Big happy entry

Warning: this is essentially a brag post.

"If you ever started being lucky, you'd be unstoppable". The brother said that to me once when I was whining about running bad, and well, yesterday I did run good in the last event of the Fitz Winter Festival and ended up chopping it with Rob. A thrill not just to be back to winning ways, but also to actually chop with Rob.

60 runners, got off to a good start until I got Mick Duffyed in a standard Mick Duffy pot. I flopped the nut straight, he fell in love with second pair enough to enter into a suicide pact, then managed to turn his second pair into trips and river it into a house.

Recovered a bit but then the blinds got big and I had to switch to shove mode. I was down to 7K when I shoved a pocket pair into a bigger one in the blinds and got lucky when my lucky dealer Pavel duly tripped me.

Meanwhile Rob was tearing up the other table and was up to about 40K.

Then I got moved downstairs and it was a lucky move for me. First I check shoved top pair into top pair better kicker and got lucky when he folded. Then Pavel dealt the ultimate cooler in my favour: middle set against two opponents with top pair. I slowplayed it and they both duly tripped up on the turn. I was sitting there doing my best weak tight "Should I call here with the second nuts or nut? Oh what the heck, let's gambool" impression and had just flatcalled the leader's second bullet when joy of joys, the other guy shoved. I was fistpumping on the inside when I heard the other guy reshove. No need for Hollywood any more: instacall.

Paul Fish arrived shortly after. By now it's almost the bubble, I'm chipleader, he's a very healthy second. First 4 pots go, I raise, he calls behind, I check, he makes massive pot, I fold like a baba. Then I raise ATs on the button, he calls again in the SB, BB calls. Flop T84, check, check, 10K into 18K pot, and he min raises me. This is the first time I've played against Paul so have no idea how to interpret the min raise. After a ponder, I decide that given his image of me must be weak tight at this point, it's very likely a semibluff, so I ship. Now I get the full Paul Fish treatment: he's in my face asking if bottom set is good, if I have an overpair, motioning to call, fold, all the tricks. I'm trying not to give away anything so I just sit there and smile, but inwardly I'm cursing myself for an overplayed TPTK as I now think he has jacks or maybe queens. After an age, he calls so now I know I must be behind. Or maybe not: he has pocket 9's. He turns an openender but fails to suck out. I now have 35% of the chips in play with 12 left.

FT starts. This is the first giant stack I've had since Drogheda and I stick to the same strategy which goes against conventional wisdom but is based very heavily on ICM. While I'm sitting there, Rob goes from shortie to biggie with a breathtaking display of final table poker. Second one in a week where he went from short at the outset to win or chop. His STT chops really show in these situations: he also came from shortest stack to win in Macau. One hand where he extracted a double up with top set was pure genius. If you ever need someone to play an FT for your life for your entire roll, Rob would be the man to call. I sometimes wonder if people fully realise what an astonishingly good player Rob is, given that so much of what he does is beneath the surface and based on his unerring ability to home in on what the other guy is thinking. People don't tend to see Rob's best work because it usually involves either him making a great fold or inducing his opponent into making a bad one. It's not flashy, but it's always optimal, and he squeezes every last ounce of positive EV from these situations. As I've said before, I consider Rob to be the best all round NLH in Ireland in terms of his versatility.

4 left and Tommy Buckley started talking about a deal but Rob wasn't keen. At that point I was still massive chipleader, Rob was massive second placed, and the other two were relatively short. I then took out Tommy for the umpteenth time. Basically coolered him blind on blind where I raised in the SB with a bag of spanners (idea being to exploit his image of me as uber nit), he called, I flopped bottom 2 on a board that would look to him like I couldn't have hit, and made what I knew he'd interpret as a weak cbet. He shoved with an openended straight draw and missed.

Rob took Ralphie out shortly afterwards with a sneakily played KQ. There was very little between us in chips at this point so we instachopped. Headsup could have been interesting as it's fair to say that Rob knows more about my game than any other player, and I possibly know more about his than anyone else, but chop made obvious sense. Rob suggested after we should maybe have agreed to chop but played headsup anyway for practice and in retrospect that would have been interesting.

Well done to all at the Fitz as ever for another great festival.

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