed some of these thoughts to David Lappin via Skype, explaining the reasons for my admiration of the German way of approaching things. He commented "kinda like what we are trying to do with the Firm". I never really thought of that before but it's spot on. Perhaps we should change our name to die Firma.

If the Germans are to be admired for their discipline, work ethic and logical approach, there's also something to admirable about the Irish alternative. I'm no surer how to characterise it than the German was with his "something else". Blind optimism? Illogical faith? The English also struggled with how to characterise our often bewildering lack of logic before eventually deciding there was no other way to describe it other than as "a bit Irish". Maybe it's a historical hangover as a small country but we seem to value success based on the sheer improbability of it.

To illustrate, consider the fact that in the midst of deep recession with card clubs all over the land struggling, not one but two new ones opened in the Dublin region on just one day last week. Last Friday, popular TD Luke Ivory opened a new place in Rathmines, while I headed to Newbridge to cut some ribbon at the new Full House Card Club, run by Mark Day, Daniel Olmer and Ladas Lux. The lads have a lovely room there and deserve to succeed, tough though that will be in the current economic climate.

I hung around to play the opening night tourney. A bounty had been put on my head, three times the buyin. This meant everyone at my table was quite keen to get in pots with me. Contrarian that I am, I nitted it up and played a total of 4 hands in 6 levels. The last two were against a  delightful character called Mick who I played against a few years ago in Carlow and remembered as a man with a lot of favourite hands, and got dealt them so often he never had to suffer the annoyance of folding preflop. He particularly liked hands that had either a 6 or a 2 in them. This strategy had resulted in the necessity of an early rebuy for Mick, and he had already done half his second stack when we finally got in a hand. Folded round to Mick, he opened for his standard four and a half big blinds (playing 15). After everyone else folded I had the problem of what to do with eights in the big blind. I decided that since I was well ahead of Mick's range that included any hand with a 6 or a 2, the only thing for it was to wager all of my chips. Mick looked a little upset at this unexpected development (having seen me fold all night he was clearly rooting for that trend to continue), but called and turned over QT. After the KKJ flop I pointed out there was a lot of ways I could lose this now, and an ace on the turn was one. As he raked in the chips, Mick remarked "I was sure you had aces when you shoved....but I called anyway". Now there's a man who has no truck with trends or graphs when it comes to decision making.

Next hand he limped (which basically meant he had a hand he wasn't mad about, and almost certainly lacking a six or a two), and I now considered the problem of what to do with queens in the small blind. Given what I knew about Mick and his distaste for throwing in the towel preflop, I decided a big raise was in order here. I considered the shove but thought that might be overkill, not to mention the possibility that it might be the only bet size that would get a fold. So instead I went for the hefty pot committing third of stack raise, and got the snap call. The rest went in on a K42 flop. Mick had K7o and my bounty, a fitting reward for a man doggedly determined to keep chipping away against the odds.

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Ben Wilinofky's blog

In social situations I spend most of my time smiling at and listening to people. This isn't a facade but an accurate reflection of my inner psyche. While I get that most people are mainly interested in people most similar to themselves, I've always been interested in the full spectrum. In fact I'd generally rather hear from someone with very different experiences and views from my own. I recently read a brilliant blog by Ben Wilinofsky where he talks honestly about his struggle with depression. 

I went through something similar when I was Ben's age but came out of it as one of the happiest people I know. I imagine my psyche as a well tended country estate where nothing major ever happens and things just tick along pleasantly at a sedate pace. 

However....

There remains one tiny part of my psyche that is the last survivor from my youthful depressions. I imagine this part, my inner cynic, as the disgruntled inhabitant of a box room in an obscure extension of my country estate. Most of the time, he's up there on his own muttering under his breath about the faux gentility of the rest of the estate but essentially bothering nobody. But every so often, something causes him to stick his head out and shout his tuppence worth.

At a recent live event, a guy I've known since I started in poker asked me how I was getting on this year poker wise. As I was about to answer he blurted out by way of explanation "cos I don't read blogs or Twitter or any of that shite". That was enough to get my inner cynic to open his door and shout "HE DOESN'T REALLY CARE. HE'S JUST MAKING CONVERSATION!" My inner cynic visits me so seldom these days that when he does I tend to pay attention. So I heeded his words and kept my answer to the question to 5 words or less.

I'm also going to heed my inner cynic and keep this blog entry short, as he's pretty convinced nobody's really interested.

 Mainly, I just wanted to plug Ben's blog.

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TROPHY!

One of the things poker players occasionally debate after they've run out of bad beats and brags to swap is the importance (or otherwise) of trophies in poker. David Lappin once attempted to tilt an opponent headsup after a proposed deal had broken down by informing his opponent who had wanted the trophy in the deal that if he won the trophy, he would dump it into the bin in front of his defeated opponent, illustrating that he placed no value on the actual trophy other than the opportunity it would allow him to annoy his opponent who did.

While most recreational players place a lot of value on trophies and winning tournaments, most professionals would lean towards Lappin's more cynical view that it's all about the money and a trophy celebrating how well you ran in one specific tournament has little if any merit. I've heard stories of trophies being left behind in hotel rooms or surreptitiously deposited in bins in airports rather than pay the luggage fees to transport them home.

Prizepool? What prizepool?

This view was tested when several of Europe's top professional players assembled to represent their countries at the European Nations Cup of (Duplicate) Poker. Mainly because aside from trophies and medals, we weren't actually playing for anything. Well, there was qualification to the World championships for the top 6 sides, but for all we know that could be another tournament without a prizepool.

First of all, credit to Padraig Parkinson for assembling about as strong a team as he could for this event from those players who made themselves available for selection. Other national captains were not as successful apparently. When I saw the list of names on the French team, I was surprised that I didn't recognise a single name on the list, as I know pretty much all of the top French players. All became clear when Parky shared a bus from the airport with the French team, who informed  him that the team was selected on the basis of a live satellite played in Deauville (so essentially they ended up with 6 random players who happened to be in Deauville at the time, entered the satellite, and ran well in it). Other national captains apparently just selected all their mates. Others struggled to get professional players to turn out for what the Danish player at my table (Lars Bonding) kept referring to as "a play money event". Our team was myself, Big Mick G, Dermot Blaine, Eoghan O'Dea, Cat O'Neill and last minute substitute Rob Taylor (Cat's husband), with Parky acting as captain and substitute.

Team Ireland attempts a resteal v Team GB

Most of us got there on Thursday. Play wasn't scheduled to start until Saturday, but first item on the agenda was a demonstration and run through on the technology. As myself and Big Mick headed down for this, we ran into the Lithuanian lady on the UK team, Genting pro Daiva "Baltic_blonde" Barauskaite. I only knew her from online and had never met her before in person but she immediately introduced herself and was instantly charming. Thinking myself and Big Mick were heading straight to the demo, she ended up following us to Dermot and Eoghan's room when we went to collect them, joking that it seemed she might have accidentally joined the Irish team. We eventually made it down to the demonstration, which was straightforward enough and gave us no real sense of the many technical issues that would make the weekend's play rather challenging. Big Mick pointed out that the only thing the demo proved was how boring poker is as a game when there's nothing at stake.

Team talk

Parky had texted ahead to have the team assembled when he got there. We went out to a Chinese restaurant where despite being pretty inebriated, Padraig delivered some top notch thoughts and recommendations on what the strategy should be. For those unfamiliar with the duplicate poker concept, the basic idea is that each seat on each table gets dealt the same cards for every hand. So on hand 1, if you look down at K7o, you know that every other player in your seat on other tables is also looking at K7o. Flops turns and rivers are similarly pre-ordained. There are 6 players per team (one of whom must be a female), and each team has one player in each seat at different tables (which are therefore obviously all 6 handed). Each hand is scored by calculating the net amount of chips each team won or lost overall on that hand. The team who won the most chips gets maximum points, the team who won the second most gets one point less, and so on down to the team who lost the most chips who get the minimum points. Every hand counts, so effectively every decision by every player in every hand feeds into the overall result. The cost of a really bad error is to guarantee your team nul points on that hand, which is far more significant than what a well sized thin value bet or a good fold early in a hand stands to gain you, so the performance of each team was more likely to hinge on the weakest link rather than the strongest (a point illustrated by the fact that despite the UK winning two of their seats, they only came fourth overall). So optimal strategy seemed to be to err on the side of caution and take the low variance ABC route when in doubt. The other point Parky was keen that we all got was that since each hand counted equally, no one hand was more important than any other (the last time this event was run in London, a different scoring system basically meant it all boiled down to the hands that had the biggest movements of chips). So if you did happen to make a mess of one hand, you had to just draw a line under it and get on with it and play each remaining hand on its merits rather than chasing to try to make up for the mistake. The final point Parky was keen to stress was that this was essentially a satellite to the Worlds: as nice as it would be to win it or medal, the real objective was top 6 to qualify for Rio.

After an early night (the main thing we were worried about as a team was not the structure or the opposition but whether we would be able to perform at 9.30 AM, the scheduled start time. Nearly all professional players work the evening or night shift so 9.30 AM is like 3.30 AM for a normal person), we were good to go. There were some very mixed views about our chances. Chatting to the Lithuanian captain who I'm friendly with since we shared a livestream commentary gig, he was somewhat dismissive of our chances, feeling that a team of predominantly mtt players could struggle in a format where the blinds never increased and everyone's stack was reset to 200 big blinds at the start of every hand. This was a popular view: that players with experience of deep stacked cash games were what you wanted (this turned out to be more or less completely wrong as it happened, but it was the widespread view. As it turned out, a much more important skill was the ability to pace yourself and know when and how to reduce or increase variance, something all top mtt players understand). The Dutch captain was even more dismissive of our chances when he spoke to Parky. But on the other hand, when we tried to get on a team bet with the UK, Neil Channing turned us down after due consideration, opining that we would be favourites not only to finish ahead of the Brits but in his view to win the whole tournament. Never underestimate the shrewdness of the Channing when it comes to these types of assessments: while we led the way and moved slowly and safely to victory, the Dutch and the Danes (who on paper had the strongest teams, and mostly adopted a hyper aggressive approach) punted their way up down and around the lower half of the field.

Touch your screens and play

The first session set the tone for my table. The two most active players were the Estonian in seat 2 (who was opening most hands, not folding to 3 or 4 bets, and turning up with some fairly random holdings at showdowns) and Lars Bonding for Denmark in seat 3 who was 3 betting most hands. I was pretty card dead and the only tricky decisions I had were very marginal light 4 bet spots over Lars 3 bets. I erred on the side of caution and didn't get involved with the Q9s which I would have been more inclined to play in a normal mtt. The only big hand I played was a pretty gross one that illustrates that while duplicate poker is supposed to reduce the luck element, it certainly doesn't come close to eradicating it (it just makes some things like who wins a standard flip unimportant but makes other factors like team selection, table draw and timing much more important). Lars opened the cutoff, I 3 bets queens from the small blind, and he called. I cbet the 864 flop, he raised, and I shoved. Over the next thirty seconds, I went from hoping it hadn't gone all in on other tables and feeling pretty good about myself to praying I wasn't the only table where it did go in, as the board ran out 8647T to make the nines a straight.

So at the break I was eager to find out from my teammates how that particular hand had played out on other tables. I was somewhat relieved to find that it had gone in on most tables (usually on the turn, except on Rob's table where he had the nines and the queens butchered the hand by check raising the river all in), except for one table where the queens had somehow folded the flop (a bizarre fold to say the least) and another where the queens got away more legitimately on the turn. This illustrated how big a part luck could still play: the dubious fold on the turn with the queens probably ended up getting that player's team maximum points since he lost considerably less than the queens did anywhere else, and the nines on that table must have felt great but actually cost his team. Similarly, any player who managed to get away from the nines on the flop would actually have been severely punished by the scoring system.

The original rather optimistic plan was to play 100 hands per session, but problems with the technology (we were playing on smart phones) and the network made for very slow going. My table averaged 15 to 20 hands an hour (which is snail's pace 6 max) and it was clear as the weekend wore on that some players were getting increasingly frustrated by this. At the very start, Lars Bonding insisted that after each hand everyone had to carefully count the chips in front of them before verifying totals on their phones, but by the end of day 2 he was adopting a more whatever approach, allowing the dealer to verify for him to speed things up. So we ended up playing 66 hands in the first session (as we got more used to the setup this increased to 72 hands in the Sunday sessions). For most of this, Ireland hovered in or around the middle of the pack on the scoreboard. I pretty much expected we would if we stuck to our plan, as a softly softly strategy that lowers variance means you are more likely to be mid pack over a small sample size but hopefully towards the top over the entire sample.

This was borne out when after another solid second session where Team Ireland kept the mistakes to the minimum, we were provisionally overnight leaders. I say provisionally as the combination of the format and the technology meant that a lot of hands had to be taken out afterwards (basically if there was a cockup on any table like the dealer button being in the wrong place, then the hand had to be voided at all tables). As it happened, we lost the lead overnight to France, presumably because some of the hands where we out scored the French had to be voided. But we were still in a good challenging position and well poised to at least wrap up top 6.

Introducing a new poker concept.... bathroom equity

After the third session, the good news was we had moved back into the lead, but the other news was that it was the slimmest lead imaginable, and the top 9 had all bunched right up so even though we were now leading, a top six position looked a lot less certain than it had at the start of the day. I was pretty card dead for that session (by now as a team we were getting used to the idea that most seats were cold and there was generally one hot seat per session that got most of the cards and tricky decisions, so at every break you were keen to find out how your teammate in the hot seat had got on). The only spot where I got to exercise a bit of creativity was one that had nothing to do with cards or stack sizes or position but everything to do with bladder. The Serb to my immediate left had been requesting a substitute so he could take a toilet break for some time, and was becoming visibly more uncomfortable by the second as it took some time to locate the substitute. The sub finally appeared just after he had opened under the gun, meaning that he was free to go relieve himself once the hand was over. After it was folded to me in the big blind, he muttered "Please fold quickly". So I obviously threebet ridiculously light. After he squirmed and called and we waited 30 seconds for the flop to appear on screen, I started to move chips into the pot. Before I had announced the amount, he had already folded and was sprinting towards the bathroom. Lars Bonding, realising what had just happened, chuckled and tapped the table. He also suggested that my plan if I encountered any resistance had to involve a very long tank while making flowing water noises.

Poker is a game that tests every aspect of your brain, not just the ability of the rational part to process a wide variety of information and make good decisions, but also the emotional part which will determine how well you do so under pressure or after a setback. It's widely recognised that at the top level of the game, differences in technical ability are much less important than the ability to remain emotionally stable and avoid tilt. The French in particular appear to have buckled under the strain as they tumbled from 2nd to 9th over the course of the final session. These are the situations where you want a cynical hardened pro rather than a talented enthusiastic amateur.

In the hot seat

As we got into the fourth session, I realised that my seat was the hot seat this time around. So no pressure other than the knowledge that if I got too many big decisions wrong it could cost the entire team (Jesse May told me later that Parky exclaimed "oh Christ that's Doke's seat" on the livestream when it became clear that 5 was the hot seat. Luckily I played as well as I felt I could (which I pretty much always do under pressure) and I also ran well. It might seem odd to talk about run good in a format that is supposed to minimise luck, but as I explained earlier all the format really does is move the luck from flips and coolers into other things. One key hand starts with me three betting aces from the big blind after the loose Cypriot in seat 1 had opened and Lars had called on the button. They both called and the flop came jt4 with 2 clubs. After seat 1 raised my cbet and Lars folded I shoved. As the Cypriot tanked I knew I was ahead, but after he called and turned over k7 of clubs, I knew this was a massive spot, because it was difficult to imagine these two hands getting it in on most tables. Any reasonably solid player would just fold the k7s in early position (as our seat 1 Cat did), and any normal player would certainly fold it once the 3 bet came in. This made it very likely that on every other table the aces won a relatively small pot, but I was about to either double up if I held (probably scoring a maximum for the team) or get stacked if the flush got there (and get the dreaded nul points). So despite having played my hand perfectly, there was now approximately a 30% chance Ireland was going to be punished, and conversely that my Cypriot opponent would be rewarded for rashness. So I was a pretty relieved bunny when about a minute later a blank river hit the screen and my aces held.

A much less clear outcome arose when I got another big pair in the blinds. After seat 1 opened again and every single player behind called, I found jacks in the big blind. After my longest tank of the tournament I eventually decided that the big squeeze was the play here (a small squeeze was likely to get called in at least two spots and a deceptive flat could work out well if this was the one universe in eight where the jacks flop a set, but could get me into serious trouble in the other 7 universes where I don't. After I squeezed big enough to make it clear I was almost certainly committed, and everyone folded, I was left to ponder how the hand had played on tighter tables. If the jacks were destined to win a big pot post flop my squeeze would score badly, but if they weren't I might have scored another 14 pointer (apparently the jacks didn't win as big on most other tables).

In all the other big spots I faced in that last session, I erred on the side of caution as the main objective for Team Ireland was to lock down a top 6 spot.

As soon as the session ended I immediately tweeted that my seat had been the hot seat in that last session and I just hoped I hadn't got the big decisions wrong and cost us (for obvious reasons we were not allowed to tweet or use any electronic devices during sessions). So I may not have been the most elated man in the room when it was announced that we had not only won but had actually extended our lead in the last session (that would be either Rob Taylor who literally went ballistic with happiness or a similarly thrilled Big Mick G who had just scooped his seat, Player of the Tourney and team gold) but I'm pretty sure I was the most relieved. Before the announcement, we assembled at a table and waited nervously. Jesse May and Parky arrived and immediately ratcheted up the tension by offering different opinions as to who had won, Parky plumping for France while Jesse felt the UK had done it. Big Mick winning his seat (and then MVP) boosted our hopes, but then as it was announced that not only had the beautiful Daiva won her seat for the UK but also the lovely Barny Boatman his, we started to get a little paranoid that Jesse as livestream supremo might have been told something.

While we waited for the announcement we wondered among ourselves whether the order would be 123456 or 654321. In the end they went for an order nobody guessed, 321456, so the tension could not have been bigger after they announced Spain as third and Russia as second, meaning both Jesse and Parky had their picks in play. So maybe I wasn't the only member of Team Ireland more relieved that excited after they called our name and we found ourselves on our feet walking through the room to the stage.

Once we got there they gave us our medals and the trophy while Parky made a hilarious acceptance speech. No better man for these occasions.

The other teams were very gracious in defeat and the Brits in particular seemed to be rooting for us (team Captain Barny had tweeted Come on Ireland! before the announcement) and Big Mick justifiably came in for most of the praise. It was obviously a star performance by Finglas' finest and though he's a man of few words who generally prefers to let his play do the talking, when he does open his mouth he has the knack of summing things up perfectly as he did on this occasion when he tweeted:

" I've won a lot of money playin poker over the years but 2day was defo d biggest achievement/most rewarding day of my 7 year professional Carer winning player of the tournament and winning the tournament overall 4 ireland was some buzz. Great feeling. Come on d Irish!"

Video killed the poker stars

Team Ireland celebrated in time honoured tradition by getting extremely drunk and there was some good banter after Big Mick started joking about how he had won the cup for us with his MVP performance only to be cut down in typical Irish fashion ("ok, so you're the best play money player in Europe"), and a very drunk goose and worm arrived in the hotel lobby at 5 and proceeded to run around waving their arms and bumping into each other like a couple of apes who had just found fruit punch.



There was great reaction and well wishes from home (apart from one rather bizarre outbreak of team selection questioning on IPB after we won: I accept it's kind of normal to have these post mortems after a team loses or performs badly, but after being crowned European champions? Really?). On the subject of team selection I again applaud our captain for assembling as strong a team as was possible in the circumstances. While everyone who follows Irish poker could probably reel off 10, 15 or 20 names that merit consideration, the fact is not all of these could make it, or possibly even wanted to. Other countries struggled (or didn't even bother trying) to assemble a team of their strongest pros (many pros would never even consider giving up their time for a tournament with no prize pool) and we did better than most in this regard. And even some teams who did field very strong teams discovered too late that their hyper aggro style was disastrous in this format. Horses for courses, and the result vindicated that while several of the countries are stronger than us by almost any other yardstick, we got our tactics spot on. Other teams may have been stronger on paper but struggled adjusting to the scoring system or perhaps the "play money" aspect. One of the crucial aspects of poker is the knowledge that every decision has a monetary implication (see Big Mick's comment above after the demo). Take away this and you have a very different game (if you don't believe me go watch some play money games online and see if they play anything like real money games). As someone who routinely gives my money to other players to play (as a staker/backer) I'm acutely aware of this. The first thing I  need to know any player I'm considering is will he treat my money as if it were his own? If I think he won't then he's never getting a cent from me no matter how good he is. The same applies in my opinion to team competitions with no prize pool: you need guys who will give it their all rather than treat it as a play money game. It was noticeable on day 2 that a lot of teams were taking it less seriously, while others who had a bad day 1 decided the best way to get back into it was to just start shoving 200 big blinds preflop and hope for the best. There was considerable amusement on my table when on the second hand of day 2 after it was folded to the small blind and after he completed to 50, the Estonian big blind just shoved for 10k. The amusement gradually turned to something else when he repeated the trick several times in the first dozen hands. At the break it was confirmed this was a tactic the entire Estonian team was adopting, and the Russians were doing something similar. This brutal but effective strategy (which I had actually suggested to one of my teammates before the tourney even started might be effective and essentially a loop hole) saw both teams ascend the leader board. I wonder how the organisers who were trying to push this format as the ultimate skill game would gave felt about a team winning the Cup thanks to a strategy of open shoving 200 big blinds as a team randomly. I am a big fan of the IFP and their new president Patrick Nally as they attempt to promote poker as a skill game and create tournaments with added money (Patrick's done amazing marketing work for other sports and pointed out in his speech that poker is unusual as a sport in that not only does all the prize money come from players pockets but organisers charge them for the privilege and pocket any additional TV or sponsorship money). So some more tinkering with the format may be needed to re-enforce the message that this type if event enhances the skill element while diminishing the luck factor.

Gimme a B, gimme an M, gimme a G

I was rooming with Big Mick G this trip. For most of our careers we have been contemporaries and rival (although he's a good bit younger than me, he has actually been playing longer and a pro for longer). We both made our TV debut on the same episode of RTE's short lived Late Night Stars of Poker (where we both suffered the indignity of losing to a boxer who had never played before).

I'm a long time admirer of Mick's work ethic and disciplined approach. He also has a refreshing lack of egomania. Ego is a very dangerous thing in poker because it can make you believe you are better than you actually are and don't need to keep working harder to improve. The day you think you have cracked this game is the day you stop improving, and not too far from the day the game passes you by.

 Very likable  I would almost say Big Mick is the only major Irish player that I don't know anyone who dislikes him (I would actually say that if it weren't for the fact that the same can be said for Marc McDonnell). He's so modest and self critical that none of us had any inkling he was in contention to win his seat, let alone Player of the Tournament. But when he did he was so delighted he positively bounded through the room to the stage , mumbled a few incoherent words near the mike, and came running back to us beaming broadly. When he was called as Player of the Tournament he again charged the stage like the world's happiest gorilla. Not bad for a humble lad from Finglas dismissed by many (including the UK player at his table at the end of day 1) as "just a nit". So let's hear it for Big Mick G... the finest play money player in Europe.

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