A sad farewell to the Legend

Yesterday I went over to Galway with Ian for Dave "The Legend" Curtis' farewell party in the Eglinton. We did an Irish Poker Radio show from there that should be up soon featuring a great interview with Dave, and Rob Taylor talking about the cashout tournaments on Full Tilt. Dave did a tremendous job turning the Eglinton into the most welcoming poker club in Ireland. The first time I met Dave, I'd just put local character Christy Morkam on monkey tilt after I called his five bet shove with nines (confident I was ahead of his range: he had 98s as it happened) in a cash game there. Christy was berating me for the call until Dave leaned over and whispered something in his ear (Christy later told me Dave had pointed out I had actually a few decent results and was the reigning European Deepstack champion). Dave's ability to do that (defuse a potentially volatile situation with a few words) is one of the many talents that made him the best card room manager we're ever likely to see.

As for the tournament itself, well, like most Eglinton affairs it became a flipfest fairly fast. My recent online running form continued for a while into this: I got it in dominated a few times but what's a little domination when you're running good, Doke style. Unfortunately it couldn't last: Port Laoise mafioso Piggie (Dan Rankin) getting me in the end when I shoved an ace and failed to outrace the world's biggest breakfast eater's sixes. Dan was playing very well so at least my chips went to a good place, a rare enough fate for them in the Eglinton.

Most of the hands were perfectly standard: only one worth commenting on was when I called local player Bernard Brady's late position uber shorty shove blind. Given that I was getting over 5 to 2 on the call, it was a perfectly standard call with any two in my opinion so why bother even looking, but Bernard didn't seem to agree. People don't seem to realise that just because my natural game is tighter than most doesn't mean I won't make these calls when I'm clearly getting more than the odds I need against the shover's range. As it happen I was actually ahead with 22 v A6o but didn't manage to stay ahead (for once).

Online has been going well. I nailed down my first package (first of many hopefully) for Coventry already, also scored a package for the Snowfest EPT (in Austria) meaning I now have two EPTs to look forward to, and cashed in a few mtts on Bruce, including the nightly $17500. The Cake mtts seem substantially softer than those on Stars or Ipoker so I'll definitely be targeting as many as I can on my nights in.

Tomorrow I'm off to Longford for the CPT there. Hopefully I'll see a few of you there: Liam and Fionn have done a great job revitalising the CPT.

Posted in: