October 2008 Archives

Congratulations to Rob on winning last week's caption competition.

For your chance to win €25 and have it deposited into your Boylepoker.com account*, just leave a comment.

The International Poker Open in Dublin was my destination courtesy of Boylepoker.com, who invited me to play as a guest and a bounty. Little did I know that this would involve wearing a Sunderland shirt for the duration of the day! This pained me a little bit being a lifelong Liverpool fan but we all have to suffer for our art sometimes.

I have a bad feeling that my luck is starting to change. In fairness, it's probably about time. On Friday before I left for Dublin I went to my local betting office to lift a bet and somewhere between there and my bank, I managed to lose £500 - and when I say lose I don't mean I lost it on a horse or something - I mean I must have dropped one of the £500 bundles that they'd paid me, while I was putting them into my pocket. Then, just to rub salt in my wounds I came out of the bank to find a parking ticket stuck to my windscreen for the second time this week.

Once again Mad Marty spins us a tale from his vast library of true stories!

I was standing around at the Killarney tournament recently and the talk was that the bar had been raised. Some of those who weren't paying attention fully went on a complete tilt because they thought that they'd have to climb over rubble to get their next drink. But they calmed down when they realised that it just meant that a new standard for Irish tournaments had been set. The IPO certainly met that standard, thanks to a fine piece of organisation from Stephen and a marvellous team effort in the hospitality department from the Boylepoker team. They don't use the term team lightly.

Congratulations to Gunshot Kid on winning last week's caption competition.

For your chance to win €25 and have it deposited into your Boylepoker.com account*, take a look at these two gents!

The Killarney tournament that I went to a couple of weeks ago was one of the best events I've ever been to and as I said in my last blog, I really hoped we could reproduce that atmosphere at the IPO. I knew that we had a hard act to follow, but I actually think we managed it.

Neil Badbeat Channing talks about Greekfish at the Boylepoker.com IPO 2008

The top 3 chip leaders take their seats at the Boylepoker.com IPO final table.

Jonathan Gelston has just doubled up, winning a pot approaching 3 million chips.

His opponent in the hand was Ruari Coy.

375k raise by Jon was met with a reraise to 900k by Coy. Jon promptly re-re-raised all-in and Ruari called, turning over his pocket Kings. Jon had an AJ offsuit.

Flop Q 3 2
Turn A
River 4

A cruel blow on Ruari who has been playing some smashing poker... but well done Jon.

Raymond Kerley has just knocked out Tommy Moir and Andreas Nilsson in a 3 way pre flop all-in situation.

Raymond's KK fended off the 6 6 of Moir and the 10 10 of Nilsson

This moves Raymond up to 1.75 million in chips.

Manager that is!

Padraig talked to Level One Liffey earlier today. Padraig should be eating his words now as Level One is still involved in the action and it's level 11.

Richard Forbes is having the time of his life. He tells us he has loads of chips, he must be hiding them though! He came from England to be here.

Richard says this is the best tournament he has ever been to. This is possibly because it's the only tournament he's ever been to!

Dave Callaghan was the latest big name to bite the dust as he went all in on the button pre-flop against Portuguese player Joao Monteiro. Dave was sporting a Q 10 offsuit and they were no match for Joao's pocket Aces.

Joao marches on, his stack looking a lot healthier now at 18k and he becomes the latest player to join the Sunderland supporters club; literally winning the shirt off Dave C's back.

Thomas Boivin was all in pre-flop with his 14000 stack and found 1 willing caller in Irishman Aidan Connelly (7600 chips). Thomas turned over the cowboys while Aidan displayed his AQ offsuit.

One deep breath later and the flop fell J 4 6, another breath saw the turn card, a 10. Thomas couldn't look as the dealer turned over the river card. His luck held as an 8 fell to send Aidan packing with a warm applause from the table for a game well played.

Thomas showed his appreciation to the dealer by hugging him enthusiastically.

Resident Boylepoker.com pro Marty Smyth has made a steady start to he IPO. Just now he took a pot of 2,500 chips from Stephen Kettel, although Stephen's excellent fold drew plenty of table tapping from opponents.

Stephen was forced into a decision when Marty raised the pot (2,500). Kettel took his time but folded and turned over his two pair; Aces + 4's. The fold was all the more difficult given that there was no flush or straight available.

Marty reluctantly showed his hand - two pair, Aces and Kings. Marty now has a stack of 15k in chips with 5 mins to the break.

Kettel on the other hand is down to about 6k and stuck between a rock and a hard place, with Marty Smyth on his right and Dory Zoumis sporting a 25k stack on his left.

Poker legend Jeff Duval is on currently on 19,900 chips and leads the bounty field.

Jessie May chats with Boylepoker.com sponsored pro Padraig Parkinson on Day 1A of the IPO at the Regency Hotel Dublin.

And we're off. Day 1A of the Boylepoker.com IPO 2008 is underway. The Regency Airport Hotel is alive with the sound of poker chips.

Our Ciaran, Paul and Gerry enjoy a laugh before the main event starts. Don't think they'll have much time for that kind of thing in few minutes. The place is buzzing now. Stay tuned for more.

We're almost there. Europe's biggest ever live poker tournament is just a couple of hours shy of kick off at 16:00. Check out our blog for regular updates. We'll have plenty of interviews, pics and the latest news on what promises to be a magic tournament.

When you look at the European poker "circuit", there's almost a two-tier feel to it - Premiership and Championship. If you're prepared to front up £5,000 to play a poker tournament, or better still, if you can find someone else to front it for you, it's Leicester Square, Budapest, Amsterdam and maybe even a trip to the Bellagio in between. Well for some.

My first outing as a Boyle's man in the WSOP Europe Omaha Championship threatened to start with a bang. I was minding my own business in Heathrow on my way to the Heathrow Express when Mr Smyth found me and talked me into going for a drink. It wasn't too hard. Twenty-five minutes later, we were evacuated in a security alert. Lots of people were quite anxious, but not me. I was with The Champ. Bad things don't happen when you're with Mr Smyth.

This week will go down in the history books as, err, long.

Things started great with a visit to Killarney to see how well or badly our competitors would run a huge poker festival; they ran it bloomin brilliantly and made us realise what a job we have on our plate next week to match what went on down there.

Congratulations to Marc on winning last week's caption competition.

Firstly I'd like to welcome my new stable-mate to Boylepoker.com and also congratulate Boyles themselves for signing one of the true greats of the game. I'd heard of Padraig and watched him playing poker on TV whenever I was just starting to get into the game, and I remember actually being a bit in awe of him the first time I met him.

"Tough times make tough people" preached Benny Binion.
 
Never has this statement been more apt than in today's economic climate. Boffins using terms like 'credit crunch' and 'economic turmoil' make me sick. You see, poker players are unaffected by a "recession".

Congratulations to JOHNWAYNE on winning last week's caption competition.

For your chance to win €25 and have it deposited into your Boylepoker account*, take a look at who Boylepoker's Ciaran Corbett bumped into recently.

In the second tournament I managed to get a small cash for £4750, but to be honest this was a bit disappointing too because my exit hand was a pot for 2/3 of the chips in play with 5 left, and would have made me a huge favourite for the title if I'd won. Also on reflection, I think I made a mistake in the hand which makes it even more annoying. 

It's been over a month now since I last played a live tournament, which seems like ages since I'd been playing pretty much every week for the previous few months. During my time at home I'd been getting back to playing online a bit more, which was going pretty well for the first few weeks, until I wiped out most of my profit in 2 bad sessions.

Boyle Poker's Paul Spillane was a regular on the tournament circuit several years ago. He was one of those guys who knew it was only a game and behaved accordingly. He added colour and fun to the tour, never more so than when winding up Americans, which seemed to be his main hobby. I walked into the poker room in Binion's one morning several WSOP's ago, wiping the sleep out of my eyes.