Shorts

Brag: Just won a Ladbrokes package to Killarney. Sucked out on some poor fecker on the bubble: my queens making a four card flush to crack his aces. I always wondered what it would feel like to suck out on someone.

Also, forgot to mention I final tabled the Fitz EOM on Thursday night. Probably my most wildly swingy tournament ever. I think I was near the chip lead, then short within a few orbits, then near chip lead again a few times.

Smurph's jacks cracked my kings at one point. Never nice to have it happen to you but if it must, then at least let it be to someone like Smurph. Unfortunately she was unlucky after that, so I was glad to read she got a nice score in the SE monthly game. Smurph's virtually an icon of Irish poker at this point, and no better lady ambassador for the game could there be.

Anyway, very next hand I pick up kings again! An English LAG who has been trying to run over the table raised early. I stuck in an overbet allin praying he'd think I was tilting and call light, but he made a great fold showing Ace queen! I guess I need to work on my tilthead impersonation.

Final table was a big non-event really. With the average M 6-7, and me bang on average, card death was always likly to be fatal, and so it proved. By the time my M had shrunk to 4, I'd not seen a single decent ace or even one pair, nor did any good situations arise. In fact, best hand I saw was my exit one: KJ in the BB. Folded to the button who raised, I shoved, and he called with his aces, as you do.

Still, enjoyable tournament, another decent result: just a shame the FT was so crapshooty. It wasn't the strongest final table I've ever seen either, though from what I hear the best man (Oz) won (or at least chopped).

A friend asked me today why my game is so effective in Ireland compared to England or the US. While not totally accepting the implication that I'm crap overseas (I've cashed in about 30% of the tournaments I've played abroad, even if I've not had a really big result yet), I think there's some truth in the notion that my game works best in Ireland. Hard to pin down why exactly, but something along the lines that the type of bad players you get abroad are different from those you get here. The typical bad player in Vegas is weak tight: his natural predator is the good LAG to whom he slowly leaks chips. The typical bad player in Ireland is what I'd call BAG: bad aggressive. Players like me are their natural predators: they'll see us fold a couple of times and dismiss us as weak tighties, then we'll be sitting there with the nuts and they'll be convinced they can get us to fold if they shove all in. Or worse, they'll find to their horror that I might just call their allin with middle pair. So let's hear it for BAGs: if it weren't for them, us nits would never get paid.

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