Doking around in cyberspace

Why I'm not David Bowie

2012-01-26T11:19:00.002Z

I didn't play last year's IPPF so when I said to Mick Mccloskey I'd go with him to this year's version, in my mind I thought I was going to a game with 100 or so runners. So it was a pleasant surprise to learn it'd be more like 400. On the drive down, I made various business calls and found other ways to play with my new smartphone, all the time trying to drown out Mick's complaints about dereliction of navigation duties.

Day 1 went pretty well. I chipped up throughout without any major incident. My table did get progressively tougher as the evening wore on with the arrival of Colin Hammond, John Keown and Ciaran "Tag" Taggart. Otherwise, the highlight of the day was one of the great characters on the Irish poker scene Nicky Power mugging it up for the cameras to take the piss out of my Twitter parody account (choke_doke).

There's always been a bit of a banter culture around Irish poker and I seem to be attracting it a lot lately. I also had to endure a piss take blog from my friend Lappin (see later), and Daragh Davey and Nicholas Newport bowing down every time I entered the room at the weekend. I don't mind a bit of banter though and I guess if you're going to get it, having a couple of young ballas bowing down is a nicer form than anonymous Twitter death threats :)

I was happy to bag up comfortably above average having almost doubled my starting stack. By contrast, Day 2 couldn't have gone much worse. I missed the opportunity to triple up when Jamie Flynn opened for the umpteenth time. I was about to threebet light with T7s when I noticed the guy beside me was almost wetting himself with excitement, leading me to suspect he had a hand. So I let the hand go. My read was spot on as my neighbour threebet Jamie. After Jamie peeled, they got it in with 88 and 99 on a J98 board! The board didn't pair so my T7 would have scooped.

My favoured strategy in softish live events with a good structure is to try to chip up steadily using a smallball approach, rather than making any premature big moves. However, there inevitably comes a time when you have to kick on as blinds and antes escalate. After Gavin Flynn opened to 1700 utg at 400/800 with a 100 ante, I elected to flat call with AK in the small blind. I prefer flatting in these spots out of position against a good player when the effective stack is 40 to 55 bbs, as the threebet just inflates the pot and makes it likely that if we do get it all in pre, I'm going to be flipping at best. I think the threebet also folds out most of the hands in Gav's range that I dominate, while the flatcall disguises my hand. It allows me to get away cheaply if I miss the flop, but potentially win a big pot if I hit. The big blind came along. The flop was 8 high all hearts (I had the ace of hearts). In my mind, I now have enough equity that I'm happy to get it all in, and did after the big blind potted it, Gav folded, and I check raised. I assumed I was flipping nearly always with two overs and a flush draw, but wasn't in this case. I was up against a queen high made flush and didn't get there.

I didn't really think too much about the hand until a good player at the table told me later he didn't like how I played it, preferring the 3 bet pre, and the check call on the flop. I strongly disagree though (I don't like putting in a chunk of my stack when I'm going to have to fold most turns and can add about 30% to my stack without showdown if the check raise gets through), but I ran the hand by Lappin and Rob Taylor (who both play it same as me).

I was back later for the side event. I made a strong start doubling my stack early on without any major showdowns. There was one funny hand with Ciaran Cooney. Ciaran 4xed the button to 200 over a limper, I threebet to 550 from the big blind with queens, the limper flatted, Ciaran 4 bet, and after a little deliberation I decided the fold was most prudent here. Ciaran showed 93o. He told me later he'd done it because in his very first live event a few years ago he'd 6 bet me with 23o and got me to fold, so I guess Ciaran's timing is good in that he finds me with the one hand I'd be 3 bet folding here (everything weaker gets flatted at this point, and everything stronger is not getting folded). I'm fine with the fold though, there's nothing wrong with folding the best hand from time to time (it certainly beats calling with the worst every time), and a couple of top players told me they'd make what Lappin calls a "boxy" fold in this spot.

I ruined my good start the next time I got queens. Having raised in late position and got called by both blinds, I chet when checked to on a 542 flop. Smurph called and the big blind now shoved. My instant read on him was that he wasn't strong, he seemed just to be fed up of my constant raising, so I figured he was either overplaying something marginal, or making a spazzy move assuming I couldn't have hit that flop. So I called. Smurph now reshoved and my gut was I was now beaten. However, I only needed to be good about 35% of the time to call, and convinced myself I could be up against a smaller overpair or a pair and a draw hand involving a three. However, on reflection I don't think I'm good here often enough, so not exactly my finest hour. The big blind had 94o, and Smurph a set of 4s. I never recovered from this, being forced to wait for a decent spot to shove. A7 over a couple of limps looked like one but ran into AJ behind. That ended my weekend on the playing front.

I hung round on day 3 as a couple of my friends were still in and going well. Unfortunately it went pear shaped fairly quickly for both Daragh Davey and Padraig "Smudge" O'Neill so it was time to get clane out of dodge, or to dodge out of Clane, and back home for a Sunday grind. I had a bad one, but had the consolation of ending my night railing Daragh and Lappin deep in some majors. Lappin, playing his first major in ages, romped into the last 100 of the Milly like the classic thoroughbred he is, and just as we were both getting excited about the 200k plus up top, unfortunately ran tens into kings with 67 left. Great show by the talented Mr Lappin though, who has also made me the subject of his latest entertaining blog which explains among other things why I'm not David Bowie. He assures me the entry became his most read ever within 24 hours.

Daragh Davey, who bunked on the couch in the suite myself and Mick shared and got a lift back from Clane with us demonstrated his true grit within a few hours. Shaking off the disappointment of playing brilliantly for 3 days to just double his money, he ended headsup in the Ipoker 200K, and was unlucky not to win when his AT was outdrawn by KQ. I'm on record as an admirer of "other" Daragh, and my admiration is based at least as much on his temperament, discipline and attitude as it is on his poker skills (which are considerable). In a world where people often confuse flamboyance with talent, and arrogance with accomplishment, Daragh prefers to just get on with the business quietly and with class. I'm pretty sure this is the first of many big results.

Well done to Danny Maxwell for his great blogging and photographs this weekend (including those that adorn this blog). Danny's blogging for IPB of Irish live events really adds to the occasion. I also ran into Breifne at the weekend, promoting his new venture, SharkRankings.com. The basic idea is to have a ranking list for live and online events. Irish Eyes are running a number of qualifying events at quarter past eight 5 nights a week. I've been hitting these up when I can with spectacularly unsuccessful results (I've yet to cash!).

This blog is being typed up on the plane to Madrid, where later today I play 1a of Estrellas. Then next week I'm off to Prague (with Daragh Davey) for EMOP (and the live final for last year's leaderboard). With the deepstack following that and then Galway UKIPT, it's going to be a very busy month on the live front, making it harder to keep ticking away online. I rose to an all time high on the PocketFives rankings list after my recent rush of results (in the top 300 hundred in the world, and number 3 in Ireland, although I slipped down to number 4 at the weekend as Jude tore up Stars to move back ahead of me). With more and more top class Irish online players emerging, it gets harder and harder to stay near the top of the Irish list. When I broke into the top 10, I wasn't even in the top 1000 worldwide: now you need to be around 500 or so worldwide to make top 10 in Ireland.

Finally, speaking of top class online players, a big well done to two of the Dungarvan gang, Mark O'Connor and Gavin Flynn, for chopping the main event in Clane. Both lads are part of the Dungarvan group of players that seem to feed off each other's success, and you'll be hearing a lot more of these lads in future. I heard that two of Ireland's "live pros" were taking the piss out of what they called internet players on their table on day one. While it used to be the case that many online players struggled to transition to live, I think it was noteworthy that when the dust cleared at the weekend, it was two young online players who had risen to the top. The last few years have seen the online kids rise to dominate the international stage, and the next couple will see the same thing happen here in my opinion.

Having viewed my latest career change with a mixture of shock and disdain initially, my daughter Fiona seems to be coming round to the view that there may be something to this poker lark. When she was home for Christmas, she asked me to give her a crash course so she could play with her housemates. It took only 15 minutes or so as she's a very quick learner (it's clear that whatever talent for the game I possess she has inherited). She's still a novice though, and I got the following amusing text from her this weekend:

"If you're playing holdem and you accidentally say straight instead of flush before you show your hand, do you lose the pot because of it? Or is it just a stupid rule the lads just made up?"

As I texted back to her that they'd made it up, I regretted that we never had that Daddy-daughter talk where I explain that lads are sneaky. Limerick lads especially.

Jesus W(e)PT

2012-01-14T16:33:00.002Z

I went in to my first WPT confident about how I was playing and optimistic I could get a result. Maybe I should aim to go into tourneys pessimistic and jittery, because I managed to butcher my first hand of note. After three betting a German who seemed to be playing very aggro with aces and getting flatted, I then got check called on a JT7 board with two clubs and a low diamond. A low diamond on turn made the board even more draw heavy so instead of checking behind for pot control like I normally would this early, I fired again. That's actually ok I think given the drawy nature of the board but once he raised I should have just gone away. Instead I called to see what he did on the river. All the draws missed so when he fired for about a third of pot I levelled myself into thinking it might be a cheap stab with a missed draw or a blocker with a hand like kings. It wasn't: just top set. So my 30k starting stack was now 20k.

Not to be too results based but it probably made no difference as no matter how many chips I had I think I was always destined to be felted when I got set over setted later on. That left me with 10 bbs and there was no recovery. I shipped in with AKs, got called in two spots, then Dermot Blaine squeezed button for almost half his stack. The first flatter now went away, but the second one, Bodog sponsored pro Tatiana flatted again. The board ran out 7 high with no further betting and when Dermot announced ace high I was suddenly optimistic I might be chopping or even winning, but Tatiana somehow had kings.

I was back day for the IPC. Last year I got a number of monkeys off my back like never having cashed in an EPT main event or a WSOP, so 2012 would be a good year to start cashing in the biggest events on the Irish calendar (never having cashed in an IPC, IO or IWF). My tournament started slowly as I struggled with card death and having Nik Persaud to my left. Things picked up when Padraig Parkinson arrived. Parky was clearly enjoying the festivities too much to be overly fussed about the poker, and having bluffed off half his stack to Nik first hand, did likewise with the other half to me next hand. That got me through to day 2, although a period of card death near the bubble meant I drifted back from being well above average after I made a hero call v Marc McDonnell that prompted some banter on Twitter. This whole business of people tweeting at the table makes things interesting (it also means people at home can follow the banter and get hand and chip updates). When I came back on day 2, Jason was sat directly behind me but I learned of his exit via Twitter!

I flipped well on day 2 to get right into the mix, then lost a big one with kings v ace jack all in pre that would really have put me right in the hunt. That left me in 20 bbs mode again and after finding aces I played them in a way designed to try to extract maximum value and a full double up. It didn't really work out on this occasion as my opponent hit a set on the turn, so it was another second final table exit. Good at least to get the year going with a live cash, although to be honest between my own buyins and those of my stable it barely made a dent on my losses for the weekend.

I was home in time for a Sunday grind and thankfully that went well enough to more than wipe out the live poker losses, as I got a second on French Stars. I followed it with a win a few days later in their main nightly which I bought into late. I was intending to have a night off and had gone into town for dinner with an old friend, then caught a movie with Lappin, and some more food with Lappin, Mongoose and Triona, but when I got home the itch was there so I late regged just in time. Pretty glad I did as I ended up binking for for €8300. So as ever, online rule, live drools.

Right before the WPT I had a long interesting chat with Andy Black. He'd been reading up on ultrarunning so was 20 questions, and was telling me about a one week retreat he was just back from which was invigorating. By the end of my few days in Citywest I was feeling (and looking: there's a rather horrible photo on IPB courtesy of Danny) anything but invigorated. My ongoing health problems are probably something I need to start paying more attention to and factoring in when scheduling. I had been thinking of doing the full WSOP this year but unless the health issue has completely cleared by then (which is possible but unlikely) I might need to look at a 2 to 3 week raiding visit instead. I'm also going to have to maybe look at curtailing my domestic schedule too rather than simply playing everything on the calendar.

Tomorrow I'm appearing with Breifne on his Dublin City FM Sunday sports show On The Ball. Think I'm scheduled for arpound 4.30. Breifne is currently launching a rankings site for Irish poker and there's a nightly €33 freezeout on Irish Eyes that I play most nights that counts for points. Irish Eyes Poker have also put a bounty on my head on the night I do play (whoever knocks me out gets entry to a freeroll for the monthly 100K game on Irish Eyes worth €200) so hopefully I'll see you there at some point. Also, I recently did an interview for PocketFives on the occasion of my second triple crown

What's another year?

2012-01-04T05:41:00.002Z

OK, here goes with the review of the year that was, 2011.

January
My year got off to a quiet start, with January being one of only two months in the year where I didn't get a Hendon mob entry. I did play my first ever EMOP, where I got slowrolled by a granny, and ate sushi with Jason Tompkins and his girlfriend, who was attended on by her own lesbian fan club.

February
Saw me notch up my first official (Hendon mob) cash of the year. Nothing to get too excited about, a min cash in the Nottingham UKIPT, although coupled with the cash in the Galway leg it did see me high up the UKIPT leaderboard and thinking maybe I should play all the legs chasing the points (I eventually gave up after failing to cash in Cork). Highlight online was being told by an English Stars grinder that Stephen "allinstevie" Devlin had told him I was a crazy LAG, "the craziest man in Ireland". High praise indeed.

March
Another UKIPT (Manchester), another cash, but not in the main event. I final tabled the £300 side event but failed to last an orbit on a table with 4 Irish players. Online, I had my deepest ever run in a Stars major, chipleading the Sunday warmup for hours before ultimately bubbling the final table.

April
A big month for me live, as I notched up three Hendon mob cashes in a week, and four in the month. It started with a 4th place finish in Malaga (Estrellas). From Malaga, I headed straight to Berlin for my only EPT main event of the year, and got the monkey of never having cashed in an EPT main event off my back. Having clung on without much of a stack for days (earning me the label of "Grinder of the Tournament" on the official blogs) and then finally got one together with about 70 left, it was a disappointing finish to what looked like being a run all the way to the final table at least. I did make a final table in Berlin, in a turbo side event. I also final tabled (and chopped) another turbo towards the end of the month, at the Irish Open. April also saw me parting company with Bruce poker as my official sponsors. It was an amicable split and Bruce will always have a special place in my heart as the first site to sponsor me.

May
Got off to a ropey start when I turned up at the wrong hotel for the JP Masters. Once I showed at the right hotel, things went a bit better, as I final tabled the main event for the second time in my relatively short career. After busting in 7th, I jumped into yet another turbo, primarily attracted by the kick of having two Hendon mob entries for the same day. Alas, it was not to be, as even though I won the turbo (or more precisely chopped it with my good friend Breifne Earley), Hendon records entries under the date the tournament starts rather than finishes. Highlight of the month though was my appointment as Irish Eyes Team captain. A couple of other sites had expressed some interest after I left Bruce but after speaking to Steven there was always going to be only one winner, as the Team captain role was much more appealing than the traditional "sponsored pro".

June
Was meant to be all about Vegas, but I left for Vegas on a high having become the first Irish online player to claim a PocketFives triple crown. A few weeks previously, Jono Crute had a triple crown sweat during the week he stayed in my house, and had told me of his ambition to be the first Irish player to get one. His ambition became mine too and was achieved a few weeks later. The Triple Crown is a notional award dished out to online players who win three big tournaments on three different networks in a seven day period. Having won the 30 rebuy on Ipoker on Monday and the 15k turbo on Merge on Thursday, I had to head to Carlow for the CPT final so the triple crown was looking unlikely (I'd actually decided if I didn't bink on Thursday I'd give up trying and take a few days off before Vegas instead). However, having busted in Carlow in time to get back for a Sunday grind and a last tilt at the crown, I signed up for as many 100-200 runner fields with a sufficient buyin to qualify on various sites, to give myself the best possible chance of binking the all important third win. So I ruled out all the Sunday majors as too much of a longshot. Ironically, the one "major" I did play, the Bodog 100k, was the one I ended up binking. I only ended up playing it for a couple of reasons: first there was a significant 25k overlay (I can't resist an overlay), and also I'd just busted my Stars account and couldn't get more money on so I couldn't sign up for any more Stars games. So not only did I claim the triple crown, but did so in style with my biggest online score to date, 25k.

I then headed to Vegas and my blog detailing my less than optimal manner of so doing became my most read blog entry to date. An entry with zero poker content: a lesson there perhaps. In Vegas, I got another monkey off my back, the "never having cashed in an official WSOP event" one, as I cashed in two side events.

July
I went into the WSOP main event on something of a high having notched up a third cash at a WSOP side event. Having pessimistically booked my flight home for before day 3, I had to change my plans and hang round for day 3 which I made with a decent stack. A few hours in though, it all came crashing down, as my aces got busted by kings. Still, good overall Vegas for me and I came back feeling good about my game. The undeniable highlight of the month was leading four Team Irish Eyes players onto the final table of EMOP Dublin. Having been crippled just before the final table, I was happy to get headsup, where I managed to get it in ahead, but didn't manage to stay ahead. Still, my second place finish represented my second biggest ever score, and it was particularly sweet to reward the faith Irish Eyes had shown in appointing me Team captain.

August
A relatively low key month saw me continue to tick over online, and I notched up a min cash at the Unibet Open. Having put together a stack after the bubble, I was disappointed to get coolered, but you can't win them all. You can only try to.

September
Another lowkey month, where I notched up a minor cash in a side event at the European Shorthanded Poker championships.

October
Saw me hit my second EPT of the year (London) but get there too late for the main. I did have a good trip though, final tabling the EPT country of the Year freeroll and also cashing in the 1K side event, maintaining a near perfect record of cashing in at least one event at all but one of the EPTs I've attended. October was a sad month for Irish poker though, with the death of one of its greatest characters, Sean Gregory.

November
Another "four Hendons in one month", starting with a minor cash at JP's mini WSOP (where I also chopped the IPB Last Longer: one of several I managed this year). I ended the month on a high, winning or chopping two events at the Fitzwilliam festival (the main event, and as part of the Old Nits team in the team event), and cashing in a third. I also won a specially organised sit n go at EMOP Riga in between.

December
Another lowkey month live saw me threatening to move into the chiplead near the bubble of APT Manila only to have aces dogged by kings again at a crucial point. The month and year finished on a real high online though, as I bagged ny second Pocket Fives Triple Crown. Having won a $109 freezeout on Stars on Tuesday, I followed it up with a $50 freezeout on Ipoker the following night. After busting the Fitz EOM in time to play a few night games the next night, I got headsup with the chiplead in the High Roller on Carbon, but lost a bunch of races and 40/60 to lose to Portugal's Miguel Silva. It all came good the follwing evening though, when I got down to the last three of a $100 freezeout on Party. However the other two still standing were online beasts, Joao Mathias "TDurdenWar" and Sebastian "p0cket00" Sikerski. This time I got headsup with Joao and after a ding dong headsup battle, we got it in racing and this time I won.

This upswing right at the end cemented 2011 as my best and most profitable year ever in poker. Online, I matched the year I had in 2011, but live and overall had my best year ever. I also made a bit of money on staking and other bits and bobs.

Staking
I did a lot more staking this year, and had a profitable year, thanks primarily it has to be said to my good friend Rob Taylor, who I had 10% of in the Irish Open (which he final tabled) and 25% of in the Fitz main event (which he chopped with me and 4 others). Next year's going to be even bigger for me on the staking front and I'm going out on more of a limb, so fingers crossed it works out for me.

Blog
I've always been surprised at the number of people who read this blog. I started it purely for my own benefit, and even now I see its primary purpose as providing a snapshot of where I am in poker at any given time and a sort of online chronicle or scrapbook I'll have to look back on when it's all over. It's very hard to keep a blog fresh, the typical trajectory with most blogs is after a period where every entry is basically the same they fizzle and die. I'm conscious of having to make an effort to avoid this and thankful to my many friends for being much more interesting characters than I am myself and therefore providing me with fresh fodder thanks to their antics. Special mention to Jono Crute whose truly bizarre antics and letters to poker site support staff kept ius all amused. After that "How I got to Vegas" blog proved an unexpected success in terms of attracting readers, readership of the blog actually built on that through the rest of the year. My blog has always been well read in Ireland, but this was the year that saw it build a bigger readership outside Ireland (approximately 75% of my readership is now overseas).

Other media
I'm a fairly unrepentant social network whore and anyone wishing to follow my career in excruciating detail can do so on Twitter and Facebook. This year also saw me contribute a monthly column to Player Ireland, a blog for the Star website, and a weekly "Letter from Doke" for Irish Eyes team members. I've also become a frequent contributor to Breifne Earley's Sunday afternoon sports show "On The Ball" on Dublin City FM. There have been times I've been concerned I might be overpressing and overstretching a little but hey, as my granny used to say, if something's worth doing, it's worth doing to obsessive extremes.

Commentary
This year I also provided regular live stream commentary at several major events. Particular highlights included chatting with Jesse May and a personal hero of mine Dan Harrington at the Irish Open, providing commentary on the final table with another personal hero and best in the business Neil Channing, commenting with my good friend Lappin at the JP mini WSOP, and working with Rebecca and Emmet at the Irish Winter festival. I also did some commentary at the Unibet Open (with Roy Brindley).

The Dokes
Readers of my annual wrapups from other years may recall that I usually hand out awards to Best Player and Most Promising. The Dokes are even more notional than the PocketFives Triple Crown, but here goes anyway.

Player of the Year
Last year I gave this to Sean Prendeville, who crushed both live and online. This year is a little different with no one player crushing across both, so I'm splitting the award in two.

Live Player of the Year has to be Niall Smyth. Not only did he win the biggest tournament on the Irish calendar (the Open) but he followed it with another win in Killarney, and a deep run at the Winter festival where it looked like a unique treble was on. Obviously Eoghan O'Dea deserves special mention: his appearance in the November 9 was the biggest thing to happen to Irish poker in years, but it's my award to give, and reflects my belief that the true measure of greatness in poker is not the one big one, but consistency. So it has to be Niall for me. Special mention also to Dermot Blain who is phenomenally consistent, and hopefully it's only a matter of time before he wins a really big one.

Online Player of the Year has to be Big Mick G. He's topped the Irish rankings at Pocket Fives for most of the year, and broken into the top 100 in the world.

One to Watch in 2012
I'm tempted to give this to last year's recipient Jono Crute just for the sheer LOL factor of giving it to the same again more than once (Tom Kitt used to win it every year in the old Boards awards). However, Jono's had a great year online and is likely to rinse and repeat in 2012, and I don't think he'll be giving live poker much more focus than he did this year. I'm also tempted to give it to David Lappin who has become a formidable live player this year (not that he was ever bad: he did chop the first major live event he ever played, a Unibet Open) and after taking a lot of this year off to pursue other career interests has vowed to return to online with a vengeance in 2012, but giving it to someone who has already achieved as much as Lappin has seems foolish. So instead I'm going to nominate Daragh "Mongoose" Davey. The Mongoose has been knocking on the door in major events all year (and getting it slammed in his face in the form of horrible doggings late on) and is the one young player I think has all the tools to crush both online and live.

Special mention to two hotbeds of upcoming talent. Dungarvan has several top young players coming through (Mark O'Connor fted the IPO) and Drumlish is threatening to be the new Claregalway with two of the most promising young players in the country.

2012
If 2012 is anything as good to me as 2011 was, I'll be a happy man writing another annual review blog in a year's time. Hopefully, it won't be a case of pride goes before a fall, and with a little help from my friends I'll continue to improve and adjust as needed to stay ahead of the curve, May we all: me, my friends and all my blog readers, have an awesome 2012. Gl us.

Letters from Jono

2011-12-29T05:03:00.001Z

Not a lot to report since last blog since I haven't been out of the house except for my daily run followed by taking the dog for a walk as a warmdown. It's a sign of the times, or rather my age, that the dog forces me to run faster on the "walk" than I do on my actual run. The rest of the time I've been grinding away steadily, with good results. This week I've already won a $109 freezeout on Stars and a $50 freezeout on Ipoker to set up a triple crown sweat for the rest of the week. I've also shipped various satellites, won't bore you with the details here (that's what Twitter and Facebook are for).

Readers of the last blog entry will be relieved to hear that my friends Jono and Karl Henrik made it back safe and sound from the USA's most criminal city. Like a lot of young guys who makes his fortune from clicking buttons online, Jono's wealth is primarily of the "number on a screen" variety and he struggles to get his hands on actual currency. Since I possess some actual currency, I volunteered to help him out by swapping some of his online moneys for the money he'll need to fund him and his stable at the WPT. Stars seem to be slightly dubious of this young guy routinely moving around vast sums of money (obvious drug dealer), so when he transfered to yet another new person (ie., me), they sent him this email:

"Dear GAWA9,

As this transfer is very large, and you have not transferred to this player before, please confirm by email that you would like us to proceed with your request.

Please include the real name of the intended recipient in your response.

Thank you for your co-operation in this matter. We apologize if this extra security measure causes you any inconvenience.

Regards,

PokerStars Security"

To which Gawa9 replied in his own inimitable manner:
"Hi,

Please proceed, his name is Dara O'Kearney, hes an excellent card
player, a good friend and has a hot daughter.

Cheers"

I say his own inimitable manner as Jono has considerable pedigree in support banter, with the following one he sent to Party a while back ranking as surely the finest piece ever by anyone anywhere:

"Hello Party Poker,

As Im sure you are aware, your server went down again today in the
middle of many tournaments. I am currently in the 20r 10k, 50 10k and
the 110 speed as well as registered for the 33t, 10r speed and 90 7k.
Obviously I expect refunds for all of these to be in my account by the
time I wake up tomorrow. Having dealt with this before its very
possible you will tell me this is a problem with my internet however I
am playing many other poker sites as well as browsing the world wide
web with no problems and all of my friends who play on your site have
the same problem so I think it's best if we dont drag this out and you
just hurry up and give me my money back.

If I were to liken your site, "Party Poker" to a party I might go to
in real life it would be a house party in which the host promises
girls and alcohol of the highest standard (great tournament schedule
and software) and the beer will be free (no rake) and the females lack
morals (soft fields). However upon arrival you discover that whilst
the alcohol and girls are amazing, they just randomly leave and your
left with frustrations of wondering what the fuck is going on and
nothing but a skanky hooker and a few cans of cheap lager.

I hope my analogy makes you see the error of your ways and maybe one
day you may even offer a quality service.

Thanks for the refunds in advance

Jonathan Crute

xoxo"

End of year madness and endless brags

2011-12-21T12:00:00.001Z

It's that time of year where players start to reflect on the year they've had, and in some cases go a bit mad. (More on that later).

As the year draws to a close, it's time to look back and reflecting how I did overall this year and whst I can do better next year.

Online
Barring a major bink or downswing in the next few days, my bottom line profit for 2011 is comfortably over $200k but down on 2010. I probably worked harder this year online and had my biggest scores this year (a few 5 figure ones), and I think I ran ok overall (certainly not below expectation) so I think the dip is down to a couple of things:
(1) Game selection. I didn't game select as well this year as previous years. I tried a number of bigger higher prestige games and while I more than hold my own overall in these, these are essentially the poker equivalent of vanity publishing in my book (I summed up my thoughts on this during the week on IrishPokerBoards). Practically all my profit comes from $100 and less buyins. For example, on Stars this year, I beat all six levels I played decent volume at by a hefty margin (261% ROI in the $60-$100 group). Big Mick G and Jude both said to me in London at the EPT that there are no good games (apart from Sunday) with a buyin of over $150 these days: it's just the best players in the world swapping $'s and paying rake.
(2) Tougher year. Online inevitably gets tougher over time. Several of the other top Irish online players have seen their bottom line plummet this year. Some have even recorded losing years. At the end of the day (or year) when you toss in rakeback, bonuses and other extras, making over a quarter of a mill clicking buttons at home is more than acceptable.

Nicky (Power) said to me in Vegas a few years ago that the game passes everyone by in the end. This stuck in my memory and made me determined to make the most of it while I can still beat the game online. To be honest, live is so soft that I can't imagine ever reaching the situation where I wouldn't have a fairly clear edge outside of EPTs and WSOPs, but online I can definitely feel I might be looking at a 3-5 year shelf life. Hopefully when that point comes when I can't beat online any more by a worthwhile margin, I'll be able to step back, see it and walk away, without having to do my roll first all the time complaining about variance. They say that all political careers end in failure: too many successful poker careers end in busted bankrolls.

Live
2011 was my most profitable year live to date, helped in no small part by my second place finish at EMOP Dublin. But like my online year which was very consistent (I made approximately the same in both halves of the year, and don't think I had a losing month), I've been really consistent live this year in terms of notching up the results. I'll do a fuller summary in my end of year blog, but apart from EMOP Dublin, other highlights during the year included getting the "never cashed in an EPT main event" monkey off my back in the only EPT I played this year (Berlin), as well as the "never cashed in a WSOP event" one with 3 cashes in Vegas this summer. I also ended the year on a high chopping the Fitz main event and being on the winning team in the team event. My consistency this year is highlighted by the fact that I got a Hendon Mob entry every month this year except January and December, a total of 19 over the year which is my most ever in one year.

Onwards and hopefully upwards in 2012
Adding online and live together, 2012 was my most profitable year to date in poker. However, there's no disputing that I ran above Ev live (and possibly online too) so there's no room for complacency. I have to keep working to improve my game to stay ahead of the training sites curve. I have a very good brains trust of top players to discuss hands and strategy with. They're all top class players in their own right, and perhaps more importantly, they cover the entire spectrum of winning playing styles, so I get top class advice from every angle.

One thing I want to focus on more (again) in 2012 is game selection. Game selection has been the key to my career to date, allowing me to build from a bankroll of zero (I never deposited a cent online: everything I've won has been spun up from freerolls) following the path of least variance. While I'm now in a position bankrollwise to take a sustained and nasty downswing, and it could be argued it would be more profitable for me to focus on more profitable high variance games, I feel myself that I'm psychologically better equipped to deal with sailing along with no losing months (but also no massive scores). After all, I've always been a long distance runner, not a sprinter.

This year my game selection suffered slightly. I still made money across all the sites I played, and I played a good spread (my biggest winners this year were Bodog and Ipoker). But I definitely played quite a few games which would not be that profitable for me long term, so next year the plan is to stick more rigidly to the bread and butter games.

Live: well, we'll see what comes. Live is always such a small sample size that luck is the main determinant of success in any one year. That said, game selection is vital here too, and with the exception of the WSOP which I see as my one shot at glory every year, I won't be running around playing EPTs full of the best mtters in the world.

THIS GUY
I was finishing my night grind a few nights ago around 6 AM when my laptop started making that "You've got Skype" noise. Clicking the answer button, I heard the distinctive voice of Jono "Gawa9" Crute. As I recall, the conversation went along the lines of:

Gawa9: Doke, what's the name of that form you have to fill for the US?
Doke: Eh? Why?
Gawa9: Me and Karl Henrik are going to Detroit in a few hours.
Doke: Again, eh and why?
Gawa9: We just decided we wanted to go to the US.
Doke: When?
Gawa9: An hour ago.
Doke: And Detroit?
Gawa9: There were flights. What's that form?
Doke: ESTA. I'll skype you the link.
Gawa9: ESTA, that's it. Doke, you're a legend. See Karl Henrik, just gotta ask a Vegas veteran these things
Doke: When's your flight?
Gawa9: 10 AM. From Dublin airport.
Doke: Really? How you getting to Dublin?
Gawa9: Hmmmm. When do we need to be there?
Doke: Probably around 8, you have to clear immigration on this side.
Gawa9: Karl Henrik, we're gonna need a cab.
KH: Where to?
Gawa9: Dublin airport.
KH: OK.
Doke: You realise Detroit's not exactly one of the US's prettiest cities right?
Gawa9: Really? That sucks
Doke: Be like some Americans randomly deciding to fly to Milton Keynes for Christmas
Gawa9: That makes me sad
Doke: You're going through with this?
Gawa9: No choice now. Flights already booked
Doke: Enjoy Detroit so. Go visit a car factory and walk 8 Mile imo
Gawa9: Not doing 8 Mile! Can you ring my Mum and explain if I don't come back?

Obviously there was drink implicated, and Jono apparently woke up on a transatlantic flight wondering how he'd got there remembering only that he'd gone pub the night before. Since then, Facebook and Skype has been unusually entertaining with glimpses from the most awesome poker road trip ever. Highlights include a novel solution to what to do when you want to drive away from Detroit but have no credit card with which to rent a car (correct answer, it turns out, is ask a cop who drives you round to cheap second hand places where you eventually buy a red 1995 pickup), a decision to drive to Chicago stopping at the funniest town name they could find (Welcome to Climax was an early contender, but with no room at the Inn they ended up in Kalamazoo). I'm sure Jono will be posting a trip report on the crazy kid's blog at some point, but I just felt this whole moment of seasonal madness was just too good to go unnoted on my blog. Jono: in a world of people pretending to be "characters", you're a genuine eccentric, and I love you for it.

Manila

2011-12-14T07:34:00.006Z

On paper, it looked easy enough: Dublin to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Manila. I knew from past experience that Amsterdam airport is big and can be tricky to connect through, but it was Hong Kong where I almost came a cropper.

Proof that I shouldn't be allowed out of the house alone, part one
Having been warned that Hong Kong doesn't do gate PA announcements, I located the Cathay Pacific flight to Manila on the screens and installed myself at the indicated gate. While I waited there in the eery silence, I availed of the free Wifi to chat to some friends. The spell and silence was eventually broken by a PA announcement warning Dara O'Kearney that his flight was now closing. I strolled over to the official. He strolled away. Another passenger looked at my ticket and pointed out it was not for this flight to Manila, but another one just leaving from some other gate. A quick look at the screens confirmed there were two Cathay Pacific flights to Manila, and the one I was supposed to be on was departing. As I checked the gate, the flight literally disappeared from the screen. A panicked run through the terminal and I zoned in on an empty gate with no display but two security guards. Good news: this was the gate. Bad news: the flight had departed. As I was processing this piece of info, a female Cathay Pacific hostess emerged pointing at the shute and shouting "run! run!" Having no reason to believe that this was anything other than sound advice, I ran ran. Down the shute, round the corner, and I literally hurdled into the plane as the door was sliding shut. The air hostesses on the plane found this incredibly amusing.

This is Manila
My first impression of Manila was that it was a symphony of praise to chaos theory. On the cab ride in from the airport, I observed that motorists paid little heed to lanes or the like, but liked to beep their horns every few seconds. The cab weaved in and out and around to a constant cacophony of beeps. Took a bit of getting used to, but once I did it seemed to me that as lawless and chaotic as it appeared, traffic was flowing much faster than it would anywhere people respected lane rules and traffic lights.

The hotel where the tournament was taking place was booked out for the first night, so I scooted round the corner and found another. Scooting is probably not a good verb here: although the hotels were only a few hundred metres apart, every time I walked it it felt a bit like obstacle course with the beggars, the hustlers, the street kids, the working girls, the street traders and the unreliable pavement. The kids were probably the saddest aspect: I read in the local paper that there are an estimated quarter of a million of them here. Kids as young as four trained to trot along beside you, one hand outstretched to beg, the other tapping you gently on the belly or side to get your attention. I find it very hard to see such visible desperate poverty, and not feel a bit guilty and worthless when I reflect that I make a small fortune from exploiting a superior knowledge of game theory and probability.

Day 1c
I'd originally planned to play 1b (Friday, the day after I got there) of the Manny Pacquiao World Poker Open (which despite the name was an APT event rather than a WPT one) but my friend Mark Dalimore who had arranged this entire trip was delayed and didn't arrive in time to play it, so we both registered that evening to play 1c, the last day. A few pool tables had been set up in the poker room. Manila is infamous for its pool hustlers and Mark willingly donated. I decided an early night was in order for me. Surprisingly I was having no jetlag problems but a good night's kip before a major tournament is never a bad idea.

I didn't get too much to play with all day but managed to work my way up to double stack near the end of play by making the most of what I did get. It wasn't the kind of field where you could do anything fancy without cards, so I stuck to value betting much bigger than I normally would. A series of minor setbacks late in the day saw me drift back from 30k to finish with 21k, 21 bbs when we came back for day 2. We'd lost two thirds of the field so I was well below average but still reasonably optimistic.

Mark got knocked out early and turned up late in the day with legendary Welsh wizard Dave "El Blondie" Colclough, who lives out here now. Dave had played 1A and got through as one of the chipleaders.

Day 2 - Take 1
Day 1 ended early, around 9.30 PM, a pleasant change from tournaments back home where you play til 4 AM and have to be back less than 12 hours later. I was in bed by 10, keen to stick to the plan to get enough sleep as possible. When I moved from marathon running to ultra running, I hooked up with Norrie Williamson as my coach. Nobody has studied ultra running as scientifically in the world as Norrie: he literally wrote the book on how to train, eat and live for optimal performance. Nobody has yet done anything like that for poker, and it remains a matter of conjecture rather than scientific method as to how much things like good diet, general fitness and rest affect poker performance. One thing I've noticed from observing most of the top players who are consistent performers is that they sleep far more than I do, and far more than the average person. Given that the key skill that top poker players have (particularly online players who multitable) is the ability to identify and process relevant information at lightning speed and make decisions, it is not surprising that an activity which places such high demands on the brain requires that the brain be given ample recovery in the form of sleep. I've never been very good at sleeping. This flaw was a major advantage when I was running 24 hour races but may not be when it comes to playing poker (although mental stamina and the ability to make good decisions when tired is important in tournaments with long days), so that recently I've been trying to improve my sleeping (or at least do more of it).

I slept straight through until almost 7 AM. When I woke and saw the time, I decided to try for another hour or two's kip, since we weren't due to start back until 1 PM. Next time I opened my eyes, I read 1.46 on the clock. I hurled myself out of the bed and into my clothes, and on the sprint to the Pan Pacific, I frantically tried to work out how much of my stack if any I likely had left. Up 5 flights of stairs and into an empty casino except for cleaning staff. I figured I must have blinded out but where was everyone else? Checking the time on my mobile phone (which was still on Irish time), I found it was almost midnight back home. Subtract 8 hours, so it's 4 PM? No, wait, that's Vegas that you subtract 8 hours from GMT, here you add 8, so.......8 AM. I slunk back to the hotel cursing the clock in my room which I was convinced had malfunctioned. But when I got there, it read 8.15 AM. Somehow I'd read 7.46 as 1.46. The following photo taken at 7.59 illustrates that this is easier than it sounds.

Day 2 - Take 2
If someone had told me that I'd be gone within a couple of orbits, I'd have assumed it meant I waited for a standard reshove spot, got called, and lost. But while I was indeed gone in a couple of orbits, in that time I got myself into a spot where I was more than a 4 to 1 favourite to move into the chiplead in the tournament. So, quite an eventful half hour.

Hand 1: I raised an ace in late position and get the blinds and antes to move to 23k.
Hand 2: I'm not in this hand, but it was hugely significant in hindsight given what followed. El Blondie opened in early position, called by a loose local just behind, and an elderly guy in the blinds. Flop was 744, it's checked to the local who fires in a chunky bet, the elderly guy raises, El Blondie flats, and the local folds. The turn is an 8 and the old guy shoves and gets snapped by Dave Colclough. The hands are 33 and A4s. The old guy catches his 2 outer on the river to cripple Dave and become table chipleader.
Hand 3: After 2 more blind steals that see me move up to 27k, I flat a late position raise from a loose aggro French guy I barely cover with kings in the big blind. I check call an ace high flop, and a blank turn. When a second ace hits the river, it gets checked down and my kings are good. I'm now up to 40k.
Hand 4: The French guy limps utg playing 15k. I find AQ on the cutoff and raise to 3K, happy to get it in if he shoves. The local on the button flats, as does the French guy, The flop comes AT4 with 2 spades, I cbet 5k, the local raises to 13500, the French guy folds, and I shove. The local folds. I'm up to 50k.
Hand 5: Two more blind steals and I have 55k. I find aces in early position, and make my standard raise to 2200. The local just behind who seems to be gunning for me since Hand 4 flats. The old guy in the blinds who also seems frustrated by my apparent aggression threebets to 5600, I four bet to 12500, and after an eternity, the old guy shoves. He has kings, and binks on the turn, which is fair enough.

That's poker
I wouldn't be human if I didn't feel a bit sick as I walked back to my hotel. It's a long way to come to sit and wait patiently for more than a day for the rush to come, and then when it does and you get it in 81/18 to move into the chiplead in one of the softest 4 figure buyin tournaments ever as the bubble starts to loom on the horizon and you know that with a stack you'll be able to cruise to a megastack. One of the things I like about online poker is that no one tournament ever means too much if you do it right: it's ultimately just one in a sample size of tens of thousands. But live is slower and sample size necessarily tiny by comparison, so it seems like every tournament matters more (even if it really doesn't. I was talking to Lappin recently about my "take it or leave it/not that pushed either way" attitude to chops and said jokingly I wish I'd chopped Dublin EMOP headsup as I'd be 10-15k richer. Lappin responded saying 10k is nothing compared to what you will win in your life playing poker).

However, I shrug these setbacks off quicker than most. Mark, great friend that he is, took only a few minutes to learn of my demise and come over to check up on me. He said he expected to find me committing hara kiri, and was astonished at how positive I seemed. It generally takes 10 minutes or so for the mists of disappointment to clear, but once they do I'm done with it and already thinking about the next tournament.

An Englishman, an Irishman and a Welshman walk into a bar
The following day I spent some time chilling with Mark by the pool, then we met Dave for some midday drinks. Dave's a great guy with a great attitude: despite all he's achieved in poker to date, his ego doesn't seem to cloud his perception and his desire to keep up with the ever evolving game. Mark always gives me some interesting stuff to consider every time we meet. This time he suggested that I might benefit from either a total break from poker, or regular mini breaks. My work ethic is probably the one thing I get the most comments and compliments on from other players, and I do see it as one of my biggest strengths, but there may be a case for taking more breaks as periods of reflection, so I don't end up chasing my tail.

This year is winding down, and overall it's my most successful year to date (albeit only marginally more so than last year). It's a natural point at which to stop, reflect, and plan for next year. On the poker front, I think I need to narrow my focus to home in on the games that mean the most to me (live) and are (likely to be) the most profitable for me online. Away from the table, I probably need to get a bit more balance back into my life, and give greater consideration to my health, fitness and diet. I'm almost 2 stone heavier than when I was running, and while it's unlikely I'll ever tip the scales at 10 and a half stones again, I want to drop at least a stone.

Downtime
Busting a tourney relatively early with no side events to play and an internet connection too unreliable to play online (I did try though!) makes for a fair amount of down time. Generally when you're abroad you're drawing to a few movie channels and a music channel or two as far as English speaking stuff goes. I found myself watching a lot of Fox News, purely as entertainment, something I generally associate with Vegas. Now that they're not even pretending to be in any way balanced any more, it's always good for a giggle. Usually this takes the form of endless variation on current far right wing dogma (currently there's a feverish attempt to portray the Republican nomination process as anything other than a parade of Crazy Bobs), but one amusing piece that caught my eye was some bloke who wrote a book on how to win the lottery (seriously: or at least how to increase your odds of so doing).

Apparently it boils down to three basic tips (how he managed to expand this into an entire book is surely a more miraculous feat than his claim to have won the lottery 7 times):
(1) When buying 10 scratch cards (this in itself qualifies the tip as a fail), buy ten from the same game rather than spreading it over 10 different games
(2) When deciding which scratch cards to buy, check how many grand jackpots for each are still in play (apparently they make this information available to the public in the US)
(3) Don't QuickPick: always play the same numbers.

(1) is basically a trick of mathematical semantics. Let's say each scratch card has a 1 in a 1000 chance at the start of winning because 1,000,000 were issued and 1000 are winners. If you buy cards from ten different games, each card has precisely a 1 in a 1000 chance. But if you buy from the same game, you have to factor in losers (in the same way you remove known cards from poker probability calculations). So if the first one is a dud, the second one has a slightly higher chance of being a winner (1 chance in a 999999/1000). If that's a dud, the chances that the third one is a winner is ever so slightly higher, and so on. Therefore, your chances of scoring precisely 1 winner in your batch of ten is very slightly higher than if you buy ten different games. The key phrasess in that last sentence are "precisely 1 winner" and "very slightly higher". The increase is almost insignificant: if the first nine are duds, your chances of the tenth being a winner rise from 1 in 1000 to 1 in 999.991. Big whoop. Also, this increased chance is "paid" for by it being significantly less likely you'll score more than one winner using this method. Either way, your expected value is precisely the same: the only difference is that when you buy ten from the same game more of this equity resides in your chance of hitting one winner. Naturally, the guy didn't explain any of this or the math underlying the other two points: he just presented them as indisputable facts.
(2) actually has some mathematical validity. Or rather, could have, if he related it number of cards remaining. In the example he quoted, he said that you should always go for the option with the highest number of grand prizes remaining. This is not true. If option A has 6 grand prizes remaining but only 10% of the cards sold to date, then it's a much worse proposition than option B which has 5 prizes remaining but 90% of cards already accounted for.
(3) is not only rubbish: it's actually wrong. Whether you pick the same numbers every week or you do a random QuickPick, your chances of winning are precisely the same. The only difference is that it's actually worse (in terms of expected value) to pick the same numbers every week as there's a much higher chance you'll split the jackpot if you do win as opposed to the quickpicker.

The Fox presenters of course lapped up this nonsense without any attempt at criticism. I guess it's what they're programmed to do when dealing with right wing nuts spouting propaganda: it's probably naive to expect them to develop the ability to think critically all of a sudden just because the topic changed from voodoo economics to junk mathematics. Fair play to your man who wrote the book though: good game selection sir. If you need to reach the gullible fools who would be your target audience here to lap this nonsense up, where better to promote yourself than on Fox?

Chops and slaying mongooses

2011-12-07T09:12:00.007Z

With barely a day to recover from my return from Riga, I was starting to feel very like a live pro as I headed into the Fitz to play their supersat for the main event there. The festival ran for a full week, and my plan was to play at least 5 of the 7 days.

Having played it cautious and folded my way through early card death, I was hoping to exploit the tight image when the shipping portion started. Unfortunately, one of the D4 lads who it's safe to say wouldn't be buying the tight old man image got moved to my table just as the time to cash in on the image arrived, and first time I shipped KQs over a Vera Duffy limp, he snap reshoved AQ and held.

Thursday was effectively the end of month, rebranded as part of the festival. I ended up bubbling the final table. When I reshoved A6s over Dave Masters button raise and got called, I was happy to see him turn over A4o. Two rag aces are often a chop, but when the first card to flop was a 6, this was looking less likely, and it seemed I was on my way to a doubleup. However, a 4 appeared beneath it on the flop, and another on the turn to send me packing. Dave went on to chop the event with James Waldron, both continuing a fine run of recent form. Also well done to my friend Padraig "Smidge" O'Neill whio chopped this last month and was unlucky not to do so again this month after final tabling.

I took Friday off (or rather grinded online) but was back the next day for the main event. First there was a diversion to Ken Doherty's place to contribute an interview to Eoghan O'Mahony's documentary on Irish poker. I ran into Parky who was there to do livestream commentary on the IPO final table. Anyone who has read his recent blog will know he was less than happy with the performance of his team, in particular one member. He filled me in on the gory details and other gossip from the event.

After my interview with Eoghan, I stuck around Brady's bar where they were streaming the IPO final table. There was a brilliant atmosphere there: all the final tableists brought their own supporters, particularly Rory Brown whose cheer section was led by the inimitable Tom Kitt. There was also a good crew of the young Waterford lads I've become pally with this year, to support Mark O'Connor. Mark's online record suggests he was the strongest player on the table, but was hampered by being the short stack. In those situations it often means you need to get lucky early on, and he did just that, getting it in dominated but getting there to double up. The other Irish lads started short too, but any worries about them being first out were quickly allayed. Rory played a waiting game early on and his patience was rewarded when he caught a few big hands to propel into the chiplead. He and Mark got it in virtually flipping, and Rory was looking good to win when he held. However, it was Paul Purcell who stayed under the radar to get headsup with the eventual winner. Well done to the 3 lads though.

From there I sped into town with Nick Newport who drives like he plays for the Fitz main event. I could have had an easier table: Conor "TommyGunne" Fennell a few to my left peppered me with three bets, and further on down there was Smidge, and IWF champ John Keown. I managed to keep out of trouble and chipped up steadily to end the day with over 80k despite losing a couple of big races. The biggest pot I won eliminated John Keown: I flatted a raise called by John in the blinds with tens, flopped top set, and got the lot in on the turn which gave John a smaller set. This left me fourth in chips overnight much to many people's surprise given my reputation as someone who grinds short to medium stacks rather than accumulates big ones. In fact, I think I get big stacks as much as most top players, but the fact that when I don't I tend to hang on longer than most with the short stack creates the image of a short stack specialist.

In the event, my status as a big stack didn't survive long into day 2, half of it disappearing when I lost a race. A while later I lost another one and was looking at elimination with just 4 big blinds left, but I staged one of my trademark recoveries to make the final table. With 6 left, three of us were approximately level in chips, and the other three while shorter were not yet desperate, so a deal seemed prudent. Eventually we agreed that my good friend Rob Taylor, Declan O'Connell and me would take €8500 each, with Big Mick G, Jude McCarthy and James Waldron taking €7500 each. We played on for the remaining €2250, which Jude claimed after he overcame a 3:1 deficit headsup with Rob. It was another great effort by Rob who hasn't played live much this year but has still managed to final table the Irish Open and chop the Fitz end of month tournament a few times. He was unlucky not to claim the win here: had his jacks held against Jude's A4o ghe would have, but it was not to be. Big well done to Jude too who was a reg when I started going to the Fitz first 4 years ago and is one of the few regs from back then still in the game.

The following night, Rob and I were back for the team event. Calling our team the Old Nits, we were joined by Smidge and possibly the best online mtt player in Ireland Lappin (David, but generally known by his surname which is also his screen name). Rob only made himself available at the last minute and I had been intending to ask Daragh "Mongoose" Davey (in my opinion one of the best young live players on the scene if not the best) to join our team. In the end, Mongoose (as he is affectionately known) assembled a team of his own that included Nick Newport. On paper, they looked like our main competition, and once the tournament got underway it became clear they saw us as theirs, as they were targeting us specifically. With all four of them having immediate position on all four of us, this gave them a big advantage, and seriously curtailed our play. In team events, it is almost always the team which keep all four members in the tournament the longest that ends up winning, so it's crucial to avoid early bustouts, and we all managed this. Rob and Smidge are nits by nature, and I reverted to my original style for the occasion, which just left Lappin to worry about, but he assured us he would do his best not to get a hundred big blinds in preflop with AQ early on :)

I got almost nothing to play with and with Team Mongoose member Noel who I have a fair bit of history with sitting to my right making it clear he was calling my shoves with any 2 and trying to verbally goad me into shoving light, I let myself get a lot lower than I would have in an individual event while I waited for a decent spot. Noel was good to his word and when I finally found a pair of fours in the small blinds, he called with J3o. I held, which bought me some more time. Next time I shoved I wasn't so lucky, my AT losing to his Q9. I was less than pleased by some of the Mongoose celebrations that accompanied my exit (I know it's a team event, but still) and a comment Noel made to me in the heat of the moment, so I went for a walk round the block to clear my head before coming back to rail my remaining teammates. I came back to find Smidge had also been dogged and eliminated by a Mongoose. Things weren't looking that promising for us until a moment of madness by my vanquisher Noel was trumped by a moment of genius from Lappin. Having raised a pair of eights, Lappin saw Noel and the big blind call. The T44 flop was checked around, a 6 appeared on the turn, and Lappin made a weak looking quarter bet pot, called by Noel. A 5 on the river saw Lappin check, and then Noel unexpectedly shoved for several times pot. Lappin quickly concluded that, in his words, "the bet made no sense" and called. Noel had king high and had crippled himself and propelled Lappin into the chip lead. Both he and Rob outlasted the remaining Mongooses, to clinch the team title (in the end, it was Marc Brody's American team which almost snuck up the inside to take advantage of the Nits and the Mongeese spending too much time worrying about each other). Poker's not really a team sport, and as the Fitz paid us and took our "winning team" photo they commented that we were the only team that stuck around to rail each other, but these team events are always good fun and a pleasant change from the ruthless individual events.

The biggest problem with playing all this live stuff is it eats into the day (or night) job: grinding online. I eased myself back in Tuesday, and managed a few final tables on Stars. Then it was back on a plane, this time heading for Manila (via Amsterdam and Hong Kong) for Manny Pacquaio's World Poker Open.

Rigged in Riga

2011-12-02T06:37:00.002Z

Humans have a basic need to socialise and form bonds with their work colleagues and peers. We all need to be able to talk to people who understand the specific stresses and challenges of our chosen profession. These peer groups essentially function like modern tribes, with their own language (or jargon: a non poker friend commented once to Mrs. Doke that after I started playing, "all your husband's Facebook and Twitter messages seem to be written in a code only other gamblers understand") culture and customs. This need is so strong that neither distance nor isolation can prevent it. Truckers turned to CB radio, while online poker players use Skype.

What makes poker almost unique is that the peers with whom you form these tribal bonds are also your biggest competitors: the ones trying to crush your dreams and take your money. It's not unusual for, say, boxers to form close bonds of friendship after they've knocked lumps out of each other, but it would be unheard of them to travel to the fight together side by side in the same car or plane, and back home after one had crushed the dreams of the other. But in poker, well, it happens all the time, and we develop protocols, customs and psychological defences to deal with being on both the giving and receiving end.

It happened to me and my friend Phil Baker recently. Phil picked me up in the early hours, we travelled on a plane together to Riga, knocked each other out of a couple of tournaments, and then travelled back home together afterwards.

A good contingent of Irish travelled for the EMOP grand final in Riga, and all the advance buzz on the city itself was negative. When people who come from Tallaght are telling you Riga is a horrible unhospitable and dangerous place, you do start to be a little afraid. On this occasion however, the collective experience of the Irish who travelled was much more positive. No muggings or rapes to report, just plenty of good times and friendly locals.

Most of the Irish were staying at the Radisson, the official hotel where package winners were playing. Both Feargal Nealon and myself had transferred our packages won in Clontarf castle for Barcelona (I got mine at the last Team Irish Eyes member standing, and Feargal hacked his way round a golf course to get into a freeroll which he duly won). The bigger buyin here meant hotel was no longer covered, so Feargal sourced a cheaper option nearby for us.

We were met at the airport by a friend of Phil's, Artak, who used to deal in the Jackpot before moving back home. Artak gave us the local run down, but also started to wind Feargal and me up about our hotel, saying it was a fleapit located in the worst part of town (in actual fact, it was basic but great value, and the area was just round the corner from the Radisson).

We went to get something to eat in one of those cheap student places you find in most European cities that would be marketed as trendy organic something and charge ten times as much if they existed in Dublin or London. After an incident where one of our party who shall remain nameless broke protocol and started helping himself to the food being served, Phil impressed us with an intervention in flawless Russian. Whatever he said pacified the situation (he later told me it was along the lines off "Please forgive my dumb tourist friend, he's from Sligo").

One of the biggest problems of travelling to live events is it forces you to abandon your regular sleep pattern. Midday flights are the worst (effectively they're like 4 AM flights for normal people if you're an online grinder used to playing 6 PM to 6 AM and then sleeping until the afternoon). After conking out for a few hours, Feargal and I were up just in time to scoot over to the casino to play the supersat. We both went the route of maximum efficiency buying in late and busting early, though the nature of the competition was encouraging. I got it in with KQ versus a bare king high flush draw on a queen high flop. The flush draw called it off too, but got there on the turn. Not nice when they get there, but you don't want to be discouraging such "bravery" in the long term when you meet it.

There were two day 1's, and most of us decided to play 1A. With only 80 runners, this meant a high likelihood of being on the same table as some other Irish. I was plonked right beside Phil Baker, and across from Noel O'Brien. After one big hand early on where a local 6 bet folded kings to my 7 bet having put almost half his stack in before convincing himself I had aces, I lost a few small pots in the early skirmishes, and then a big one to Noel where we both had an overpair to the board on the river. His was unfortunately bigger than mine, and better disguised since he'd flatted it in the blinds. I was so unsure about the hand afterwards that I ran it by 5 different people who I regularly swap opinions with on hands, and my confusion was not helped by the fact that all 5 suggested a different way to play it (also different from mine). The sixth person I asked, Jason Tompkins, said he'd played it as I played. Since Jason's the only one who has played a good bit with Noel, I guess this made me feel better.

That left me with a reshipping stack just before dinner, and Phil seemed like a good target to come over the top off as he was opening most of the time it was folded round to him. I eventually reshipped AJ, and when Phil snapped I knew I was facing an uphill battle, as there's no hand Phil snaps with I'm ahead of, and not even that many I'm flipping with. Worst fears confirmed: he had AKs. I pulled ahead on the turn and thought I was still ahead after the river until Phil said "Unlucky Dara" snd I noticed for the first time he'd caught a runner runner flush. Phil's a gent and there was no boisterous celebrations or obvious delight at my demise (in fact he seemed more depressed about it than me) or IPB/Facebook brags. A more gracious winner you could not hope to meet.

The exit from any big tournament always feels a bit like a little death, and I never feel particularly social afterwards, so I just spent the evening in my hotel room grinding a bit online. Losing hurts, but then it's supposed to.

The following day was a day off with the 1B runners getting their shot. I ran into a good contingent of Team Irish Eyes players at the casino and

wished them better luck than the 1A contingent (only Phil got through, and he had only barely advanced on starting stack). I also had a good chat with Connie, who was telling me about some exciting plans for 2012. Watch this space. Unfortunately, 1B was an even bigger disaster than 1A from an Irish standpoint, with nobody surviving the day.

It was a big holiday in Latvia, their Independence Day, so myself, Feargal and Jason Barton's Da Les headed into town for the celebrations and fireworks. When we alighted from our cab to join the throngs heading to the river for the fireworks, it was like a scene out of Schindler's List, with everyone thronging in one direction towards the river. We stepped out of the Pied Piper rat like procession to have a few bevies. Like his son, Les is a very interesting guy who has been intimately involved in the snooker world (he was Ronnie O'Sullivan's de facto manager, and heads up the Players Union) and he had some very interesting insider insights to that world. We eventually tore ourselves away from the comfort of the bar as the fireworks were starting. Our view was obscured by buildings so we walked down to the river, arriving just in time to miss the last firework. We'd literally turned the corner to an unobscured view when the whole crowd started clapping and dispersed. Wp us.

I played the side event the following day, making the second last table, before getting it in dominated again against a very good young Lithuanian player. He was autoraising the button so I figured A9s was well ahead of the range, but he had AQ and held. Around the same time Phil got knocked out of the main (in a very creditable 13th).

On Sunday, I went for a walk round the park in the centre with Feargal. Very charming and surreal park: at one point we ran into a celebration by the lake (it looked like a birthday party) accompanied by a musical duo on brass and accordeon. The last official event on the calendar was a one day turbo on the Sunday. Most of us played this. I busted on the second last table (again!) and headed to dinner with Feargal. One very nice steak later, we were back at the casino. With a few of us hanging round at a loose end (there was no cash action), Phil took it upon himself to get a sit n go going. After some debate over the buyin, it was agreed to allow people to buy in for either 100 Lats (about 150 euro) or 200. I intended to go for 200 but my card was maxed out so I bought in for the lesser amount, something of a bad beat as I ended up winning the thing.

The structure was exceptionally good for a sit n go so it went on for hours. Given this plus the absence of antes, I decided tight was right. In the early going, the more aggro players were knocking lumps out of each other and taking the piss out of myself and Jason Barton (who was playing even tighter than I was). There was some great banter at the table, mostly centred on Phil. At one point Feargal sucked out on Noel and did a hilarious victory dance, which Noel took in good spirits. The "tight is right" school of thought was reenforced when the dust settled and the last three standing were myself, Jason and the tightest of the Scandis.

One final bit of Phil Baker hilarity to report: he pulled the funniest hit and run I've ever seen. While we were in the middle of our sit n go, a bunch of Chinese lads appeared enquiring about a cash game. Some of the live cash pros in our midst were licking their lips as the lads sat down at a cash table near us, but their enthusiasm evaporated when they saw everyone buying in for the bare mimimum 50 Lats. As I came back from a 5 minute break, I was surprised to see Phil sitting down at their table to play, as he was still in the sit n go. Before I had time to ask him what he was doing, he had straddled, everyone had folded, and he'd walked away thanking the lads for the game and the three Lats.

Lappin it up in the Maldron

2011-11-23T06:27:00.003Z

I'd been looking forward to JP's mini WSOP as something different on the calendar and while the numbers were probably disappointing for JP and all involved, that was the only disappointing aspect of another great JP festival.

I made a decent start in the 6 handed but ultimately went out near the bubble when my AK couldn't hold against Stewie Samuels AJ. While I was there, Big Iain recorded this interview with me talking about the festival:

The following day I was back for the main event. Tough table and card death meant I was happy enough to get out of the day with just over starting stack. I hung around for much of day 2 with a similar stack, then started to chip up until I finally caught a hand. I took a risk slow playing a set in a three way pot and reaped the reward of a full triple up to move to over 200k. I continued to chip up til I lost a big race, and then shortly after the bubble I lost most of my stack with a rivered flush against a rivered house. Another lost race eventually saw me bust in 28th for a min cash (I also chopped the Irish Poker Boards Last Longer).

The following day I played the 8 game. The most interesting hand was against Kevin Fitzpatrick in 2 to 7 Triple Draw and it ended rather bizarrely with me mucking my queen high hand after Kevin declared his hand as ten high. When the dealer spread his cards out popped an ace so he had misdeclared his hand, but because I'd already mucked he was still awarded the pot. My mistake I guess for mucking without seeing all his cards. I never really recovered from this and didn't trouble the scorers.

I also did some livestream commentary with David Lappin and Iain Cheyne on the main event final table which you can listen to here. Some great insights from Mr. Lappin and I hope we'll get to share the mic together again some time.

I've been falling a bit behind on the blog front of late. Last week I played the EMOP grand final in Riga in the company of a great bunch of Irish lads. Full trip report with sordid details following shortly on that one.

Homeless and demented, courtesy of Paddy Power

2011-11-17T09:49:00.006Z

One of these days, or years rather, I'll get a run in a one of the two big annual Paddy Power live events. Just not this year. I'd prefer if it came in the Irish Open, but at this stage I'd settle for the Open's less attractive sister, the Winter Festival. Pretty much nothing went to plan in this year's version, even my wardrobe. I'd qualified online for the Sole Survivor online so had to wear the Sole Survivor gear. In previous years this consisted of a top and optional hoody, so I bounced into the Burlington in my usual poker gear thinking I'd swap my shirt for the tshirt and keep my jacket. Unfortunately there was no tshirt this year: just a hoody. Matters got worse when it emerged the hoody was far too hot to actually wear in the room. And got even worse again when having got permission to take it off and put it on the back of the chair, I found that the inside of the jacket had molted onto my black shirt which was now covered in green fluff. There's a rather horrible photo of this floating around. I look homeless and demented. Dealer Izzy tried to convince me it looked like a cool designer shirt from a distance. Sick bluff, but I appreciated the effort. Andy Grimasson on the other hand couldn't stop chuckling and pointing out "the shirt just looks ridic Doke" at regular intervals.

The poker didn't really go much better. I moved a little up from starting stack but after dinner everything went wrong. A series of small pots and minor setbacks left me short and having to push, and when I did with AJs, I ran into AK.

Undeterred by my exit, I was back the next day mainly to rail some friends still in. Rebecca McAdam also grabbed me for this interview:

There was some debate with the cameraman as to which side he should film from, a debate I settled definitively when I pointed out that it really made no difference as I have no "good" side, and Rebecca no bad one.

I also played two side events without troubling the scorers. I got a good start in both. In the last one, I 4 bet shoved kings into ace king which pulled ahead gamely on the turn. That pretty much summed up my weekend on the poker front, but you can't expect to cash every tournament and claim to be sane, and given that this is already my best ever live year nobody should be expected to put up with me whining about going a few games without a cash. My good friend and Irish Eyes teammate Mick Mccloskey told me that one of his many fans told him recently that his 10th Hendon mob cash this year made him the most consistent Irish player this year in terms of numbers of live cashes. Mick was feeling chuffed about this until I pointed out I have 15 on my Hendon mob for this year. All the best friendships are based on ruthless honesty in my view.

A few of my good friends went deep in the main event. One I tipped to Neil Channing as one to watch for the future was Daragh "Other Daragh" Davey. Daragh has a tremendous attitude and has all the skill discipline and patience needed to get to the very top in this game. He went deep in the recent European 6 max, and again here. He always seems to get horribly unlucky in the end (this time he got it in with AK v A4 in a massive pot with 20 left) but if he keeps getting into position it's only a matter of time before the big one comes. Feargal "MidniteKowby" Nealon got even unluckier, losing twice to an underpair. Other honourable mentions to Colette "Smurph" who went deep yet again, Niall "sicko" Smyth who looked like a rather unique treble was on for a while, and Chris Dowling who keeps popping up at these final tables. I did some live stream commentary on the final table with lovely Rebecca, the inimitable Emmet "epic" Kennedy and Downtown Rory Brown. Chris was particularly unlucky not to finally claim an elusive big title. Former WSOP main event final tableist, the great Scott Gray, left a message saying how much he enjoyed listening my commentary, which I thought was very nice until he added that he now had a better idea of how I play and the thought process I go through, very handy free information he will no doubt hope to use next time we play. Cheers Scott :)

I read an interview with a famous cartoonist once (Gary Larson I think) where he was asked what advice he'd give aspiring cartoonists. When probed further after answering "Become a dry cleaner", he pointed out that as a professional cartoonist himself it wasn't in his interest to help anyone become competition to him, but there was a shortage of good dry cleaners where he lived. I often think of this whenever players come to me looking for poker advice. My natural inclination is to help when asked to do so, but I've had other players saying I'm hurting us all by doing so.

In the bar of the Burlington drowning my sorrows after busting, a man who was still very much in and would go on to win over 50 grand in the tournament was telling me how much he likes the weekly advice letters I write that are sent out to everyone who signs up to my sponsors Irish Eyes. A big well done to Noel O'Brien who has only been playing at this level a couple of years but showed himself to be fearless and unfazed. Noel's on a bit of a run at the moment too and I expect to see him at more final tables in the future. It's fair to say I get a good bit of (mostly) friendly stick over the Letters from Doke, so it's nice to hear at least one person appreciates them.

The ultimate winner was popular Northern Irish bookie, John Keown. John's been a good friend of mine for almost as long as I've been playing poker and like everyone else he's had to ride through his fair share of lows so I was delighted to see him land a big score. John recently bought me breakfast in Cork so good karma I say. Anyone hoping to bink big: just buy me breakfast some time.

Theos Rippis is an Aussie mate of mine (and also Feargal Nealon). A self described recreational player, I spent a good bit of time with him in Vegas at the WSOP last summer, and he came up with the idea of doing a bankroll challenge grinding 180 mans. I gave him some very general guidelines and strategy tips to get him going (mostly around bubble play, effective stack sizes, bankroll management and push/fold) and off he went.

Theos has written an excellent blog report on how it's gone so far and his thoughts here

My 180 man experience and knowledge is well out of date at this point and I think Theos has gone past the point where I can give him much useful input, so I'd be very grateful if any guys with current experience of grinding the 180 mans could have a look and give him some feedback.

As an aside, there was a lot of talk about Martin Stasko's chess background recently. Theos is a much better chess player, genuine near IM (international master) standard. Imo, this manifests it most strongly in Theos very disciplined and methodical strategy/game theory based approach to poker.

Welcome to London.....here's your cupboard

2011-10-11T04:44:00.007+01:00

I started to suspect that "Executive Apartment" might not mean what I thought it meant as I was checking in and they asked me if I wanted to upgrade, and when I asked what an upgrade meant, was told it basically meant "you get a window". Actually I should probably have suspected that long before, as this place was recommended to me by Mick Mccloskey. Mick has proven himself to be a man who values value above every other consideration on many occasions, not least when he dragged me all over a supermarket in Malaga looking for the absolute cheapest water per litre.

Deciding I'd rather have the extra hundred quid than a window for the next few days, I eventually found my cupboard, number 021. First I got into the lift, then realised the 0 signified ground floor. Next attempt was a right turn through a well hidden door behind reception, revealing a warren of numbers from 039 down to 022. So back to reception where I found an even more cunningly disguised door the other side of reception where the numbers, behind which lurked another warren with numbers from 001 to 012. After climbing the stairs (no good either, the numbers now started with 1) I found another brilliantly hidden door behind the stairs. A few more well hidden doors later and I'm wrestling with the lock to cupboard 021, buried so deep within the building it seemed there was no phone signal. After dumping my luggage and freshening up in the bathroom so small you had to back into it, I felt ready to tackle the task of finding my way back out, so I could head to the Metropole. As I was exiting the cupboard mentally trying to reconstruct a schematic of the way back to reception, I noticed another well disguised door just to the left on mine. Worth a try, and it brought opened onto the lift beside reception. Result.

Still feeling like I'd just gone through a loophole in the time space continuum, I walked from Hyde Park up to the Metropole. I was there in time to play the 1K side event but feeling a bit tired from an early start, a flight and the search for my cupboard, I decided it might not be the best idea to play a 1k sterling event in the circumstances. I went to get some food with the idea that I'd then decide whether to play the 440 turbo at 8. Walking back, I ran into Ben Jenkins who was still in the main and obviously buzzing. A brief chat with him perked up my poker appetite and when he asked if I was going to play the 1k, I said I was. And stuck to it.

I was about 30 minutes late but got off to a good start. First hand I find kings, raise utg+1, and get two callers. One decided to raise me on a JTx flop. He fired the turn again but gave up with Q8o on the river. Next hand, I won a decent pot when I raised ATs utg, flopped middle pair, turned 2 pair, and rivered the house.

After that, I was pretty much just card dead. Liv Boeree got moved to the table and wasn't best pleased when she got 2 outered by one of the table fish for most of her stack. Next hand she made a steamy looking reshove but had the goods, jacks, which held against tens. She hung around for most of the day amusing herself and the table with some very innovative chip stack structures, before reshipping ATs over KK.

Meanwhile, I was struggling with card death. The one hand I got, sevens, lost a chunk when they ran into a shortie's kings. I then got lucky to get back into it. I reshoved KQ over a guy opening most pots when folded to, only to run into queens behind. A king on the turn kept me alive.

One table move later and I'm at the same table as Devilfish. A late card rush and some well timed steals and resteals see me finish the day with a very respectable 56k, in or around average. Didn't play any big pots with the Devilfish who seemed to decide early on I was a rock and therefore not to be tangled with without the goods. One interesting thing I find When I play abroad is if I sit there quietly not saying a word or joining in the table chatter, the general assumption is that I'm playing a lot tighter than I actually am. Numerous times this week I heard myself described as "the tightest player at the table". In a way, it's like stepping back in time to when I first appeared on the scene in Ireland.

Devilfish was visibly tilted when a girl at the table called his overbet on the river with king high (and was good obviously), offering the loud opinion that God gave the fair sex one anatomical part he referred to in crude terms as compensation for not having any brains left to give out.

Day 2 was mostly a case of hanging in there. I was on the verge of a stack only to get rivered and crippled in a big pot. I hung in with 6 bbs for a long time around the bubble, then won a 70/30 (AK v A9) and a flip (AQs v tens) to get right back into it. A lack of cards and spots after the bubble saw me treading water, then I got 2 outered on the river again to return to shortstacksville. With 16 left I lost a race (AK v 99) to bust for £2800. Normally I find second last table exits pretty tilting, but was fine with this one as I felt I'd done the most with what I was given to play with, and while I could argue I was unlucky to get rivered in big pots twice, I can't argue that I was also lucky at crucial points (the early 30/70 I won, and winning both the 70/30 and 50/50 on the bubble).

Well done to Bobby Willis who I played with a bit in this game. He ended up fifth for 11k.

Turbo king.....does not strike again
I jumped straight into an unusual 330 turbo. The twist here is that each player was dealt their own river card (face down unless the chips were all in before the river). This makes the game a bit like seven card stud, and it was clear that very few in the field understood the full implications of the personal river. In particular, small pairs go down in value in a straight race, as the two overs have a better chance with a personal river (if it pairs the board, the overs pull ahead unless the pair's personal river also hits it). I never got going though in this. I'd like to play it with a slower structure.

Hyperturbos live....chaos poker
On Wednesday I went back to play the 100+20 hyperturbo. 5k starting stack, 10 min blinds. I almost didn't play on principle as I doubt the best hyperturbo player in the world could beat a 20% reg (or 23%+ when you take the prize pool deduction into account) long term. They wouldn't get away with this online, but that doesn't stop Stars doing it live, and if people will play, then why not I guess. Mad props to all the dealers in this one (most of whom were either Irish or regular faces on the Irish festival circuit) for some lightning dealers. Without the best dealers, a live hyperturbo could descend into a 2 hands per level farce, especially given the clueless nature of much of the field who had to keep being reminded about antes and the like. Even with top notch dealers and floor staff (also crucial. Given how fast players bust, you need floor staff to be on their toes as far as table breaking goes), it's something of a farcical affair, particularly late on when you can go from having too many chips to shove to having so few you're priced in too call on your bb with any 2 in the space of an orbit without playing a hand. This is what basically happened to me.

The floor staff were also top notch, with many regular faces like Toby, JP and Carine on top of their game.

EPT Country of the Year freeroll
14 players (out of an eligible 38) turned up for this 10k freeroll. Feargal Nealon was flying in so I arranged to meet him at Paddington. In the event his flight was delayed, which meant not for the first time I found myself hanging round Paddington for no good reason. All I can say is it looks a lot different in daylight filled with people and open shops.

Fintan Gavin arrived late and proceeded to bluff off a third of his stack to me first hand. My plan was to check call the whole way so as to let him barrel, but I got greedy when I rivered the nuts and fired out a small bet I hoped he'd interpret as a weak lead. Instead he just gave up.

They were paying 8 places in this, and I was just over starting stack when the final table of 9 (also the bubble) formed. At the final table I found myself in an O'Dea sandwich, with Eoghan to my left and Donnacha to my right. Eoghan was short though and ended up bubbling when he lost a race to Feargal Nealon. As he (jokingly) whined about bubbling, he received zero sympathy but lots of abuse, even from the old man. That's how we Irish roll.

I then picked up the only two legit hands I got. First Big Mick G shoved KTs for less than 10 bbs utg, I called with AQ, and lost on a k high board. Standard shove post bubble obv. Next hand, the rest of my chips were in from the small blind with queens against Feargal's qjo. Feargal won this one with a runner runner flush, so it's fair to say I ran pretty bad in this overall, so wasn't too disappointed to have to settle for a £500 min cash. The big prizes went to Nick Newport (first), Big Mick (second) and Feargal (third).

Good banter in this tourney. Early on, Nick Abou Risk was the centre of it without pretty much everyone exclaiming "But you're not Irish!" at some point.

After my bustout I hung round a bit. Had a very interesting poker chat with Mike Lacey, Jesse May and Nick Abou Risk, and then went for some food with the other Nick (Newport) and Feargal. Most of the lads were jumping into the UKIPT turbo but I had an evening flight so headed to Gatwick instead.

Congratulations to Cat and RobO
On Saturday I headed north to Belfast for the wedding of two of my oldest poker friends, Cat O'Neill and Rob Taylor. In such circumstances it's normal to wish the happy couple a happy marriage, but actually it's harder to imagine a couple with more shared interests than Rob and Cat, so anyone even considering that this marriage will be anything less than blissful is drawing dead. The wedding itself was a classy affair with some memorable revelations in particular from Cat's brother Tony in relation to Brylcream :)

Player down....goodbye Sean

2011-10-08T03:10:00.003+01:00

I played day 1B of the Barcelona EMOP. Recently I've been trying some of the mental techniques I used to prepare for big races (of the running variety) to see if they help with the poker, and one area where I've noticed a definite improvement is in my patience early on. The biggest mistake I see predominantly online players (myself included) live is to get bored, play too many hands, and try to force things prematurely.

Anyway, it paid off on this occasion: I think I'd lost the minimum through my early period of card death/making the second best hand a lot, so still had 13k left when I was on the right side of a cooler. At 150/300, a loose player utg raised to 800, a loose Scandi flatted just before me, and I found aces in late position. I threebet to 2600, and after asking how much I had left the initial raiser threw in a clump of chips to make it just over 9k. The other guy unexpectedly flatted, I shoved, and now the initial raiser was annoyed to discover after the floor had been called that he couldn't reraise to force the other guy out as my shove represented an underraise (an elementary mistake you see online players make live more often than they should, particularly after taking the trouble to get an exact count from me). So he flatted, as did the other guy. The board ran out KT896 with three diamonds and with neither of them betting I was still feeling good about my aces (I also had the ace of diamonds).As anticipated, they turned over queens and jacks. So a timely triple up. From there I moved up towards 70k without any major setbacks. Late in the day I lost with tens against a shorty's A5 to finish with 56k, around average.

It's not just the French who do it
Unfortunately day 2 didn't go to plan. I was card and spot dead for the first three hours and struggled not to fall too far back, kept afloat by the occasional well timed steal or resteal. I had just over 40k shortly before dinner, less than 20 bbs, when I got moved to a new table. First hand: I shove AJs and it gets through. Second hand: I shove sevens and runs into kings behind. I was left with a pile of small denom chips which represented just over 3 bbs. I was bb next hand so with over a third of my stack in (counting antes) and getting over 2 to 1 to call I was more or less committed. After a late position raise I checked one card to make sure it was higher than a 7, and seeing a queen reshoved. My opponent hummed and hawed as the dealer counted my mountain of small denom chips before announcing, "OK, I call", and turned over aces, which held against my Q9. An annoying end to my tourney about 40 from the money but no major regrets: I felt I'd done as much as anyone could given what I had to work with. The tournament itself was a massive success, with over 450 runners, an EMOP record that proves that the tour is going from strength to strength. Roll on the live final in Riga.

Mrs. Doke was struggling with the same flu so this curtailed our sightseeing a bit, but what we saw of Barcelona was absolutely brilliant. I also ran into Team Irish Eyes member Noel Keane on day 1 (he busted just after dinner unfortunately). Noel's an interesting guy with a very interesting background and "how I got into poker" story.

Bad news from home
I was still struggling unmanfully with the flu, as was my better half sniffling back in the hotel room, so my mood couldn't really be described as cheery as I described to her how I'd been slowrolled. The wifi connection in the hotel was terrible, but when I eventually got it working, I learned two things that quickly put into perspective just how unimportant what had just happened to me was in the grand scheme of things. First I found out that the living legend that is Pagraig Parkinson had suffered a heart attack two days previously. I sent him a message on Twitter apologising for the delay in so doing saying I was out of the loop in Barcelona with dodgy wifi. Sharp as ever, Parky tweeted back "WHOSE DODGY WIFE?", indicating no damage to his humour valves at least, surely a good sign. Get well soon Parky.

I also found out to my deep sadness that another poker friend, Sean Gregory, had just lost a long fight with cancer. Everyone who knew Sean agreed he was one of the most genuine and positive people on the Irish poker scene. No matter how bad the beats got, Sean somehow kept a smile on his face that could cheer up anyone. Sean was one of the first people to befriend me when I appeared on the scene a few years ago, and one of the first to come to grips with my game (which meant that as much as I loved his company, I dreaded seeing him at the same table). He was a natural poker talent who read people well and worked out how to play them. He was also profoundly generous: a long chat I had with him after I knocked him out of a major tournament on my first year on the circuit provided me with a wealth of information on how loose players think and play, and a wealth of ideas and improvements to incorporate into my own game to counteract them. This is not generally how people react when I knock them out of a big tournament, but it was typical of Sean. Sean was the ultimate people person. Very few people in Irish poker remember that I have a brother who played at the top level, because he drifted away from the game around the time I drifted in, and poker's a fast moving and fickle world with a cast of characters that changes quicker than your average Aussie soap, but the first question Sean always asked whenever we met was "How's the brother?" He was also an underrated talent. Like many talented players, he struggled with the vagaries of short term luck (and ill fortune), and bankroll management. Even a smidgen of luck earlier in his career would have afforded Sean the chance to prove to us all just how great he could have been, but he never seemed to get the break when it mattered most. About a year ago he came to me looking for advice on how to play online, saying he'd watched me play and rated me the best in Ireland online. I was more than happy to give him whatever advice I could, and was thrilled to see him subsequently win some big ones online. The last time I saw Sean at a major live tournament, a few months ago, he asked me to sit down with him and helped him construct an online schedule. Unfortunately we never got round to it, as for one last time Sean's luck deserted him when he deserved it most. Rest in peace Sean: you'll never be forgotten by anyone who had the privilege to know you.

Better news from home
Congratulations to Niall Smyth who followed up his Irish Open win with another win in the Killarney main event, a truly remarkable double that will come as no surprise to anyone who has seen Niall play. Congratulations to everyone else who went deep, particularly Mark O'Connor, one of the best young players in the country. I've never failed to been impressed any time I've played with him live (or more frequently) online.

More fun in lifts
Frequent readers of this blog will know my occasional obsession with the wry and amusing things people get up to in lifts. The lifts in the hotel in Barca were a bit of a disaster. If the lift was going up but you were going down, it tended to collect you on the way up anyway. Same if you were going up when it was on its way down. Basically the world's friendliest lift: it literally couldn't wait to get you inside it.

One day I was on the ground floor looking to go up to the 5th, where the room was. The lift opened, empty, and I got in. It then went down to the basement, and picked up 8 pensioners. They shuffled in, pressed the button for ground floor (groan). One of them was standing too close to the doors so when they tried to shut, they couldn't, so they re-opened. 4 of the 8 pensioners were now convinced they were on the ground floor, so they wandered out. Much to the dismay of the other 4 pensioners who started shouting at them in Catalan. This only confused the wanderers further and they now fanned out in different directions. Two of the pensioners who were still in the lift now got out with a view to rounding the others up. This they eventually managed, although one particularly stubborn soul refused to accept he was still in the basement, so the doors closed without him. He must have had an immediate change of heart and pressed the Up button, because the doors re-opened. He got in, as 3 other pensioners got out, once again convinced they were on the ground floor. I'd had enough: I surreptitiously jammed my finger on the close door button, and off we went.

Next...
This blog is being typed on a plane from Barca to London, where the plan is to play a side event or two before Thursday's EPT Country of the Year freeroll. I've rented an apartment beside Hyde Park this time to save myself the ordeal of spending a few more nights with my friends in Paddington. Then it's back home where I have a royal wedding to attend!

Ain't no party like a D4 party

2011-09-29T22:49:00.005+01:00

While my overall record in tourneys run by Mike and Brian of D4 Events is second to none, closer examination reveals that while my record in their European Deepstack is sensational (I won the first one, cashed in the second, and final tabled the third), my record in their other major, the European Shorthanded, is atrocious (I've never made it out of day 1 alive). So I was hoping to put that to rights last week in the D4 Ballsbridge Inn.

I played the supersat the night before, primarily because I thought it would be a good idea to get some 6 max live practise in, and to see what type of bad the bad players were likely to be the following day. Things got off to a bad start: the supersat was actually played out 9 handed, and I was down to my last allowed rebuy early on when I raised AK on the button and got it in on a KT9 flop against the big blind's K7o. He obviously knew the 7 was coming on the turn when he called my rereraise shove on the flop. I managed to recover from there to bink a ticket, due in no small part to finding aces every time I really really needed them, and better yet, a customer willing to call my shove with something like 23 on the "two live cards" basis.

I played day 1A, made a reasonable start, but then it all went in 3 hands just before the first break. First I got set over setted, which is never fun. That accounted for half my stack. Half of what remained went a few hands later when I called the flop with a draw, barrelled when another draw got there on the turn and it was checked to me, and fired a second bullet on the river which failed to get through as my opponent had the flush I was trying to represent. Then just before the break, Joey Lovelady opened, I threebet AKs playing 50 bbs, the value at the table put in a massive 4 bet for more than my stack and I called it off. There are spots where I might fold AKs, but 50 bbs having already threebet against a French player playing every hand ain't one.

When you managed to incinerate 200 big blinds that fast, self doubt is inevitable, so I ran all three hands by the people I go to for line checks. The Doke Thinktank findings were that the first hand was fine (most thought there wouldn't have been a second and third hand as they'd have lost the lot right there), the second hand was split between people who thought I played it fine, too aggro (fold pre or flop), or not aggro enough (shove flop or turn), and nobody was ever folding in the third one. Sometimes it's just not your day.

Take 2
This being a re-entry, I was back on Friday for take 2. I got going this time but took a few hits late in the day and then went out in a fairly standard blind on blind cooler. Apart from that, the only highlight was running into and having a chat with the loveliest woman in poker, Rebecca McAdam, recently appointed deputy editor at Card Player.

Knowing and doing - two very different things
Before the 300 side game on Saturday, I ran into my Irish Eyes teammate Paul Lucey and my amigo Feargal "MidniteKowby" Nealon (who is crushing the turbos online at the moment). Feargal gave us a good pep talk about playing uber tight and avoiding marginal spots against French action junkies just itching to gift your their stacks if you showed a bit of patience. I agreed in principle but somehow found myself playing way too many hands early on and losing about half my stack in a series of marginal spots. At the next table, Feargal bluffed off half his stack first hand, and then when he did get a stack hero called it off! Right pair we are. Feargal busted in time to run off to the Betfair game in the Fitz and bust that to be back in time for dinner.

At a secret location
I knuckled down in the side and staged a mini recovery until I got it in in a fairly standard race just before dinner, my jacks losing to ak. I had an interest in my friend Daragh "Other Dara" Davey who was chipleader of the main at this point, so I arranged to meet him for dinner. What started as a Dara only event gradually mushroomed as I ran into other people or they phoned: I ran into Ger Harraghy, Albert Kenny and bops in the hotel, David Lappin materialised out of a cab, and Feargal arrived back from the Fitz. Bit of an ordeal getting everyone to the secret location as most of them knew me but none of the others, but after a few false starts and Other Dara leading Ger to the wrong place, we had a good dinner. It's always interesting to hear a bunch of top class players with widely divergent styles discussing and debating hands, and Lappin had some great non-poker stories from the film world (his Da produced the likes of My Left Foot, In The Name of the Father and The Boxer). Tempting as it is to steal them to spice up the blog at this point, you'll have to ask him in person :)

Wasted Sundays
My original plan was not to show my face in D4 on Sunday unless I was in the main event, but smarting from the events of the past three days, I was back the next day for the last event, the 200. I was hoping this would be a proper crapshoot where I could chip up or bust early, but they gave us way too many chips and too much time for that. Instead I chipped up and then bust just after the bubble, my A9 failing to hold against 89o. Another min cash on my Hendon mob.

Congrats to James Waldron for winning that game. Also well done to Other Dara in the main (he got horrendously unlucky in the end), and to "best of the Irish Eoin "starrbar" Starr who followed up his recent UKIPT side event win with a 12th here, and "best of the Irish based" Ivan Tononi. When I went over to check on Other Dara at one point I was rather dismayed to see ViperEyeIRL Ivan to Daragh's immediate left. But once Daragh was out I'd have loved to see Ivan win this: he's not only a really great player but also a perfect gentleman He's one of those guys who always seems to get very unlucky when it really matters (here he couldn't have got it in much better, aces v j8o on an 8 high flop) but hopefully it's just a matter of time before he has his day.

Also, well done Albert Kenny, who got 7th in the WCOOP Omaha HiLO AND busted Negreanu. The two Daras were railing him at 6 AM and he was desperately unlucky not to take it down.

Away trip
This week I'm on my first away trip since Vegas. This blog is being written on the place to Barcelona, where I play 1B of the EMOP tomorrow. I just ran into Brian "Fox" O'Keeffe and a few of the other Waterford lads. Brian's apparently an even more nervous flyer than fellow Deise legend Nicky Power: must be a Waterford thing. Hoping for a good run at this one but if not, Barcelona's a nice city to spend time with your better half (Mrs. Doke is along for this trip, currently giving me an earful on how boring it is to fly). Yes dear.

On Monday I head to London for the EPT. I'll play one or two sides before the Country of the Year freeroll on Thursday. Good luck to everyone playing in London and Killarney at the weekend: I have a few horses in both so hoping for a good weekend on the sweat front.

Terminal poker
Something new and fun on Irish Eyes is Terminal Poker. The basic idea is similar to rush poker. At the moment it has a growing number but still small. If anyone wants a freebie to try it out, sign up here at my blog (link on the side), and then email me your username and we'll give you a 10 euro free money voucher to get started.

The latest fad: re-entries

2011-09-19T07:13:00.003+01:00

I played the 50K guaranteed 100s festival in Maynooth, largely because I was intrigued to see how the novel idea of 4 day ones with re-entries would work. I played day 1c and got through with one bullet (no re-entry), mainly because I got off to a great start. Or should I say a lucky start: the first major hand of note I got it in with the schnuts (second nuts) against the nuts on the flop and still managed to win the hand. My opponent, a friend of the legendary Bomber Nolan, took it in good spirits. I guess any friend of the Bomber gets used to outrageous doggings of the sort.

Day 2 didn't exactly go to plan though: I was definitely on the toughest table in the room. I was struggling to get anything going and ended up reshipping queens from the blinds over an early position raiser. He was a foreign lad with a huge stack and seemed very spewy so I reshipped knowing full well I could get called very light, but it was still a surprise to see him call fairly quickly with A8. He hit the ace on the turn. I can't really complain though: I'm always happy when an opponent calls it off as a 9/4 dog getting only 6/4. Professional poker players and bookies have one thing in common: in the long run our money all comes from people making bad bets against us at insufficient odds. And I've been known to make a few bad ones in my day too (see the first paragraph).

I had a pretty good week online with lots of final tables and better yet a few wins. I won the €10r on Eyes one night, and the $22r on Stars twice this week. Most recently tonight. At the start of the final table, I realised I needed to win the tournament to break even on the day, the Sunday grind having been something of an epic fail to that point. Somebody asked me at a tournament recently how much I'd be down in an average night if I didn't cash in anything. The answer is a couple of grand most week nights and up to double that of a Sunday.

The new Player Ireland has a piece from me on EMOP Dublin. I'm playing the European Shorthanded on Thursday (day 1A). This is also a re-entry tournament so if I do bust 1A I'll probably be back for more punishment on 1b. I think re-entry tournaments are a great idea overall, but I hope organisers follow the example of the Macau in charging reg fee only once per player (not per entry).

You may notice ads for various stuff on the new look blog. Not to plug everything, but one worth paying attention to as I genuinely get asked about it a lot (or more generally the best way to get money on and offline). I personally use Neteller and an associated Net+ Cash On Cash Off card which works as a debit card (meaning no credit card fees) against your Neteller account. This also means no fees when booking flights etc. (Ryanair for example charge you extra for using a credit card), and I can use the card to withdraw cash from ATMs. So click on the Cash On Cash Off banner at the side for more details.

UKIPT Dublin

2011-09-14T16:09:00.003+01:00

Well, it was time to give the old blog a bit of a makeover so hope you like the new look. When I started this blog it was basically a sort of Dear Diary: I didn't even tell anyone about it for months. I still see it primarily as a sort of diary I'll have to look back on when it's all over.

Anyway, winning Super Wednesday on Party and the Ipoker 60K on Friday gave me a shot at a second PocketFives Triple Crown if I could win another qualifying tourney over the next few days, but despite a string of final tables on Stars and Merge, I didn't manage to convert any. So not to be on this occasion.

I took Wednesday off as my friend Mark Smyth had been selected for the "Team Pro plays a home game" segment on the TV coverage for UKIPT Dublin. He invited me, Phil Baker and Larry Santo (and Larry's friend Tyler) along. You're guaranteed entertainment with that crew and hopefully it'll translate to the coverage. Larry in particular looked awesome fresh from the tanning salon: Phil tagged the show as Hungarian Jersey Shore, a line I told him I was stealing.

After the shoot, I headed to D4 with Phil and got there in time to see Lappin amass a ridiculously big stack in the 6 max side event. He ultimately finished third: another online monkey appears to be making the transition to live poker successfully.

The following day I was back for day 1A of the main. My first table was about as bad as it gets: only 6 handed, and the other 5 were Jon Spinks, 2 other very good English lads, Richie Lawlor and Danny McHugh! I decided to buckle up my seat belt and do nothing fancy, and thankfully the table was one of the first to break. I won a lot of small pots there to get off to a good steady start, the most interesting of which was against Spinksy who elected to defend his big blind against my standard small raise. I flopped top pair and went for a pot control/bluff induce line. Spinksy did fire once (on the turn after I checked behind on the flop) but great players don't let you win much in those spots and he rightly gave up on the river.

My second table was very different: in fact it looked like a Sporting Emporium reunion! When I started playing there a few years ago, Eamon O'Reilly, Jane Topkin and Ektor were regular faces.

I switched my play a bit and played much looser at this table. For the most part it worked well for me, except for one mistake against the lovely and talented Jane (who you may remember was second in the JP Mini WSOP a couple of years ago). She defended her blinds and check raised me on a 864 board. I had tens and my first instinct was there was a good chance she was bluffing here as it doesn't look like an early position raiser's board. She didn't look too comfortable as I tanked but I couldn't quite convince myself to commit so in the end I let it go as I felt I didn't need to take a big risk on a misread at this point. Jane looked really relieved when I did let it go and confirmed to me later she was semi-bluffing with an open-ender, so very well played by her. Great spot and great bet as it forced me to decide there and then if my hand was good knowing it was nearly all my stack if I was wrong.

My next table was another nightmare, with a chipped up Dermot Blain (a super player that I don't ever remember seeing make a mistake) and nobody else over the age of 25 apart from a guy I've played with a few times called George. It wasn't the kind off table where smallball LAG was going to work so I switched gears again and played about 4 hands in an hour. Despite or I guess because of this I chipped up quite a lot at the table. The two most interesting hands:
Hand 1: Derm opens in late position. I have aces and just under 30 bbs on the button. Because I've been so tight I think a 3 bet folds out 95%+ of Derm's range (my stack size makes it obvious I'm not 3 bet folding) so I elected to flat because of this and the fact the two blinds behind were a young aggro guy who was squeezing a lot, and George who rarely folds his blinds. Flop came 985, George led for almost pot, Derm gets out of the way, I raise for almost half my stack, and George tank folds a nine. I think I probably got the maximum here.
Hand 2: A few hands later I raise A3s in late position. George flats the button and the English kid defends the small blind. Flop was T62 with two of my suit. When it was checked to me, I prepared to make a standard cbet when I realised that if I did so and got raised, I couldn't get it in with fold equity against anything legit. I therefore adjusted my bet size down to 25% of pot, and after I got check raised stuck it in. The kid tank folded so I believe he had something. The other upside to my flop sizing is it makes the shove look super strong (my tiny cbet looks like an action inducer in retrospect when I follow it up with the shove).

I escaped from that table with 50k. My last table of the day looked promising but unfortunately I had a very good aggro Russian to my immediate left who wouldn't let me away with anything. I was card dead for the last session so I drifted back to 38K which was fine: decent day's work I thought.

Tournaments like this are as much social occasions for me as anything else, so I took up Mick Mccloskey's offer of a spare bed and hung round the hotel on Friday. I played the triathlon side event and never really got going. I was put at the same table as two of my friends, wee Bridie Gribben and not so wee Steven Byrne (Mark was there briefly before a double dogging). Steven knocked me out of this event in Cork but this time it was Bridie who did most of the damage, living up to her promise to my friends who were watching to make me her bitch :) The craic at the table was mighty, Bridie was trying to get me drunk with red wine and it was a shame we broke. I didn't last very long at the new table, after which I wandered around a bit seeing how my friends who were playing 1B were getting on.

On day 2, I had breakfast with Breifne Earley (who is heading off to New Zealand this week). Breifne was one of the overnight chipleaders and asked me for some tips. I ran through some stuff on effective stacks, shoving stacks, reshoving stacks and associated ranges, only to discover to my horror when we got back that we were at the same table so I was one of the reshoving stacks I'd just told him to watch out for!

Unfortunately I didn't play as well as I had the previous day, one hero call against Bops did a fair bit of damage. I was down to 26k aka 13 bbs when Oscar Fred opened on the button for a min raise. This was the first time he'd min raised. I had a legitimate reshoving hand in the small blind, JTs, but spent a little while pondering what the first time use of the min raise meant. In the end, I decided one of three things, in order of most to least likely:
(1) A total steal. Here the min raise loses the minimum
(2) A marginal type hand that he's prepared to call a 13 bb reshove from me but not a bigger reshove from the bb
(3) A monster. Here the min raise is an action inducer

Eventually I decided to go for it and shoved. Another factor was the guy who had just moved into the seat to my left looked very competent and I couldn't expect him to make mistakes if I started shoving light, and bops was lurking just behind, so rather than shrivelling any further to a pure shoving stack, I figured I had to go for it. If the shove gets through I add over 30% of my stack, and I think JTs has 40-50% equity against most of Oscar's calling range. Unfortunately, the BB woke up with one of the worst hands he could have for me, AJ, the ace being my suit for good measure, and reshoved. Oscar folded and there was no miracle.

Well done to all who cashed, especially IPB supremo Dom Hever (who I had a share of), and my friends Max Silver (amazing Fossilmanesque defence of the crown he won last year) and Jason Tompkins. Jason's phenomenally consistent in tourneys in Ireland which is the real hallmark of class and it's surely only a matter of time before he wins a really big one.

On Sunday I appeared on Dublin City FM's "On The Ball" with Breifne Earley to talk about the success of Team Irish Eyes players at EMOP Dublin and other recent Irish tournaments. This week also saw the appearance of my first blog for the Star at their website: http://starbets.ie/poker-blog/grinding-and-an-afternoon-with-roy-06092011/ It's aimed at more general readers than this one.

Next live outings for me are the 100s festival in Maynooth this week, and the European Shorthanded next week.

Tanks and minis

2011-09-01T07:17:00.004+01:00

After a week of largely treading water online, it was good to get out of the house. I opted for day 1B of the Unibet Open so that I could play my favourite monthly game, the Fitz end of month. As I walked in, I ran into a few other lads who had made the same decision. They were worrying about how late it might run, but I pointed out that if you were there at the end, the ten grand richer you'd be would more than compensate for any tiredness in Citywest. Worst case scenario though would be to bust on the bubble at about 4 in the morning. Needless to say, this is exactly what happened.

I was short throughout most of it (watching from a cash table after he busted in classic Lappin fashion - 35 bigs all in pre with 5 high, I heard Lappin only half-jokingly tell someone "Doke spends almost his entire life between a third and half the average") before going on a rush two tables out to move close to the chiplead. I then lost a massive threeway flip on the bubble. Holding AK, I initially outdrew Marc Brody's tens who barely covered me when a king appeared atop the flop. The dealer spread the flop to reveal a ten lurking beneath to more or less kill me. The shortie's AJ pulled ahead when a queen appeared on the turn, and the king of the river did nothing for me but housed up Marc's set of tens.

As I was standing up chatting to Lappin, there was a loud discussion going on among the Fitz regs remaining about my call with the AK, with Fitz stalwart and Irish poker rankings number one Stuey Samuels offering the opinion that it was a terrible call because of the bubble. Stuey gets through more bubbles than anyone else in the Fitz thanks to some very cautious play on the bubble (earlier, he opened AQ on the button for 4 big blinds and folded to my 16 big blind reshove with sevens from the small blind) so fair play to him, but I had no regrets about the manner of my exit as I was more interested in playing for the win and the 11k up top rather than locking up the 400 min cash. In an almost identical spot a few orbits earlier, Marc had tabled A7o, so AK is far too big against the range for me to even consider folding. My chips went to a good home for once as Marc who was clearly the best player left on the table in my view told me he went on to win when I ran into him in Citywest. He made a point of coming over to me at the table to tell me how impressed he had been by my play in the Fitz which was a very nice gesture.

Out in Citywest, there was a lot of talk about how only five Irish had played 1A, and only one (Daragh Davey) had made it through to day 2. Turnout was better on 1b (over 30 Irish played) but we were still outnumbered about 6 to 1 overall. I guess it's just the way things are right now: the number of Irish players willing or able to stump up a four figure buyin has dwindled so events in this price range including possibly even January's Dublin WPT will basically be poker tournaments in Ireland rather than Irish poker tournaments.

My tournament was similar to my Fitz EOM in that I was short until near the bubble. On day 1 I had the pleasure of playing with current Irish Open champion Niall Smyth for the first time, and he's a very impressive and pleasant table presence. Overnight it emerged that the only other person still in the IPB Last Longer was Other Dara (Daragh Davey) so we agreed to chop it (which means I've now chopped the last three IPB Last Longers I was involved in). We both had less than 20 big blinds so the last thing either of us needed was to have to think about a Last Longer before sticking the loot in. As it happened, Other Dara bust a few minutes into the day, while I doubled up. We got moved to the TV table where I was pretty card dead and had a very active neighbour to my left Jimmi Bastian. Jimmi had no qualms about three betting me any time I opened from mid to late position so I had little choice but to stop opening light for now.

By dinner time we were three from the bubble. Other Dara suggested we go to the restaurant round the corner rather than the one in the main body of the hotel where they were charging all non-Unibet qualifiers 12 euro for slop (and an extra 4 euro if you wanted dessert with your slop). This was a great suggestion as for not much more we actually got decent food. Roy the Boy Brindley was there on his own so he came over to chat and ask if I'd do some commentary if I busted soon. I'm always up for a bit of commentating so I agreed.

Just after dinner and still before the bubble, I was on the right side of a cooler. Kings on the button and two guys all in before it even got to me. They had queen and jacks and I held. I now had a well above average stack for the first time, but unfortunately it didn't last long.

The very aggro chipleader got moved onto my table, button to my big blind. We played a few pots and then the big one: he opened on the button, a shortie shoved 10 bbs from the small blind, and I found AQ in the big blind. Standard reshove as far as I'm concerned: AQ is way ahead of both ranges and I can't call without committing my stack so I might as well shove. Unfortunately the chipleader had a very nice hand this time: kings, and held. All in all a strange mixed feeling of disappointment and pride at another deep run as I was led away to collect my min cash which seemed particularly min given there was over 100 grand for first.

The Unibet girl came scampering over to make sure I didn't sulk off, and chaperoned me to the commentary box, where I passed a pleasant few hours with Roy the Boy. Roy told me afterwards he felt we worked well together because unlike some other commentators I wasn't fazed by the fact that he does his own thing and doesn't look at you when he's talking to you. I thought we made a pretty good team too, with contrasting styles approaches and opinions. Roy's a consummate pro when it comes to commentary.

The one big upside to Saturday exits live is it frees up Sunday for the Sunday (online) grind. I built a few stacks in the majors but unfortunately failed to convert to a final table, the closest being a second last table exit in the Party 200K. I've been struggling a little to find my A game online since Vegas and the 6 week layoff from online that it entailed. I feel it's very important to be honest with yourself about how you're playing and be ever vigilant for mistakes and areas to improve. I generally don't make many big mistakes (like nearly everyone else who multitables I make a lot of small ones) but since Vegas I've been slipping up on that front. For example, this week, 4 handed in the Bodog turbo deepstack, I was approximately level with 2 other stacks, and the other guy had twice as much. Button shoved for 9 bigs, the big stack flatted in the small blind, and instead of sticking my chips in with AQs, I folded, hoping the big stack had a monster and eliminated the other guy (the pay jump from 4th to 3rd was unusually significant). Of course they both had hands I dominated, A9 and KQ, and to make matters worse an ace flop and they flip flopped stacks instead of me eliminating one and crippling the other. Maybe my exit in a similar spot in the Unibet main was too fresh in my mind, but AQ is always a reship there. I paid the price being eliminated in 4th a short while later.

One area of the game that has given me most trouble online is my light 4 and 5 betting ranges and spots. I used to not do it enough: recently I've been doing it too much in bad spots. It varies from site to site: your ranges have to be very different somewhere like Stars or Party where there's a lot of it going on than some of the more sedate networks where there's almost no light 4 betting and 5 betting (on those sites, 4 betting light is very profitable, but 5 betting light is just burning money because the other guy always has a hand, always). So I've been putting a lot of thought and work recently into assessing the relevant variables such as opponent type, stack sizes, tournament situation (bubbles etc.), position, history, and game flow.

Anyway, I feel like I'm getting back to my A game online. I did at least bink another UKIPT satellite, and one for the IWF. The IWF satellite was a 20r which unfortunately only had one ticket. I say unfortunately because I got headsup with my friend DPablo on Boards and Ipoker, but no friends at the table as they say, especially when it's winner takes all. Final hand was basically a cooler given the way the headsup was playing out: I got it in dominating with AK against a worse ace. I played the headsup very aggro as I tend to so DPablo was justified in thinking any ace was pretty massive against me and just unlucky I had a bigger one (and held).

EDIT: I typed this blog up before last night's grind but didn't get to post it til now. At least my feeling that I was getting back to top form online was justified by the nights results: a string of final tables (three on Irish Eyes) and best of all a win in the Super Wednesday 30K guaranteed on Party for my first 5 figure online score since Vegas. Also, I had some quality rail, including EPT Player of the Year and all round German wunderkind legend Maximilian Heinzelmann, and Milly winner Danloulou (who deserves congrats for his final table at the weekend in the Microgaming 500k).

Finally, congrats to Alan McIntyre, the only Irish player to cash at the latest EPT. I've said before how much I admire and am impressed by Alan, not just in terms of his play but also his attitude and temperament. Study and technique are all very important, but there's no replacement for natural talent and temperament. Alan managed to cash despite being down to 4 big blinds at one point on day 2, a terrific grinding performance. It's not always about driving the big tank in this game: the great players know how to navigate a mini through a minefield when needed too.

Doke gets rightly Lappined

2011-08-21T15:47:00.001+01:00

Well, I haven't blogged in a while, mainly cos there was nothing much to blog about, and I resisted the temptation to write a blog about not having anything to write about.

I did end up in the Fitz one night after meeting Lappin in town. For anyone wondering why I insist on referring to him by his surname in contrast to my "Christian names and/or screen names" policy for all my other friends, it's because I feel if someone has a surname as awesome as Lappin, then Goddammit it should be used as much as possible. Ever weirder, I ended up sitting in live cash for about 30 minutes while waiting for my lift to arrive after busting the tournament. Regular readers will be aware of my aversion to live cash. This was the first time in well over a year I put myself through the trauma. I ended up almost 100 big blinds which seems like a decent hourly if perhaps not sustainable :)

A few night later I was finishing up an evening session online when Lappin popped up on Skype to tell me he'd just signed up to Irish Eyes and wanted me to jump into a cash game with him. Since I was down to a few tables, I humoured him. I nitted it up for an hour or so while Lappin played something like 55/45 all the while abusing me for the nit that I am. We did eventually play a big pot: I threebet aces, he min reclick four bet, I five bet small enough to let him think the 6 bet shove might have fold equity and and he shoved in the 130 bigs with AQs. All well and good except his flush draw got there before the river so I got rightly Lappined. If you're gonna lose those, better it be to a friend than a foe I guess.

I headed down to Cork on Friday for the Macau Classic with Mick Mccloskey. I had a pretty good day 1b, chipping up from 20k starting to 48k. The biggest and most interesting pot ended with a November Niner getting a Doking. It started with Richie Lawlor (one of the best tourney players on the scene at the moment who came within a hair's breath of the remarkable and unprecedented achievement of cashing in 4 UKIPTs on the trot) opening to 750 utg at 150/300. I flatted with ATs two behind, as did Eoghan O'Dea two behind me. The flop came 764 with two of my suit, Richie led for 1050, I called, Eoghan raised to 3800 with 10k behind. Richie tank folded (queens according to his Twitter) and I had to think now too. Folding didn't seem great when you play ATs and hit a two overs and a nut flush draw flop, calling seemed unpalatable too, so I ran through the math quickly to see if shoving was ok. I figured Eoghan's range as 44+ (that is, sets, overpairs and pairs with a straight draw). I have about 42-43% equity against that range so even if he never folds the shove is plus Ev. If he ever does fold it's even better for me. Also, if I widen his range to include worse flush draws like KQs, my equity gets closer to 50%. As it happened, he had a hand I'd never even considered (76o for top two) but even if I include 2 pair hands (I excluded them because Eoghan was playing very tight and didn't think he'd play something like 76o from mid position with less than 50 bigs) I'm basically a 5/4 dog against the range so the shove's ok with the dead money. And there's always Plan B, hit the flush, which I duly did. Hopefully Eoghan's getting his run bad out of the way before November.

I got my comeuppance on day 2 though, losing a load of races to shorties. After losing with queens against AK, I was down to 4k (4 bigs). I staged a recovery to 50k before I lost a few and ended up shoving 15 bigs with KQ in late position over a few limpers. After the last limper tank called I figured I was racing but wasn't: his AQ held.

I bought in late to the 300 side event and lasted precisely two hands, the second of which was reminiscent of my Lappining. Utg limped for 150, I made it 400 just behind with aces, a guy in late position made it 1200, I fourbet to 3400 and called his 16500 shove. Someone said "aces and kings" but my opponent said "No, I don't know what I was thinking" before sheepishly turning over AJs. Flush got there of course.

The Macau made their main event a re-entry tourney which wasn't to some people's liking but I think is a good idea. Anything that increases prize pools is good, as is anything that encourages people to gamble sub optimally. Another advantage is if you travel for one of these games, it's good to have more than one bite at the cherry. There's nothing worse than travelling to play a game like that, see your aces done by AJs for millions of big blinds in level one, and spend the rest of the week fretting about the broadband in your hotel. Hopefully other organisers will follow the example of allowing players to re-enter without having to pay the registration again (as is the norm in ripoff Las Vegas).

Leading from the front, getting it in behind

2011-08-04T03:43:00.025+01:00

Experience has taught me at least one thing: it always take me a while to re-adjust to playing live in Ireland after Vegas. So I was glad to be able to get the cobwebs off at 2 events before EMOP Dublin, the one this year in Ireland I really really wanted to do well in. After playing ok on day 1 in Waterford, I played pretty bad on day 2. Those post Vegas blues again. I played ok in the Fitz EOM the night before 1B of EMOP, but once the shipping section started I didn't last long. Second hand I shipped was KQ and it ran into Trevor Dinneen's AK. My timing was bad, but at least my friends' was better: Jono Crute, David Lappin and Gareth Cash, in the midst of a pub crawl, turned up just around then to see how myself and Jono's Norwegian friend Espen were faring. I was now free to join them for a few.

The taxi man lecture
Short but memorable cab ride to Grafton Street. Memorable mainly for the taxi man giving us his views on poker, both live ("the fish are all gone") and online ("over"), and trying to teach us how to play PLO, all the funnier given Gareth would be one of the best young PLO players in the country. Attempting to explain the difference between NLH and PLO, his basic premise was "it's easier to get away from a hand in PLO". All reasonable enough until he decided to give us an example to illustrate. Apparently, if you raise with jacks in NLH and the flop coming 762, there's no getting away come what may. On the other hand, you could raise with KQJT in PLO and if the same flop comes, well, now you can get away. Nobody could really argue with this, since as Lappin in the front pointed out drily, "king high basically". The three of us behind were trying to contain our mirth.

Lappin cut the lecture short by suggesting we bail from the taxi a short distance from the pub. Part of the reason I figured a couple of pints mightn't be a bad idea was I was still on Vegas time, meaning restlessness all through the night finally giving way to sleep around midday, and getting up at 7 PM. Since EMOP kicked off at 2, that wouldn't do, so I thought maybe a few pints would make me sleepy. That didn't work out at all, but the night was a big help in another way. The conversation moved to the differences between online and live play, and Lappin in particular had some very interesting ideas. By origin almost an exclusively online player (he's been crushing for years), a recent break from online post Black Friday has seen him playing more regularly in the Fitz, and getting a handle on how live players play and are best exploited. This is something I've put a lot of thought into myself over the years as I try to compete on both fronts. Both online and live are always evolving, and having top class players to talk through the latest developments is always a huge help.

Insomnia - not just a coffee shop
After attempting to sleep at home, I gave up, which meant heading to Clontarf the next day with no sleep in almost 24 hours. Hardly ideal, and also left me wondering "How bad am I going to look in the photos? Maybe I need sunglasses and a mask!". In the end, I decided the return of my trademark red tie might provide sufficient distraction from the state of me.

My starting table looked pretty rough, not least because I had the player I told an Israeli at the table was "currently Ireland's best live player" two to my left.

Luckily we didn't tangle before I got moved. My basic approach on day 1 was to play hypercautiously and choose the lowest variance lines possible. The top French players think and talk about this a lot and they have a point: in my view in deep stacked tournaments with soft fields, it's worth sacrificing a little Ev to reduce variance. Also, given I was supposed to be leading the Irish Eyes team as Team Captain, an early exit would have been embarrassing to say the least. My second table was a bit softer, but still had a couple of good local (meaning Irish) players, notably Richie Lawlor who has put together a string of results recently, and Fergal Gallagher.

I played a few standard hands against Richie, and a more interesting one against Fergal where he three bet me pre, bet the ace high flop small, and then overbet the turn when another ace appeared. My immediate instinctive reaction (and comment to Richie beside me) was "That bet makes zero sense if he has the ace" but in the end I decided to be prudent and just fold. On another day where I was feeling a lot cautious I'd just go with my read there, which was apparently correct based on comments made by Fergal on IPB later. There's no harm in being bluffed now and then though, and fair play to anyone who pulls it off. At least the tie was still holding up.

My friend and constant travelling companion Mick Mccloskey (who was living in our shed/studio for the weekend) got himself embroiled in a bit of controversy when he was caught red hand of Ulstered helping himself to the dealers tea and coffee - it seems Mick just can't resist a free drink :)

Towards the end of the day, I started to feel very weary indeed. Irish Eyes supremo Steven Merrick popped up to perk me up with a pint and a query of how it was going ("Not very well but I'm not panicking yet"). It seemed to work: I chipped up late in the day to finish well above average, top 10 in chips.

Day 2
After some much needed kip, it was back for day 2 where the only face I recognised on my table was Tom Kitt (who lasted only a few hands). The table broke almost immediately and initially things went badly as I lost almost half my stack by instalments.

A race won (AK v TT) got me back to where I'd started the day. I then got moved again and found myself wedged between two of my friends, Gary Clarke and Mick Muldoon. Gary was there when it all started for me (when I chopped the European Deepstack of 2008 with him and 3 others). Mick was already something of a legend and someone I always listened to intently at the table as he has such a clear grasp of poker theory and how best to explain it.

I was still struggling to get going when I found myself all in on the bubble. A very drunk Finnish gentleman raised and I found aces in the big blind. I instantly moved all in, hoping this would make my hand look less like aces and more like AK. As he tanked (loudly), my opponent told me he had AK and asked me a number of questions about my hand. I told him I didn't have kings but might have aces. I didn't think he was calling but did everything I could to get it with the speech play and a few reverse tells I often throw in in these spots. These generally don't work against experienced players (Matt Dobbins, looking on, said he knew I had a monster) but on this occasion got the call from AK and the timely double up. Around this time, myself, Mick and Gary found out we were the last three standing in the IPB Last Longer so we duly chopped it for 450 yoyos apiece. My general policy on Last Longers is I don't like having to take my equity in them into account near the business end of a tournament. Shortly after the bubble burst, Gary busted, and Mick was moved into his seat.

By close of play, we were down to 2 tables, and I was down to 8 bbs, which as a number of people commented overnight, is my kinda stack.
Day 3
As we drove back from Clonsilla to Clontarf the next day, I remarked to Mick that it was pretty remarkable we'd both made day 3. Mick hadn't been at all confident: the previous morning he packed up all his belongings into the car in preparation for the flight north after he busted. The power of negative thinking was further illustrated by the fact that I thought it was extremely unlikely we'd both make the final table, much less the top 4. Very first hand of the day, Mick min raised the button and I shoved in from the small blind.

As he dwelled up, he said "You're the math guy....I think I'm supposed to call here", a reference to an ongoing argument/debate we have about these spots where you're pretty certain you're a big dog but priced in. Mick subscribes to the theory that if it's marginal (as in you're barely priced in) and it's for most of your stack (so if you lose you lose a lot of utility and fold equity), you're better off waiting for a better spot. I left him to his decision, happy to take the 72/28 I assumed it was if he called, or the pot if he folded. He eventually did fold and to put his mind at rest that I wasn't exploiting him without a hand, showed him the AK. He confirmed he would have been dominated.

I continued to progress when Bob Elkin shoved his short stack in from early position and I found tens in the small blind and reshipped. The tens held against Bob's A8. Bob is one of allinstevie's crew and is another example of the hidden poker talent in this country: hidden because they're too busy crushing online to play much live.

By now a fairly boisterous good-natured rail was forming, spearheaded by my amigo Feargal "MidniteKowby" Nealon and Steven Merrick.

The party almost came crashing to a halt a few hands later when I found nines under the gun. With less than twenty big blinds, my hand was far too strong to fold, so raise/folding was out of the question. I therefore took the Gus Hansen line of moving in to maximise my fold equity. All well and good except Mr. Muldoon's aces are lurking in the blinds.

I thought this might be the end of my EMOP Dublin as I knew the stacks were close and thought I might be covered. After the dealer had counted them down though, I was left with just over 2 big blinds, one of which I immediately had to post blind. Connie O'Sullivan, looking on, quipped "that's plenty for Doke" and his sidekick Matt Dobbins predicted "the mother of all comebacks" starts here.

The mother of all comebacks
The mother of all comebacks started with accomplished Finn Aki Pyysing opening utg. Everyone folded to me in the big blind, and although I'm clearly committed and never folding, I looked first before announcing call and pushing the rest of my chips in.

I had 86s against Aki's AK.

After we both missed the flop, I picked up a flush draw on the turn, leaving the two Micks calling for different outs (Muldoon wanted a heart, Mccloskey a 6). In the end it was the other out, an 8, which saved me.

No rest for the crippled though, I'd barely stacked my chips when it's been folded to me in the small blind and I find J5o. I had to count out my stack to decide if this was a push or not.

With about 5 bbs, I have very little fold equity. On the other hand, J5o has almost 50% equity against a random hand so even if I have no fold equity (that is, Aki always calls, regardless of what particular random hand he has), it's still a mistake to do anything other than shove here. If he ever folds (and I suspected the fact he'd just lost a pot to me would reduce his willingness to lose another 4 bbs to me now), the shove is even more profitable, so I quickly decided it was a shove. He tanked for so long I actually expected to be ahead when called, but wasn't. He had Q3.

This time a jack appeared on the flop to double me up again.

I folded for almost an entire round before finding sixes utg, a standard 9 bb shove if ever there was one. Mick Muldoon snap called in the small blind, so fast I asked him "Do you have aces again?". Instead he had ace ten. The top card on the flop was a ten so I figured that was it, but the dealer spread the flop to reveal a 6 lurking behind.

Suddenly I was right back in the game and feeling much happier.

Shortly afterwards we were down to ten after a sick hand where I had to open folded jacks after there was an open, a shove and a reshove before it got to me, and I commented to Mick "One of us is going to make the final table now". "Why not both?" was Mick's inspiring reply.
Pyysing your stack away
It's folded to me in the small blind and playing 15 bbs I find AQs. Rather than open shipping, I elected to make smaller raise to get more hands I dominate in. Aki thinks for a second or two, then announces all in. I immediately announce the call, and he shouts "Fuck!". I'm expecting to see a weak ace, but instead I'm surprised to see the 83s powerhouse. Actually feeling pretty sick about the fact that he's live (at least I have the suit covered), I'm fully expecting to see a 3 pop out at some point but after a sweat when we brick the flop and turn and the dealer slowrolls the river, I can breathe again.

There was some debate and consternation over what had just happened, not least among the Finns who seem to revere Mr. Pyysing (he's literally the guy on the poster), with a number of different theories doing the rounds. The most plausible one was Feargal's that he was a bit tilted after I'd sucked out on him twice and just wanted to win one hand against me even if he had to suck out to do so. The most entertaining theory came courtesy of TD John Scanlon ("Your old guy who wears a patch but doesn't really know what he's doing persona is working nicely for you"). There may also be a germ of truth in that: one of the Scandi bloggers told me after there was fierce debate over the hand on their blogs and people were wondering if I could ever raise fold to a 13 bb reshove. So perhaps Mr. Pyysing might have thought I'm one of those players who might raise fold that shallow (I'm not), particularly on the final table bubble.
Whatever the case, it meant we now had a final table and I now had a stack at last. We broke for dinner while they prepared the final table. We ran into Feargal in the corridor who told us he and Ger Harraghy were heading to a place in Clontarf that had been recommended, so we tagged along. 1014 lived up to its recommendation and it was good to get out for an hour and clear the head before the final battle.
Lol at the guy shoving 83 on the old guy

After getting a text from Jono that read "Lol at the guy shoving 83 on the old guy", it was down to final table business. There were 4 of us with stacks of about a million, myself, Mick Muldoon, and 2 Scandis. One of the Scandis moved into the chiplead when he made a looseish call with KJ in the big blind after JP Whyte shoved from early mid position with eights. I then grabbed the lead a couple of hands later. The now sober Finn who had called my all in on the bubble opened in late position, Soren 3 bet fairly big to 220k, and with queens in the small blind I stuck the lot in.

After a bit of a dwell, they both folded. Soren then went on an absolute heater eliminating Mick Muldoon in a cooler, another player in a race, and before we knew it we were shorthanded. Mick was in a few times and doubled his way back into the mix with me hovering behind him trying to bring him some Doke rungood.

Before we knew it we were down to 4, then 3 when Mick 4 bet shoved AT into Jukka the one time Jukka had a hand.

Feeling like Brian Boru .... Doke against the Scandis
As last Irishman standing, it was down to me to try to combat the two remaining Scandis. I'd played very tight on the final table til now, keeping out of trouble and only showing down big hands. Now was the time to capitalise on that, as the shortest of the three with less than 20% of the chips. I upped the aggression several notches and for a long time it felt like I was crushing and on my way to an inevitable victory. I moved almost effortlessly from being the shortie to a commanding chip lead with 60% of the chips in play. Jukka was the first to re-adjust to my change of gears and since he had position on me two hands out of three and was playing his stack perfectly and showing a willingness to get it all in regularly, I felt if I could land the killer blow on him, I'd be almost home and hosed.

The turning point came when I had Jukka down to 15 bbs. Soren folded his button and I elected to ship A6 from the small blind, as Juka was reshipping a wide range and with A6 I'd rather just take the blinds and antes and whittle him down a bit more rather than encourage him to stick in medium suited connectors I'd basically be flipping against. Jukka looked like all his Christmases had come at once when he heard me say "All in": I wasn't so happy when I saw his hand (jacks), and even less happy when they held and I doubled him up to a bad stack size for me again.

As the stacks levelled back up, there was some suggeestion of a deal from Soren. I was willing to consider it as I wasn't fancying my seat much now with the gamble happy Jukka to my left, but Jukka didn't want to deal so we played on. Not for very long though: the curse of the rejected deal struck. Soren raised on the button. I considered a reraise with KQs but after looking at Soren for a while decided he looked stronger than strong and instead meekly folded, also mindful of the fact that Soren had been playing very tight since we went three handed. Jukka had no such concerns, shoving in with A9 in the BB, snap called by Soren's aces. A9 is a very strong hand three handed but given how tight Soren was playing at that point and how comfy he looked, I think I'd have let it go. But I guess it was a case of live by the sword die by it for Jukka. A short while later Jukka was eliminated, Soren claiming the last of his chips, meaning he went into the headsup with a 3:1 chiplead. I had 15 big blinds which at least I know how to play :)

Unfortunately, it turned out so did Soren. He played the headsup very well, not allowing me to get away with limping the button or min raising light, and I quickly decided the best plan was to stick to the Nash equilibrium. Finding K8 on the button, Nash says shove with 12bbs, so I shoved. Nash also says call with J9s (it's right on the margin), and after some thought so did Mr. Larsen. I was happy to see that I was at least ahead for now, but not so happy when the board ran out J9754. At least I had outs til the end, but they never came.

It was a great weekend overall for Team Irish Eyes. As the tournament got down to the business end, the Team Irish Eyes shirts started to outnumber all others. Four of us made the final table including my great friend and regular travelling companion Mick Mccloskey, Michael Muldoon and JP Whyte. Robert Shaw, Robert Elkin, Chris Pyke, Sandro Taddei, Kevin Fitzpatrick, Kevin Hanley, Tony Harte, and Gerry Kane all cashed in the main event too. There were also some great performances in the side events, notably from Tony Baitson (who was pipped at the post in the PLO event) and my amigo Feargal "MidniteKowby" Nealon (who hacked his way round the golf course to qualify for the freeroll for a Barcelona package which he went on to win). Pride of place though to the side event queen Shella McSweeney who had not one but two third place finishes.

A big thank you to Connie, Matt and the rest of the crew for making this a great event. EMOP Ireland is here to stay and will surely go from strength to strength.

After the excitement of a live outing, it's back to the online grind for me. I managed to snag a Barcelona EMOP package in the satellite on Irish Eyes tonight, and I'm looking forward to it already. Hopefully a good contingent of Team Irish Eyes members will qualify and make the trip.

My only live outing in the next week is Friday's monthly game in the Bluff Club in Swords, run by my friends Larry Santo and Peter Barable, and one of my favourite places to play in the Dublin area.

Just a big hole innit (aka Grand Canyon trip report)

2011-07-22T03:10:00.004+01:00

After day 1 of this year's Main event, I headed out of Vegas on a 2 day road trip with Mark Dalimore, Mick Mccloskey and my son Paddy. We got to Williams, Arizona late in the afternoon and decided to spend the night there. We stopped at a place called The Singing Pig on the famous Route 66 for some ribs. When you spend 6 weeks in Vegas you get used to seeing unusual or surreal sites on a daily basis, but still: the sight of messrs Mccloskey and Dalimore in pig masks was well weird.

Next port of call was a Mexican stroke Irish bar stroke restaurant rejoicing in the wonderfully bewildered title of Pancho McGillicuddys. Not many seem to realise the Irish Mexican connection via the San Patricios, and this not many included Mick and Mark, so I bored them for a few minutes with the story.

After checking into a hotel on the infamous Route 66, we ate in an authentic diner and had some drinks in a local bar, where Paddy got hustled at darts by Mark, while I maintained my unbeaten record at pool this trip. Game selection was the crucial component to that success.

I was pretty wiped out still from my day one so elected for an early one. Mark, on the other hand, elected to stay up all night, and by the time we woke up, he had seen the sunset, apparently driven through some sort of swamp (we were leaving a mud trail for the rest of the trip), found some bears and who knows what else, and was still buzzing with enough energy to supply a small city. As Paddy and I trailed around a local supermarket looking for something that might do as breakfast, Paddy said with more than a hint of desperation in his voice "How the Hell are we going to tire Mark out?"

We headed for the Grand Canyon national park which, it has to be said, was pretty spectacular. We walked along the rim and every angle gives you a completely different view of the canyon. Paddy and I climbed out on a hidden ledge at one point and shared a sneaky "herbal cigarette" which was pretty awesome.

Towards the end, myself and Mark made an attempt at winding up some locals.
"Gets a bit boring just looking at rocks".
"Yeah. Basically just a big quarry innit? Got one of those in Slough".

After walking for a few hours, we headed out of the park, stopping to eat in a place running by a local Indian (Native American). Mark was trotting out his "Indian expressions" (basically "How" and "I come in peace"). The occasion was clearly getting the better of Mick because after receiving the princely sum of 6 cents as change, he went all in on the tip jar with the six cents. The tip jar was empty up to that point so tipping clearly wasn't the norm here, but nevertheless the Indian proprietor looked like he could hardly contain his disappointment that the first tip he received didn't involve any coinage other than cents. It's hard to watch a grown man have his dreams of generous tips shattered like that, so I dropped a few dollars in the jar.

We drove back to Williams to visit BearIzona, a wildlife park that is home to a variety of the world#s most lethargic animals. Mick who likes value for his buck started complaining about the lack of energy from the supposedly ferocious bears and wolves. He quietened right down when we all started agreeing that the only course of action was to dispatch him forth from the car with a stick to poke a bit of life into them.

As we drove out of Arizona into Nevada, we hit some mini sandstorms, lightning and then a full scale flash storm. Suddenly the highway looked more like a lake and visibility dropped to a few metres.

Thankfully it disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared. We stopped off at the Hoover Dam and O'Callaghan Tillman bridge. At this stage we were in a battle on two fronts against the fading light and rising winds: as we started across the Hoover Dam on foot, one of the locals warned "It's pretty windy so good luck with that".

We got pulled over by a cop in Boulder City for speeding. When he saw Mark's driver's license, he wondered aloud why overseas drivers always seemed to speed. Things weren't looking too good when he offered Mark the option of a night in jail or a fine of $508 (a suspiciously irregular amount that suggested he might be bluffing). As Mark mulled over those two unattractive options, the cop relented and let us on our way with a warning. Who knows, perhaps the extra $8 is intended as a tip to Indian restauranteurs who otherwise would have to make do with the occasional six cents here and there.

All in all, a very enjoyable trip made better by the company. Mick kept us well entertained with tales from previous roadtrips that involved getting run out of small towns in Nevada. He suggested it was for rowdy drunken behaviour and scalping the natives at poker, but the suspicion lingers that inadequate tipping may have been involved.

Back home

2011-07-21T09:44:00.002+01:00

Nothing really to report, getting back into the online grind, but.......

EOGHAN O'DEA!!!!!

What a performance by a great player and great guy, the perfect tournament so far, and he deserves to go on and win it now. Won't be easy though: it's easily the strongest final table in recent years with a load of online ballas and not one Darvin Moon in sight. The takeover of live poker by the online kids continues.

I (and I'm sure many others) are tempted to go over in November to rail him. The Venetian have a Deepstack series on then too....hmmmm.....

The end of the dream.....for now

2011-07-18T07:42:00.005+01:00

Maybe I should stop writing mid tournament blogs as it never seems to end well. After two days of grinding hard and playing well, I felt like I deserved a little day three luck, but that's not how it works in poker, at least in the short term. Shortly after getting aces cracked by kings to bust this year's WSOP main event, I ran into Parky in the corridor. He expressed surprise at my demise saying that himself and Scott Gray figured I already had enough chips at the end of day 2 to last me a few months. I told him I just wished it had happened late on day 2 instead of day 3, as then I'd be home already and wouldn't have spent another couple of grand on flights, hotels and other expenses. Sharp as ever, Parky pointed out that basically I'd done a mini rebuy.

Parky famously said once that the worst day of the year is the day you get knocked out of the main event. This has been true for me in the past, but not this year. I'd be much more upset if I'd gone out making a bad mistake. The Scandi kid with the kings said "Sorry" immediately afterwards as we shook hands and clearly meant it, showing a lot more class then most I've come across this summer.

I still had two horses in running, Nick Newport and Mark Dalimore, and both got through to day 5. Unfortunately both went early in the day, Mark on the TV table where he affected Danny Negreanu to the point where he celebrated Mark's demise even though he wasn't in the hand (and ran over to tell his friend on the rail that Mark was mad). Danny's reportedly had coaching from some of the younger players to modernise his game this year: maybe some of the Scandi kids might be able to help him show a little more class in other's defeat.

Mark was typicially philosophical after his exit: by contrast Nick was pretty inconsolable. Lacking any real reason to linger further, I decided it was best to get out of Rio. In previous year's, I've lingered too long there after my exit and been left feeling like those guys who continue to haunt the campus long after they've graduated, unable to move on from student life. Mark, generous as ever, got me a suite at the Hilton and the plan til I fly out Tuesday is to chill and decompress with him. We went to the Stratosphere Top of the World restaurant last night and today's entertainment was provided by an excellent no budget movie, "The Encore of Tony Duran", at the Las Vegas film festival (it won the Best Film award at the festival).

In Fremont street with Mark

The end of every WSOP campaign is a time for honest reflection and tentative plans for the following year. My tentative plans for next year is to play more events with less than 1000 runners, and also to try to get my non-holdem games to where I feel I can compete against the best. Most seasoned experts say that there is much more value in the other games these days than in holdem. I also have a bit of work to do on my holdem game. While I feel my preflop game is as good as anyone's, particularly shallow, I need to improve my post flop game against the very best players with more cash game experience than me.

The positives I can take from this year is I broke my duck in bracelet events with 3 cashes, I built stacks in several events, and overall rarely felt outclassed by anyone I played with. While it would have been nice to go deeper, I didn't feel I made many mistakes when it mattered and most of my exits were either standard or unlucky.

Well done to Reggie, Pete, Nick and Eoghan for cashing in the main event, and best of luck to Eoghan who is still in at time of writing.

Serious business

2011-07-14T05:55:00.002+01:00

My plan or at least hope going into day 1A of the main event was to make a fast start and then just steadily chip up all day. I had a tough looking table but got up to 35k in the first hour. A mad Italian then sat down, having bought in late. My first impression, that he was unlikely to last to the first break an hour later, was pretty much confirmed when he started 10x opening every second hand or so. If he got called, his plan B was the 5k cbet.

I figured I needed to play pots against this guy while he still had chips. Against someone like that, I'd be happy getting the lot in with top pair or better even at this early stage but unfortunately I couldn't catch even bottom pair. I was back to 25k when he basically gave his stack to Scott Montgomery. With the blinds just gone to 100/200, he makes it 500 utg (a startling change from the 10x opens: clearly he had a hand this time). Scott who has been playing tight and hasn't 3 bet yet makes it 1500. Back to the Italian who now shoves for 35k. Scott has aces, which holds against the Italians AK.

Table broke shortly after and most of the rest of the day was a long struggle without cards. So the "build a stack day one" plan didn't come to fruition but in the end I was mainly just relieved to have escaped with 16k.

I ran into Neil Channing a few days later and he commiserated with me on my day 2 table draw. I hadn't seen it yet so asked him why it was bad: he said he recognised two other names apart from me, Keith "The Camel" Hawkins and Chris Bjorin. Both were chipped up and to my left too, and there were also a few online ballas there.

With 32 bbs and a tough table, I figured my best plan was to nit it up and try to minimise the spew. The structure means there's no need to panic and rush into a premature gamble. I folded every hand for an hour. I was down to 11k when I called on the button after three limpers. A small bet on the flop when checked to me took it down to give me some breathing space. I then folded for another hour and was back down to 11k when I found a good spot to 3 bet shove. Chris Bjorin who was playing very loose opened in early position, one of the online ballas flatted and with 4500 out there now KQs was plenty good enough to be going with so I shoved in. Chris folded quickly. The online guy tanked for an age so I figured I was in good shape even if called (unless it was AQ). He eventually did call with jacks so we were flipping. We were still flipping after a 9 high flop with two of my suit and a king on the turn got the job done.

A lot more folding in the next level as I got a serious of rag seven and eights, then an attempted utg steal with 33 went badly awry. The small blind called, the AJT flop looked like a good one to fire a tickler at. After a very reluctant call, the K on the turn looked like a great card to barrel bigger. After another reluctant call I decided not to stick the rest in when a blank hit the river. His KJ took it down.

Back down to 11k, I finally found a hand. Keith the Camel opened to 1500 in early position, John Tabatabai threebet to 4k on the button. I found aces in the small blind and just instajammed to make my hand look like AK or a tilt shove. As it happened, Tabby had queens so was never folding. Then came a weird hand which included the dealer flipping over the entire muck before the flop. I don't want to go into the details of the hand as it's clear to me that opponents are targetting Twitter and blogs for information in running, but while I won the hand to advance to 40k, it was the one hand that troubled me after as I may have lost value. I ran it by Nick (Newport) at the break and he would have gone for more value, but Peter Murphy later told me he'd play it exactly the same way so it's probably ok. In any normal tournament or a faster structure I would have gone for more value but in this event your tournament life is worth a lot more than normally so you have to think very carefully about sticking all your chips in to get a few K extra value.

I steadily accumulated chips for the rest of the day playing tight for the most part, but occasionally swooping in when the time and situation seemed right to try to capitalise on my very tight image. I got up to 60k but towards the end the Camel started 3 betting me a bit more often, perhaps recognising what I was up to. I bit back with a 4 bet at one point so I broke approximately even in my battles with Keith. Keith was the most impressive player all day in my opinion and deserved to steadily chip up to 150k+. I was also impressed how much he'd done his research: we'd never played together before but no sooner had I sat down than he was asking me "Do you still run ultra marathons Dara?".

I drifted back a bit in the last hour to finish with 53200, which is just over 33 bbs, more or less the same stack I started with. I'll be happy enough if I can grind a 30 bb stack all the way to the final table next Tuesday.

I have a 6% stake in my poker soul bro Mark Dalimore who goes into day 3 with 112k and is playing brilliantly, 5% of Nick Newport (just under 50k) and 94% of my own action (I just sold 1% to a friend back home in running to give him a sweat) so it'll be pretty disappointing if I come out of this ME emptyhanded. But I'm not thinking in those terms: I'm feeling very positive as I think I'm playing my A game right now. It's basically been a long hard grind without much help from the deck, but sometimes that's what it takes. I remember a couple of years ago railing Nicky Power as he ground a short stack all the way to the money in the main event with very little help from the deck: Nicky's performance was my touchstone throughout day 2 as I clung to the discipline you need to keep folding when there are no good cards or spots.

In between day 1 and 2, myself, my son Paddy, Mick "Voucher" Mccloskey and Mark Dalimore did a two day field trip to Arizona that took in the Grand Canyon. Awesome trip and I'll write a full report on that at some point with pics. Paddy's now gone home on the flight I originally booked for myself (I rescheduled to next Tuesday and extended my hotel booking so I'm here till then come what may) and most of the other lads have already left town. I've been hanging with my Aussie pal Theos Rippis who just started an excellent new blog from the perspective of an accomplished recreational player, and today grabbed breakfast with my friend Matt McAllister. Matt's a great guy who makes his living as a trader, a life that closely mirrors that of the poker pro but if anything is more high stress.

I also went bowling one night with Theos, Paddy, Nick and Other Dara. Despite having bowled something like 4 times in a 30 year period, I gave a reasonably good account of myself, even if my softly softly technique was a source of amusement to the younger lads. Other Dara compared it to watching Marge Simpson bowl, and it did seem at times like my bowls wouldn't even reach the pins let alone knock them over, but in the end it took a last gasp strike by Nick "The Power" Newport to deny me victory and the cash we'd wagered. I won't complain too much though if the only bad beat I get for the rest of this trip comes in a lane rather than on a table.

Waiting for the main

2011-07-07T01:28:00.002+01:00

Going into day 2 of the latest 1k event I was 13/638 and optimistic, but in the end it was another day 2 disappointment. I barely won a pot and it was one of those frustrating times that every time I bet, they folded when I had it and called or raised when I hadn't. Once the antes start to bite, you I was at the start of the day, reshipping tens on the button for 25 bigs over a loose late raiser. Unfortunately, he not only had a hand he could call with (AK) but he hit the turn and won the race. So another relatively modest cash: my third of the series in bracelet events.

My last attempt at a side event requires even less description: I just drifted back from starting when with 3k left (30 bigs) I got in with kings against aces. That at least left me free for most of the day which was my son Paddy's first full one in Vegas. A night off and out seemed reasonable since I wasn't playing the next day (today) so we headed out with a few others. We started out in an almost empty gloomy bar in the no man's land between downtown and the Strip because a member of the group who shall remain nameless thought it was a karaoke bar. It kinda or more precisely sometimes is: just not on Tuesdays or any day near it. Paddy was at least enjoying the jukebox (NIN, some classic 80s goth and tons of Bowie) and a couple of games of pool against the old man. We split into teams for the last game and the Doke family team were on the verge when the cab we'd called to get us out of here arrived.

It turned out the cab wasn't big enough to take us all, so Paddy suggested we let the others go and we wait for another cab. He wasn't really that keen on karaoke and suggested we might go somewhere else. The night took another turn when the second cab never showed. The neighborhood didn't look the kind of one where loitering in a suit with five figures in cash on you was a great idea (we played a game of "Count the Bail Bondsmen" on the way in). One of the best things about making your own people (that is, having kids) is there's a middling to decent chance they'll inherit your eccentricities. Thus it was Paddy who actually suggested we walk from here to the top of the Strip and then down it. Normally I'm the one making those kind of suggestions only to get poohed poohed and mad looks from whoever I'm with.

The walk through no man's land was certainly interesting. Paddy is very good at recognising gang tattoo markings so I knew which guys not to shout "You suck" at. When Paddy was a small boy and we went for walks in a new city (we moved around quite a bit: Paddy had lived in 5 different countries by the time he was 5), a source of tension was always that he figured the best way to get a look at a new city when you're 5 and tiny was to walk on the very edge of the pavement (they're called sidewalks here). I've since been told that the optimal responsible parenting line is to tell the kid to walk on the inside, but Paddy was such a happy kid it seemed harsh to lay down these kinds of rules, so I generally just kept an eye on him and was on high alert to yank him out of the way of any threatening bus or whatever. As we walked through a less affluent hood, at one point a guy flailed towards me, his limbs thrashing like a windmill. As I tried to decide how to react to this, Paddy just leaned across and gently but expertly diverted the guy away from me. Paddy's a natural pacifist (at one point, he walked back almost a block to give a homeless guy some change he found in his pocket) so it was particularly touching to see this filial instinct to protect the old man kick in. Another of the best things about making your own people.

We stopped at the Stratosphere to watch a bungee jumper. We also stopped off at Circus Circus, where I stayed the first time I came to Vegas. Paddy is an even bigger Hunter S. Thompson fan than I am and told me tons of interesting Hunter stuff I didn't know. It's a proud moment in any father's life when he realises his son has grown into a man who can teach him stuff. We had a long natter about life in general and both our chosen paths (he's had to watch me change careers several times in my life, and recently set up an urban composting business of his own) as we meandered down the strip stopping to tour a few of the other iconic hotels and resorts.

We did eventually end up rejoining the others in the karaoke place. The musical selection was a lot less to Paddy's liking though so we didn't stay that long, walking back to the Gold Coast for a 4 AM pre-hangover feast in TGI Fridays.

Today is an official rest day for me. We also moved into the Rio this morning as final preparation for my main event. I decided to play tomorrow's Day 1A. Most of the other lads are playing other days for a variety of reasons. With 3 cashes and 4 day twos in side events, I'm going into the main feeling very good about the my chances. I've been accumulating stacks regularly in the side events and with the better Main structure there's more time to do that. So fingers crossed.

Women problems

2011-07-03T10:43:00.002+01:00

It's easy at times to kid yourself into thinking that your problems are bigger than they are, or you're the only one with problems. I was waiting this morning for the elevator to go for breakfast. When the doors slid open, I was confronted with a guy whose problems were quite different from those of a poker player running bad, and probably more serious. He was looking sheepish while the other occupant of the elevator, an angry looking girl, berated him. "You absolute dick!!! The threesome with my best friend was your idea in the first place!!!!"

I maintained a perfect poker face all the way through the eight floor descent, all the time wondering where the friend was now.

I got off to a good start in event 54, moving up to 4k (from 3k starting) in the first hour. Then at 25/50 (level two) I managed to play an 11k pot. It started innocuously enough with three early position limps. I limped along with pocket eights in mid position. The small blind, playing only 2k, made it 325. The first two limpers called and they both had stacks bigger than mine, so I called too, figuring I was mainly setmining. Flop came 567r, the raiser checks, the first limper bets 675, second limper calls, as do I. The raiser now shoves for 1k more, the bettor folds, the other guy reshoves and my first instinct is even though I'm clearly behind I'm probably going to have to call for the price. I spend a few minutes running through the math. Based on the pot size and what I have behind, I need about 26% equity to call. The most likely scenarios, in order of most to least likely are:
(1) First guy has a pair bigger than 99, second guy has a set. In this case, I have 32% equity.
(2) One of them has 99, the other a bigger pair. This is actually worse for me as I have less outs (8's no good, and only 2 nines left), and I have only 25% equity
(3) They both have tens plus. This is better for me: I have 39%.
(4) They both have sets, in which case I have about 34%

Overall, it's pretty clear that I have on average about 32% so it's a fairly clear call. If I somehow found myself in the main event in this spot I could consider folding even if priced in on the basis that there are safer ways to chip up than getting all your chips in when 2 times out of 3 you're going to lose. But a 3k starting stack event is a different matter entirely. If I folded I'd soon be down in the <30 bb arena where your hands are largely tied. There's added equity in getting a stack early in these shallow events so even if it was closer (like I thought I only had 27% equity) I'd still call. So I called, knowing I was basically gambling.

As I anticipated, the first guy had a big pair (qq) and the second a set (55). I binked a 4 on the turn, much to the chagrin of the set holder who started berating me as a "lucky Irish donkey". I opted for diplomatic silence as I raked in his stack but he kept ranting. Another guy upped the ante though saying "I call there too" which didn't really calm the situation. "No you don't. It's an awful call, how can eights be ahead". One of the Ritalin kids piped in "I don't think he thought he was ahead, just priced in". The ranter was unwilling or unable to accept this argument. I concluded it was more likely the latter when I saw how he played the 10 bbs he was left with: first he called a 4x raise to fold on a jack high flop, then he limp folded with 5 bbs. When he was eventually put out of his misery and stormed off, the entire table (including the dealer) cheered.

I'd moved steadily up to 18k when I was on the right side of a cooler. A shortie shoved for 2k, a very good aggro Russian reshoved for 12k, and I found kings in the big blind. The Russian kid had AQs. Bit of a sweat when he turned a flush draw. When you're running bad they always seem to hit against you, when you're running well you fade them, as I did here. I continued chipping up steadily to have 36k after 4 levels at dinner, with blinds still only 100/200.

After dinner I got moved to a much tougher table with a few online superstars. After losing KT v K5 when a shortie shoved, I found myself down below 30k again. I decided to tighten up, coming out once in a while to three bet the internet lags. As one of them eventually remarked, they were getting through 100%. I won a race against a shortie to move back to 40k when I got moved to a much softer table (no one under 30). I made hay as people locked up for the night and finished with 59500, three times average and fifth in chips according to Poker News. So a good day's work and a healthy situation going into Monday's day 2.

After we'd bagged up, I had a quick walk around to see what else was happening. The ladies bracelet event was down to two tables, and one of the tables had a much bigger and more vociferous rail thanks to another guy with women problems, albeit very different from elevator guy's. Every year a few brassnecked men insist on entering the ladies, and one now remained. Every time he put a chip into the pot he was roundly booed and heckled by the rail.

Sometimes, you can have too much balls in this game.

Barbeques >> live poker

2011-07-02T01:53:00.001+01:00

Mark came with me to Neil Channing's Black Belt mansion barbeque. Neil really looks after his lads, some place he's set the lads up with, complete with its own tennis court, swimming pool and Xbox. Being poker players, it seems the availability of the Xbox trumps the pool and tennis court. Great night with most of the UK's "poker royalty" in attendance and a few stray foreigners like recent bracelet winner Fabrice Soulier. Most people are just not very entertaining when they're running as bad as Neil right now, but not Neil who has taken on seems to be turning into the Victor Meldrew of poker mantle, complaining about aggro whippersnappers making poker a preflop game in hilarious style and abusing them in the social media he's such a master of. You tell 'em Neil!

Mark's a great guy to bring to something like this as he buzzes with positive energy. We had a good natter with a nice couple from England, Martin Johnson (independent bookie of the year in the UK) and his wife Nadia who is the very definition of bubbly despite being teetotal. When Nadia expressed concern at Mark's status as designated driver as he skulled the beers, I told her I wasn't too worried about that: Mark's eyesight being a far bigger concern :)

The drive home was quite entertaining as Mark identified the first exit at the last possible millisecond. He wasn't quite so sharp on the second one so we had an exciting little offroad excursion before we got back onto the ramp (as did the driver right behind us).

Next morning, Mark picked me up to go to the Binions main event. After a tilting hour in the reg line, we got in just before the first break. I still managed to do about 3k barrelling in the one hand I did play. No biggie when you have 30k starting though, and I played very well from there to get to 80k before I butchered a hand that left me with 20k. I rebuilt again to just over 110k. It wasn't the easiest of tables: mostly silent robotic Ritalin kids (the dealer actually said at one point that Binions had a new rule: you're allowed to talk at the poker table), apart from one kid whose meds must have been misfiring and couldn't sit still (or shut up).

The gabby redneck kid was no fan of the Irish either: after initially accepting the view of the guy beside him that the redneck accent is just about the worst, he said "wale, thuh Arish eck say aes even ugliuh ah gaysssss". I don't think he realised I was Irish though, my accent clearly not complying to his version of Arish.

At the dinner break I walked around the Downtown area a bit. Fremont Street is something to see. Then you get to the end and wander a bit more into what look like pretty dodgy slums. Fearing for your wallet, you immediately u turn back to the more sanitized Fremont Experience with its street showgirls and hawkers.

My exit, in level 12, was pretty tilting. Card death and an attempt to do something about it getting a few loose raises and threebets snapped off saw me drift back to 75k at 1500/3k when I opened jacks in mid position to 6300. An English kid I'd never seen before or heard of (he didn't seem very good, or rather he was like a lot of onliners: good enough to recognize "spots", but not good enough to be able to distinguish the good ones from the bad ones taking game flow and table dynamics into account) threebet the button to 15k and then announced he was obliged to call after I shoved. He had ATo and binked an ace on the turn, which is rapidly becoming my least favourite street. Live poker is pretty tilting at times: like when you sit and play well for the most part for 12 hours only for that to happen. But that's (live) poker.

Next up is tomorrow's 1k bracelet event, which would be a great time to start running well live again.

El Tren RIP?

2011-06-30T08:35:00.002+01:00

No day 2 for me this time as my campaign ground to a halt late on day 1. I got off to a great start, moving from the 4500 starting stack up to 14k with no major incident (and not too many showdowns) a few hands before the dinner break. However, I made it to dinner with Nick (Newport) and my Aussie mate Theos (Rippis) with only 5500 of that left. First major incident: I raise AK in the hijack, button calls, a 15 big blind stack shoved from the BB, I reshoved, and was up against AJ. I relax when first card out is a king, but there's a jack behind it and another on the turn. Last hand before the break, I made a slightly loose raise with A8 in early position hoping nobody would want to get involved since it was the last hand. The button called and when the flop came T85, I decided to go the pot control/bluff induce line and check called. I stuck to the plan when another ten hit the turn and a low blank the river. Unfortunately he had the ten.

Nick was flying at that stage, playing very well. Theos was still in too (he was the only one of us to make the money: Nick getting done shortly after me after making a great gutsy call). Daragh Davey (who I insist on referring to as Other Dara) was early chipleader in the 2-7 Triple Draw, a source of considerable amusement given Ireland's status (not) as a hotbed of that game.

As we were walking back from dinner Nick joked if I notched up a third cash I'd be Irish player of the series (it hasn't been a great series for Team Ireland to date) unless Other Dara shipped the bracelet. Unfortunately it wasn't to be. Despite recovering to 12k, I was crippled when an Italian shipped in early position for 14 bbs, I reshipped my 20 bbs with AKs, and wasn't that surprised to see the Italian turn over QTo. After all, Italians are known more for the courage than their brains. And they're not particularly well known for their courage.

The board ran out J9x28 to cripple me. A few hands later I got the rest in with J9 in the small blind against the big blind's 87. Flop was T96 which my opponent remarked was a good flop for him.

No point in complaining though, that's the nature of these tournaments. The good thing is I feel I'm playing the early stages very well and building stacks so it hopefully augurs well for the main event, where you're deeper for much longer and the racing section starts later. I have a couple more shots at the side events before that. I feel like I'm back to my A game or close after a bit of a mid series dip.

After my latest exit, it was time for some ice cream therapy for tilt. I never get tilted after lost races or doggings where my opponent made a good play and was unlucky to run into a good hand, but one thing that does tilt me is to see bad play rewarded. But that's part of the game too and if it wasn't it would be obvious to bad players more quickly that the good players get the money in the end. I was also cheered up to find a message from Neil Channing inviting me to a barbeque. Neil's a funny guy and said while he hoped I wouldn't be able to make it because I was still chasing a bracelet in the 1500, if not, I should come round: "Hopefully you'll be busy winning a bracelet but if you don't come and be miserable with us."

On Monday evening I met former Sporting Emporium stalwart and all round good guy Mike "Oz" Osbourne for dinner. Oz lives here now and like most of us has been through a few career changes recently but he's always a fascinating guy to talk poker strategy with, and about the industry in general. He has fond memories of his time in Ireland and told me he hopes we won't see the kind of violence we're seeing in the streets of Greece now our economy has taken a nosedive. It was my first time eating Ethiopian food (it involves spongey bread).

My son Paddy gets here next Monday which should help me keep my spirits up as we get down to the most important part of all this: the main event. It'll be his first Vegas so hopefully he'll had a good time in between listening to the old man whining about beats.

Finally, some news which I'm afraid will be devastating to a lot of Irish Poker Boardsies. Cult favourite Spanish pro is here at the series. I almost didn't recognise him, because the mustache is gone and the hair has been sheared to a crew cut.

Hit me baby one more time

2011-06-28T08:37:00.004+01:00

There's not much to be said about my fourth bracelet event, the midweek $1500. Didn't play particularly well and got unlucky pretty much sums it up. My default strategy of playing very loose when the blinds are low and targeting the weaker players wasn't working out for the simple reason that there were 2 good players behind who knew what I was at and 3 and 4 betting me willy nilly. It took me a little longer than it should have to work out that default wasn't going to get the job done this time.

Card death didn't exactly help my cause so I decided to batten down the hatches and avoid spew until I found a hand. I had 2200 at 50/100 when I finally found queens. Ali Eslami, playing every hand and 3 and 4 betting for pure devilment, limped under the gun. I made it 400, he flatted, and he called my shove on a 9x6d2d flop with 9d7d. He turned a flush. I had the queen of diamonds and therefore a redraw but didn't get there.

The weekend 1500 started quite brutally. I raised AcJc and Kevin O'Donnell and two others called. The Tc5c2x flop looked like a reasonable one for me to fire a cbet at. Kevin called, the other two folded. The 2c made my flush on the turn and Kevin called again. The 6c on the river seemed like overkill but hoping he was chasing with a one club hand I fired again and called his raise to find myself somehow looking at pocket sixes. That inauspicious start left me with 1500 but the table was one of the softer ones I've been at here and I was back up to 8k quickly enough. After a setback where I ran AKs into a short stack's aces, I moved between 4k and 8k for most of the day. Basically a long grind, the excitement mainly being provided by being drawn at the same table as Almira Skripchenko, chess queen turned Winamax poker pro. This was only Almira's second event so quite the coincidence as she pointed out, particularly since we were also next to each other at the Berlin EPT. Now that I've a sample size of three, I can say with authority that Almira is the most charming player I've ever been at the same table at, even if I was a little upset when she started laughing at my shoes :)

Almira has a rather concerting habit of swishing her hair around periodically (she may be a closet Willow Smith fan). Although the tables here are big there were a few big ol' boys at the table so there was a bit of a sardine effect, meaning I was generally in the trajectory of the hair swoosh. I don't think Almira was aware of this though. Probably just as well: in Vegas I believe women often charge for that sort of thing.

She's also a very good player so I was relieved to have her to my immediate right (in Berlin, I was to her right). By the time the table broke thirty minutes from the end, only me and Almira remained from the starting lineup and I was still stuck on 6k. I doubled up quickly on my new table (tens holding verus ace 9) and then put the boot down as people locked up for the night to finish with 33k.

Coming back to day 2 wasn't a new experience, but having an above average stack was. Having navigated the bubble I got as high as 90k before losing a 100k flip. That meant slipping back to 20 bb territory rather than having a real stack. I battened down the hatches as there were aggro players behind and had 43k when I found a good spot at 1000/2000 (300 ante). I raised to 4700 in the hijack with jacks. A bad aggro player behind 3 bet to 14500 and tank called my shove reluctantly moaning "ok, I guess I got outs" with a2o. Indeed he had: the first card exposed was a 2 and then the dealer spread the flop to reveal two aces lurking behind. Just for good measure the fourth ace popped up on the turn. So another WSOP cash but a real feeling of what might have been. No point complaining though: I'm regularly building decent stacks in these events for the first time and if I keep getting myself into position with a couple of hundred left, I give myself every chance to run good when it matters to land a meaningful score.

I have two or three more bracelet shots before the main event (I'm also planning to play the Binion's main event). I've been keeping my eye in in stts and smaller mtts but not overdoing it either. I'm conscious that after 5 weeks it's easy to be jaded by the time the gruelling main event starts, so I'm also paying attention to what I eat, trying to get some exercise and apart from a few one night with Sean Prendiville, Dave Callaghan and Tom Kitt haven't been drinking either. Rest is important too: I'm sleeping longer than I normally do at home and taking "easy" days before bracelet events.

On my down time I'm reading my old running compatriot Michael Collins' latest novel, "Midnight In A Perfect Life". I can never decide whether Michael is a cynical romantic or a romantic cynic but his books always strike a deep chord with me, and the writing is always beautiful and insightful. In this book, one character points out "We all start with such high expectations", an observation that is particularly true for poker players. Where we differ from others is that most professions can survive the gradual erosion of innocent optimism, but to be a true poker pro, you have to be able to keep wiping the slate clean and reset your expectations to high.

You can keep your Liv Boerees

2011-06-21T21:19:00.004+01:00

The trick in these WSOP side events seems to be to recognise in time that you're going to have to take a race. For those of us who are used to thinking of a 10k starting stack in a live event as ridiculously short and even 15k as "a bit of a pinch", that's a bit of an adjustment.

I got off to my usual good start in the latest 1k. Then card death and lack of spots saw me drift back towards starting stack as the antes started to bite. I had 4k and had just moved to a table where a good ol' boy had about 100k. He didn't get those by not playing every hand. His playbook was pretty simple: raise big with your big hands, bigger with your rag aces and kings, limp the rest. Cbet every flop, several times the pot. So when he limped utg at 150/300 with a 25 ante and I found AT just behind, it seemed like a decent spot to shove 4k into 1k where I fold out a lot of better hands behind (they were mostly terrified of the Louisiana chipmonster: talking about how they were folding big hands because he was just "too lucky") and get called by whatever garbage he might have this time. Unfortunately, the one player behind capable of calling lightish, a South American Stars Team Pro tanked for an age in the SB and eventually called (with just 1k behind). The good ol boy reshoved and I was afraid I was less than 20% against a bigger ace and a medium pair, or maybe even less than 10% against a bigger ace and tens plus. Actually it couldn't have been better for me: I was getting 9/4 on a 6/4 shot. The Team pro had 77 and the good ol boy 33. The ace obligingly popped up.

From there I coasted to 30k as the end of day and bubble approached. The field gradually winnowed down to more better online players and I got moved to a table with a few superstars who weren't going to let me smallball my way to riches without a hand. I ended with an acceptable 21k, relieved more than anything else to finally have a WSOP cash. I ran into Andy Grimasson at the break before the bubble burst, and he told me he'd now played 35 or 36 bracelet events in his life without a cash. Andy's a top notch tourney player so it proves no matter how good you are, variance is massive in these yokes. So I was happy to have that duck off my back before I hit the teens.

I came back for day 2 reasonably confident. With just over 20 bbs I was confident I knew what to do at least, but with that stack it's mostly about run good. 30 minutes in, I ran queens into kings and aces. It's probably the closest I'll ever come to folding queens pre with 20 bbs. A lady opened, another guy reraised and I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach but after some thought decided I couldn't be folding queens with this stack. I had no specific reads as my first table had just broke. I did notice the lady had a lot of small denomination chips, a sign perhaps that she wasn't a stereotypical female rock just playing big hands. The other lad looked like the type who'd play any pair for any amount to any action so even though it didn't work out for me, I'm happy enough with the shove here. Once the lady reshoved, I was pretty sure my goose was cooked though, and it was. Her aces held.

The payout process was pretty tilting (think A&E room) and I was still pretty distraught from my exit when I ran into Card Player's Rebecca McAdam in the corridor on my way back for a cry in the room. I only get that way after deep runs in Irish Opens, EPTs and WSOPs, everything else is easier to shrug off. But you're only going to get so many chances at the big ones in your life and that reality hits just after an exit. Rebecca's always good for a hug, and a Rebecca hug is always welcome, but particularly when you've just busted and have a month to go in the desert surrounded for the most part by ugly sweaty men in shorts.

This Vegas campaign has a very different feel to it. In the aftermath to the FBI's crackdown on Stars, Tilt and Ultimate Bet, the absence of logos has been very striking. Most of the time my Team Irish Eyes polo is the only logo at the table. The big sites have no lounges here this year, and no lavish parties. People are also approaching the poker much more seriously: less drinking and socialising, more early nights. I did score an invite to one of the few big parties here this year: Bill Chen's pool party next week. Bill wrote one of my favourite books on poker, "The Mathematics of Poker".

I've run into more Irish in the last 2 days than in the week before so I guess our numbers are swelling as the main looms. Wd to my fellow Wexfordman Nick Newport for cashing in his first ever WSOP event. I went to dinner with him and his roommate Daragh "Other Dara" Davey and heard how they did their own version of the Doke homeless trial. Only they waited til they got to Vegas: arriving on a Saturday to find the office of the place they were staying shut for the weekend and most hotels booked out. Wp lads. Also caught a glimpse of Seamus Cahill in what looked like the sickest 50/100 PLO cash game, and ran into Nick Heather, Reesy, Andy, Dave Callaghan and Barry Donovan. Andy Black came over to wish me luck before the 1k so maybe he deserves the credit for breaking my WSOP run bad. My Irish Eyes teammate Paul Lucey gets in tomorrow: epic times predicted.

Also ran into honorary Irishman Neil Channing a few times. I got a message from him Sunday inviting me to meet him for a coffee in the Rio. This made a pleasant change from the Black Belt spam I usually get from him :) (Only joking Neil: I'm the last man with a leg to stand on as far as Facebook spamming goes). Now Neil wouldn't be everyone's favourite poker date, there's a few superficial types who might prefer Liv Boeree, but I'm not one of them. As I've pointed out before, he's basically my hero in poker. There was something endearing about the fact that he immediately launched into a bad beat whine. Normally I barely tolerate a BBW but what can you say to a guy who has won all Neil's won and still gets tilted after some guy plays bad but gets lucky against him in a 1k event? I prefer passion to jadedness any day.

After I'd had some ice cream and a cry, I was back playing the nightly turbo. After that, I finished with a couple of stts, and chopped the last one. The important thing in this game and this town is to keep bouncing back and stay optimistic. As I was walking to Starbucks to meet Neil at the first break in the 1k, I passed an American about my age complaining into his cellphone "The best hand I've seen in 2 hours of poker preflop is just one pair". Now that's someone who knows the meaning of optimism, fully expecting to be dealt two pairs or better preflop any moment now.

Everything's bigger in Vegas (even birthdays)

2011-06-19T10:05:00.003+01:00

When I came back to my room in the Gold Coast after busting on Thursday, I spent a while thanking people for a plethora of birthday wishes on my Facebook wall (credit my mother for making me write thank you notes as a kid). This felt a little strange as even though it was my birthday back home (hence the birthday wishes), it wasn't yet in Vegas where it was still the day before. The following day I got a text message from my poker soul bro Mark to let him know where I was that evening so we could celebrate my birthday. Now I'm not a person who places much significance on my birthday - I tend to the view that your life is defined by what you do on the other 364 days of the year rather than what you get up to on your birthday - but nevertheless I genuinely appreciated all the birthday wishes and Mark's invite. By the time Mark made it to the Gold Coast it was past midnight and therefore technically no longer my birthday in Vegas, but I still went for a birthday drink with Mark and Parky in TGI Fridays. So in a sense I didn't have a birthday but rather a birththreedays.

Both Mark and Parky were in ripping form. Parky had emerged unscathed through day 1 of the Seniors event, noting optimistically that while the bubble hadn't burst yet, he expected it to do so overnight as "there's a good chance at least half the field will die during the night".

I walked over to register for my third bracelet event before I retired for the night, and got up positively brimming with optimism. My first table featured Barry Donovan but broke within an orbit. My second table was mixed: I was to the immediate left of a very good and very affable guy from Edmonton, a high stakes cash player. So far in Vegas I've been maintaining a silent brooding table presence, saying more or less nothing, quite enjoying the fact that almost nobody knows who I am here so I don't have to talk. But there was good banter at the table and my neighbour was a particularly interesting guy with some great stories. It was also very interesting to observe his play. Like most high stakes cash players, he played way more hands than most tournament specialists, relying on superior post flop skills to compensate for any equity surrendered pre flop. So it was a real learning experience for me to watch how he played a wide variety of hands against different types of opponents. Like most tournament specialists, I think my preflop play is basically as good as it'll ever be, but there's still a lot of room for improvement post flop when the effective stacks are relatively deep.

I made a reasonably good start and was happy with how I played, apart from one hand where I flopped trips but lost value with the line I chose. I don't think I've played the perfect tournament here yet (that is, one devoid of mistakes). Maybe it's a bit unreasonable to expect to play an entire tournament without a single mistake when you're playing as loose as I generally do here (way looser than I do live back home), but it's still a goal worth striving for. By the time the table broke, I'd noodled up to about 6k from a 3k lowpoint.

My new table was a more silent sullen affair. Card death and a few light opens that got snapped off saw me drifting back a bit to 5400 when I opened 77 utg for 400 at 100/200 with a 25 ante. A serial three bettor made his standard 2.3 threebet to 925 and it's back to me. I'd often just fold here but not against this guy with this stack: it seemed the perfect spot for a lightish 4 bet jam. I don't 4 bet light very often live, probably not as much as I should, but even by my conservative standards this seemed perfect. I usually have the best hand, he folds a fair chunk of his range that sevens are racing against, and I usually would be racing when called. As it happened, he snapped with AK and the board ran out TT2A6 to send me to the rail. No regrets about the exit though.

There's usually a law of diminishing returns with movie sequels and so far Doke In Vegas 4 is a pretty unsatisfactory rehash of Doke In Vegas 3, in which our intrepid hero went out near the bubble in his first bracelet event, went out earlier in each successive bracelet event, but saved his bacon in the stts and turbo tourist trapaments. Hopefully there's still time for a twist in the tale though. I do feel like I'm playing much better than last year. Thanks to my switch to online mtt specialisation, I now play 20 bbs or less very well, and I'm also playing better in the early stages of these events. I've made chips early doors in all the events whereas I used to blind down until I won a flip or was on the right side of a cooler.

Next up is my first 1k event in about 10 hours. With only a 3K starting stack, it's even more important in these to make a good start, and not spew early doors. Also important to get some shuteye before, so off I go.

U2, the Cranberries and Ian Paisley

2011-06-17T23:28:00.000+01:00

I'm not convinced that whining about running bad is plus Ev, but after doing so in my last blog, things have definitely taken a turn for the better. I had decided to play Event 28 the next day, so took it easy on Wednesday. I got up late and played a couple of live stts, winning the second one to bank my first actual winning day here this year. Live stts are the only thing I've never managed to find a way losing money at over here, so I really should play more.

Event 28 was eventful to say the least. I won a decent pot first hand with AK but then dipped as low as 2k before catching a heater. I had 18k a couple of hands before the break, but one hero call gone wrong later I was down to 6k at dinner. Dipped down to 4k again before I found a good spot to triple up to 12k: maniac number one opened in early position, maniac number two 3 bet just behind, I find AQ in the small blind and shove with no fold equity. Maniac two had ATo and I held. A few hands later, maniac one opens again, I reship for 20 bbs with nines, but this time he has a hand, tens, and I'm on the rail.

The highlight of the event was a gangster from New York who popped up at my table. He really did look and sound like he'd walked off the set of the Sopranos ("I'm in construction, it's a legitimate business") and was most entertaining as he told us How The World Works According to Pauly ("I got three 21 year old goilfriends. I set em up in different condos in Manhattan. That's all it takes with the ladies") and reacted to a kid from Montreal who kept three betting him with muck ("Benny, this kid don't seem to understand, get the baseball bat!").

After I busted, I had dinner in the Poker Kitchen with Parky and Scott Gray. Both were in fine fettle as they had a couple of sweats in play, including Mike Sexton on the final table of the 7 Card Stud HiLo split. Parky was as hilarious as ever and had some great tales and gossip that I'd love to repeat here but won't as I'm pretty sure I'd be sued if I did.

It was just before midnight so I headed into the live stt room. There was nothing appealing on the immediate horizon so instead I jumped into the nightly turbo just before late reg closed. I do love a good turbo and as I pointed out to Parky and Scott, if turbos were main events, I'd now have an EPT, an Irish Open, a JP Masters and a few bracelets :)

That meant coming straight in with a shipping stack which suited me fine. Someone asked me recently what was the best thing about my game and I was forced to admit to him and myself that it's that I play 20 bbs or less more or less perfectly as far as the math goes. That's ok though: as flashy as the big bluffs and the hero calls and monster laydowns are, most tournaments at the business end come down to 20 bbs effective or less.

5 hours later I'm getting paid after shipping another turbo. I won this twice last year and it pretty much paid for the trip. In theory I'd probably be a lot better off if I just played this and the other tourist trapaments while I'm here but there's no glory in that so I prefer to play just enough to pay for the free shots at a bracelet. Speaking of which, next up is tomorrow's 1500, and if that doesn't work out, Sunday's 1000.

While I was playing my first final table in the nightly turbo, in another part of the Amazon room Elky was making a Lazarus style comeback to win a bracelet in front of a boisterous French rail. I like Elky: he looks like a rock star but without the ego. I like the discipline and seriousness and intensity with which he approaches the game. In the words of my favourite song, there's nothing "as ugly as a teenage millionaire pretending it's a whizkid world". In a world overpopulated by ugly teenage millionaires taking their behavioural cues from Hellmuth, Elky stands as a welcome reminder that to be the best, you don't have to shout "I'm the best" at every available opportunity.

At one point the Italian gangster asked me where the flag on my Irish Eyes shirt was from. When I said Ireland, the dealer said, "Ah, U2....the Cranberries....Ian Paisley". I wonder how Paisley feels about being the third best known entity from Ireland.

The Athy gypsy curse

2011-06-16T03:20:00.000+01:00

Before heading back for day 2 of my first WSOP side event this year, I swapped a few texts with Jason. Jason jokingly wished me the same luck as he had last year (when he ran probably the worst of any Irish over here). Well, the joke hypothesis is one possibility. Another that has crossed my mind since is it was some sort of Athy gyspy curse, as it's difficult to describe how badly I've been running since I got here. Forget winning races: I can't even win the 80/20s most of the time, and no matter how tight I sit waiting for a good spot to ship, the first time I do I run into something, usually aces, or sixes, or king eight, it doesn't really matter since right now I'd put money on anyone else's K2o against my kings.

OK, I know how boring it is to hear a poker player whining about how bad he's running, so I'll try to leave it at that for now. Things at least took a slight turn for the better yesterday. After busting out in Caesar's (first ship called, lost race, yada yada), I played my first live stt this year in the Rio. I got headsup against a good Italian (they exist!) and lost a 60/40 (AT, my current bogey hand, against his K7) for nearly all the chips. We'd done a saver so at least I got some dirty ol' money from it. After that, I bought in late to the nightly turbo. I did very well in this last year but have been wondering about whether it's worth playing, given the reg is effectively 30% and there are far more pros playing it this year. On the other hand, there's still definite value: it's difficult to describe just how bad the tourists and recreational players are. One example: tight old guy opens for 1500 utg, two calls, I find aces in the BB and make it 4500 playing 30k (table chipleader), old guy shoves, and the second caller decides K8s might be good here and reshoves for 20k (I promised no more whining so I won't mention that he of course flopped 2 pair). Anyway, I ended up making the final table with a decent stack, but was first out for not much moolah but at least it was a confidence boost and stopped the rot as far as Vegas roll hemorrhage goes.

That meant a late night so I decided to take today off apart from maybe some more stts later on, as I'm playing my second side, a $1500 NLH, tomorrow.

The WSOP is a commercialised affair on every level. As you walk through the corridors of the Rio, you are assaulted on all sides by ads for stuff and you run the gauntlet of hucksters and hawkers of all types. Half way up the main corridor to the Amazon room, a young lady on heels so high they encroach on the high heels/stilts border and sporting a skirt so small it's almost a belt approaches thousands of men every day with the opening line "Can I show you something?" She looks like an accident waiting to happen, balancing on her heels/stilts on a shiny marble floor. So, in fairness, do most of the players currently buzzing round the corridors. This early in the Series, the overwhelming atmosphere is one of optimism and smiles. We all think this is going to be our year, but of course for the vast majority of us, it won't. Wind the clock forward a few weeks and we'll be the ones scowling around like a lost tribe looking like people's whose lives have gone badly wrong, getting sympathetic looks from passersby.

Dirty ol' money

2011-06-13T19:02:00.000+01:00

As I walked away after exiting my first WSOP event this year, my initial thought was "I've seen this movie before". My exit, losing a 65/35 having outlasted 88% of the field but not the 90% needed to cash, was eerily similar to last year's start (when I lost a 70/30 to Durr even nearer the bubble). Let's hope the movie just started the same but turns out different this time.

It's much easier to get dragged down into despondency live than it is online. With the best will in the world, you get more emotionally invested live. Online it's possible to grind your way through a 200 buyin downswing in a week. Live, a 200 buyin downswing could take years. So it's important to try to take whatever positives you can. I was very happy with how I played: despite losing several big pots where I was a huge favourite I kept battling back. THe biggest worry is not how I'm running (there's no point worrying about that), but more how I'm feeling: tired and sore. My back injury is making sitting for long periods an uncomfortable experience.

I wasn't favoured with a good table draw. My starting table featured at least 7 pros (3-4 is the par for these events), and I was wedged between Josh "JJProdigy" Field and Bill Chen (author of The Math of Poker and one of my personal poker heroes). My most interesting hands were against Josh. Once I'd figured out who he was and noticed he was min opening a lot, I started three betting light every so often. Not that often, but often enough to establish a bit of history and make him wonder how come the old guy beside him seemed to only get hands when he'd opened. Initially he folded every time but I was sure that wouldn't last. Then I picked up my first hand (aces), three bet him again, and this time he peeled. He check raised me all in on a ten four two flop with eights and I held.

The chips went back the other way shortly after. He limped the small blind, I raised with eights from the big blind, he shoved for 23 bbs, and I called after some thought. Given the history, I think it's a pretty straightforward call. He had sevens, I hit a set on the river that gave him a spade flush draw, and a fourth spade fell on the river.

That table broke shortly afterwards. The rest of the day I bounced from table to table, and by the time we got to the last level of the day, I was up to 15k and on my fifth table. Blinds were escalating and I open shoves fives into ace jack. First card out was a 5 so I relaxed thinking I was home and hosed, but the other 2 flop cards, kq, gave the aj a gutter which he hit on the turn. That left me with a couple of big blinds but I won a race against Erica Schoenberg to get going again and ended with almost 12k. Shortish but workable.

My day 2 table looked handy enough apart from a German and as Asian who were looking to abuse the bubble. The Asian was opening everything from mid position which meant I wasn't getting any shoves from late position, and needed to either find a hand or shove from early position. I maintained my stack using the latter strategy until I finally picked up AK, which I duly reshoved over the Asian. He took a little while to work out he was getting 2 to 1 before calling with QTo. First card out was a ten and that was that.

The other half of Team Bro, Mark Dalimore, had showed up late on Saturday, and railed me Saturday night. We went for a quick drink in TGI Fridays and ran into Scott Gray who was in great form. Mark stayed in my room but disappeared Sunday morning to check into the Hilton. He re-appeared in the Rio after my exit and asked me what my plans were. I said I wanted to play the Megastack turbo in Caesars so he drove me there and we jumped in.

Anyone who has met Mark will know he's a larger than life character. Although we're similar in many ways, we're polar opposites in others. I'm usually the quietest person in the poker room, and he's always the loudest. So I'm sitting there "in the zone" with my ipod, he's at another table with his back to me, and I CAN STILL HEAR THE FECKER :)

We'd jumped in just before the break. As I was standing up having played no hands, I saw all of Mark's chips being pushed to another player. He assured me the exit was standard, based on what he thought he had. He popped up at my table to put a bounty on my head so we could go get a Chinese. I made some headway with queens, then lost a chunk in a threeway all in (AJs v 64o and J9o).

A lot of the American kids table talk is about the different medicinal aids they're using to maintain focus at the table. The adderall or ritalin gives them an intensity that is a little unsettling at times. The guy who ended up knocking me out (his Q8 > my A7 blind on blind) was overfocusing not just on the game but also on the antes, constantly badgering tardy posters and getting other people to make change.

Mark railed me for a while and remarked how bored I looked at the table. I think this is a problem for most of us whose main income comes from playing multiple tables online. The lack of financial pressure on me to get results here probably doesn't help either but I need to find some way to maintain mental focus as there's no point showing up if I'm not going to do my best. Ritalin is a step too far imo though. Mark suggested more down time this trip and that may be worth a try. We've already agreed to a road trip to the Grand Canyon after my son Paddy gets here.

The Chinese turned out to be a Korean. I'm not the biggest fan on Korean cuisine but at least the company was top class. We swapped stories for a few hours. One of the many things I like about Mark is that unlike most people our age he doesn't pretend he knows everything and he freely admits to being a work in progress. He gave me the low down why he's no longer wearing the Ed Hardy bling and the cross around his neck that used to be his trademark.

In Caesars, at the next table from me, some young guy hyped up on Ritalin was lolling at some old guy he'd just "owned" (his words). The old guy reacted with a diatribe that went something like "Look kid, it's not important, it's not my life, my wife or my health, it's just dirty ol' money, and I've got more of it than I could ever spend unless I was very careless".

An ace up the sleeve...

2011-06-11T08:56:00.001+01:00

A WSOP campaign is essentially a mini life. You go into it with a healthy dose of unfounded optimism. In the beginning, you flounder around a bit trying to figure out what's what and who's who, you don't seem to know anyone and your stomach is trying to get accustomed to a new diet. Then you start meeting the other Irish, slip into an easy routine of socialisation, and have to be careful not to let it overwhelm you or distract you from what you're there for. Then the faces disappear one by one as they bust the Main event, you bust the main event and you're left at the end of another WSOP mini life, looking forward to nothing other than the sweet release of the flight home.

At the moment, I'm again an infant in Vegas, albeit one with a fairly clear idea how its life is likely to pan out.

I've settled in pretty well into the Gold Coast. As KP pointed out on Facebook, one advantage of spending a night among homeless bums in Paddington is it can make the rather basic Gold Coast seem like the height of luxury. I haven't run into anyone I know yet (Mark Dalimore is arriving tomorrow though). Yesterday I headed to Caesars to play their megastack series. I was gifted an early doubleup but then lost a big flip and never recovered. First ship with my recent bogey hand AT ran into jacks in the small blind.

I bounced from there into the 4 PM tournament shortly before late reg closed. After marvelling at all the min raising going on from even the old codgers, so very 2011 Internet, it suddenly hit me: my God, this is a limit tournament. I made the second last table despite getting no cards and not winning many hands. No cash either though: they were only paying the final table.

I was back in the Rio in time for the nightly turbo. This was something of a cash cow for me last year, almost singlehandedly paying for the trip. No such joy on this occasion, and ominously there were far more obvious pros in the field. A sign of the apocalypse after Black Friday? The dearth of logos decking and walking the halls of the Rio also points to the party being over. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the talk around relates to fallout from the FBI pulling the carpet from under online poker in the US. Surprisingly, to me at least, are reports of droves of the best and the brightest US grinders who are "going straight". Maybe I shouldn't be that surprised: this generation of Internet whizkids were drawn into the game as one of the best ways to exploit an innate ability to make quickfire informed decisions based on calculating equity rather than any idealistic "love of the game". If they all go off and become equity traders, it may be a good thing for the rest of us trying to make our living from the game in the short term, undoing some of the "damage" done by the training sites making it too easy for anyone with a bit of natural aptitude and a lot of application to get good fast.

I do enjoy playing live here. Americans are fun: neither desperate nor afraid to be characters at the table. Poker has a broader appeal here than anywhere else (except maybe France) so you meet a much wider range of people. One Texan in his 50s at my table in Caesar's established himself as a front runner in the character stakes when he responded to a compliment from a dealer telling him he looked great for his age with "I know. I'm in great shape, I'm good looking, but I'm old, so...." Then someone at the table started talking about A8 being the "dead man's hand" because it was the hand Wild Bill Hickok was holding when he was shot dead. I'd heard this countless times before so wasn't paying much attention until the Texan produced his tournament entry to reveal his surname: Hickok. It turns out Wild Bill was his great grand uncle. Not only that, but he went on to tell us he owns the bullet that killed his illustrious great grand uncle. The bullet entered Will Bill's skull, passed through his brain (zero marks to the guy at a table who asked, without a hint of irony, "did it kill him?"), exited through his cheek and lodged in the wrist of his neighbour at the table, one Jack McCaul. Not that's an unfortunate seat draw right there. Jack (who it turns out is the great grand uncle of Irish poker player Thomas McCaul!) carried it in his wrist for another 30 years or so until he died in St. Louis is 1903, as the doctors apparently didn't think it prudent to remove it. After his death, the bullet was given to Wild Bill's family, who passed it down to the current owner, the Texan.

I play my first WSOP event, a $1500 NLH, tomorrow, so I decided to take today completely off. When I was running extreme races, I got very good at resting up in a hotel room for days on end before a race, barely moving a muscle so as not to expend any unnecessary energy before the starter's gun. The same extreme preparation probably isn't needed for poker, but it's no harm to take a day off now and then to recharge the batteries and prepare for the bigger events.

It's much harder to switch off a mind than it is to rest a body though. When you consciously try, it just finds new minutae to focus on, no matter how trivial. One thing I do more in this month than in the rest of the year put together is ride elevators. One pattern I noticed on my frequent ascents and descents from the 8th floor of the Gold Coast is it takes a lot less time going up than it does going down. On the way down you pick up more passengers. As such, it's the opposite to life. Another difference is on an elevator you always know whether you're going up or down (unless you're very drunk). In life, it's not always that obvious. In about 12 hours time my WSOP 2011 campaign kicks off. I'm full of optimism that my poker career is still in the ascendancy. But who really knows.

So I made it to Vegas anyway...

2011-06-09T05:52:00.000+01:00

OK, so I made it to Vegas anyway. If that sounds like I'm announcing the mere fact of my arrival like it's some sort of accomplishment, that's because it feels as such after the little ordeal I had in London. After idling in terminal one of Heathrow for a while after my arrival and typing up my last blog entry, I headed for terminal three, which I was assured was the Virgin Atlantic terminal. Long walk, but sure didn't I have all night? I was greeted at terminal 3 by the sight of VA logos everywhere, which was encouraging. Less encouraging was the absence of any sign of my flight to Vegas on the screens. Hmmmm. Better check the old itinerary. A quick glance at aforementioned itinerary revealed the source of the problem here: my flight to Vegas from Heathrow was actually from Gatwick. Crumbs and jiminy cricket.

Having no notion of the most economical way of getting from Heathrow to Gatwick but harbouring a strong suspicion that the answer wasn't "taxi!", I decided to catch the last train to Paddington. That got me into Paddington around 1 AM, just in time to see every shop, food outlet and tube station in the joint slam its shutters shut. Hmmmm. After ascertaining that the best plan of action now was to tube it to Victoria and then catch the Gatwick Express, I was left with the minor problem of what to do for the next 4 hours until the tube station reopened.

The answer I came up with, and I acknowledge it right here right now to be laughably sub optimal, was to spend the night in Paddington shivering on a bench like a homeless bum, surrounded by actual homeless bums. And let me dispel any illusions you might have: spending a night shivering like a homeless bum surrounded by actual homeless bums in London's draughtiest and least attractive train station with no food and no toilet and just your overheating but running down laptop battery as your only heat source is not as much fun as you might think. A few hours into this I noticed one of my homeless bum compadres had skulked off somewhere. A little investigation revealed the destination of the skulk to be an inexplicably open but empty ticket office which afforded considerably more shelter and heat than the concourse benches. Better yet, it boasted a power outlet. As I reveled in the plush surroundings of the floor of the ticket office recharging my laptop and my spirits, I got all philosophical about how even the smallest things can become huge luxuries in the right light.

My reveling and revelation didn't last long though: a station security guy materialised to chase us homeless bums back out onto the concourse with shouts of "get out or you'll have me sacked". I wouldn't have thought his job security was a pressing concern to the homeless bum fraternity, but nobody argued. He shot me a particularly quizical look: I guess he'd never seen a homeless bum in a white Miami Vice jacket clutching a laptop before.

My partially regenerated battery got me through til 5 AM, opening time for everything. Hurray! The Circle Line tube ride to Victoria was rendered all the more surreal by the fact that I was the only human in the carriage, and my companion the only bird. Yes, an actual bird of the flying feathery variety was sat on the seat next to me, looking up at me like he'd never seen a homeless bum in a white Miami Vice jacket with a laptop before. I took a picture of him with my phone which I'll put up at some stage to prove I wasn't hallucinating. I also think it's just as well the ticket conductor didn't come til after the bird got off at Notting Hill to tell the other birds his "Hey, you'll never guess what I saw on the tube this morning..." story, as I'm reasonably certain that the bird was not in possession of a valid ticket.

The Gatwick Express entertainment was provided by the panicky American old lady determined to drive her silent and sullen husband round the twist with very public fretting over them missing their plane. "We have only 6 hours before takeoff! Are you sure that's enough time? How long does this train take to get to Gatwick?" I was tempted to up the ante by telling her "Ah, you'll be grand, it rarely takes more than 5 hours" but the husband looked like it wouldn't take much for him to actually snap, snap as in "American tourist on Gatwick Express snaps and shoots 7 passengers", so I left it. Instead, I focused on the positives of my night as a homeless bum. It probably surprises nobody that knows that I used to run for 24 hours non stop for no good reason other than to see how much it could mess me up that I like to put myself through some sort of pointless ordeal every so often in the view that it "builds character" and "puts things in perspective". Anyway, when you've endured a night like I just had for no good reason other than your own stupidity and lack of attention to detail, you kinda need to find some sort of silver lining.

So yeah, I made it to Vegas anyway.

The best things in life are threes...

2011-06-08T01:17:00.000+01:00

There are some tournaments that certain players always seem to do well in, and others in which they seem destined never bother the scorers. The JP Masters is a good one for me (two final tables and three cashes in four attempts). I was hoping the CPT Grand final (where I came a morale and roll boosting fourth just before Vegas last year) would be one too, but the evidence of my latest display there suggests otherwise.

I won't bore you with individual hand histories. The summary is I never really had a stack, and didn't really deserve one getting too many of the marginal decisions wrong. I hung around (as I do) for longer than was decent in the circumstances before deciding the time to gamble was upon me. First time I shoved I ran into something that was 60/40 over my favourite shoving hand, and I was on the rail about a dozen from the bubble. While it would have been nice to go deeper (and even nicer to play better), it's fair to say my mind was elsewhere. Half of it was already halfway across the Atlantic to Vegas, and the other half was thinking about a triple crown (more on that later).

Someone told me at the weekend that CPT regulars don't like to see the likes of me ("the pros") who parachute in once a year for the Grand final doing well, and they'd prefer to see one of their own take the title. That's fair enough I suppose, human nature and all that, but even if they got their wish as far as me personally, you'd have to say that overall the tournament was a triumph of the pros (or parachutists, or whatever you want to call them). Congrats to Smurph, Alan McEntire, my roommate Mick Mccloskey, Tommy Walsh and Tom Kitt all of whom final tabled. Tom and Tommy were in the three way chop, with Tom also claiming the title. It's fair to say that Tom's has been knocking on the door and on many people's "most likely to" lists for a few years now, so it was great to see him claim a major title at last. Mick also deserves a special mention: he's remarkably consistent in these events, and every time I talk through hands with him he impresses me with the sophistication of his thought processes. He admits himself he's not a "math guy" but intuitively he gets there. There's a rather ageist assumption among some of the younger guns that players past a certain age can't possibly be capable of playing at their level or that the game has "somehow passed them by", but Mick is a strong argument to the contrary. I don't think it's a matter of (physical) age but rather a mental attitude of continuing to question yourself and look to learn how to be better. I can certainly think of a few players still in their 20s who were crushing a couple of years ago but no longer who are much stronger candidates for the "games has passed them by" charge.

Part of the reason I was a little distracted in Carlow was I was having a very good week online, so good that I was in line for a Triple Crown (a purely notional Crown awarded by Pocket Fives to any mtter who wins three tournaments with more than 100 runners and a 10k plus prize pool on three different sites or networks). Having won the 30 rebuy on Ipoker on Monday and the 15k turbo on Merge on Thursday, I needed one more win in a qualifying event to claim my first Triple Crown. In between, I'd also chopped my favourite nightly tournament, the 10k on Irish Eyes. I don't normally agree to chops online but was happy enough to chop 4 ways on this occasion for a number of reasons. The remaining players were all pretty decent (which is unusual on Entraction), so I felt I had little real edge over them and it was likely to come down to flips and coolers. I had the most aggro player on the table threebetting and raising me every time I put chips into the pot, so I was either going to have to wait for a hand or make a big move without one and risk bad timing and finding him with a hand. The decisive factor though was Mrs. Doke was shouting at me for dinner :) It's a testament to how good the structure is that this was my only tourney still in play, so I was quite relieved to be able to end it there and then.

After my exit in Carlow I hauled myself back to Dublin for the Sunday grind, stopping only to join Breifne on Dublin City FM's "On The Ball". We had a good old natter about this and that (mainly Vegas and the WSOP).

The grind got going in earnest around 6 PM. The plan was to sign up to as many 100-200 runner fields with a sufficient buyin to qualify on various sites, to give myself the best possible chance of binking the all important third win. So I ruled out all the Sunday majors as too much of a longshot. Ironically, the one "major" I did play, the Bodog 100k, was the one I ended up binking. I only ended up playing it for a couple of reasons: first there was a significant 25k overlay (I can't resist an overlay), and also I'd just busted my Stars account and couldn't get more money on so I couldn't sign up for any more Stars games.

Early on, my best shots looked like the 25k on Cake and the 100k high roller on Party, and I was massive chipleader in both a few tables out. Both went south pretty fast to a number of lost races and 70/30s. By 1 AM I was down to my last two shots, the 55r on Stars and the Bodog 100k. Neither were looking too healthy but a timely race won against Jude Ainsworth kickstarted me on Stars, while on Bodog the standard was so predictably awful I wasn't having to do anything fancy to hang in there. I ended up on the final table of both. The Bodog 100k came to a conclusion first. I was rather lucky to get headsup with the player I did on Bodog. The term over aggro monkey could have been invented for this guy so even with a 3/1 chiplead at the start of the headsup I felt a strong favourite to prevail as the strategy was fairly straightforward (find a hand and let him triple barrel the loots). I was happy to let him win 90% of the hands because of his aggression, but I won the big two that decided things. Suitably elated at having clinched the Triple Crown (and the small matter of the 25k I got for winning the Bodog one), I ended up coming 5th on Stars. All in all, my best online day (or night) ever with about 30k in profit between everything, and a very timely boost running into Vegas.

This blog is being typed in Heathrow airport as I wait for my flight to Vegas. Although I'm still suffering a bit from injuries sustained in my fall in Cork, I'm looking forward to giving my fourth WSOP campaign as good a shot as I can. I'm under no real financial pressure to succeed and I think it's easier to succeed in those circumstances. The plan is to play all the lower buyin nlh events and the main event. Whatever happens happens, and so long as I feel afterwards I genuinely gave it my best shot, I'll be happy. I'm also planning to do short blog updates every day or two from Vegas. This will probably give the blog more of a Dear Diary feel than normal, but hopefully it'll be of interest to at least a few Iranians.

The surreal life

2011-05-29T03:10:00.002+01:00

Sometimes it seems that every time I play the Fitz end of month, the evening starts with a lofty declaration to Mrs. Doke that "maybe I'll play a bit of live cash afterwards", only to end with a dejected storm down the stairs and out onto the street muttering under my breath how the biggest donkey at the table always seems to get my chips, far too tilted to even contemplate subjecting myself to the Hell of live cash. In actual fact my record there isn't all the bad: I notched up a few wins there in my first year and in my last half dozen or so outings I've had a 4th and two other cashes. But human memory is a selective thing.

At least I made the dinner break this time, and the dinners in the Fitz are so good that's almost the equivalent of a min cash. As I headed back for my second dessert, Mick O'Hora said there are some people who need to be protected from themselves when it comes to dessert tables. I think he was talking about himself but in all honesty he could just as easily have been talking about me. The rib injury is making regular exercise particularly unpalatable at the moment. The other highlight of dinner break was a good natter with David Lappin, who I'd also been talking to in Cork. David's been one of the top Irish online mtters for a while now, but since he doesn't play much live most people probably wouldn't recognise him or realise how good he is. Very savvy guy with a lot of interesting opinions and ideas about the industry.

With dinner out of the way, I got up to double starting stack, aka 20 bbs, which seemed like a decent enough stack to send into the middle in support of KQ after a serial opener in late position. Unfortunately he had AT and held.

So it was back to the online grind. Decent enough week, mostly crossbars, but enough of them for it to be profitable overall. I was just starting into my night session on Friday when I got a call from my friend Andrew (Yates). Andrew's great craic at the best of times, no better man to brighten up a dull night shift of clicking buttons. Andrew was trying to finagle my daughter's phone number out of me. Note to self: must stop putting pictures of my hot blonde teenage daughter on my Facebook to be seen by half the poker degens in Ireland. The night session wound down around 6 AM, so I decided to stay up and watch some TV and then head out to get the Irish Racing Post for the Poker supplement which I'd been told is the nuts since Ken Powell (kpnuts) took over.

As I was walking to the shop, I realised I'd put little or no thought into my clothing ensemble for this impromptu shopping expedition, and I must have cut quite the eccentric figure in my grinding poker hoody (good for the cold wee hours), my running leggings (which I got into the habit of wearing so I could head straight out for a run in the morning after a night of grinding) and my snazzy new formal shoes. So basically the top half of me looked like a degenerate gambler, the bottom half like a distance runner, but the feet were convinced they were on their way to a wedding or a funeral.

The guy in the shop asked me if I was looking for a paper. He looked positively bemused when I said "yes, the Irish Racing Post". I think after years during which our interactions consisted solely of him scanning the barcodes of running magazines and me handing him money for them, he thought I misunderstood the nature of the Racing the Irish Racing Post covers.

Anyway, I heartily recommend the supplement which appears every last Saturday of the month, and not just because there was a nice piece on me and Irish Eyes this month. There was also a very nice feature on Jono "GAWA9" Crute and a Q&A with Rob Taylor. Rob nominated me as the person he most admires in poker which coming from Rob is a huge compliment. As I've said before I think Rob is probably the guy who has taught me the most about poker down the years, and I still remember the thrill I felt the first time he mentioned me on his blog as someone he regarded as a good player.

I filmed a short interview with Big Iain in the Fitz on my plans for Vegas: no doubt it will emerge at some point. I'm starting to get psyched about Vegas this year. The new plan is pretty much the old plan: I'm staying across the road from the Rio in the Gold Coast for the first few weeks, then moving into the Rio for the main event, as I did last year. Apart from the main I'll be concentrating on the weekend holdem events and some of the smaller buyin midweek events. High variance stuff, but I see it as a once a year shot at the bracelet. One of the advantages of being entirely self staked (I don't sell percentages of myself in live events any more) is you can justifiably go into the event with the idea that you just want to maximise your chances of winning at any particular point (rather than your chance of cashing, or your equity). When you're playing with other people's money to ny extent you can't really do that, or at least you shouldn't. On the days I'm not playing a bracelet event, I'll be targeting some softer lower variance stuff like the daily and nightly tourneys in the Rio that are touristfests, and the stts.

A few people in the Fitz were asking me about EMOPS Dublin so there seems to be a good buzz building for Clontarf castle in late July. In addition to online satellites, Irish Eyes are running a great Ironman promotion at the moment that offers a really cheap way to get in. Full details at http://www.irisheyespoker.com/en/Poker/Promotions/monthly-promotions.aspx

Busting tournaments and ribs in Cork, and a free tenner

2011-05-26T05:09:00.004+01:00

I quite fancied playing the shorthanded side event in UKIPT Cork, but we got there too late for it so instead Mick and I headed to a very good Italian restaurant in Douglas. Mick was very tilted by the 2 minute taxi ride that set us back seven euro, but the food made up for it.

Two of my best poker friends Jason Tompkins and Feargal Nealon got headsup in the shorthanded. I think they chopped the money and duly played on for the title. Feargal was pretty happy to get a 1st on his Hendon mob at last. He also asked me to mention that Tony Rafter wished him luck during the event.

I had decided to play 1A for a number of reasons, principally because I thought it would be a softer day with less travelling pros. My two tables were grand, some good players but overall the kind of tables I'd have expected to do well at given any sort of rub of the green felt. As it was, I really couldn't have run much worse. I ran the nut flush into a flopped house for a third of my stack. I could have done the lot but with the paired board and it being early doors, I went the cautious pot control route. Other than that, I was pretty card dead. The one flop I hit (a set of fives) saw my opponent, the preflop raiser, check fold an 852r flop. Sigh.

I also had to make a very unorthodox raise fold of jacks with just 21 big blinds, something I'd never countenance normally. After an under the gun limp at 100/200 and a call, I jacked it up to 700 with jacks in the cutoff, thinking I was calling any shove. A very loose foreign guy called on the button, then a good English player in the blinds made a tiny reraise to 1700. This immediately set off alarm bells: he can't think I'm raise folding with my stack and the foreign guy had shown no ability to fold to a raise previously. So I folded. The Polish guy called and folded the nine high flop (the English guy showed aces).

I tried to tell myself that after my disciplined fold I'd get a deserved break but of course it doesn't work like that. After hanging around with the short stack for a couple of hours I got it in in a very good spot, holding tens against eights and King ten suited. When the flop came with two spades (the suit of the Kt) my heart sunk thinking I now needed to fade spades as well. Turn and river bricked but to my horror the dealer started pushing the chips towards the eights. I hadn't even noticed the 8 on the flop :)

Cork was also the event when my money stopped running good: I had shares in a number of people, not even one of whom cashed.

The following day I was walking down the ramp in the hotel with Mick when my ankle went from underneath me in a divot in the carpet. I fell forward and didn't manage to get my hands down in time, so I basically bounced on the ramp. I was winded but felt good enough afterwards to continue on to dinner with Mick, Jason, Alan and Nick (Newport). After coming back and playing the triathlon (two hands: I raised AQs and gave up after most of the table called and the flop came jack high all one suit not mine. Then I reshoved jacks with 19 bbs over a raiser who unfortunately had queens), I lay down for a while and suddenly started to feel very bad indeed. A trip to A&E seemed like a good idea so I went to ask reception to arrange it. As I was doing that, both Steven Merrick and Phil Baker materialised with offers of lifts. I went with Steven's superior local knowledge.

Initially things looked like they were moving along nicely. A nurse asked me a pile of questions and prodded me to see where it hurt and how much. Then they did some sort of heart test. The last time I had one of these a few years ago the doctors reported that I had an abnormally large heart, so they suspected a rather horrible disease called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. After a few months of tests they concluded the abnormally large heart was just the healthy result of genetics and the extreme amounts of cardio training I was doing for ultra marathons at the time. So this time I was well prepared for the "your heart is way too big" result. Unfortunately, I may have done too good a job convincing them I was in no immediate danger. They sent me back to the waiting room with the promise of an X ray. After 6 tilting hours there watching people come and go and rereading a sign that said "your position in the queue depends on the severity of your situation", I realised they'd basically lost interest and I might very well be bottom of the queue for eternity. Phil rang to ask how I was and came to rescue me around 2.30 AM (he was back playing in the main the next day but still went out of his way to get me: what a legend).

I also played the 300 side event. I got off to a pretty good start but then basically just hung around through a long period of card death. Late in the day I should have doubled up through Nick Abou Risk after opening AQ on the button and calling his KQ shove but the board straightened up and we chopped. Right before the end I shoved 18 bbs from the small blind with A8s into Nick's A5o in the BB and he binked a five. That's poker baby: at least the chips went to a good home (I think Nick ended up 4th). Nick's not only a great player but also a gentleman so nobody should begrudge him any luck he might get.

It all added up to my first losing trip in a while. I wasn't too bothered to be honest: I was due a losing trip and I think it was down to how I ran rather than how I played. A few of my friends did very well: Jason not only chopped the short handed with Feargal but went deep yet again in the main AND cashed in the triathlon, and Phil and Chris (Dowling) both final tabled the main event. The same names keep popping up deep in Irish tournaments which I think proves my point that anyone can luckbox a big result (or two) but the real class players get deep over and over again.

When I got home my own doctor gave me the rather gloomy news that the damage from the fall was a bunch of strained muscles (the biggest of which is the diaphragm: something Phil had guessed using his kick boxing experience) and damage to the rib cartilege and joints that'll take 4-6 weeks to clear. All of which unfortunately means going to Vegas carrying an injury. This was the norm when I was doing the extreme running, but it's a first for poker.

I've been tipping along online, nothing major to report. I'm still enjoying how soft the Irish Eyes evening tourneys are.

My daughter graduated from her secondary school today (and gave a great speech at the ceremony: well done Fiona). I had to chuckle when the priest presiding over the ceremony advised us all to take our kids computers away and ban them from Facebook. When I was that age the standard advice was similar,with the result that my parents basically never allowed me to play video games. Now I look at my young grinder friends who sharpened their ease with technology and trained their decision reflexes with thousands of hours of video games, perfect preparation for them as they now 40 table their way to fortunes. Meanwhile, my brain starts to fry once I hit ten tables. That's what you get when you waste your youth on history books and science projects, instead of the really useful stuff you can learn from video games :)

I'm playing the Fitz EOM later today, and heading to Carlow the weekend after next for the CPT Grand final. After that, it's Vegas baby.

Finally, news of an Irish Eyes offer. Irish Eyes Poker are in the process of looking at launching a new poker platform to compliment our existing site but would like to test it.

Called Terminal Poker, the game very much resembles Full Tilt's Rush Poker but is also designed to be deployed in casinos and other physical places, where we can operate our cash in cash out service.

Anyone interested in trying this, signup to the site and let us know your username - email team@irisheyespoker.ie, and then we will send €10 to your account so you can play a bit and look through the software.

We should say this is a very new plarform and there may be 10 or less players online when you log in.

So, to do this you need to do the following:

1. Sign up with the cardroom CardClubGames through this link: https://www.cardclubgames.com:443/Register.aspx?RegCode=27AFE99B-67D0-46EA-A64C-629752CF2558
2. When your account is created and verified, email us your username.

3. Your account will be credited with a free €10 instant bonus within a few business hours*.

* The bonus is only valid for poker (not casino).
* The minimum amount that can be withdrawn is €20.
* In order to withdraw you must have played at least 250 raked hands. Stats will be visible in your account
* Only one code per account allowed.
* General bonus rules apply.

Do you wanna be in my gang, my gang?

2011-05-16T07:14:00.004+01:00

As you may have read elsewhere, I've been appointed the new Team Irish Eyes Poker captain. The role is different from the traditional "sponsored player": essentially my role is to provide a player's point of view to improve the player experience.

I've been playing on Irish Eyes Poker for a while now, mainly because the network is so soft :) I'm particularly looking forward to meeting all Team Irish Eyes Poker players at July's EMOP Dublin leg in Clontarf Castle. This promises to be one of the highlights of the Irish calendar with local players pitting their wits against the regular European crowd the EMOPS attracts. Players who sign up using signup code 'doke' to join Team Irish Eyes Poker get a great 30% rakeback deal and a 10% live bonus which can be used to buy into live events as a Team player. In addition, Team players receive an EMOP Bubble guarantee, hospitality at EMOP events, and the Last Team player playing at EMOP Dublin wins a 2,000 euro EMOP package to another EMOP event.

If you already have an account and want to join the Team, drop me an email, tweet or message at Facebook or Irish Poker Boards with your account details and I'll get the good people at Irish Eyes to sort it out for you.

To launch my captaincy of Team Irish Eyes Poker, Irish Eyes are running a new league online from this Monday 16th May to Sunday 12th June where the winner of the league will get a Free seat for the Northern Open, and hotel accommodation for the event, on from the 17th June in the Fairways Hotel, Dundalk.

Play in the Deep Stack tournaments on Irish Eyes Poker every day at 16.00pm or 21.55pm. These have a €10 entry fee and have a €1,000 gtd prize pool.

EDIT: Irish Eyes Poker have generously added a ticket only prize in a special private 9 man tournament, for players that come in positions 2 - 10 of the league. We can stagger the chips based on the finishing position, and suggest as it is a deep stack tournament league, the following chips stacks will apply:

2nd = 6000
3rd = 5500
4th = 5000
5th = 4500
6th = 4000
7th = 3500
8th = 3000
9th = 2500
10th = 2000

This final game we propose to set up for Tuesday 14th June at 21.00.

There are 56 in total between Monday 16th May and Sunday 12th June. Play as many as you like and the best 8 results will go to your league points.

How it works: You MUST register to take part in this league by emailing your username to team@irisheyespoker.ie

The 'LOWEST' point scorer in the league wins. Your finishing position in each of your best 8 Deep Stack events are totalled to give your final point score.
Winner of the Deep Stack is in 1st position which equals 1 point. The player that finishes in 42nd position gets 42 points. So the higher you some in each of your best 8 tournaments, the lower the points you will have in the league.

Player positions will be posted on Irish Poker Boards.

Best of Luck. I'm going to play a few of these but I'm excluding myself from the league. :)

I made my Dublin City FM debut with Breifne today. It was good craic and hopefully I'll be back there regularly. Breifne came up with a great bankroll management type project that hopefully will get off the ground.

On the online poker side, I had a pretty good week, some very deep runs on Irish Eyes and Party. I've also cashed in most of the SCOOPs I've played so far, but nothing to get overly worked up about.

I'm heading to Cork on Wednesday with Mick Mccloskey for the UKIPT. I expect I'll have to make my way to some roundabout or other for Mick to pick me up cos that's how he rolls.

The real Jamie Gold of Irish poker...

2011-05-14T03:24:00.019+01:00

Where's this D4 anyway?
This year JP moved his Masters from his traditional base in Tallaght (the Maldron) to D4. This well publicised fact somehow escaped my attention, so last Thursday evening having just tweeted "heading to the Maldron for the JP Masters" I did just that. My friends Jono and Cory were supposed to have arrived at Doke Manor to stay in the building Mrs. Doke had constructed in the garden that is the subject of some marital debate (I view it as a shed while she insists it's a "studio"). The Belfast whizkids had missed the appointed bus so instead had headed to the venue. As we approached the Maldron, I texted Jono so the lads would be out in front with their luggage. No sign of them when we got there. No sign of anyone in fact, when I went inside to find them. Three people in the bar, none of them poker players as far as I knew. Not a good sign. The room upstairs used for the poker completely empty. Definitely not good.

A quick phone call to Jono revealed their location and that of the tournamemt. Mrs. Doke was not exactly impressed by her lesser half's latest absent-mined professor gaffe, but good sport that she is she tends to just get on with things. Thirty minutes of sudden lane changes and marginal traffic light pushes while her terrified husband screamed "It's only a side event: it's not the end of the world if I miss a few hands!", I was sitting down to the short-handed between two of my favourite slapheads, Nicky "No pair no draw no cards no hair" Power and Roberto Taylor.

Player gone!
No sooner had I started to enjoy the banter at the table than I hear a "Player Gone!". I look up and see the becapped head of Jono smiling wryly as he walked away from the table. Another epic live fail from the internet whizz. Meanwhile at my table Nicky was in cracking form, although perhaps not taking the poker seriously (he went out shoving Q4o from utg+1 for lots). Rob was in great form too, he even took the inevitable bad beat on the chin.

I got unlucky too: unlucky James McManus actually had a hand when I reshipped an ace on the button over his umpteenth open :) 6 max is good fun though.

What's with the cap?
A couple of weeks ago during a slightly drunken late night Skype chat, Jono had suggested if he wore a suit to the main event, I should wear a cap. I found it hard to believe he even owned a suit so decided to call his bluff.
Ger's got game, Jono's got suit!

Unfortunately this was a bad read and the kid showed up in a suit he'd bought for a wedding, and a pink and blue cap for me. This didn't fit my abnormally big head but Jono's a resilient guy so there was a plan B: his classic NY Giants cap. This did fit: it also fit perfectly with the "midlife crisis" look.

I almost avoided the embarrassment of having to wear it when Jono managed to lock it inside the shed/studio. With the key firmly wedged in the lock on the inside of the door preventing the door being opened from the other side, it wasn't looking good for the wedding suit and the cap until Mrs. Doke turned up and managed to dislodge the key from the outside.

Lucky cap?
After running the gauntlet of cap-related abuse in the hotel before kickoff, I settled down at my table hoping that at the very least the cap might prove lucky (a rather fanciful belief given the cap had not cashed live since the IPO a couple of years earlier). I kept out of trouble and chipped up steadily to just under two starting stacks with no real incident. An acceptable day 1.

Dinner was a two shift affair, and with the word from the early birds being "steer clear of the hotel slop", I headed up the road for some fish and chips with Rob, Eoin Olin and Cory. All were going well although Cory was having to contend with the blaaaaaahs (Jason Tompkins 3 betting him both willy and nilly almost every time he opened).

Jono got off to a flyer and even managed to cripple his hero Ger Harraghy with a two outer. While Ger was still reeling from the loss to his immediate neighbour in the wedding suit, his phone beeped. It was a text from Jono that read simply "OUCHO". After Ger's exit, I got moved into the seat. Dealer Gemma, looking at me and the kid, made the kindest comment anyone did all weekend ("I'm seeing double"). Things were looking good for the kid to make a day 2 until he ran second nut straight into nut straight. Oucho.
Seeing double

Cory meanwhile was playing an absolute blinder. Despite having the worst seat in the room (Jason Tompkins to his immediate left, TheRealFDT to his left, and Eoin Olin and Tony Baitson also at the table), he chipped up to 77k.
Blaaaaah 3 bets Cory again

Day 2
Day 2 was much more eventful for me. The most interesting name on my redraw table was Cathal Shine to my immediate right. Cathal is a regular in the top 5 or 10 Irish online mtters on the P5's Irish rankings, and I've played with him a fair bit online. Nick Newport was also at the table. THe most interesting hand I played was against Cathal, but played out the way it did mainly because of Nick, Nick had just lost a big one where he raised KK utg and flatted a threebet from his neighbour, and got it in on a nine high flop against a set of nines. Next hand, Cathal raised in early position, and I found my first hand of the tourney, aces, just behind. I quickly flatted as Nick was now left with a reshipping stack, and was hoping he might go for a steamy squeeze. He resisted, so now it's just me and shinerr. The flop came 996 and I flatted his cbet. He fired again when a ten hit the turn, and I flatted again. He gave up on the river. So not exactly as I hoped, but an acceptable enough result.

I hovered around 70 to 80k for most of the day until I doubled up through James Waldron after a table move. I opened queens utg, button flatted, James squeezed from the small blind, I shoved, and he called with the jacks. The girls held for once.

Another table move late in the day saw me wedged between two of the three friends I'd just had dinner with, Albert Kenny on one side, and Alan McIntyre on the other.

Future superstar, Alan McIntyre

The aggressive Richard Hinds was just the other side of Alan, and Eoin Olin to his left, so it wasn't the nicest of seats. I'd drifted back a bit when I finally got a bit of a stack thanks to two slightly controversial calls. First I called Albert's 11 bb button shove with KJo. Online I wouldn't even think about it, I'd just click call and move on, and live it's probably fair to say I call a good bit lighter than most in these spots. Basically, if the maths says call I don't mind calling even if I think I'm usually behind (but have the correct price against the overall range). On this occasion I actually expected to be ahead, but was actually behind, at least temporarily, to A4o. But I pulled ahead of the flop and stayed ahead.

The second call was with jack high, as my opponent reminded me in the shop the following day, obviously still smarting from it. I opened JTs for my standard not much more than a min raise in the cutoff and Richard shoved 15 bbs from the small blind. I decided I was calling if I was getting 6 to 4 as I figured I had about 43% against any reasonable reshoving range and having calculated I was getting the price, made the call rather quickly. Richard turned over A9o, I just flopped the flush, no messing about, and a clearly disgusted Richard went off to tell the bloggers about the disgusting call Doke had just made with jack high. I obviously expected to be behind (or flipping at best) but thought I'd rarely if ever be worse than a 6 to 4 dog, so I'd make the call again any day of the week. Coming up to the bubble when I found myself wedged betweena rampant Marc McDonnell, Cathal Shine and Alan, and grappling with card death meaning I was playing almost no hands, Richard had made a swipe about me clearly folding to the money. This remark suggested to me that he might see me as slightly scared money and therefore be more likely to be reshipping absolute spanners, another factor tipping me towards the call there.

These two calls and suckouts pushed me up to 400k near the end of the day, but I managed to do almost half of that in the last orbit. I had one raise snapped off, and then on my big blind it's folded to Ciaran McGivern who looks like he's folding til he realises it's been folded to him, and then he thinks and raises instead. I peel my first card: ace, and decide it's enough in itself to be 3 betting here and if Ciaran's body language is to be taken at face value he has nothing anyway. Ciaran unfortunately 4 bets me, so I now realise sadly I've been taken in by a bit of Hollywooding and I have to look at my other card to see if I can continue in the hand. It's a rather disappointing three so into the muck with it.

Last hand of the night I did another chunk with the second nut flush against Alan's nut flush. That left me 12/13 overnight.

At home, Jono was giving us a good triple crown sweat. Having won tourneys on Party and Stars already this week, he stood to claim a coveted PocketFives triple crown if he could win a decent sized tourney on another network. He was headsup on Ipoker when I arrived home with Cory but after a few suckouts a 3:1 chiplead disappeared and he told me wryly when I came back from checking mail in the other room "We have no points". Only a matter of time though.

Day 3
My day 3 campaign was severely hampered by Jason having direct position on me. I felt Jason would quickly pick up if I started opening light so I didn't bother.
Time to 3bet Doke again

Pretty much nobody else in the country seems to understand my basic live game as well as the Athyminator so I never enjoy being to his right. Eventually I found a hand, tens, utg, and opened. Sure enough Jason 3 bets me and I'm about to 4 bet shove when I hear Alan say "all in" in the big blind. The tens are an easy fold now. The two lads have a pair of kings each (I wouldn't have sucked out). Alan having kings saved me as there was no way I thought my tens weren't huge against Mr. Tompkins.

Noel Clarke gets doked

It also needs to be recorded that not for the first time I got very lucky at one point against Noel Clarke. Noel runs very bad against me so when I shipped a suited queen into his suited ace blind on blind (my situation worsened by the suits being the same), it was no surprise that the queen appeared to save me. Noel took it like a gent but it obviously hurt. He apparently lives on an Arctic Island up near the North Pole (or something) and only gets out a few times a year to play, and every time he does I'm there sucking out on him. Joking aside, he made a correct and courageous call and that's all you can do. As he was led away to claim his prize, I remembered I'd bought a percentage of him, and hoped he'd forget about it til next time I saw him, but a few minutes later he was walking back to give me my cut. Oucho.

The disadvantage of playing so tight is when I did find a couple of hands, kings and aces once each, I didn't get much action. I basically jogged up and down on the spot til the final table formed.
Reminiscing with JP

JP did some pre final table interviews as I remembered that it was at the JP Masters the first year I played it where I shook off the "Jamie Gold of Irish poker" tag some had given me after I won the European Deepstack but failed to get another result for a few months until I final tabled the Masters. It's fair to say this tournament has been good to me: in the 4 times I've played it, I final tabled twice, and went out on the second last table once.
Jason looks suspicious as I chop the IPB Last Longer with him
Once again, Jason was to my immediate left. There was just him and me left in the IPB Last Longest now so I suggested chopping that to get it out of the way. After a joking refusal, he agreed. I was starting to regret this as with 7 left Jason had become the short stack. I was sticking to my usual very basic strategy with 20 bbs or less: ship or fold. By taking any shove I deemed positive expectation, I steadily moved my stack towards the average without showdown. The key to that strategy is to get big enough so that when you do run into a caller you can take a hit (alternatively you can be lucky enough to have the aces this time, or suck out). I was almost there when it got folded to me on the button and I found ace ten. With Jason perilously low behind, I considered a normal raise to induce a shove from hands I crush, but the problem was the big blind Eoin Olin. Eoin is very competent and aggro in these spots and I really didn't want to induce him to shove a hand I'm not much better than flipping with, so in the end I stuck to plan A and moved everything in front of me into the middle. As it happened, all the chips were going in pre no matter what I did. Once Jason quickly called I figured I was in bad shape, and was. His AK flopped 2 pair and crippled me down to 7 bbs.

That meant I basically had an orbit to get it in, and a few hands later K5s looked good enough to go with from early position. Rafter flatted the button for a big chunk of his stack so I figured I was in bad shape but was hoping 30/70 at least. The SB then reshipped and I now feared the worst. Rafter folded AQ apparently and the other guy had KK. Not enough hearts appeared for my liking so it was time to shake some hands and leave the scene.

Busto

I went to get something to drink with Mick McCloskey to shake off the disappointment. No regrets, the AT ship was standard and in the end I had the choice of shipping the K5s or shipping blind next hand. I was just unlucky on both occasions to run into hands that crushed me but I'd run well to that point.

I was hoping either Jason or Alan would go on to win. Apart from the fact that they're both good mates of mine, I thought they were the pick of the players left. Unfortunately they were the next two out before a 4 way chop. Had it been played out, my money would have been on Eoin Olin to win, which given my record wih Jason and Alan probably means he'd have been fourth had it been played out :)

It was my first time actually playing with Alan and he impressed me as a tremendous natural talent with immense potential. Jason always brings it and is probably my biggest rival on the Irish scene in terms of consistency in these things. JP joked at the start of the final table that every time he runs a tournament, one or both of us makes the final table.

Also, special mention to Mark McDonnell, who once again got unlucky when it looked like he was crushing an entire tournament. Mark always seems to get unlucky just before the final table but one of these days, one of these days...
One of these days kid, one of these days...

Turbos ftw
The last side event was an $80 turbo. I find it hard to resist a good turbo, and with only 2 tables, it seemed like a good way to blow off some steam. Breifne Earley was the early chipleader using the rather novel strategy of playing every hand blind. My most interesting hand was the first one I played. The irrepressible Phil Baker had just arrived to my immediate left. Most of the table limped and I found AKs on the BB. Playing 40 bbs it's a good spot to stick in a big raise, but I know Phil likes to get creative in these spots so I just limped along. The fact that the hand was suited meant that if worst came to worst and there was no raise, I had a well disguised hand that played well multiway. As it happened, Phil went for the squeeze with 54s and folded after I shoved. While he was tanking he asked me if I had a pair, saying he'd call if I told him I hadn't. I assured him I had a pair and when he folded showed him my pair (of clubs). Any table with Phil at it is going to be noisy and entertaining, so it was a shame to see him leave.
The fabulous Baker boy

In the end, I got headsup with Breifne. I had just over half so took the title (and most importantly the first place on the Hendon Mob :)) I joked to Jono afterwards that my Hendon mob for that one day, featuring as it did two final tables and a "win", was more impressive than his entire one :)

By now most people had left. I somehow ended up playing a weird version of Chinese poker with Mick, Phil and Ger (Harraghy). Deena attempted unsuccessfully to buy me and Mick a drink but Mick was having none of it. In recent months he's totally cast off the role of the world's best round dodger and he's buying drinks willy nilly left right and centre.
Mick wants to buy you drink

Also well done to Rory Brown who was third in the more legit 150 side event. And a big well done to JP and his crew. They never fail to deliver and while they must have been disappointed by the numbers I'm sure this event can grow in the future.

EPT Country of the Year
At the Irish Open recently, my friend Steve Berto told me that my cash in Berlin had pushed Ireland to the top of the EPT Country of the Year table. I found it hard to believe a 56th place finish could do that, but it turns out it's calculated as percentage of cashes to total number of entries, and you need 16 cashes to qualify (to stop a small country winning it with one cash). As my Berlin cash was the 16th and final Irish cash of the season it meant we moved onto the table at the very top, ahead of Spain. Poker's not a team sport but at a time when our ability as a nation was called into question I guess it's nice to win this. It was certainly a team effort as it took the efforts of 13 different players to get us to 16. Special well done to Tom "The Bomb" Finneran who got three, and Bobby Willis who got two. Apparently the 13 of us get to play a 10K freeroll at the next London EPT which should be good craic.

Well done to to my German pal Maxi who not only got headsup in 2 consecutive EPTs but followed it up by winning 2 EPT awards.

Connie's kingdom
Earlier this week I headed down to the Kingdom with Mrs. Doke for a couple of days. Connie had asked me to go talk to some of the more promising and proficient players there. Featuring as they did a Killarney main event winner, several Irish Open qualifiers, and a few online winners, my qualifications to teach them anything are somewhat questionable, but I greatly enjoyed the time I spent with them. My son Paddy challenged me recently as to what if anything I was doing to help out in the current economic mess Ireland is in, and it occured to me that maybe one thing I could do is steer some people in the right direction to making a good living from poker. So Connie's invitation was well timed and I'm always open to any casinos or clubs who want to try something similar.

While I was there I played a satellite for the UKIPT in the Cue Club. Connie's hospitality was rewarded (not!) when we got headsup and he saw at first hand how well the Dokester can run at times, as I won a few flips and 40/60s to claim the prize.

I had another good week online. Didn't play much volume but did well in the little I played. I got a second in the 20K on Irish Eyes, a third in the 15K on Party, a deepish run in a SCOOP and a few other bits and bobs.

Vegas is just round the corner so my thoughts are starting to turn to there. I'm very confident this year with how I'm playing and running. Basically I'm doing about as well as I was at this stage last year online (and last year was so good online I'd take it every year) but considerably better live.

Before Vegas I have a UKIPT to win, and a CPT grand final. There are also some other things in the pipeline, including a regular slot with Breifne on Dublin City FM's Sunday afternoon sports show (I should be making my debut there this Sunday) which I'm excited about. My second column for Player Ireland (on the Irish Open) should be out soon and there is another big piece of Doke news you'll be hearing about soon in the next blog and elsewhere.

Just another few days in the life of Doke...

2011-04-27T06:24:00.002+01:00

My Irish Open main event went pretty much the same as almost every other time. You'd have thought that doubling the starting stack to 20k would have given me a fighting chance of at least making the first dinner break but no, shortly before it was scheduled I was taking the walk of shame trying to avoid contact with people who looked like they might want to ask "How are you getting on?" thinking the last thing I wanted was to be sitting down to dinner with a bunch of people still in. I almost made a clean escape but after stopping to commiserate with fellow busto Peter Barable I got hauled back to do an interview with Jesse May.

This at least provided a few lols. Jesse clearly had no notion who I was so was frantically typing my name into the Hendon Mob as the cameras got ready to roll. Struggling with a first name that can be spelled at least 4 different ways and a surname with at least three variants, and an apostrophe in there somewhere too, he was making little headway so I told him "just type Doke", which is the fastest way to get there. This seemed to tickle Jesse's fancy.

Jesse couldn't see the wood (or foreign flags) for the trees (Irish ones) so he decided to go with the "live grinder who has cashed a lot in Ireland" angle. I used to be quite cranky about this given that my record outside Ireland is roughly similar to that in Ireland in terms of number of cashes/number of tourneys entered but decided not to bother pointing out the 5 cashes at EPTs, 2 GUKPT main events, UKIPTs and Estrellas cashes. I did get a little cranky though when Jesse asked me if I felt like my type of player was being surpassed by the Internet players with their fancy 3 4 and 5 bets. Mainly because I've played at least 1000 times more tourneys online and made way more money than live and think of myself primarily as an online player. One factoid Jesse had been given to back up his hometown hero angle was that I've supposedly cashed in more tournaments in Ireland in the last 3 years than any other player. I don't know whether this is actually true but if it is I guess it's pretty cool.

For the record, my exit from the main was pretty standard. I opened tens utg, Johnny Weafer and Carmel Reynolds called behind, as did a blind. I flopped middle set and got it in on the turn against Carmel who had flopped top 2 and a backdoor flush draw. The backdoor closed to bring my Irish open challenge to a phut.

Back to the night job
The one advantage of busting early is I was home in time to do a bit of a Friday night grind. It was a pretty good one, highlight being a third place in the 40k on Party for 4k. I was a bit disappointed in the end as I lost a 40/60 to get headsup with a chiplead and then a 60/40 to exit and there was 11k for the win. Three tables out I was chipleader, with moorman (second in chips) to my immediate right. We had a lot of battles as I decided I needed to tackle him now that I had the artillery rather than let him run over the table into a big chiplead. He's pretty hard to play against but for the first time I think I at least held my own.

Who can resist a turbo?
The following evening I was back in the Burlo sitting down to the 300 turbo. I ran pretty well in this and ended up in a rather bizarre 9 way chop. Bizarre because I had less than 5% of the chips, and the guy who suggested the deal 40%. He took 7k and everyone else got 5k. Someone in the bar asked why I agreed to a chop as nobody in the country plays 10 bbs or less better, but I feel with 3 bbs any edge anyone might have is pretty small in real terms. 5 grand for a few hours of dogging people seemed like a decent enough return.

Before the turbo I met Jono and a bunch of his mates for dinner. These included Max (who came second in the Berlin EPT), Ricky (a valuehunter of the highest order: this man insisted on being allowed into the second softest WSOP event, the Ladies, and was toying with the idea of entering the Ladies event this weekend), Mickey "mementmori" Petersen and Todd Terry.

The highlight of the day was seeing three of my swaps or stakes survive through the bubble. Only Mick Mccloskey was well stacked: Jason and Rob were clinging on for dear life. Jason then ran queens into kings but at least it was the right side of the bubble. I probably didn't make things better when I pointed out to him that I got more for a few hours dogging people in the night's turbo than he got for 2 days of quality poker in the main event :)

Live multitabling. Why not?
I've gotten out of the habit of swapping with people since it became less crucial to reduce my variance in live events but I decided to swap with a select four to give myself a good chance of a sweat. Three of the four had made day 2, as well as three I'd bought stakes in. I swap good. You'd think this was good enough reason to go to the Burlo but like the eejit that I am I decided to try a new experiment: live multitabling So I ended up playing the 1k and the 200 turbo simultaneously. This turned out to be an even worse idea than it sounds: it just meant I spent a lot of time walking across the room missing hands on both tables and spewing equity on the double. I got a bit of a stack in the turbo only for it to disappear in 2 hands near the bubble. When I used to be the tightest player in Ireland, I always thought I was unlucky if I didn't win two pots where I got it in ahead. These days I think it's unlucky to lose two when I get it in behind both times. :)

Highlight of this day was doing another interview with Jesse who now knew who I was (fame at last). Dan Harrington of course didn't but it was pretty thrilling to be in the presence of the man whose books taught me how to play tournaments. Dan's a very nice guy in person.

Three becomes one
While I was busting two tournaments, missing two dinner breaks and talking to two American legends, the main event was slimming down to one table, and one of my horses was getting there. The previous night near the bubble Rob had come over to talk strategy as the bubble loomed. We both agreed that with Rob's stack at that point there was little point in taking any unnecessary risks. Some people believe you should always go mental on the bubble, but we've always been of the view that with a short or below average stack this isn't a great idea. You can't win a tournament with 60 left, and the equity you gain from a double up at that point is way less than what you lose if you bubble. So basically, don't gamble just for the sake of it. Now Robbie had ridden a below average stack the whole way to the final table. During the week he'd put up a post selling percentages more or less at face value. I jumped in for 5%, the highest I ever take in anyone (I prefer 1-2%), before deciding that buying one of the best live tourney players in Ireland at face value was just far too good a deal and went back to edit my post to 10%. Best edit ever.

I also did pretty well out of my perennial swapping partner, Mick McCloskey. Mick's consistency is phenomenal and while he'd like to have gone further he can be proud of another deep run that shows he can still challenge for the biggest prizes in poker even though he's now 97 years old:)

Taylor time!
Monday was going to be an exciting day given that I had 10% of a final tableist. In actual fact, the 10% was merely a nice bonus: even if I'd had nothing I'd have been giddy with excitement for Rob. Since I dogged him on my way to winning the European Deepstack three years ago, he's become my mentor, friend, roommate, co-commentator, travelling buddy. We've gone to EPTs, GUKPTs and WSOPs together, we spent a month together in a small Gold Coast hotel room in Vegas last summer without coming to blows, we've chopped some tournaments and knocked each other out of others, we've spent countless hours swapping bad beats and talking strategy and swapping intel and screaming at each other all in the name of poker. All of which meant I was more nervous than if it had been me on the final table. Mrs. Doke was shocked that I wasn't able to sleep, having watched me take my own final tables and big days in my stride as just another day at the office after a good night's sleep. But watching is harder than doing because you feel powerless.

I arrived in the Burlo a couple of hours before kickoff. Rob and I ran through the table draw, the stacks, what we knew about the other players and how we thought they'd play. Just like old times. After taking a break, this was Rob's first big live outing in about 6 months, and the break clearly did him good. The head had cleared, the old razor sharp mind was back, and I'd never seen him as upbeat and enthusiastic. As it started, I felt a knot in my stomach and crossed my fingers that this would be his day of days.

In the end, it wasn't to be. He didn't get the breaks he needed but he outlasted two to claim over 60k, his biggest ever live payday. He was carried out on his shield. Most people fundamentally misunderstand Rob's game seeing him as the ultimate nit. I went to eat with him and Cat immediately after, and Rob was happy that he'd gone out making a brave move to get a stack rather than blinding out or down to the point where a double up would merely prolong the agony.

While it would have been great to see him win, I pointed out that now he would always be a guy who had final tabled the Irish Open. He's proven he can compete at the highest level. The Rob Taylor story is far from over.

Livestreaming
I spent most of the rest of the day doing some unexpected commentary for the Internet livestream. Iain kept asking me to come back saying people were enjoying it. To be honest my read was he had to be lying but needed someone so Paul Marrow could take fag breaks, andd I was slightly worried about what the reaction would be as I was pretty tired and also a bit down after Rob's exit and trying to talk intelligently about what's happening on a table in the distance while out of the corner of your eye you see someone has typed "WHATS HE TALKING ABOUT? HE SHOULD HAVE SHOVED! THAT IDIOT KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT POKER" in response to your latest comment.

I can only imagine how tilting it must be to some to listen to me droning on about optimal game theory (luckily I'm the only person in Ireland who will never experience that) so I was very alarmed at this overdokage, and I'm not and never will be a professional commentator like Emmet or Bex so all I could do is basically say out loud what I was thinking about the poker. Much respect to Emmet or Bex: it's impossible to describe how difficult it is to keep talking on demand for hours on end. I felt my brain turning to mush towards the end of each 20 minute stint so I can't really imagine how they manage it for hours.

I was therefore very pleasantly surprised to find that the reaction to my commentary was on IPB, in the chatbox and in person and texts was overwhelmingly positive.

It was a very interesting and exciting (for me anyway) final table to comment on. Irish players like Rob Taylor, Seamus Cahill and Niall Smyth stepped up to the plate and all played brilliantly. There were very few clear mistakes and the overall standard was very high. Niall played brilliantly throughout and in my opinion totally outplayed Surinder headsup and was a most deserving winner. Seamus was magnificent and showed great character and temperament to keep coming back from the beats. Rob did everything he could and had he doubled up to 2 million would have mounted a serious challenge to Seamus and Niall.

I also had the thrill of co-commentating with Neil Channing, in my view the best expert analyst in the world on these things. Neil is also an absolute hoot and delight to co-commentate with. You're not going to get much mic time but as he rolls out the phrases like "between bankrolls" you're not going to mind as he has you in stitches. Hearing him say "when in doubt I feel the best strategy is to just agree with Doke" was also a highlight :)

Also credit to Iain for all the technical stuff. It's a tough and entirely thankless job but it's a great service to people watching at home and will go from strength to strength imo.

At one point I got a text from Jono asking me where I was. When I told him I was doing the livestreaming, he replied with his characteristic dry wit "Just another day in the life of doke", probably the best summation to a few days that includes a bit of everything - live and online, turbos and slow structures, talking about and to poker people - that makes up the organised chaos I currently call my life.

Goodbye to Bruce
I have come to the end of my tenure as a sponsored pro for Bruce. I have greatly enjoyed my time and association with Bruce, and no matter what happens in my future career in poker they'll always have a special place in my heart as the first to take a chance on me. I'd especially like to thank Chris Fitz who has been a gentleman and a pleasure to work with at all times, and a consummate professional.

Grinder of the Tournament

2011-04-12T16:57:00.005+01:00

I got to Berlin from Malaga via Dublin late Monday. I met Jason and Alan in terminal 2, and we ran into Dermot Blain, Isildur-tackler Seamus and Nick (Newport), all of whom were booked on the same flight. They were all playing day 1A, and the conversation centred around that being the better day to play (less travelling pros). I was down to play 1B and hadn't given it any real thought (other than wanting to give myself a full day's rest between Malaga and Berlin).

Romantic opportunities
I was rooming with Jason for this trip, and when we got to the Grand Hyatt, we found we'd been given a room with a double bed. I'd specifically requested a twin room so immediately rang reception.
"I booked a twin room but this one's a double".
"All the twin rooms are gone".
"Um, ok. Can we separate the beds at least?"
"No".

The receptionist obviously considered any further discussion of the matter to be futile because the next thing I heard was a click telling me he'd hung up. History teaches us that arguing with a German is not advisable unless you're prepared for a protracted and bloody ground war, so after informing Jason, we decided to let this one go. The bed was pretty big and a line of pillows down the middle seemed like the optimal play. Luckily, like myself, Jason is pretty easy going and doesn't tend to sweat the little things. Even more luckily, he's probably the world's quietest and stillest sleeper. Of course, I'm not as goodlooking as his other half Joy so he had every incentive to stick to his side of the pillow line.

R n R (rest and railing)
My day of rest was very restful, interrupted only by wandering over to the casino to see how the lads were getting on at breaks. Mostly they were flying: Derm and Seamus were up to 100K before you could say "Bob ist dein Onkel", Nick made steady progress throughout the day up past two starting stacks. Not much went right for Alan early but he knuckled down and also finished over double starting stack. No such luck for my roommate who lost the chance of a double stack early when he had aces busted by the kingers, and late in the day he was on the other side of a KK/AA cooler and didn't suck out. True pro that he is, after a short break to clear his head, he was back grinding at the cash tables. Jason is a phenomenally talented player who I expect to have a career in poker as long as he wants, due to his temperament and discipline. Jason is also entirely self taught, which I think is a huge long term advantage. In an era when the training sites are churning out legions of trained monkeys, being able to work things out for yourself from first principles is a big advantage, as the game keeps changing and evolving.

The year of the nit
Feargal Nealon has said to me on more than one occasion that 2011 is likely to be The Year of the Nit, and I'm kinda coming round to that way of thinking, at least in slow structured live tourneys like EPTs. In the second half of last year, buoyed by the success my LAG online game was having, I essentially tried to play a very similar game live. It's always hard to draw definitive conclusions live because sample size is so small, but in the run up to Galway, I started to think maybe I'd opened up a bit too much and crossed over into spewland. The EPTs create an interesting dynamic because you have such mixed fields. You have recreational players who are not used to playing deep stacks and slow structures, and are therefore liable to make horrible mistake either before the flop, like thinking it's ok to 8x AK and then shove 300 bigs when you get three bet (this actually happened!), or after, like getting the farm in with one pair. To take advantage of these players while they still have chips, the better young players are playing looser and more aggro than equilibrium strategy (game theory parlance for the optimal way to play if everyone else is playing optimal). This in turn makes them exploitable if you know what they're doing, adjust accordingly, and they don't readjust. Basically, the TAG game becomes very effective again so long as you choose your targets wisely (the aggro LAGs who are good enough to know they're supposed to fold if a TAG shows strength, but not good enough to realise they're being exploited).

That was basically my approach to day 1B, a day of card death where most of the chips I got came from the stealing from the better LAGs. As such, it was a pretty uneventful day, the highlight of which was having one of the top female chess players in the world, Almira Skripchenko, to my immediate left. I don't get star struck around poker players, if I was sitting between Phil Ivey and Patrik Antonius I'd just be thinking awful seat draw, but chess, well, that's different. Smart chicks kick ass.

The nit against the maniac
The most interesting hand of the day for me started with me minning to 400 utg with tens. The table maniac called behind, as did the BB. Flop came 954r and the maniac called my cbet. The turn was a ten, and I went for and got the check raise. The river was another 5 and I bet less than half the pot for a couple of reasons:
(1) To get value from weak one pair hands that would fold to any chunky sized bet
(2) Hoping my opponent would interpret it as a weak lead and raise if he had air.

Apparently my opponent did think I had some sort of weak one pair hand I could be pushed off because he immediately moved all in and my chips were in before his. He had KJo. Towards the end of the day, I tried to cash in on my image and any reluctance of other players to play big pots before the bags came out, but ended up getting a few raises snapped off.

That, and losing a chunk with KK v 44 on a ten high flop that also featured a 4, meant I ended day 1A with a bit more than starting stack, an acceptable outcome. Jude Ainsworth and Tom Finneran were the other two Irish playing 1B, and every time I spoke to them at a break they seemed to have at least twice as much as me, but stack envy is not particularly helpful in the early stages of a long tournament. As it happened, they both got done towards the end of the day while the nit squeaked through. At the dinner break we legged it over to the mall. I reminded Tom that the last time I ran into him was just before the IWF last year, and he was congratulating me on my year and saying he was having a bad one. Since then, he's gone on a real heater and has been the most successful and consistent Irish player on the international live circuit in the past 6 months. I hope it's not the case that every time we meet our fortunes flip, as if it does, that means I should be avoiding Tom like the plague, and he's a fun guy to spend time with. Thinking aloud, he reckoned none of us imagined we'd be making our living this way when we were studying for our Leaving Certs. He also told us he'd dug a ditch the previous week and on balance thought it might be an easier way to make a crust. I definitely agree with the first proposition, but I'm not sure about the second. We went for a cappucino in the Hyatt after and ran into Donnacha O'Dea, who told us he was over for the cash action, which was already mental by all accounts.

Back in the comfort zone
If there's one thing us online tourney bumhunters do well, it's playing stacks of 30 bbs or less. I started day 2 with 27 bbs, and apart from a brief surge on day 3, remained between 15 and 30 bbs for the rest of the tournament, picking my spots well and making the most of the few hands I did get to have the Poker News blogging team dubbing me "Grinder of the Tournament". Big stacks are more fun, and my record in rebuys online where the stacks are deeper is much better than my record in freezeouts where they're not, but I firmly believe that the true pro plays all stack sizes and structures well, which means being prepared to grind it out for long periods when you drop low rather than just flinging it in in an attempt to gamble your way to a big stack.

Payback with AK
AK was my scourge live all last year. If I'd folded it every time I'd have had a better year live. But day 2 was the day it repaid my faith in its charms. The day was another one of card death. The few hands I did get were AK though, and I generally doubled up with them.

Late in the day, I got moved to Nick Newport's table, a few from the bubble. A few hands later, he was dogged with AQ v the table chipleader's A5o, a cruel fate. Apparently he went out near the bubble of his last EPT too, but he's obviously doing something right getting to the bubble, and it's only a matter of time before he gets through one. It's a good sign too that the thought of blinding through the bubble never crossed his mind.

Bubble? What bubble?
A couple of hands later, just as the dealer was telling us that she once dealt a bubble that lasted over 3 hours, it was announced that we were on the bubble, but that there were all ins on three different tables. They played this out quite tortuously to heighten the drama, but I was pretty sure the bubble had effectively burst, as more often than not the short stacks are behind in these spots, and the chances of all three surviving seemed remote. In the event, one guy did (by chopping) but the other two didn't. I was glad the bubble didn't go on too long as with my stack (about half the average), there was little point in taking any unnecessary gambles with stacks that covered me. Playing for the win is all very nice and macho, but there are certain times when stack size and payout structure makes caution more prudent. With half the average stack and 120 players left, you're still a 100 to 1 shot at best ftw if you double up, and most of your equity resides in your chances of cashing. One such spot presented itself the hand before Nick's exit: utg opened. I covered him and he looked like the type of player who might be looking to exploit the bubble, so I had decided to ship AQs if folded to me in the BB (discretion may be the better part of valour near the bubble, but that won't stop me if I think I'm almost certainly ahead and can get it in first with fold equity). But then the chipleader reraised, meaning if I do ship it now, I'm doing so without fold equity. I may very well be ahead, or flipping, but I'd be risking a lot more equity if I lose than what I gain if I win, so I just folded without too much thought. The chipleader showed jacks after the other guy folded so I was well out of that.

Having made day 2 in my last 4 EPTs without a single cash, it did feel pretty good to be bagging up in the money.

Rollercoaster
Day 3 was the day I finally started getting cards. Still grinding a 20 something bb stack, I did drop perilously low early in the day until I found a spot. Previous EPT winner Joao Barbosa opened in early position playing not much more than me. I wasn't exactly fist pumping on the inside when I found tens in the BB because Joao was by far the tightest player on the table (I've played with him a few times before and he always is) so there was every chance I was crushed and little chance he was folding, but you can't be folding tens with 12 bigs and antes in play either, so I sucked it up and shoved. He didn't look happy but called with a dejected shrug and turned over eights. My tens held and I got another doubleup two hands later. French livewire Aurelien Gugliani opened the hijack and after briefly considering the smaller raise with AK on the button, I decided to make things simpler and just shoved, since the smaller raise commits me anyway (not that I'm ever folding AK with just over 20 bbs). This has the disadvantage of folding out most hands I crush (weaker kings and aces) but might fold out some hands I want to fold (small and medium pairs). My general rule of thumb is that if the shove adds 20% or more to my stack if it gets the fold then I prefer to shove.

Much to my horror, my neighbour to the left who after a brief attempt to run over the table at the start of the day had settled down immediately reshoved. Gugliani tank folded and once again I found myself racing with AK, this time against tens. My chances were greatly helped by the news from Gugliani that he had folded the other two tens (this actually makes me a 52% favourite rather than a 43% dog). It also meant when the king popped out on the turn I was home and hosed.

Suddenly I'm up to almost average stack with 60 odd left.

The plainclothes detective strikes again
I drifted back to 275k when the Big Hand arrived. It was last hand before the break and I minned at 4/8k on the button with KcJc. A very loose German reraised to 40K from the BB, playing 250k. I quickly ran through the options:
(1) Fold. I ruled this out because I think my hand is too strong to fold in this spot against a very loose player who rarely if ever folded his blinds. The fact that it's the last hand before the break makes it more likely he has nothing much (he might be trying to exploit any reluctance I have to play a big pot just before the break having recently doubled up twice). The fact that it's the first time I've raised his blind might make it more likely he had a hand (as he'll think I'm more likely to have one), but not necessarily (I know players like Carter Philips routinely test players with an atc reraise the first time they raise to see how they react to a 3 bet). It being the last hand before the break, he may think it's more likely I have spanners. Another reason for not folding is I figure the time had come to move up a gear or two to try and start putting together a final table stack. If I folded I'd have 23 bbs after the break, back in the sub 30 bbs zone where there's very little room for creativity. I therefore ruled out the fold.
(2) The 4 bet. The problem here is that even if I raise to only 80k, I'm pretty much committed against his stack. So if I 4 bet, I'm likely to fold out all hands I crush and be forced to get it in against everything that crushes me. I might fold out hands like 22 or KQ (or maybe not) that I want to fold, but on balance the 4 bet didn't look very appealing.
(3) By a process of elimination we're left with the call. This seemed the most sensible option with a position and a suited hand (the suitedness makes it more likely I'll pick up flush equity that makes it profitable to shove over his inevitable c-bet). So I called. It's less than 10% of the effective stack to call and folding on the flop if it comes horrible is ok I think.

The flop came QcTs2s and he led at it for 41K. I didn't think very long before shoving: tbh I think it's pretty standard (and the other Irish I talked to agreed). He doesn't have to fold very often for the move to be profitable given my open ended straight draw and backdoor flush draw. Once I announced all in, he looked pained, and I relaxed thinking he was definitely folding, or if I was called, I was in decent shape with 10 to 14 outs. He looked to be on the verge of folding a few times and I thought he was just Hollywooding, but he eventually found the call. I was pretty sick when I saw his hand: AK, an ace high hand I have fewer outs against than if he has a set. No 9 or ace or club appeared, and I was left with 3 bbs.

As we walked away from the table to the break, WPT winner Cornel Cimpan beside me commented "Brilliant shove, terrible call". I guess it's either a terrible call or a brilliant one: most of my range crushes AK there and with the board so draw heavy I'm also shoving all my made hands, but I guess he figured at the very least he had 15% equity with the gutter and he was getting 2 to 1 on the call. He also had a backdoor flush draw with the ace of spades.

I have no real regrets about the move. Even if it didn't work on this occasion, I think it would more often than not (and on another day I'd suck out), and as I said, I felt the time had come to kick it up a notch after grinding 20-30 bbs for 2 days.

Last Rites
I came back from the break thinking I had a round to get it in, but actually I only had one hand. Moved to a new table, I found myself pot committed in the BB with 76. The small blind shoved AKs and after an interesting 543 flop that gave me the nuts but him the nut flush draw, I doubled up. I needed one more double up to get back into the tournament properly but it wasn't to be. I got moved to another table which featured eventual winner Ben Wilinofsky (who apparently never shuts up at the table, but is an entertaining motormouth rather than an irritating one and carries himself with considerable class). After finding 42o in the BB and having to fold (I'm a 2 to 1 dog at best), I found 55 in the SB, good enough to call the utg shove from a guy with only slightly more than me. He turned over A7s so again I was racing for my life. The flop bricked out, but he caught running clubs to flush me out.

All in all, an oddly anticlimactic end. Having found myself in survival mode and thinking about the equity of money jumps for most of the day, after I hit 300k I stopped thinking about the money jumps as now most of my equity resided in the chance of the big score, only for it all to go quickly wrong. I usually feel devastated after exits but bounce back quickly: this one was kind of the opposite. Immediately afterwards, I felt kind of numb and not too disappointed as I was happy with how I'd played. Delayed reaction I guess cos I woke up the next morning feeling worse than I ever have the morning after. I guess it took the night for it to sink in how little the 12500 I got for 56th really was in comparison to what was on offer for the big prizes, and how rare these opportunities come along.

The show must go on
Still, no point brooding too much over what can't be changed, so I jumped straight into the 1K side event. I got off to a very good start: the general standard was quite shockingly bad. I was feeling very confident when one of those spots arose, you know, the heartbreaking ones where you do everything right to get the farm in as a 92% favourite but find it's the one time in 13 you're destined to lose. Cornel Cimpan opened utg to 500 at 100/200. I flatted behind with aces, as there was a bunch of trigger happy squeeze merchants yet to act. Sure enough, the kid in the BB ramps it up to 1850, Cornel calls, and I thought for a while trying to decide how much to raise to. In the end I went with 4200, chosen to make it look like I'm not yet committed and might fold to a shove. The kid was clearly having a hard time believing I could have a proper hand here and after spending a few minutes staring at me while I tried every reverse tell in the book, eventually shipped AK. The board ran out QTxJx to leave me with debris, and I never recovered.

The turbo king strikes again
The one advantage of the quick bust out in the 1K game meant I could play the 300 turbo. My only ever EPT side final table came in a turbo (I chopped one in Vilamoura last year) and I do very well in turbos online so I love to turbo. The key is to win your first all in, something I managed to do (with a flush against top pair) and I mowed through the field into the chiplead with 10 left. At that stage I had 35% of the chips. From there it was all downhill, as one of the most tilting players I've ever encountered took my stack in instalments.

Hand 1: 10 left, it's the final table bubble, and a short stack moves in for 5 bbs. The drunk old Russian calls in the sb, as do I, and after I bet the queen high flop he shoves and I find myself admiring his set of sixes. 25k goes east.

Hand 2: Early on the final table, the drunk Russian who was antagonising everyone even the dealers with his antics (playing so slowly he kept getting clock called on him and needing to be told to ante every hand, occasionally refusing to do so with a shrug and a "No understand English") raised the button playing 20 bbs. His steal stat was 100% (he'd already showed up with T5o utg after one such steal attempt) so ATs looked pretty big in the big blind. I shoved and found myself admiring his aces. Ship another 60K east.

Hand 3: Shortly afterwards I called a shorty shove for 30k with AQs and lost a race against sevens. I folded a bunch of 7 and 8 highs while I waited for the really short stacks to get blinded out, which left me with 30K and 5 bbs six handed. QJs seemed like a reasonable hand to shove over the Russian's range of atc. He called slowly and turned his cards over even more slowly after nodding and saying nice hand. This time I found myself admiring a pair of queens.

So out in 6th for 1450, which meant I'd made a profit of 20 euro on the day. Who says there's not good money to be made playing live tourney poker? :)

I played the other 330 turbo the next day. This time I didn't win the first all in, so I had an evening off.

The Great Berlin Robbery 2
Last year, the Berlin EPT made news all over the world by virtue of a daring daylight robbery by some guys in balaclavas. This year's daylight robbery was considerably less daring and is unlikely to make the news anywhere. Last year the robbers wore balaclavas: this year Spielbank employee uniforms. Let's just count some of the ways this robbery was perpetrated
(1) When you pay €20 reg in the Fitz for their monthly tournament, they give you free drinks all night and a three course slap up feed. When you pay €300 in Berlin, they give you, well, less than nothing. I say less than nothing because not only do you not get fed or watered or even a €10 voucher, they charge their captive clientele criminal prices for food and drink. Like €5.50 for a small bottle of water. The same bottle will cost you 11 cents in the supermarket across the road from the casino. So why doesn't everyone just buy the water across the road and carry it in to the casino? Ah, they've thought of that too. They simply don't allow you to bring any food or drink in from the outside, and the King Kong sized security men guarding the entrance to the casino seemed more concerned with stopping people sneaking cheap water into the casino than preventing a recurrence of last year's robbery.
(2) Exorbitant cash game rake meant I made no appearance at the cash tables in Berlin. While my attitude to live cash tends towards the "I'd rather be digging ditches", I had intended to play some this week given that the wifi connection in the Hyatt didn't inspire confidence. But as a matter of principle, I refuse to play in a game where most of the money is going to inevitably end in the rake slot.
(3) Most reprehensibly of all, they rob the dealers of their tips. As I was cashing out, there was the usual guilting "Would you like to leave a tip for the dealers?" inquiry. This always seems a little rich when you've just played for 3 days for double your money back, but on this occasion I was more than happy to leave a few hundred because the general standard of the dealing was excellent, and I personally know several of the English dealers and one Irish dealer and they're all good people and a few I'd even consider to be good friends. Several were wishing me good luck throughout the tournament and clearly rooting for me when I was all in so I'd have to be a real bastard not to want to tip them. Imagine my horror therefore on discovering from one of my dealer friends that they receive not a penny of the tip I or anyone else left. They worked very long shifts in trying conditions (poker players are a grumpy lot at the best of times and even more so when they're being asked to pay a 5000% rake on water) so keeping their tips is just taking the piss. Particularly when you consider that the dealers were by far the most professional aspect of the tournament: the Spielbank employees didn't do a great job of breaking tables properly, the clock was a joke (it kept disappearing and when it re-appeared was generally incorrect in terms of players left and average stack), and announcement of blind changes were unreliable (all the more important when for some bizarre reason most tables seemed to be positioned so the dealers had their backs to the clock).

My advice to poker players on tipping: ask a dealer first if they're actually going to see any of it. If not, buy them a drink or find some other way to show your appreciation.

State of the Nation
Last year I had extreme doubts over the wisdom of playing EPT main events, wondering how much of an edge anyone could have. This year, after a full year of concentrating on mtts online, I can see that the better online mtters (and I like to kid myself that I'm one of them) have quite an edge, so playing an EPT main event no longer needs to be justified purely as a chance to socialize or chase glory but is plus Ev. It also has to be said that pitting your wits against the best players and trying to think of new edges to exploit them as they try to exploit the live donks is a tremendous challenge beyond anything you'll have to deal with grinding the nightlies online or playing fast structured Sunday majors. While I'm much more confident in my ability to hold my own or better against the best these days, I don't think I'm optimal in every situation yet, but I have a good collective brains trust of poker peers and friends to run stuff by so I think I can continue to improve.

It's noticeable that the Irish are getting more numerous at these events and it's becoming less of a rarety for an Irishman to cash or go deep. In this EPT, about 30 from the bubble with only 20% of the field left, over half of the Irish who started (5 out of 9) remained. I was the only one lucky enough to cash, but I think it is evidence that more and more Irish are approaching these events properly and are all capable of running deep. When you see someone like Alan who just showed up at his first EPT with the game and the courage to go deep (and he went out shortly before the bubble in this one), it does suggest that we're finally becoming a force to be reckoned with.

When we went to dinner, Tom Finneran remarked on how much value there was in the field. Jude concurred, but qualified it by saying that once you got down to 60, there would be predominantly only good players left. With 60 left, I remembered Jude's words, and it did seem to be the case. That means that from that point on you mainly have to run good and but also be prepared to go for it (up the aggression or get run over). I think all the Irish playing EPTs regularly now are more than capable of doing that. I therefore expect us to keep getting into position regularly, and I firmly believe it's only a matter of time before one of us wins an EPT. A generation of predominantly live grinders is giving way to a new generation of players who honed their skills online and had played a thousand online tournaments and a million hands before they ever showed their face at an EPT. More are waiting in the wings.

Forwards and Backwards
The plan was that Berlin would be not only my only EPT before Vegas but my last trip abroad. Under pressure from Mrs. Doke to justify leaving the house when nearly all the profit seems to happen when I'm in the house, and not particularly enjoying the live grind, that seemed sensible. But after three winning away trips on the bounce and getting better at actually enjoying these trips, I may be going back to the Boss asking for permission to hit San Remo (by all accounts the softest EPT of them all) or even Madrid. Manchester was pretty grim but Malaga was a blast and a week spent in the capital of Europe's oldest civilisation and richest culture wasn't half bad either. Good food, good company, and a few very pleasant runs in the Tiergarten.

Before that though, it'll be back to the online grind after a 2 week break, and then the Irish Open. Having gotten the "never cashed in an EPT main event" monkey off my back, the next two monkeys to be tackled are a deep run in Ireland's premier tournament, and a WSOP event. The word in Berlin from the English camp is that very few of them will be travelling to the Burlington this year due to competing events that week, so the chances of a home victory are probably higher than in recent years. It would be nice for an Irish person to win the Irish Open this year. It would be even nicer if I was the Irish person :)

I Don't Like Mondays...

2011-04-04T21:10:00.003+01:00

This particular Monday is given over to getting from Estrellas Malaga to EPT Berlin via Dublin. Unfortunately I won't be in Dublin long enough to make it sensible to go home so it basically means a day spent in airports and planes. Still, it'd be churlish to complain about a bad Monday after a great Sunday, Saturday, Friday, Thursday and Wednesday.

My first trip to Spain was a qualified success (or maybe a score draw) on the poker front: played 4 tournaments, cashed in one (4th in the 300 side event). It was an unqualified success on every score: great hotel, great food, beautiful place, awesome company.

Mick Mccloskey was waiting for me in the airport with my friends Jono "gawa" Crute and Ger "JamieCarra" Harraghy. First laugh of the trip was Mick telling me that while he'd arranged to pick Ger up in Magharafelt, and had, he didn't want to go to the hassle of finding Ger's place so made him walk to a roundabout on the motorway about a mile and a half from his house. Mick defended himself by pointing out that "it's not my fault he lives on the wrong side of Magherafelt".

After checking in, we ventured out for room supplies and ran into TD Toby Stone. Toby lives over there now and is enjoying the beach lifestyle. It's always a relief to see Toby at events as he's the best in the business.

We mainly just wanted water in the supermarket. My line on water purchase is fairly standard: go in, and buy the required quantity for a price that looks reasonable. Mick's is slightly more optimal, but much more time consuming. Every time I thought the job was done and was wandering towards the checkout to pay, Mick's voice would pipe up from some obscure corner "Doke, put those back, I found cheaper ones". After a few such swaps, I put a halt to his gallop and called time on his search for the world's cheapest bottled water, insisting that we were settling for 20c a litre. Back in the hotel, we regged in the casino for the super satellite only to discover that one of the benefits was the casino left copious amounts of bottled water on tables.

One of the culture shocks in Spain is they do like their breaks. An hour into the supersat that started at 9, they sent us on a 1 hour dinner break (in the 300 side, we were sent on a 1 hour dinner break shortly before midnight). I got off to a decent start in the supersat but crapshooted badly to go out in 50thish (19 seats).

The main started at 4 the next day (the Spanish don't like early starts apparently). I didn't get the best of table draws: for one thing there were two other Irish at it, Irish Eyes sponsored pro Paul Lucey and Danny McHugh. I got off to a reasonable start but lost a biggish pot late in the day when I turned the nuts and improved on the river and still managed to lose the hand. That left me in push mode and I shoved an ace into two of them.

Before that we had the Stars barbeque where we ran into Jono's full crew, as well as Gary Clarke, Ciaran Cooney and Paul Lucey. Malaga is a nice place to just shoot the breeze with interesting characters.

Next day I got up and went for a run along the sea which was very pleasant, and hung with Gary for a while by the pool which was also good times. Gar's an interesting and thoughtful young guy.

We managed to round up a decent posse for a trip to an Argentian steakhouse on the marina that came well recommended. Jono's entire multinational crew of internet kids came along, as did Paul, Gary, Ger and Mick. Good craic unfortunately truncated by my decision to have already bought in to that night's side, a 150 turbo I had high hopes for. Mick, Ger and Paul headed back with me to join me in my attempt to put a Spanish flag on my Hendon mob while the others went on to a night of Schnapps fuelled ribaldry.

I got off to a cracking start in that. The standard was particularly awful so no great achievement there. Unfortunately it all went in two hands near the bubble: I shoved KQo because all the stacks behind were 10 bbs or less. I got called by AJ and TT so it wasn't the worst situation in the world with a king or a queen likely to propel me to a giant stack. Unfortunately this was live poker (online, the KKQ flop is odds on) so neither appeared. Next hand I decided to shove J7s as I didn't want the blinds to go through without shoving and ran into aces.

Saturday was quite a surreal day in which I was recognised twice by people I'd never met before, both of whom referred to me by different nicknames. First I went out for a run after breakfast. I ran to the marina and around it a bit and was starting to head home when I was passed by a small guy in his 50s. His running style suggested he was an ultra runner so I caught up with him and asked him. My read was spot on. I ran around with him for a while at a pace much faster than is comfortable for me these days. His English wasn't great but I did find out he was "just below international class" (which probably means he'd walk into most national sides: the Spaniards are one of the giants at ultrarunning). When I told him I used to do a bit of ultrarunning and told him my name, he laughed and exclaimed "Infirmo!", the name the Spanish contingent gave me after I ran myself quite literally into a wheelchair in Quebec in the summer of 2007 at the World 24 Hour Running championships. It's nice to be remembered, even if only for a feat of lunacy.

By the time I headed back to the hotel I'd run a lot farther and faster than I have in a while in the midday sun so I was feeling pretty shattered. I hung with Gar again at the pool for a few hours and worked on my sunburn before heading for an excellent Chinese with him and Mick. A rather lovely waitress did everything she could (including cutting and rolling my food for me) to make the meal memorable, but the highlight was when she asked Mick if we wanted a schnapps. Mick had acqueiesced to all other dessert and coffee extras til now but apparently suffering from a sudden POTULB syndrome (Paranoia Of The Unexpectedly Large Bill) he vehemently passed on the schnapps until the waitress said the magic words: on the house. Me and Gar had a good laugh at the sudden change on Mick's face from the grinch to a kid at Christmas: his eyes literally lit up at the prospect of free drink.

We also ran into Bomber Nolan who told us he'd seen Gary stumbling into the casino around 4 the previous night after the night out with Jono's crew ("and you'd want to see the head on him but....big bleedin pair of yellow sunglasses, bigger than his head they were"). Unfortunately photo evidence has yet to emerge of Gar's fall to Elton John world of novelty sunglasses.

At the pool, I ran into an English guy who said "I know who you are", ominous enough but it was "Granite" Neil, one of the 3x specialists who has suffered a SlowDoke bad beat or two. Interesting character who has been through a number of careers including actor that I look forward to spending more time with at future live events.

A pretty full day meant I was feeling and looking very tired as we headed into the last side event (a 330 2 dayer), something Mick commented on. I'd also taken a little bit too much sun and Mick turned harbinger of doom suggesting I looked like I had sun stroke. Not exactly auspicious for the side and I got off to a terrible start failing to win a pot for the first few levels. Quite frustrating as the locals were still horrific. Jono's German friend Marco, the Schnapps king, was beside me and we were literally agog at some of the stuff they were doing. Eventually I got a hand in the nick of time. Playing 12 bbs, a Scandi kid opened. I elected to flat, effectively turning my hand face up against him but hoping to induce a squeeze from a member of the clown college yet to act. In the event, only one of them flatted, and I got it in on the flop against the Scandi's massive draw and held. Before I turned my hand over he said "Aces, ja?".

That got me back to starting stack and after another period of card death my patience and discipline was rewarded late in the day with two doubleups courtesy of a flip and a 70/30. That meant coming back the next day a bit shy of average with 20 bigs. I finally managed to get a bit of live run good going. I won a few small pots, then a local kid not much more than minned out of the sb when it was folded to him. This seems to be all the rage online now but I'm not sure I like it much: I prefer a slightly bigger raise than normal and a tighter range of hands with which to do so. In any case, I'm happy to defend against it with a fairly wide range and A5s is in that range. The flop came A54 and after he checked I checked behind. If he's trapping with a big ace I think I can get him in on a later street, and if he has a pocket pair I think I get more out of him by checking the flop. The turn was gin: another five and he came out betting. His bet was quite small so I decided to go for a small inducing raise rather than risk him being able to get away with some of his stack if I wait til the river to show strength. He duly shipped his AQ.

I motored from there up to 90K, then got moved to Mick's table near the bubble. Low point of the trip was knocking my roommate out on the bubble. I raised with AK from the small blind and Mick shoved in. Mick's been a very good friend to me through thick and thin and I really didn't want to knock him out but I can't fold either. There's no point in playing if you can't be ruthless at the table where there are no friends as they say. He had AQ and I held.

During the break I headed up to Jono's room where the Sunday grind was in full swing. You really get an idea how quick Jono's mind works when you see him multitabling, checking a few forums, on Facebook, chatting on Skype, watching video footage of his night out, and talking to you at the same time.

I hit the final table with a decent stack, 3rd or 4th in chips. I was pretty card dead for the entire duration unfortunately. I stayed out of trouble and managed to avoid the spew that is so tempting when the cards or spots aren't coming so by dinner break there were 5 left and I was still more or less average. By now though, the blinds and antes were hefty and as I walked back from dinner I remarked to Mick that if you folded 15 hands you'd have done half your stack, so you have to go with any decent hand or spot. Unfortunately I did end up having to fold 15 hands so that 4 handed and the blinds about to rise 97s becomes a shove. I ran into AJs (same suit) behind and failed to suck out. A disappointing end but at least I got 3k for my efforts and perhaps more importantly a Spanish flag on my Hendon mob :)

A few drinks with Mick and it was back to the room to pack in the early hours. Jono and the two German lads Marco and Tim showed up, laptops in tow. Their plans to hit Molly Malones were sadly thwarted by Jono's continuing presence depend in a 55 on Stars. Ever the grinder pro Jono was unable to bring himself to just fling it in even though he reckoned it was minus happiness Ev even if he won the tourney and was rooting to be coolered. He was coming to the end of a 5 figure day: you have to admire the kid's ability to do that after a week of partying hard, and not just chuck the last game so you can go to the pub with your mates to celebrate. Mick eventually chucked them out as he likes his kip almost as much as his free drink. Jono went on to finish second in the tourney, sick little pup that he is. Respect.

A couple of hours kip and then it was taxi to the airport time to draw my favourite poker trip ever to a close. I'd like to thank the Irish contingent for great company and support, especially Mick: despite taking the piss out of him relentlessly in this blog, he's one of my favourite poker people. I just hope he didn't drop Ger off at the roundabout on the way home.

The braggart defends himself...

2011-03-30T14:43:00.001+01:00

OK, so here I am stuck on another flight (this one is going to Malaga: I checked) so it's time to splurge whatever random poker thoughts are swilling around my brain into another blog. Chatting to a friend on Facebook about enthusiasm, the subject of my last blog, got me thinking. I have a track record of total immersion in my latest obsession for a number of years followed by total withdrawal once my enthusiasm evaporates (and when it starts to go, boy does it go fast). I've gone through a number of different pursuits and pastimes in this way. Poker is the first one that has doubled as my livelihood so I guess I should be thinking of ways to sustain my enthusiasm for longer. A lot of the young grinders who do sick volume insist on taking 2 days a week off. I don't as yet as I just get restless on days off but will probably need to start scheduling off days at some point. I suck at resting and switching off though, which probably explains why I was a much better ultramarathon runner (where the key skill is to perform with as little rest as possible and you actually train yourself to run when already exhausted, demoralised and disheartened) than marathon runner (where rest and recovery are essential to progress).

I think I subconsciously use a number of strategies to help maintain my enthusiasm. One is to dwell on the successes and ups much more than the downs. My view on the downs is once you've reflected on them for lessons learned, you should pretty much just forget about them. But you should relive and savour the highs. My running coach used to emphasise this: enjoy and relish your successes, and on days when you find yourself struggling in a race, remember how good they felt and how proud you and those around you were of them. In poker, it's much easier to get over getting one outered in a huge pot if you remind yourself you're way up overall. This contrasts with a lot of players' view that you should dwell on your setbacks and forget your successes to avoid complacency or resting on your laurels.

Which brings me on to bragging. I think I'm well known and even despised in some quarters for the sheer volume of my brag posts on Twitter and Facebook. Opprobrium doesn't bother me in the slightest. It may be based partly by jealousy, or maybe by a misunderstanding on the reasons why I brag so much. I don't brag to be admired by others (although it's nice when other people are genuinely happy for me when I do well): I do so primarily as positive self reenforcement so I can maintain the positive mental attitude in this game where the bad beats and disappointments can drag you down.

Culturally, we Irish don't handle success very well, so we tend to downplay it if we happen stumble into it. We see bragging as unpleasant, and we applaud fake humility. I've lived here most of my life so this doesn't really bother me as I understand the reasons behind it, but my wife finds this facet of the Irish psyche almost unbearable. Her stock response to fake humility "Ah I was very lucky, I'm not that good at all at all" is "Yeah, I thought so", one guaranteed to instantly reveal the fakeness of most humility. I doubt there's a poker player in the world who doesn't think they're even better than they really are. Certainly no good ones. Would Muhammad Ali have been as compelling a figure if he had hadn't insisted on telling us he must be the greatest? I don't think so.

There is one other great thing about bragging. It tilts the Hell out of your enemies and fake friends, of which inevitably there are many in this game. Brag once to a fake friend and they'll probably muster a smile and a well done. Do so repeatedly and the facade drops and you see a more genuine response of begrudgery. As the song says, we hate it when our friends succeed. I think "we" here means people in this part of the world: other cultures seem to have a better attitude to success. I also think that if we genuinely hate it when our friends succeed, then they may be our friends, but we are not really theirs.

Doke's equation: E + V = +EV

2011-03-28T01:10:00.000+01:00

I've yet to make day 2 of an EMOPS, my second attempt wheezing to a halt late on day 1 in a manner resembling my first. I never got much past starting stack and the deck was complaining of a headache and therefore not in the mood to help me out. The few big hands I got failed to win big pots, my light opens and three bets got snapped off more often than not. Some funny hands and unorthodox play throughout though proved the value in these events if you can only avoid the minefield.

The tone was set on my table early in level 1. Folded to local on the button, he 4x's it to 200, and the BB defends. He led at a J83 board for 200, which got raised to 800, before he raised to 2200. Call. Turn an 8 and the blind almost had an orgasm and bet 6K. Snap call. River's a 3 and the blind snap shoves his remaining 12K. The button thinks for a little while, then bangs (literally: thump!) his chips in and turns over aces which obviously he can never seriously contemplate folding no matter how often the board pairs. The other lad had the nuts (quad eights) surprisingly enough given how little strength he'd shown throughout the hand.

I only got one big hand before dinner and that was literally the last hand before dinner. The best player on the table opened to 800 in early position and 150/300 and I found kings on the button and 3 bet to 2k. At this stage I had 60 bbs so I'm happy enough if we get it in preflop. He was playing pretty loose and the only other time I'd 3 bet I'd been light and forced to fold to a 4 bet, so I was hoping to induce a light 4 bet. As it happened, he flatted, and the flop came T52r, pretty good for my kings. He check called my continuation bet. Before he called preflop, he'd asked how much I was playing before he called, so his most likely hand is a pair he doesn't want to commit pre with. When he check calls my continuation bet, his range is pretty much decent pairs and sets, I didn't think he was bad enough to call with 2 overs. Turn was a blank (4) and I checked behind for a number of reasons:
(1) Pot control if I'm behind to a set or trappily-played aces
(2) To get value from one pair hands I beat. If I fire the turn, he'll almost certainly fold hands like 66/77/88/99 that I may get another bet out of on the river after I check the turn
(3) To protect future continuation bets. If I only check the turn with weak hands after cbetting the flop, observant players can float profitably against me (call a flop bet and fire a chunky river bet if I bet the turn). By showing I can check strong hands like big overpairs, I make this a less appealing proposition.

So my plan was to bet any blank river. Unfortunately the river was a rather horrible 3 putting four to a straight out there (any ace or 6 makes a straight). There's now no point in value betting as he won't call with anything I beat and if I get check raised it's horrible, so I checked behind (also, there are now more pocket pairs beating me than I beat). He showed jacks and as we got up to go to dinner said "that river saved me money" which is exactly right.

Card death and a few unwelcome table moves which meant I couldn't exploit my tight image when the antes kicked in made the next few hours tough going. The only hand of note I picked up was queens. A very good cash player I've played with before minned in early position and I found queens just behind. We had similar 30 bb stacks so my choice is between flatting and making a small raise to try to induce the 4 bet shove. I ruled out the flat because I thought a cold 4 bet from someone was less likely than a chain of callers which I definitely don't want. Queens aren't quite strong enough in the spot that I'm happy to let ace and kings rags in cheap, or give any small pocket pairs the odds to set mine. I'd definitely have flatted aces and probably kings, but instead I tried the small 3 bet. The problem with this is I'm not up against a donkey likely to 4 bet jam JTs but a very good thinking player who realises I won't be 3 bet folding very often with 30 bbs, and who won't be flatting "for value" either. There are many elements to tournament luck other than the obvious ones of flips won, suckouts or your big hands holding: factors like table draw and whether you get kings when someone else has queens or aces, and also the pertinent one here: when and who you get your big hands again. The fact that I got queens here with 30 bbs against a top class player meant I was a lot less likely to win a big pot with them. So it proved: quick glance at my stack and disciplined instamuck when it gets back to him.

The blinds kept rising, and I kept getting moved and seven highs, until I finally picked up AKs utg. I'd maintained my stack numerically but it was now only 15 bbs. Until quite recently, with antes, I'd just ship here (I still usually do online), but recently live have started making a smaller raise to try to induce action from hands I dominate. It's been working of in the sense that it's been having the desired effect (getting calls from hands like AT and KJ) but not in the sense that these hands seem to then proceed to suck out every time :)

So it proved this time with utg+1 asking how much the raise was before deciding to flat the 3 bbs playing only 11. Against a competent player the alarm would now be sounding, but he didn't strike me as the competent type. Yes, he was Scandi, but more importantly he was an aul lad. I say more importantly because aul Scandis seem to play as bad or worse than aul anything elses. Flop came QJx and with 2 overs and a gutter I'm never folding now so I led big enough to signal commitment and called his shove which amounted to a min raise. I figured his most likely hand was a pair so if he's setted up fair play to him, at least I charged him enough preflop to make it a mistake to call, and if he has I still have the gutter. Instead I was rather disgusted to see KJo which held. After a rather bizarre doubleup (I shoved an ace without bothering to check the other card in early position, and got reraised by the guy 2 to my right with QTo) and a period of treading water, I shoved ATo on the button into kings in the BB.

After a day's rest, I ventured back for the last side event, a one day turbo crapshoot. I walked up to the casino with Kevin Spillane and last year's main event winner Tim Timateou. Kevin's an instantly likeable person and was still in the main and therefore understandably chirpy. A lot of things are needed to be successful in the long term in this game and you see a lot written on some of them like technique, discipline, patience, tilt control and bankroll management. The one you don't hear so much about but is in my opinion absolutely vital in the long term is enthusiasm. It's very hard to maintain in a game where disappointments greatly outnumber ambitions fulfilled, where the bad beats just keep coming, where downswings are inevitable and luck the most important factor in the short term, but the ability to stay enthusiastic is a huge asset. If you allow the disappointments, bad beats and downswings to drag you down, it's almost impossible to put in the kind of steady graft and big volume you need to make your livelihood long term in this game. Taking a break to clear your head, change your luck or get your enthusiasm back is all well and good, but before you know it you can find yourself on a break most of the time, and that's not good in a profession where you don't get paid if you don't play. Managing to recover quickly from setbacks and regain the enthusiasm to get up and try again tomorrow is vital. Or to put it in quasi mathematical terms E (enthusiasm) + V (volume) = +EV.

Unfortunately, neither Kevin nor myself got much luck on the day. He went out on the second last table and my side event campaign just served to illustrate how differently I run live and online. The standard was absolutely horrific so it was another case of "if you can avoid the minefield" and the fast structure and stationy type opponents didn't leave much room for creativity. I gradually doubled my starting stack, then reshipped it over a loose mid position raiser with AJs. Having played with him on the first table I knew he was a real ace rag merchant so as he tanked I thought I'm a 9 to 4 on favourite here if he calls, which he eventually did. Unfortunately he proceeded to hit his rag. You know you're running bad when you look to see what rag he has and then "see" it on the flop in your mindseye before the actual flop is dealt.

I'm back home for a few days, then it's off to Malaga for the Estrellas there, and then straight on to Berlin for probably my only EPT before Vegas. As appealling as San Remo is, I really don't want to overdo the trips away before Vegas.

Drunken duck

2011-03-24T15:04:00.000Z

After getting to the hotel, I met Chris Dowling and Roy Brindley to go get something to eat. We were joined by Mick Frisby and after a great Thai (I ordered the rather intriguingly titled drunken duck) that met with the Roy the Boy seal of approval, we meandered through a night that included an initially deserted bar where the main mystery was as to whether the barmaids were lesbians, a rather frightful looking Irish pub that we bailed on after one look, and the casino which has a very Vegas feel to it. Roy described it in advance as an air hangar filled with slots and that summed it up. The poker and gaming room were well hidden away and guarded by a barrier that required 6 euros to penetrate. Rather neat trick that, getting people to pay cover charge for the privilege of losing their money.

By now the beers had turned into Bushmills so my memory of the rest of the night is a little hazy. But it definitely included Gary Clarke (who had joined us at some point after busting the tournament) spinning up at Punto Banco despite none of us having much of a notion about the game, and everyone chipping in to send Chris off to jump into a 5/10 game. I went over periodically to watch Chris putting on a master display of folding when behind, and betting and hero calling when ahead. In about an hour he'd spun the buyin up to 2.5, which basically meant that at the end of a night that included a great meal, great company, much drink and no work, I somehow had more money in my wallet than at the start. You can't really do better than that.

The burning question

2011-03-24T12:04:00.000Z

Clearly, there's something wrong with me. I keep saying "I'm going to play less live so I can play more online" but somehow keep finding myself on planes to some live event with nothing better to be doing than tapping out another blog. This morning, I worked out that I'm going to be away from home for two and a half of the next four months. When I told Mrs. Doke, she asked the very legitimate question "What the Hell is wrong with you?". If she had her way, I'd never leave the house.

This particular plane is (hopefully) on its way to Lisbon. If not, this will be a matter of some concern and disappointment not just to me but to the two young Waterford lads I keep running into at these foreign events currently sitting one row in front of me, and Chris Dowling currently minding the world's largest carry on bag several rows behind me.

These EMOPS have been good hunting grounds for recent Irish raiding parties, and in addition to those on this plane a few others like Gary Clarke and Roy Brindley will also be in attendance. All of which is building nicely towards the first Irish EMOPS in Clontarf castle in July.

On Monday, a few hours after finishing tenth in the warmup, I went into town to meet Stephen, one of my best non-poker friends. When I told "emsgawa9" Jono this, he expressed immediate sympathy for my friend on the basis that "I can't imagine someone who just final table bubbled a major is going to be pleasant company", a very valid point. I therefore resolved to do my best not to take my frustrations out on my friend, but of course I couldn't not tell him what had just happened. He smiled happily and said "Great, so you won 6 grand". I started to explain that this felt like a kick in the bollocks compared to the lost opportunity to win a major title (and the small matter of 160 grand) but I remembered Jono's words and stopped myself. It also struck me that my friend was right: at the end of the day I'd won 6 grand, and that was something to be happy about. Sometimes you need the perspective of a total outsider. The other thing that struck me was that there was no doubting that Stephen was genuinely happy that things are going well for me. It's easy to forget sometimes that your best friends are those who want to see you succeed, and when you do their reaction is one of genuine happiness untinged by any trace of jealousy.

Slow like an ultra runner

2011-03-21T05:30:00.001Z

Almost 3 years ago, my friend and poker soul bro Mark Dalimore asked me why I didn't play the majors on Stars every Sunday. He suggested I play the Million every week, then amended his suggestion to, "No, the warmup, better for our time zone". He then watched as I set up a Stars account and suggested the name SlowDoke, a jibe at how slow I ran in a so-called speed session he supervised that afternoon at the track. To prove just how apt the name really was, it took me until yesterday to actually get around to heeding his advice. And I almost didn't.

After a sleepless night grinding, I tried unsuccessfully to get to sleep in the late AM of Sunday, then when that didn't work around 2 PM again. By now the house was sufficiently noisy that I was definitely drawing dead, so I got back up and signed up for the warmup and a few other tournies. Several hours later, I've navigated my way through a 5000 runner field to the final ten, the final table bubble. I'm 8/10 with just under 10 bbs, and I'm in the BB with KJ. On the other table, I see the shortie who looked like he was trying to slowly blind out of the tourney finally get it in with A9o v 88. When the flop came KT8 I thought "Great, final table!". But no: he hit a jack and then a queen for a runner runner straight and it's back to me. The other shortie looked like he was trying to slowfold to the final table too, so I figured if I tried to outwait them, I'd be hitting the final table with 2 big blinds if I was lucky. With only an additional 2k for ninth but over 150k for the win, that didn't seem optimal. Meanwhile, back on my table the button had raised, and my HUD told me he was doing this more or less every time it was passed around to him. So KJ is ahead of the range but unfortunately not ahead of his hand (AQ). The QTx flop gave me an openender and an overcard but I missed to bubble the final table. Obviously gutted to come so near but no regrets over the exit: while I'd prefer to be getting it in first with actual fold equity, that wasn't possible at a 5 handed hyper aggro table and I really couldn't afford to drop any lower to have a decent shot. I got 6K for tenth whichh would normally be a good sized score for me but obviously wasn't massive consolation with almost 160k for the win. There's no point in whinging though, and little to legitimately whinge about: I ran very well for most of the tournament and I'm confident that if I keep playing my best, I'll get the big one at some point.

I got tremendous rail support from my online poker buddies (most of whom were playing umpteen tables themselves, and one of whom was coming very close to winning his own European major, the Ongame 200k), and also a lot of IPBers, so thanks to everyone for that.

I'm off to Lisbon on Wednesday for the EMOPS. A nice big live score would go some way to relieving the disappointment of another crossbar.

Catching the little ones

2011-03-15T04:24:00.000Z

My days as a competitive runner seem more distant than they actually are (less than 4 years ago I was a national champion at 24 hours and 3 years ago had just won the world's most prestigious 6 hour indoor race setting a number of national records in the process). My biggest weakness back then was I never managed to successfully defend a title. It seemed that with the best will and preparation in the world, once the gun went and I found myself in a race I'd previously won my unconscious was going "meh, already done this once". The flip side was that my biggest strength was I seldom if ever followed one lacklustre performance with another. Almost all my biggest wins followed hot on the heels of crushingly disappointing races. My biggest triumph (winning the New York ultra marathon) was a few weeks after the most disappointing race I ever ran (2:52 in my last ever Dublin marathon). If I was a racehorse, the jockey would have to be prepared to risk overuse of the whip.

I went into the 300 side event in UKIPT Manchester still smarting from a very lacklustre performance in the main event. I'd spent most of the previous 48 hours resting up in the hotel room reflecting on a few bad calls that effectively scuppered my main. I hate excuses for performance failure: if you're that way inclined you can always find an excuse or a reason to fail. I've become very stoical about variance and bad beats, they really don't bother me much any more, but bad play (on my part) is a completely different matter. When I started playing, I was still one of the physically and mentally fittest people on the planet. When you know you can run from Dublin to Galway in a day with an injury or an illness, you tend to think sitting at a poker table making good decisions for hours on end is a piece of cake by comparison. It's only recently that it's hit me that I'm not as young or in anything like that kind of shape any more and illness or tiredness are much more likely to affect me at the table. I therefore need to start thinking more about preparing myself physically and mentally for a live tournament the way I used to for a race in the days before, rather than just turning up to play after a couple of sleepless nights.

For a variety of reasons I got very little sleep in the 48 hours before the main event, and towards the end of the day I actually felt myself on the verge of nodding off at the table. I showed up for the start of the 2 day side event in a much more rested state, and it showed in my performance, which I think was my best live one since UKIPT Galway. That said, it was almost one of those "never got going" tourneys. I was already down to half a stack when I called a small raise with 55 in position. The flop came 965 all spades, the 2 blinds checked, the raiser cbet, and I now had to decide between the flat and the raise. I'm very unlucky if there's a made flush out there, but it's highly likely there's at least one flush draw out there. I quickly preferred the flat for a number of reasons: if there's more than one flush draw out there I make more by keeping them all in until the turn, the flat may encourage the raiser to keep barrelling if he has nothing or "protecting" one pair hands, or may induce action from a flush draw (if I raise it's more obvious that I'm committed with my stack). As it happened, the blinds both folded, the turn came a red queen, the raiser fired again and now was a good time to get the loot in. He called with AsQd and the river bricked.

I'd moved up to 2 stacks when I got moved to a rather juicy looking table that featured one very loose spewy player with a massive stack. He was playing most hands, overbetting lots, and never passing on a chance to bluff. He was also very easy to read: smiling and talking endlessly when he had it, but ashen faced and quiet as a churchmouse when he hadn't. Unfortunately before I got a chance to start relieving him of his chips, Nick Abou Risk arrived and seemed to immediately formulate a similar plan. Still, at least he was on the right side of me this time, and the target had enough chips for both of us. Over the rest of the day we gradually extricated most of his chips between us, using similar methods (looking to play lots of pots with him, and giving him the chance to bluff when we hit). I finished the day with just over average and 45K.

The day 2 redraw put me at a much tougher table and I basically tread water til it broke with 20 players left. A well timed squeeze pushed me up towards 100K. A loose guy I'd played with for most of the tournament opened under the gun. Having already seen him do this with 87s I wasn't giving the raise much respect. Just behind him, a Korean lady who had a massive stack last time I saw her on day 1 but now shortish (but apparently no more reluctant about playing almost every hand) called, and as it was folded around to my small blind my squeezing range crystallised in my mind to "any ace any pair any two pictures". KQs was therefore a no brainer. The initial raiser tank folded (99 he said, which would have setted up on the river) and the lady snapped with T8s which didn't get there.

I maintained my stack through card death until just before the final table. Then a standard (for the stacks and blinds) shove with an ace from the small blind ran into a bigger ace in the big blind and when the dust had clear, my stack was down to debris. I don't subscribe to the theory than when you get crippled, you have to get it in next hand, so I folded a few 6 and 7 high hands before sticking my 2 bbs in with AT, which held against Q7o to almost treble up. This meant I now had a stack where I could correctly call a shove with (almost) any two cards. Nick Newport was sb and smart enough to realise this so he didn't push his spanners and I got a walk. Next hand I pick up JJ in the sb and shove into the bb's A3s and hold again so suddenly I'm right back in it.

It's always nice to make a final table. It would be even nicer to last more than an orbit, but with 10 bbs it was always likely I was going to have to win a flip to do so. 77 in the cutoff is plenty to be going with in the circumstances. Nick Newport tank folded the button, and chipleader Fintan Gavin snapped and announced he had AT. I said "race", not really expecting to win this one the way Fintan was running (his AQ dogged Alan McLean's AK on the bubble and just before the final table he got it in with AQ v AA and 55 and hit two queens). My expectations were not exceeded and I was out in 9th. Dena did a very good job consoling me but to be honest I wasn't really upset. As long as I feel I've played well I can generally accept the outcome.

Four Irish final tabled the 2 day side event, and Peter Barable was unlucky not to final table the main. When I started travelling to the UK, it seemed the travelling Irish were a little outgunned by the locals, but there's now a very good band of players travelling from our shores and we're starting to punch above our weight.

I decided to skip the last side event (a microstakes affair) and the plan was to do a bit of sightseeing in Manchester. Mireille knows full well what a cheapskate I am when it comes to expenses, so she took matters into her own hands ringing the hotel and booking the full entertainment package on her card for me. That meant my inner cheapskate now felt compelled to stay indoors and watch as many of the movies as possible :)

The first movie I watched was the Facebook movie ("The Social Network"). In that, the guy who started Napster says to the guy who started Facebook that you have a choice between catching lots of small fish or landing one big one, and that you never see a picture of a guy holding up a lot of small fish. His point was that you're better off shooting for a billion dollar company than settling for a million dollar one, but you can intrepret it another way. The guys who get their picture in the paper with the big fish are generally the amateur's who go out one day, get lucky, and catch it. The guys who actually make their living from fishing are the guys who go out every day and catch lots of little fish. While I certainly wouldn't say no to another picture of me holding up a big novelty-sized cheque, so long as I keep catching lots of little fish, I'll be happy enough.

Mehchester

2011-03-11T21:43:00.000Z

Well, after cashing the first first two UKIPTs of this season, my challenge in the third one (Manchester) never amounted to much at all. I was happy enough with my table draw, and early on moved up to 20K (from 15K starting) without too many showdowns or incidents. I struggled with card death all day though and eventually the table stopped believing I had a hand every time and I found it harder to get anything through. By dinner I was back down to 8k, thanks in no small part to a couple of bad river calls where I was pretty much only beating a bluff and he wasn't. I go backwards and forwards all the time trying to strike a balance between calling and folding too much in those spots: I think maybe now I need to start folding more again.

I played precisely zero hands in the next hour as there was no good spot or hand to get it in with, and was down to 4k by the time the blinds hit 300/600/75, so it was obviously imperative to get it in before I got any lower. A spot presented itself very first hand on the table. I found AQ in the SB and was obviously willing to get it in under most circumstances. The tightest player on the table, not realising the blinds had just gone up, tried to raise to 1k utg. The ruling is he has to min raise to 1200 and to be honest I'm not liking my AQ so much any more and I'm probably folding if the others fold round to me. However, a loose player flats the 1200 just behind which changes things again. Although my AQ is still in bad shape against the initial opener's range, if I ship and he reships to isolate and the other guy folds, I'm headsup getting almost 2 to 1 on my money because of all the dead money, and who knows, I can be lucky and he can have tens or jacks rather than queens plus or AK. In practise it works out even better: the initial opener tanks and folds (jacks he said), the caller calls with AJo, so I'm now a massive favourite to treble up. Unfortunately the flop came (case) jack 4 4, and I was on the rail a few seconds later. It seems that every tournament I play in Manchester ends the same way: I never really get going and late on day 1 lose the first time I get it all in.

Feargal is in bits with his wisdom tooth. While he was off looking for a dentist, I was trying to get his day switched. Toby and Dena graciously accomodated on that score. With me out and him unable to play we're basically holed up in the Ramada, which is a hell of a hole in which to be holed up. I've seen better prison cells, the TV was banjaxed, the internet connection still is. On the bright side, Feargal's managed to score a couple of tickets to the Man U - Arsenal game tomorrow (Feargal's a great man for this sort of thing) so if he feels better the plan is to hit that, and be back in time to play the 300 side event tomorrow. Only problem is the tickets are in the Stretford End so if Arsenal do score I won't be able to celebrate but will have to keep a poker face.

For the curious among you who wonder about the answers to life's biggest questions: Feargal is currently in an antibiotic haze snoring somewhere on the Richter scale between McCluskey and Power.

I went for a ninety minute run in and around Manchester through Chinatown, past the townhall, up to the cathedral, back through the shopping district, out to Old Trafford, and then back in around Manchester university and past the Hacienda (a sign outside which depressingly calls it iconic office space). Having seen Old Trafford (located not really in Manchester but a separate place called Trafford that includes Altrincham, Stretford and Sale) I now understand why so many Mancunians are ambivalent about Man U: to put it in Dublin terms they're essentially the Bray Wanderers of Manchester.

Nick Wealthall makes a new enemy...

2011-03-09T20:13:00.001Z

As I've noted to the point of Grandpa Simpsonesque repetition, the down times associated with foreign trips is the best time to blog, and this one is being tapped up in Dublin airport at the ungodly hour that exists between 5 and 6 AM as I wait for my Ryanair flight to Manchester for the next leg of the UKIPT. Aptly enough, a few hours ago I watched myself feature on the latest Channel 4 episode of the Galway UKIPT. Feature is perhaps too strong a word for what was essentially an extras role, but I did at least get to see what I look like moving all in with AT. I also got to hear myself being described as "looking a bit like a badger" by the commentator, much to my own amusement but not that of Mrs. Doke. I've grown accustomed to comments on my appearance ranging from the mildly disparaging to the psychotically offensive, poker players being the cruel superficial lot that they are, so I don't tend to worry too much about them. It was tremendously amusing to see Mrs. Doke go on instatilt and start swearing death threats in French at the TV though. She then upped the hilarity content by going on to earnestly compare the commentator to "looking like a chihuahua, and not a nice one but an annoying little one you just want to kick or squish". Not a big dog lover, Mrs. Doke, and being French she doesn't need any real excuse other than an English accent to get her blood boiling. Quelle bande de cons ces anglais, je vais lui faire sa peau.

The next few weeks are going to be very busy on the foreign trip front, with Lisbon (EMOPS), Malaga (Estrellas) and Berlin (EPT) all on the itinerary. I'm looking forward to all three for different reasons.

The online grind has been going very well this year, no major downswings to report. Qualification for my first EPT this year was secured in a 3x. I won't bore you with the details of my other recent online results: anyone sufficiently curious can check them on OPR or PocketFives, or, heaven help us all, Facebook or Twitter.

I also booked Vegas: I go out on the 8th of June and should be returning on the 12th of July, unless I'm still involved in the main event. I'm sticking to a similar plan to last year: staying in the Gold Coast until the main event at which point I'll be moving in to the Rio. My oldest son Paddy has kindly agreed to fly in as the main event kicks off to help keep his old man sane. This should be a very timely boost as Paddy is quite simply one hell of a guy. Even if he wasn't my son he'd be one of my favourite and most admired people.

I'm here in Manchester til next Tuesday. Looks like a good Irish contingent, and I should learn the answer to one of life's big questions: does Feargal Nealon snore? Although Feargal's been my main man as far as poker friends go for a while now, this is the first time we've actually roomed together. I'm pretty sure that even if he does snore he can't be as bad as Mick Mccluskey, who sounds like a chainsaw, only worse. More like a chainsaw being used to kill an opera singer who swallowed an amplifier. He should even be an improvement on Nicky Power, who even if he isn't as bad as Mick is bad enough that Marty Smyth advised me to be prepared to sleep in the bath with ear plugs in and the noisy air conditioning on.

Oh yeah, one more thing. I don't normally plug other people's blogs but, actually scratch that, I probably do plug other people's blogs more than most. Anyway, my good pal Jason Tompkins latest blog entry on his approach to live mtts in Ireland is a must read for any serious student of the game here and goes a long way to explaining Jason's consistency.

Finally (really this time, I promise), well done to Jason who shipped the Ipoker 200K and had a 3rd in the 100r on Stars the same day, and to Feargal who got coolered to bust in 12th in the Ipoker 200K the following week when he was looking odds on to repeat Jason's success. Feargal's record in these events speaks for itself and it's only a matter of time before he binks big again.

The craziest man in Ireland...

2011-02-24T05:36:00.003Z

Well, the IPR live final didn't really go to plan. Or rather it did for a while, I moved fairly comfortably from 21k up to 27k in the early going before the big hand that scuppered my chances. Chris Dowling opened in early position, and I flatted with AQs behind. I prefer the flat to the raise here for a number of reasons: it disguises my hand, I don't really mind if a few people call as the suitedness makes it a decent multiway hand, and if I raise it probably folds out most hands I dominate while if I get 4 bet, it's a tough spot (I probably have to release the hand in the absence of any strong read). Another factor was that it was Cat O'Neill's big blind and she had a reshipping stack. Cat's good enough to squeeze worse aces and kings here that she'll just fold if I 3 bet. There's also a very strong chance Chris has no real hand: he sees Cat as a rock and Chris tends to raise blinds he perceives as rocks with any two. There was a time when Chris used to make donk sized big raises with rubbish which made him a more profitable 3 bet target, but these days he's much less exploitable as he's joined the "less than 3x" camp.

As it happens, everyone folds. The flop comes AQ4 with 2 diamonds. Chris leads at it, I raise, he reraises and I now have choice between shoving or folding. To be honest I don't think there's any real decision: if I'm going to fold top two in a headsup pot on a draw heavy board against a loose aggressive like Chris to a reraise, he can profitably reraise 100% of the time. The only reason I even paused was because of some speech play that convinced me Chris had a hand: people who don't want action on a hand don't usually talk much, and it smacked more than a little of Hollywood. However, realistically 44 is the only hand that beats me here, and Chris can show up with A4s or KdJd/KdTd/JdTd. I shoved and Chris' snap call confirmed my worst fear that it was 44. I still have 4 outs twice but I obviously didn't hit. That left me with just over 5k which shrunk to 4k when the blinds went through. Utg I picked up Q9s, bottom of the profitable shoving range. The structure was getting fast and I really didn't want the blinds to go through me again so I shoved and hoped. Nicky Sinnott called with AK on the button, first card I saw on the flop was a queen but a king also featured.

In the end, Nick Newport was a very deserving winner. He's been on a real heater since winning the Winter Festival and his results on their own merit a sponsorship deal. I'm sure he'll do very well.

I had another good five figure week online which definitely helped cushion the blow. I see online very much as the day job (or more accurately night job) so so long as that's going well I'm happy enough.

When I'm grinding, I don't usually even look at the chatbox (in fact I usually don't even have it open) but as my night winds down I become aware of it. So it was the other night when the last tournament I was in was the 20r on Stars. I was feeling pretty good and social as I'd final tabled two 10k guaranteeds on Party already (winning one, the 30r). Dean Price was hyperlagging it up (playing 42/38 full ring) with a big chiplead and I was 3 betting every so often. Suddenly he called me out in the chatbox, and said that allinstevie had just told him I was "a lagtard" and "the craziest man in Ireland". I said "sounds about right", he said "I can never fold to you again now", I three bet him next hand and he folded. Quite amusing, but Dean had the last laugh, I ended up busting on the second last table while he ended up winning. Respect.

In other news, I've managed to shift some of the weight I piled on recently. After Christmas, I'd ballooned up to an unprecendented 85 kg. At my running peak (which lets not forget was only 4 years ago) I weighed 70.7 kg. It's unlikely I'll ever get that low again unless I get cancer or something but I'd like to get back down to 75 at least. Anyway, half way there: I dipped back under 80 kg.

Plan is to play the Fitz EOM on Thursday and then just play online until Manchester. The second half of March is fairly hectic on the live front with Manchester, Lisbon and Malaga. I'm particularly looking forward to Malaga as it looks like there will be a good crew going. Jono Cruze and Ger Harraghy are both already confirmed, as is my roommate Mick McCluskey, and hopefully my consiglieri Feargal. Kudos to Feargal who continued his phenomenal track record in CPTs by scooping the Sligo CPT just before jetting off to the Alps for a skiing holiday. It's a tough life at times :)

I believe the Channel 4 coverage of the Galway UKIPT starts next Tuesday night. I may feature on it: was on the TV table for a while three tables out, and did an interview with Channel 4 immediately after my exit. Remains to be seen whether they use it or not: I have no real recollection of what I actually said :)

In other news, I've been asked to contribute a monthly column to Player Ireland from here on in. It'll be a mix of strategy pieces and reports and tales from tournaments I play in. First column will probably be on strategy for satellites which is topical with so many people trying to satellite into Irish Opens, UKIPTs and what have you these days.