October 2009 Archives

After the early action in the first half hour of day 2, the rest of the day went fairly smoothly for me. I got up to 115k, which was ahead of the average, with my QQ v KK double up. I was reasonably comfortable for the rest of the day, eventually finishing on around 180k.

Yep, I finally got a car. Going to pick it up now; chuffed to bits with it I am. Went for an '08 BMW 3 series. Got it from Dave Masters Motors, did me a great deal. It will beat driving the mother's Yaris around anyway.

Congratulations to robbie on winning last week's caption competition with the following entry:

"boyle poker team employ rodney and delboy to promote the poker show in their own flashy way!"

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

Well, I had one shift this month, a $500 tournament on Saturday at the scary early hour of 12 noon. With it being a bank holiday at home and my mates all getting jobs this week, we decided that was enough of an excuse to do a triple header.

The password for this week's Boylepokerblog.com freeroll at 8pm on Friday night is doubleup. Best of luck!

Check out our 'Live Events' photo gallery, with images from some of the top live events across the world including pictures of Luke Schwartz in action at the Poker Million 2009 tournament.

Got it in yesterday drawing to one out, it was the 8 of the spades, it did arrive (it was only a $13k pot). I'd say the other poor fucker threw up. I don't think there was much I could have done but that's no real consolation for the other fella.

A huge deal was made of the final table. There was a large set assembled late that afternoon, complete with lights and at least four or five cameras. Things were a fair bit behind schedule with the field scraping by a lot longer than expected. We'd had a rushed dinner break with about 15 left, which involved us all eating whilst at the table playing. We then managed a quick 10-minute break before starting the final table.

I got a rough enough table draw for Day 2, with the overnight chip leader (Rupinder Bedi) sitting two seats to my right, his button my big blind, this was going to go very right or very wrong, very quickly!

I wasn't in Ireland for the Boylepoker IPO before I got a taste of the buzz that it was creating. The first taxi driver in the line of cabs outside the airport was a lad called John. I'd met John in his cab about two weeks before last year's IPO and on hearing about his genuine disappointment that that tournament was a sell out, I had managed to talk the good people in the Boylepoker team into sorting out a seat for him. This year, he'd left nothing to chance. He was in and ready to go.

I had never actually got to play the IPO before. Last year we were in England as Rob was playing a GUKPT event and we only got back in time to play some cash. My brief taste of the atmosphere though, was enough to make me want to play it this year, so I arranged the time off work and made sure I registered in advance as recommended by the tourney organisers.

"15 minutes into the IPO and the room clears as a rumour circulates that Mick McCloskey was spotted buying a drink at the bar!!"

All was looking well on my last blog, after getting off to a decent start I had moved onto 50/1 and was up to around $2700, when things took a turn for the worse.

Well I've made my way to Vancouver for a year, via a few crazy weeks in South America, which will not be documented in detail here. So I thought I'd get an ol' blog going to keep in touch and to keep myself in touch too, as it's the first time I'll be playing poker full time.

Last week I told you all I was off to play a €2k side event. I ended up coming 4th, despite being the deserving winner, but such is poker.

Congratulations to Markus Sippe, who took down the IPO 2009 for $62,250!!

Padraig Parkison speaks to the legendary Jesse May, after he exited the IPO 2009.

Some information on the last nine players in the IPO 2009. Here are the final table players:

Final Day players at the 2009 International Poker Open.

Another action packed day at the 2009 IPO.

Mad Marty Wilson tells us about his preparation for Day 1B of the IPO 2009, which included a barrage of Guinness.

Some action from the end of Day 1A and the start of Day 1B.

We started out with 711 players; this has been whittled down to 75 after 12 hours of poker action. A few familiar names litter the leader board.

A summary of some of the action at Day 1A of the IPO 2009.

The legend Jesse May enjoying the IPO 2009

We speak to the female contingent at the IPO 2009.

Snooker and poker, different names same game.

IPO Dealers

The password for this week's Boylepoker blog freeroll at 8pm tonight is IPO2009. Best of luck!

Congratulations to mustbemad on winning last week's caption competition with the following entry:

"there babe told ye you be a better poser than that o'shea guy."

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

Went to play a high roller event but it only got 39 runners so there was no real value, so I decided to give it the miss. Instead I headed back to play online.

Well my plan to get to 2k by Sunday night failed as I ended Sunday night with around 1750, still not too bad but a bit short of my target. I admit to making a mess of one tournament I was playing on Saturday evening which was a $20 f/o and in the middle of it I had to leave for about an hour so I shoved my last hand before I left and got a lucky double up so I got blinded away until I came back, not the best strategy but what can you do.

I think this time last year if I'd finished 10th in a tournament and picked up £38k whenever first place paid over £800k, I'd have felt pretty disappointed at ending up with a relatively small amount after getting so close to such a huge score. This time my circumstances were very different though, and when I busted out of the London EPT in 10th place I was just delighted to have had some kind of return to form after the way things have gone for me this year.

Had a bit of an upswing there online. Hitting a few hands and doing a bit of dogging. Started on Friday, Rees was over in mine and we were playing away. Playing some guy HU and was losing $4,5 to him HU in 10/20 PLO. Had $5K in the account so reloaded for the last $500.

A couple of years ago, I tried to beat a machine. It went something like this...About ten days after trying to withdraw several thousand from a site, I'd heard nothing from them, so I emailed them to find out where my money was. This was a mistake. I got :

Apologies for not posting any updates since I started, but I haven't played that much yet and have been getting over a rather long weekend. I decided at the last minute to take a trip to Killarney due to the presence of a large field and numerous satellite winners, which always means good value.

Congratulations to Chris on winning last week's caption competition with the following entry:

"Now i know u got a nice shirt john but hold up, hold up..beyonce has the nicest shirts in the world."

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

The password for this week's Boylepoker blog freeroll at 8pm tonight is blogger. Best of luck!

The WSOP Europe was a bit of a disappointment for the Irish team. I led the charge by finishing a few spots off the bubble in the £1000 No Limit event. The good news was that I got knocked out in time to catch the last 20 minutes of the United v City match. The bad news was that if I'd known they were going to play 14 minutes injury time, I could have hung around and at least made the money. A couple of days later, Dave Callaghan and John O'Shea finished in a heap on the bubble in the £5000 Omaha which is a real dirty one because not alone did they do their dough, they finished within about 20 spots of a bracelet.

I played the TV thing on Friday and as I am sure you have seen from Reesy's blog he took me clean out by the roots. It was the same story as the last 6 weeks, I didn't run or play good. It's been like this for 6 weeks now and I am fully hating poker.

So I played on the 'Late Night Stars of Irish Poker' show thing on Friday night out in Citywest. For those of you that are not familiar with the tournament basically there are eight heats each comprising of two pro's, two celebrities and two internet qualifiers.

Each heat is shown then on RTE 2 I think on Sunday nights and the winner of each heat goes through to a final eight where they compete for the $50,000 prize pool. I'm not yet aware of the payout structure.

Congratulations to charliebuket on winning last week's caption competition with the following entry:

"it looks like the recession has hit phil realy bad...awe...nana na na na IM LOVING IT ......
I CAN DODGE BUGERS BABY."

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

The password for this week's Boylepoker blog freeroll at 8pm tonight is multiply. Best of luck!

John Fox said something about how the best time to play was 3am on the last Friday of the month, and that playing just that hour every month wouldn't necessarily be what you wanted to do, but it would still be profitable!