February 2009 Archives

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

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I was suffering from a rough weekend, so didn't really fancy too much grinding on Monday. I had planned on giving the Boylepoker 'Cash Race Level 3' a run for its money, so I decided to wait till 7p.m to get grinding.

Boylepoker.com go heads up with Irish poker pro Padraig Parkinson.

I sat down to play the deepstack tournament in the Red Cow and noticed that six guys at my table had headphones on, so I went for a walk, figuring not much was going to be happening for a while. I met Brendan Murray who was talking to 'Roy the Boy' about his book (Life's a Gamble), which is hitting the shelves around now. I was a bit surprised that Roy knew enough about anything to write a whole book on the topic, but Enid Blyton probably hadn't even met Noddy or Big Ears and that didn't stop her writing about them.To be fair, Jesse says it's a good read and that's good enough for me. When I rejoined the tournament, Scott and I had a great laugh with Flipper. We were asking Flipper if it was a coincidence that after an 18 months gap he'd started updating his blog again right after he'd won a tournament but it didn't bother him in the least. 

I'm just back from a few months in Oz and Asia. Since my last blog post, I took a month off in America and came home in September fresh and ready to go. I opened my new Boylepoker account and bang straight away won the $500 high roller for $16k, which was the last iPoker nightly guarantee I had yet to win in 2008.

So after a few days break I woke at about 5am on Thursday morning and played a few super turbo heads up games, which I had a good start in winning four in a row. Although I lost a few $20 STTs in a row, which brought me back near where I started. I then took on a few MTTs and I was 3 of the money in a $10 2k Gtd whilst going deep in the $2 re-buy with $1500 gtd there. I was very disappointed with the first one, as I was the chip leader at one stage with 60 left, but I tried a 2 barrel with a flush draw and a guy called me down wit AK high. Then I lost a race and I was gone :( I was still 8 off the money in the re-buy, but I really wanted to go deep in one of these so this was my last chance!

A couple of weeks ago, I played poker in Clonmel for the first time in over 20 years. Back then, it was kind of an accident. I'd been working in my first proper job for just a few weeks and had to phone in to explain I wouldn't be coming to work as I had to go to a funeral in Clonmel, which went down very well as you can expect. The funeral was great craic and eventually turned into an all night poker game in a local Gentlemen's club.

On Friday night I went to play live and played right through till about 10 or so in the morning, after which I went home and fired up Boylepoker and started to get busy.

I played some STTs and in the first seven I failed to cash and I was only close to cashing in one of them, I then managed to win one and break the losing streak. I ended up pretty much level for the day.

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

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Boylepoker.com go heads up with poker pro Marc Goodwin.

In the summer of 1998, Paris was the place to be if you liked your football or your poker. If you liked both, it was heaven. England's player A was in both categories. He also had another fairly good reason to be in Paris that summer. The English police wished to speak to him regarding a minor misdemeanour that they thought he might know something about. He also thought he might know something about it, so to be on the safe side he headed for the World Cup and the dealer's choice game in the Aviation Club de France. The Irish understand that one.

Frustration is the word of the week folks. Since Monday I've dropped back about a quarter of what I have won over the past 2 weeks (which was a fair bit). I know this isn't much of a swing, but they're big enough sums and I despise losing money - who doesn't right?

With 5 players left in the European Poker Open V, everything was running to plan. I had 40% of the chips in play, at least double the amount of each of the other players. Then everything went wrong and I finished 3rd. So what happened?

I started playing again on Wednesday night starting with a few MTTs, I had set my alarm to get up in time for the freerolls as I thought I might get a result in one of these as they are usually good value; however, it was not to be.

I did though get a good run in one of the MTTs, it was $5 and $6k gtd with 1400 runners or so. I was going ok for a long time but when it came down to the business end, I couldn't get a hand. I think I was knocked out in 40th or so for about $32 but I can't really remember as I had this all written down and my laptop crashed so I lost my first draft :(

Well it is the start of the Party Poker European Open V and the "Lucky Logo" has already struck gold - Andy Ward and Marc Goodwin are both through to the semi-finals.

It is heat number nine and it's my turn to don the Boyle badge, I am hoping it will bring me the same amount of luck as its predecessors Doh! Wrong already, I look at the draw and see Padraig is in my heat, jeez he is not only donning the logo but he is Irish too, the world is against me.

I said after the Pokermillion final that despite the fact that I was very happy with the way I played, I felt like I was a pretty lucky winner, because of my comeback from 15k and also because I had to out-draw Eoghan in the big hand heads-up.

Congratulations to Richie 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.

I arrived back from my short break in NYC this week. What a crazy and expensive city. I suppose it doesn't help when you get stretch hummers to and from the airport though :).

But sure, why not splash out a bit considering my challenge is going so well. I got back on Monday morning around 7.30 and went straight to bed. When I woke up I was still feeling the effects of four days of drinking and was not in the right frame of mind to play so I decided to wait until Tuesday to get back to it.

Boylepoker.com go heads up with Irish poker pro Dave Callaghan.

Last weekend I avoided the card rooms, the computer and the Deepstack tournament, and ventured to the big smoke to meet an old friend. I got off the bus in Dublin city centre and went straight into Fibber Magee's bar, which happens to be directly opposite the bus stop. Andrew joined me shortly after and we had good fun catching up on old times, between those awkward silences that occur when you haven't seen someone for years.

Manila is bit more like Bangkok, except not as polluted and just milder in general, but it was much poorer and less developed than I had expected. Conversely though, our hotel (The Dusit Thani) was pretty solid. Vesty, John and I enjoyed probably the best buffet I've ever had. There was a lovely Italian (yes restaurant), a very good gym, nice rooms and sickeningly polite staff - they actually made me feel bad, they're so polite and nice! So basically if you're in Manila, stay there.

What's up sickos? Been a while since my last post... been meaning to do it for ages but...well I don't have a decent excuse apart from that whenever I'm at my laptop I can't resist opening up poker sites and getting extremely busy and then I never have the energy or interest in doing it after a long session. God, that's such a weak excuse considering I have no real responsibility whatsoever.

Anyway, as some of you will know I have been away for the past five weeks or so on a holiday slash tournament trail type buzz; although whenever I'm filling in my customs forms I always put "Work" or "Business" as my reason for visiting. I think it's because it makes me feel important and professional. I am neither, sigh.

The Aussie Millions officially finished a week and a half ago, although I'd given up before it got to the end. There was no improvement on the tournament front for me or any of the other Irish guys, although we only played another few between us.

I actually only played one more tournament and despite not actually getting knocked out, I still didn't manage to make the money, although I did lose more chips than I actually started with... confused?

As I said in my last blog, I had decided not to play any more tourneys as I seemed to be bang out of form, but I decided to come out of retirement for one last one. I didn't know anything about this tournament, but when Neil Channing phoned me and asked me if I'd like to be his partner in the team event the next day, how could I refuse? It was a $2,200 buy in (per team) with half hour levels and we took it in turns playing one level each.

Marc Goodwin and Ryan Fronda show us their poker faces... well for a little bit anyway.

Congratulations to 'robbie' 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.

I'm playing in the European Poker Open V this weekend and once again I'm happy to be sporting the Boylepoker colours for this event. I enjoy these TV tournaments; I have a very low patience threshold in live poker. So if you sit me down with a deep stack and a 12 hour session in front of me, then odds are I'm going to do something donktastic out of sheer boredom/impatience before the day is out. In the TV six-max games though, I only need to keep a lid on it for 3 or 4 hours and then come back again after a few days break, if I'm lucky!

Boylepoker.com go heads up with PokerSwat's Donal O'Connor.

We're all wondering how Pete Murphy has been getting on in the Murphy's Multiplier challenge, in which he attempts to turn €100 into €10,000. It seems like his bad luck is about to change, with some clever tactics, Pete is well on target for reaching the €10,000 mark!

After having way too much fun in Galway, I was delighted to get back to Paris and intended to follow through on my New Year resolution to take things a bit more seriously and to play a lot of side events rather than just piling straight into the bigger tournaments.

I was going to play just about every event at the Paris festival but due to a family bereavement that wasn't possible, though I did get back in time to play the main event. I didn't think it would be huge value as there were a lot of big names around for the poker awards but the French love satellites, so I was wrong again.

So back to the grind on Thursday night. I started off playing mostly STTs and had one cash game open for the duration, upping that to two whenever the numbers started to slow on the STTs. I really had another poor night, but I didn't play for as long as I wanted to try and get up at a reasonable hour on Friday and try some of the small MTTs during the day.