All Blogs

They say you aren't a great champion until you retain the title, so I was delighted when for the second time I took down Boylepoker's $500 'High Roller' tournament for $13,200.

Connie runs a €250 event in the Cue Club, Killarney every year and I've attended the tournament since 2006. It's always a lovely weekend, with a really good vibe in the club.

Part two of my trip took me to Cannes, where I played the Partouche Poker €8,500 Main Event.

I lost close to a quarter of my stack in that hand, and shortly afterwards I lost another quarter. I raised on the button with Ts8s, was called by both blinds, and the flop came AK3 with two spades. Some people might wonder why I would decide to check this flop, as it seems a great opportunity to represent the ace and pick up the pot, with a flush draw to fall back on if someone calls. There's certainly nothing wrong with betting here, but instead I chose to check for a few different reasons.

After Cork, I headed up to Donegal for the weekend with Nicky, Paul Spillane and Julian Gardner, for a golfing weekend. It was great fun with a lot of money changing hands but ultimately no one ended up winning or losing much, which is about the best I can hope for against these guys really. Unfortunately, the weekend still turned out to be pretty expensive for me.

Congratulations to power52 on winning last week's caption competition with the following entry:

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The winner will be announced on Friday September 10th.

Well leg one of my three part tour is over. A nice week is a fair way to describe it. I really liked Vilamoura last time I was here and it was even nicer in the summer.

The Friday after my last blog was one of the worst days of my life, well on paper anyway. I had my worst day of poker ever, dropping about $17k.

I heard there was a big gambler in the sports on Sunday night, so I decide to head in Monday night and see what the craic is. He sat into the 2/5 NL Hold'em game and made it €50 to go pre every hand. He started off sitting about €15k deep. I couldn't make a hand and was down about €1k in the game.

When I play poker in Cork I'm generally more enthusiastic about the game. I've often wondered why this is the case. I usually get some kind of a result there, but I'm not that fickle about the game to be that result orientated.

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

"The scene just before the car keys get thrown on the table and the swingers party gets under way!"

The boobie prize goes to: Gerry Bishop who loses 1 days holidays for his unfunny comment!

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

Online poker players who register for the Boylepoker.com International Poker Open by September 20th can freeroll to VIP status.

The main event at Macau is a great tournament, with a pretty good value field and a great structure. I was intending to take it a bit more seriously than I did the PLO.

Well last weekend just went from bad to worse. On Friday, I was doing alright online until a disastrous period hit. I ran pretty bad, but certainly didn't minimise my losses and made some very poor decisions. I dropped $50k of the $60k I was up for the last 2 weeks.

I've finally gotten off the mark for the year, winning my first live tournament at the Castle Card Club in Castlebar. In fact, it's the first live tournament I've won since the Poker Million in 2008.

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

"As the all-night party comes to a close,John does his "I'm a little tea-pot" party peice to clear the hangers on!"

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

I'm currently in Cork for the seven-day Macau festival. This is one of my favourite festivals of the year and while I've had no luck in the shoot-out and short-handed events so far, I'm still very hopeful I can bag myself a decent result before the week's out.

I've had a nice week of poker, with last Friday being the highlight when I scooped about $10k. It was like the old days on Boylepoker, with a good few $5-10 and $10-20 PLO games running and plenty of fishys about.

New Daily Qualifiers for Europe's Largest Poker Tournament For Just €3.30 At Boylepoker.com

Well, as planned, I put another €10k on Boylepoker with the full intention of abandoning the grinding approach.