"Wow, nice arse"

Quote one brazen young hussy just after I ran past her and two of her friends in the park today.

When you get my age, you take whatever bawdy comments you get and waste no time considering whether there might be irony involved.

Irish Open is less than 12 hours away, so what am I doing up at this hour? Mundane answer unfortunately: watching some PDF files slowly brewing on my laptop after they whacked this machine several times. Day job commitments.

Paddy and Lisa spent the evening/night with us yesterday so we got the full account of what it's like to be down a hole for 80 hours or so. You have to admire Lisa's resolve and commitment to the cause.

Bit of poker to catch up on: 7th in the Fitz last Friday for 160 Euro. Doubled up early on courtesy of pocket Aces and Mick Duffy. Mick min raised from early, a few callers (I'm obviously not the only one who realises Mick always min raises marginal enough hands), I have pocket Aces in the small blind. I know because of our history that Mick won't fold for any money preflop against me so I raise big enough to ensure it's just me and him. Flop comes AKQ and I know, again for historical reasons, that if I check, Mick will go allin if he caught anything on the flop (and maybe even if he didn't). Sure enough, he goes allin with A-10, and no jack comes to save him.

Continued going well until I picked up Queens in the BB. 5 limpers, and Kevin, the Fitz's answer to Mike Caro, goes all in from SB. I know he could be doing this with any two cards and in any case it's a no brain call. Turns out he's stronger than I thought with AK and hits not one but both.

That left me with 3 big blinds from where a most remarkable recovery was effected. It started wth folding a few times, then noticing the BB had mucked his hand before any one else at the table, so I pushed all in with 73o, and it got through. I then got moved to a new table. First hand, A8 in the cutoff, all in, button calls with A10 and I dog him. Next hand, pocket jacks, all in, same guy calls with queens, and you guessed it, I dog him again. A while later, I'm all in with A 10, he has AJ, hits his jack on the flop, but I runner runner a straight. Scary.

At the start of the final table, I was back up to 40K, somewhat above average, but only 8 BB's! I've drifted back to 25K before I see my first decent hand, A10 UTG, I push, the guy I keep dogging looks at one card, has a bit of a dwell, and eventually decides to call without looking at the other card, because the first one was an ace. Turns out the other one is too, so I'm virtually dead, though by the river I have any jack for a straight and he's getting palpitations, but not this time.

Online, been going well in cash, but keep bubbling or thereabouts in satellites. Latest was tonight's GUKPT, 4 tickets, 8 left, I'm about average, I raise with A 10, BB calls, flop is 10 high, he checks, I bet, he min raises, I move all in, he has queens. Oh the horror.

I'm going in to RTE Radio One on Friday to record an interview for broadcast at 4 PM (I think) on Saturday Sport the following day. I think it'll be mostly about my running, but also the poker.

Right, that file is done so I'm outta here.

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