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The winner will be announced on Thursday February 9th.
]]>Thursday was the last Thursday of the month so that means one thing, some live potting in the Fitz! I ran up a decent stack but it fell apart when I reshoved my 22 bigs over Sean Prendivilles open. His AK held vs my AQ. Fair play to Sean who went on to chop it. So I left kinda steamed and went out to get a taxi. I usually avoid the lads parked outside as your inevitably going to get your list of bad beats. Unfortunately I was lazy and just jumped in the first one. "Playing the tourney?", FML, "yuuup". To be fair he was pretty sound but he of course went onto tell me about his own misfortunes from earlier.
He was telling me about some hand involving various cards and I was nodding along vaguely paying attention. He then goes, "so I check-raise and he clicks it back", I looked at him like he had ten heads and he went onto explain it to me what it is like I was the moron. Oh how poker has changed, no wonder it's so tough when taxi drivers are clicking it back!
There's a few live tournys in Ireland coming up, starting with the Deepstack. I personally hate this tournament but there's too much value to turn up on. Then I'll probably head for Galway for the UKIPT, probably my favourite place to go, one of those if you bust early you're gonna have a good weekend!
I've also got the job of captaining the New York team for the upcoming Irish Team Championship. This has potential to be a cracking weekend, so one to look forward to!
]]>Unfortunately I'm not joining the Irish contingent off to the EPT Deauville this week. My girlfriend is off to Oz next week so my holiday leave application was denied which seems fair enough.
I have one of my horses over there and bought pieces of another so I have plenty of interest. I did play the PLO game in the Fitz last night and lost €300 which isn't too bad.
I was trying to get a bit of live practice before I head off to L.A. on the 14th of February. The action over there is big and fast so I'm trying to improve my live game/get used to sitting on your ass for four hours, then get it in and pray you hold.
Right, I must go pay this the old TV license, those ads have me spooked. Actually I wonder is it plus ev or negative ev to pay your TV license. If anyone knows, post it up. It's €160 for the year and it says you can get fined up to 1k, but is this how much you actually get fined? If so, you need to get away with it for six years. Hmm, defo seems plus ev to pay, I must do more investigation might be able to grind out a small hedge on this one.
]]>The tournament (Boylepoker.com IPPF) was good craic. My starting table had great potential with John O'Shea, Chris Dowling & a few notable heads IPB heads; unfortunately none of them were on the Guinness buzz with me.
There was six levels played on day one, I spent at least four of those in the bar, making it through the day with an average chip stack. I think my best play of the time I spent on the table was to come up with a nickname for Chris 'Showdown' Dowling.
Having had my fill of the black stuff I staggered off to bed about 3am and thought that was it for the night. Imagine my surprise to wake about 5am and find the legendary Mark Reilly on the bed beside me. Now I do like Mark a lot and was regaled by his story of how he went from being on the lash in Leixlip to ending up on my bed, but I did ask him to please %&$% off to the poker room when he starting discussing PLO strategy.
The next day didn't go well poker wise. I got my last 20 blinds in preflop with 66 v AK and if I'm honest, I wasn't that gutted to lose the race. My intentions this year are to win races in big buy-in events and lose them in the smaller ones.
It was an excellent tournament in a really nice venue but once I was out I headed home. It was a big weekend on the sports betting front for me. To cut the story short I should have stayed where I was.
]]>The first was $16k and a rake of final tables has provided some fun sweats. I also watched my big poker result of last year on the TV last night. It had the final table of the WSOPE with Dermot Blaine on it (I had 15% of Derm). Probably the toughest table ever assembled in a poker event but it made for some great hands. One hand cut off opens, button 3 bets, SB four bets and bb shoves. That was only part one and part two will be on the next week, should be fun even if Derm gets eliminated next week :-(!
It should be a quite enough weekend with an off week before the 6 Nations in the rugby competitions and the FA cup being on. I might take a trip up to Leopardstown on Saturday for the Boylesports.com Hurdle. Don't know much about horse racing but apparently it should be a cracking race!
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The winner will be announced on Thursday February 2nd.
]]>Hopefully a little heater is on the way. France winning 6 nations would be nice.
I said I needed a good weekend in the sports after doing $25k in poker during the week. A good weekend was provided with good wins on Connaught and Leinster games as per usual backed against Munster and it cost me.
Man City were playing so sticking with this year's game plan I had a big bet on them ($25k) so they had super Mario trying to score a peno for $50k at the weekend. Despite being a fucking eeijt he delivered.
I managed to cover the $25k poker loss and still how a healthy profit to keep the year motoring in the right direction.
I played the IPPF in Clane on Friday night. I ran AK in to Nicky Powers 33 on a A73A8 board to lose 1/3 of my stack. Then AQ v showdown Dowling's 99. I'm not sure if I have ever beaten Chris in an all-in situation.
On Saturday night I played a home game in Noel Hayes house. We had a 7 man SNG to get the night going, 50 a man which I shipped. Then there was a pretty epic game with some quality slow rolls. The quality of slow rolling was enhanced by a few sick back door hands completing. I put a few beats on people and scooped a few hundo.
Played in the Fitz last night and won another 400!!!! Back to back winning sessions hasn't happened in a long while, even if the total profit still did come to less than 1k I am still pretty chuffed.
Fitness is still moving along nicely towards my goal of acquiring a body like Patrick Antonious even if Nicky did get photographic evidence of me wolfing a white bread sambo and a packet of King salt and vinegar in Clane. Speaking of the great man, O'Dea was saying to me the games are quite shite in Aussie millions this year as Patrick has cleaned all the other high stake players out. You know you're the Boss when you can destroy a whole poker series in a few sessions.
I made my poker goals last week, unfortunately I lost small for the week. I'm back playing 1-2 and I'm certainly rusty! I was winning about 2k but I ran hot early in the week. I'm going to sign up to some sites and watch some videos to sharpen up my game. You've always got to be learning and improving!
My sports betting went ok last week and I won small. Swansea and Stoke were my biggest punts. It's always nice betting on Stoke with a handicap and opposing Liverpool when they need to score! This week I fancy City at 10/11, Wolves at 6/4, Fulham at EVS, and Arsenal if they can get Arteta fit will be value I feel. Don't be putting the wages on them now, but I promise there is some thought behind them!
On the lighter side of things I saw one of the funniest things the other day. It was an old guy out for a jog, nothing exciting there but it was what he was wearing. Black shoes, black slacks and here's the real gem, a Lakers basketball jersey! I couldn't believe my eyes, the guy looked like a farmer with Bryant on the back as I looked on in disbelief!
Last thing is my talented mate, Tom Kitt, who has recorded a quality gambling song, It's really amazing so give it a listen!
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The winner will be announced on Thursday January 26th.]]>
I'm going to get back into the online grind this week. I played the highroller on Boylepoker last night but my QQ was cracked by 99. I'm going to be focusing more on PLO cash as that really is my bread and butter.
A pretty exciting year ahead, I want to use the next month as a launch pad to get everything right before I head off travelling. I've got the L.A.P.C in my sights for mid February. I also have a few meeting re something which should be a pretty fun project in 2012, can't say too much about it but hopefully it will all be sorted fairly soon.
Sports went pretty well this week. Ulster was my biggest bet in a while so once I got that up I was fairly flying. The weekend was to and fro after that but in the end the rest of the bets closed out as a push.
Like the week before it could have ended up a really special week but I got stung late with Green Bay losing costing me an arm and a leg. $70k profit from the Ulster game with last week's $25k or so has me just short of the six figs. It's always nice to get a bit of a distance between your profit figure and the break even line early in the year as its gives you a nice bit of freedom to really have a cut.
Hopefully I can snaffle a few quid in poker this week, get me into six figs territory before the weekend and then really attack the circus going directly for the jugular on the last round of Heineken cup matches.
Contrary to the ribbing I get, I'm not really a great one for side events. Usually after getting knocked out of a main event, I find it hard to give a side event my full attention. This wasn't the case last weekend as my early exit from the WPT meant I felt, as I hadn't really played, I was well up for this.
My starting table had a few familiar faces, including Bomber and Andrew Grimason. There was a real nice atmosphere on the table with everyone in good form.
I started steady enough, then hit a bit of a heater just before and after the dinner break trebling my 20k starting stack. We were only playing six levels and the table broke for the last one. I ended the day with a top ten stack of 66k with around half the field still in.
Day 2 was an odd one. I loved my starting table but it was first to break. They were breaking tables down one of two lines and every time I drew the next table to break. I'm the type of player (well I guess most are) that likes time to settle into a table. Subsequently I was three hours into the day and had broken 5 times.
My stack was maintained until I lost a third of it with AJ v KK, it was a shortish corner and I was happy enough calling the 18 big blinds it cost to call the 4-bet shove. Again just after this, I get moved again to the next table to break. I know it shouldn't bother me but it was doing my head in at this stage.
I needn't have worried though as the poker gods were soon to put me out of my misery. I was only at the table a couple of hands when I picked up QQ. First to act opened, and I 3-bet from a 40k stack with blinds 500-1000-100, the button shipped for about 120k holding AQ. An ace on the flop meant no fourth lifetime cash in the IPC.
It wasn't too disappointing, we were about 40 off the money and, well you want to get them in in that spot every time. I don't know where the IPC as a tournament goes from here, but I think we can assume it wont stay the same as this year. The tournament has a good legacy, and needs to find a stand-alone berth.
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