Did someone say shrink?

As was pointed out to me in the Fitz at their End of Month tourney I haven't blogged for a while. I think the main reason is there hasn't been too much to report on the poker front above the tournament reports I put into my weekly Irish Eyes letter.

In a past life, or the mid 90s to be more factual, I found myself working in Germany on a lucrative IT project with my friend John who had wandered into IT circuitously after spells working in a snooker ball factory in England, as a lab chemist in Japan and a barrister's devil in Ireland. John had led a pretty interesting life to say the least. Having moved from Tranmere to Derry with his family at the height of the Troubles at age 12, he'd never lost his English accent, which can't have been a lot of fun during his teenage years living in Free Derry surrounded by the people who kept blowing up his father's insurance office. The reason for the family move was that head office in England thought if they sent over their only Irish employee and put him in charge of the Derry office, the locals might stop blowing it up. Well, it was worth a try, but the locals were made of sterner stuff.

The project was lucrative and John was always good company. The only real drawback was that there actually was no project. There had been at one point but then the EU changed some minor regulation and the whole thing became redundant. Rather than accept this and inform their bosses the middle managers who headed up the project decided to stay mum until the budget ran out so as to avoid awkward questions such as "Could you not have foreseen this before we blew the GDP of a small country on it?", "Who is to blame here?" and "Who gets sacked?" Which meant long days of sitting at a desk for me and John pretending to work but mostly just staring at the wall. John noted ruefully on more than one occasion that the sheer pointlessness of it all was causing his personality to shrink.

Much as I love what I do for a living there are times when I feel the routine nature of sitting at a desk ten hours a day clicking buttons is causing similar shrinkage. Were the automatons I fully expect to see again this year in Vegas plugged into their Ipods wearing their Beats by Dr Dre over a bandana or a baseball cap describing their deepest emotions only in cliched acronyms like LOL, FML and FTW born that way? Or did they turn into personalityless drones after clicking the Fold button online for the ten millionth time?

They say it's good to get out of the house now and then, and I suppose I believe them.  So this weekend I'm heading to Mullingar for the new monthly game in Jokers Casino.

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Bless me Father for I have blogged

It's been a few weeks since the last blog, mainly because I've been playing almost exclusively online, and online doesn't tend to throw up too much that's bloggable. I did get out of the house once to play an Irish Open satellite in the Burlington which at least was a successful foray. Two tables meant only 1 ticket and €1300 for second, and I ended up chopping headsup with Daragh Davey.

Daragh was my roommate for a few days at the JP Masters festival. After a slow start that saw the main event draw less than 100 runners (and probably pound for pound the highest quality field ever in Ireland) things picked up day by day as the Norwegian invaders arrived for their own Norwegian poker championships. The Vikings may have toned down their rape and pillage traditions these days, but they certainly like to drink and gamble. By the time I left, the nightly turbos were getting more runners than the main event had got, and there were dozens of cash tables filled with deep pocketed Norwegians looking to get their gamble on.

My own main event was a pretty miserable affair where I basically withered from starting to a stump on day 1, and when I sent my 10 big blinds into the middle early on day 2 supported by a bad suited ace, I ran into a marginally better ace in the hands of Mully85. No suckout or chop and my stack became part of his as he mounted another live assault that brought him all the way to the final table. Well done to him and the other Irish final tableists, Tom "the Bomb" Finneran, Alan Truick and especially eventual winner Knuckles.

I did some live stream commentary with Iain (who had featured me as you've never seen him before on his UKI poker show) on the final table which was enjoyable as ever, despite some technical problems.

Highlight of my JP Masters campaign was a win in the 300 side event. This was sweet as it's been a while since I actually won a live event. Things didn't exactly go my way early on when I lost half my stack in a funny hand, but I hung in there with a short stack for most of the final table and got lucky when needed. Both Lappin and Young Master Davey were in attendance too. A bit of history between them earlier in the tournament made for an interesting dynamic on the final table. Lappin tends to be the most unpredictable player at the table and was again on this occasion, and was unlucky to be crippled by Young Master Davey in a standard racing spot on the bubble. I then crippled YMD in another racing spot where I had 26 outs by the river, and ended up headsup with English pro Mark Segal. 6:1 down in chips, I decided my best chance was to try to gradually chip rather than flip my way back into it, which led to a very long headsup war of attrition. I'd hauled myself back to near parity when I again got lucky when I needed to. As the blinds mounted leaving less room for smallball and widening the range of hands we were both willing to get it in pre with, we did get it in and my ace 5 was in bad shape against Mark's eights. The queen high flop threw up a couple of low cards giving me a gutshot that only a deuce could fill, but no more bother to me: out popped one on the river. That left Mark chronically short and I sealed the deal a few hands later with ace ten against a raggy ten.

My roomie won the unlimited rebuy side event the following night, fairly demolishing the final table, and we both made the final table of the last event I played out there. I was ninth on this occasion while he ended up fifth for his third cash of the series. Hopefully we'll maintain this level of hit rate at the next series where we're rooming together (the WSOP).

On Wednesday morning I headed to Lisbon with Lappin for the EMOP here. One of the biggest problems when combining live with online tends to be sleeping patterns which generally need to be switched around as online poker has a more evening/nocturnal schedule. We both got about 2 hours sleep yesterday, and after wandering round Cascais for a while, we ran into Kevin Spillane and Gary Clarke in a Beefeater pub. Kev got his hustle on and we found ourselves on the wrong side of a pool score. Once he realised we'd been hustled, Lappin started talking and called onthe Jedi mind tricks he uses to such good effect at the poker table, and before anyone was too sure what had happened we'd somehow clawed back to claim victory and the confused lads were giving rather than receiving hard currency.

We walked back to the hotel to get my passport to go to the casino, but instead fell asleep. When we woke a few hours later Lappin demanded an executive decision as to whether to get up for a few hours or try to sleep on. I ruled for the latter, and drifted back to sleep to the sound of Lappin whining how this could never work, we'd wake up at 3 AM, and then be rightly knackered by the time we had to play Day 1A at 4 PM. It's now 10 AM and he is still sleeping like a baby in a onesie, so though he'd never admit it, it looks like he was wrong.

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345 scratch cards

If you run a poker event with a €345 buyin and attract almost a thousand players from all over the world, is that success? I'd certainly have assumed so, but apparently many disagree if you made some lofty predictions about getting 4000 runners. It's an expectations game I suppose.

The oddly named Super poker event in Citywest was essentially a souped up turbo. There's definitely a place for this sort of event on the calendar and I do like a good turbo myself. It's a bit like the IPO, but in a much nicer hotel, and without the bonus of a thousand or so drunks wandering round the place, some of them representing Boyles slurring "Well, aren't we all having great craic altogether" in your face every few minutes.

I never really got going and busted in time for a nice leisurely dinner at Lemongrass in the company of Nick Abou Risk and his friend Gary, the Drumlish lads (Smidge and Jaymo), Mick Mccloskey, Daragh Davey and David Lappin. Between the eight of us us we had ten starting stacks collectively. However, late regger Nick had nine of those. Nick's just turned full time pro so best of luck to him.

I did get a bit of a run in a side event, and could have done well if I didn't keep getting all in pre with kings against smaller pairs or Axs. A lady who shall remain nameless once told me she was so fed up of getting her kings cracked that she'd started open folding them. I can't see myself going down that road though, but it's certainly an interesting line.

David and I did the livestream commentary on the final table, ably produced by Iain Cheyne as ever. My friend and constant heckler Alan Mclean (father of tourney organiser Stephen) had a great run all the way to the final table and was unlucky not to go farther. Chatting to him at one of the breaks on the final table, he told me a story that made me laugh. His wife Patricia is also a very good player: in fact many (myself included) would rate her a better player than Alan. Numbered among these apparently is their daughter, who tried to buy a share in Patricia in the event and wasn't too happy being fobbed off into buying a percentage of her old man instead. However, as soon as she realised her grudging percentage was amounting to something, she was on the phone constantly to find out how much she was getting now.

Well done to Stephen for another successful addition to the domestic calendar. It's not an easy business climate at the moment and not everyone appreciates a good live turbo as much as I do. When I asked one young pro if he was going to play it, his pithy reply was "I'd rather buy 345 scratch cards".

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In Fitz it starts

In June 2007, I walked into the Fitzwilliam card club to play live poker for the first time in my life. When I gave my name, Denise looked suspiciously at me and my brother and said "Brothers?". When I asked if it was obvious, she said "It's the hair". Fair comment, as both of us were sporting the wild bushy O'Kearney hair that no hairbrush could ever tame.

My brother had been playing a few years already. I'd been playing less than a month, and apart from a few online freerolls, nearly all my experience was Limit cash. The main thing I remember is that people seemed particularly unfriendly, at least by contrast with the running world I was still active in where people went out of their way to be welcoming to newcomers. That was certainly not the case here, where any sign of nervousness or inexperience was pounced on. I remember being rebuked by a dealer for a string bet, and other players for acting too slowly.

My brother was an accomplished player who was almost making a living from the game. He was almost making a living from a few other things too, so between everything it added up to making a living. To stop me scarpering off into the night as soon as I busted, he swapped 10% with me, making it clear it was a minus Ev act of charity in his case. He had yet to learn just how well his older brother would run. 9 hours later he was still loitering as his 10% was now headsup with one of the great characters of the Fitz, Colette "Smurph". Smurph described me on her blog at the time as a "nervous newcomer" (which I clearly was) that she felt she could read easily. That didn't stop her getting it in drawing to runner runner (and getting there). My brother was disappointed to see his equity disappear in this manner, but I was pretty thrilled with a second place finish in my first outing.

Over the next 6 months I was back in the Fitz two or three nights a week. I learned the live game there. It set me up for a breakout year in 2008 when I would be crowned European Deepstack champion, make a number of other final tables in Ireland and have two deep runs in GUKPTs.

When I go into the Fitz these days once a month for their End of Month game, I still see Denise behind the desk. Several of the dealers and other staff remain the same. But very few of the regulars in whose company I learned to play remain. They've been replaced by new faces. It's a sad truth that in poker most players are losing players, and most losing players reach a point beyond which they are unwilling or unable to go on losing.

One of the few regulars that does remain is the legend that is Bob Battersby. Bob is one of those people it's possible to both love and hate at the same time. Talking to him is generally a surreal experience akin to dealing with a bot online. He asks you something, you respond, he misunderstands, you repeat, he goes off at a tangent based on one word in your sentence you said or at least he thinks you did, you respond again in confusion, and he generally ends the conversation pointing out you have no idea what you're talking about. Which of course you haven't, so you have to concede you've lost an argument you didn't even know you were having, and still have no idea what it was about. Despite this, and the fact that every time I see him he gives no indication of any memory of ever having seen or spoken to me before, I do enjoy running into Bob. I also enjoyed knocking him out on the second last table. Bob takes these things in his stride without rancour better than most of the other OAP regulars in there. As I came down the stairs bringing my chips to the final table, Bob caught my eye and said "Thanks for knocking me out.....again!" Sensing my shock at this rare acknowledgement that he even knew who I was, he pressed home his advantage. "I never see the brother with you any more. Does he not play?"

I don't think anyone else in the Fitz even remembers that I have a brother who used to play, but somehow the most seemingly forgetful man in the place does.

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UKIPT Galway: another victory for the grinders

"Yeah but what's his biggest score?"

In poker, there's an eternal philosophical battle between two camps divided by their reaction to this question. On one side you have what I call the bink merchants, who judge a player purely by his biggest score or scores. On the other, the grinders, who prefer to measure success over statistically meaningful sample sizes of thousands of tournaments rather than the lucky strike.

After the recent IPPF which ended with two proper young online grinders facing each other and agreeing to chop, I wrote in my blog "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". UKIPT Galway continued that trend: winner Emmett Mullin is a proper online grinder who despite having a biggest P5's score of just over $20k has notched up lifetime online winnings (as tracked by PocketFives) of over $1 million.

Props also to defending champ Nick Abou Risk who mounted a Raymeresque defence of his crown all the way to the final table, and one of the most promising newcomers on the Irish scene John "jwillo" Willoughby who also final tabled. Nick's friend Max Silver also added a high roller crown to his main event crown.

My own UKIPT campaign ended rather miserably with an exact bubble in a side event. After seeing my stack almost disappear near the bubble when I shoved into aces, I'd recovered somewhat on the exact bubble only to lose a flip (queens v ace king). I then more or less replicated my live week on the Sunday grind online, building a few stacks only to see them combust near the bubble and ended up doing another couple of grand.

No point whining or moaning though: after 6 weeks mainly devoted to live poker, it's time to redress the balance and get back to clicking buttons for a living.

As I hung around Monday waiting for my train, I railed the final table for a short while. The one hand of note I witnessed saw Mully get two outered on the river after calling a check raise on the flop, betting the turn (and getting called), and checking behind on the river. I had to chuckle to myself when a cheer went up from the other player's rail as the pot was pushed towards their man, clearly unconcerned about the fact that at every point in the hand when chips went in, he was far behind, and then when he finally did hit a 20/1 shot on the river, not another chip went in. Mully took this temporary reverse without histrionics or even reaction and got on with the job of winning the war: as you'd expect from a man who has played millions of hands online and understands that poker is a game of luck in the short term, but skill in the long term.

Mully is one of the Omagh crew spear-headed by Steve "allinstevie" Devlin which features several top class online grinders and a great guy: when I switched from playing stts to mtts online he popped up a few times on the rail on some of my early Stars final tables to give me some advice on the regs which I greatly appreciated. So I was really thrilled to see him win. He's had a few deep runs and crossbars live before so it was great to see him get his just rewards this time. He has the talent and the dedication for this to be the first of many, but the great thing about being a grinder is that even if it doesn't happen, he'll still keep ticking along online on the way to his next million in lifetime winnings. In response to my tweet celebrating his victory, Mully replied, in his usual self deprecating manner, "thanks a million Dara, pretty unbelievable tbh, this ones for all us grinders out there".

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Dick from Nottingham

Most of last week was devoted to the European Deepstack. I played the main event and a few side events, and kept running into aces, except in one of the side events where I had the aces. Sadly, they were no match for KTo on that occasion, the only time the aces didn't hold.

I had a spell on the feature table late on day 1A. I'd gone for dinner with Jason Tompkins (who had just won the High Roller - well done lad!) and his lovely girlfriend Joy, Daragh Davey, Nick Newport and David Lappin. I'd stated my intention if I did find myself in the last hour with a 20K stack to get it in a lot lighter than I normally would in the hopes of either doubling up or busting (so I could re-enter 1B). There was general agreement that this was the soundest strategy in a deepstack event where you think you have a fairly big edge over the field: any loss in equity taking sub optimal gambles being compensated by gained equity from giving yourself a second full run at amassing a stack. In the event, my shoves all got through (I had a very good image at the table), which at least saw me move from under 20k to over 30k.

After busting the main event and the turbo side on Saurday, I played a few online games in the room. I late regged for the nightly Night on Stars on French Stars and ended up winning it for just over 10K, so once again it was a case of online to the rescue. The French at my table in the side the following day had heard of my win and were suitably impressed. Humble as ever, I pointed out that I'd actually won this tourney three times in the past few weeks, even though I've only played it about half a dozen times. One of French commented wrily: "You must like French fish". The win moves ne to my highest ever P5 rankings just outside the top 200 in the world. It would be cool to break into the top 100 this year (but I probably need to play a lot less live and more online to get there).

This blog is being written just after busting the main event at UKIPT Galway. After a ropey start I got up to 35k near the end of the day, comfortably above average. I then lost with tens versus jto when I called a 15 bb shove, and kjs v Aj when I'd opened and was priced in to call the reshove. AJ is this week's bogey hand: I was crippled today when I shoved qjs into it, and busted the 6 max side with it versus king 7.

The UKIPT itself seems to go from strength to strength with the number of runners way up this year despite the increased buyin. On Thursday Quentin (one of the Stars managers in the UK) invited the serial online qualifiers out to dinner and was interested to hear our thoughts on what appealed to us about the online sats and what improvements could be made. I think there's quite a widespread view of Stars as an arrogant market leader, so it's always good to see that they are willing to listen and maybe learn.

 I don't normally sell my action in live events any more but my German friend Max Heinzelmann asked if he could buy a "lucky 1%". Max won EPT Player of the Year last year for his achievement of getting headsup in back to back EPTs (Berlin and San Remo) so I figure his lucky 1% could be very lucky indeed. Unfortunately it wasn't to be though.

I still have a few sweats with horses in the main so hopefully one of them binks or else  I'll just have to try to win another online tournament to get out.

At the Deepstack, David Lappin pointed to a tall young guy and simply said "Dick from Nottingham". Finding myself standing beside him later as we filed out to a break, I asked "How are you getting on Dick?" The reaction to this polite enquiry was somewhat unexpected. Mainly because his name wasn't Dick. Turns out Lappin meant dick from Nottingham.

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Madrid and Prague

It seems that every year I start with my main New Year's resolution being *more online, less live". This year's good intentions haven't amounted to any more than previous attempts, with practically all of January being devoted primarily to live poker. And February's not looking much better.

I targeted the first leg of the Spanish Estrellas tour primarily as an easy supply of tournament dollars. The online sats are particularly soft so after multiple binks I was effectively better than freerolling in the tournament itself. Just as well, as despite a late rush on day 1 that saw me up in the top 10 in chips, it went south faster than a Ryanair flight to Madrid on day 2. Still, Madrid's not an unpleasant place to find yourself having to pass a few days in January, so with Mrs. Doke in tow for once, I diverged from my normal routine of playing side events and just chilled for a few days. Mrs. Doke is a very gifted linguist who is fluent in four languages and can get by in several others, but sadly Spanish isn't one of them. It was striking to watch how fast someone like her can learn though: by the end of the trip she was gabbing away in Espanol.

My travelling companion to EMOP Prague was the less linguistically accomplished Daragh "Mongoose" Davey, fresh from a number of recent online triumphs. With a very strong travelling Irish contingent that included Connie O'Sullivan, Kieran Walsh, Jason Arthur, Richie Lawlor, Daragh Davey, brother Noel and Duncan Keane, Damien Collins, Rebecca McAdam and her boyfriend Niall, Francis "Wally" McCormack, Kevin Spillane, Gary Clarke, and Mick Rossiter, there were sound reasons to be optimistic that at least one of us would make the final table. In the event, we got two on, my Irish Eyes teammate Connie O'Sullivan, and Kevin Spillane. Connie, one of the most popular figures in Irish poker, played brilliant disciplined poker with a short stack for most of the tournament and was unlucky not to go further than 8th. Kevin, who went deep last year in EMOP Lisbon, also got unlucky on the final table after making a brilliant call with sixes on a 98x flop against two overcards. Unfortunately, one of the overcards hit the river, but it was a great performance by the very likeable Kevin to finish fourth.

I never got going in the main event but did at least have the consolation of cashing twice (11th in the Leaderboard final, and third in a turbo side event) to come home with more money than I left with, which is always nice. Daragh bricked everything, despite playing very well, but did have the consolation of hustling me into my first ever degen bet on a sport I know nothing about. After offering me the pick of the teams in the Superbowl, I plumped for the Patriots purely on the grounds that I seemed to recall hearing someone say they were favourites. If the pain of having to part with hard currency wasn't enough to dissuade me from relapsing into such degeneracy in the future, a very strong desire to avoid ever having to witness the Mongoose Celebration Dance which made Madonna's half time show almost palatable by comparison surely will.

This was my first ever trip rooming with Daragh, and you never really know how you're going to get on with someone in that context til you try, but from my end it was a very enjoyable experience. Daragh's good company with a sly sense of humour and a good sport. He even endured having to walk round the same sights of Prague twice to show me around on my day off (we played different day 1's so he'd already done the tourist thing the night before). Better still, and I don't want anyone to think this comment is directed at them personally (even though it is: hello Mick Mccloskey!) Daragh is a very silent and sound sleeper. Maybe a little too sound: getting him up in the mornings was something I felt might challenge a nuclear bomb. But as he pointed out himself, it's a well known fact that the mongoose likes his sleep.

Next few weeks are very busy on the live poker front with the European Deepstack championships being followed by Galway UKIPT. Galway's always great craic and will be a chance to catch up with lots of people. My good friend Keith McFadden who has been off doing other things is making a comeback for this. Keith has a great record in Galway and will be lodds on for a deep run.

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