John O'Shea Archives

As the title suggests, I have to go play poker in the Bahamas in January. Won a package last night worth $16k, so instead of freezing my nuts off here in January, I shall be kicking it on some beach (well inside some casino that is near a beach).

Well, after my decent recoveries on Monday and Tuesday, I wasn't too bothered on Wednesday when I was losing a bit. However, as the evening went on the hole kept getting deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper.

Finished both Monday and Tuesday very strongly, reversing $3k losses both days. In the end, I won $3k on each day, which is a nice result.

I've been playing for a few hours now. Was off to a great start, winning $6k in the first hour but now I've done it all back and some.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Playing these $200 and $500 SNG's and running pretty bad in them. However its a good lol because you can basically lose fuck all in them compared to playing PLO. Think I am doing $1,5k in them after a litany of bads beats, usually just takes one bad beat to do that much.

Five straight losing weeks in poker hasn't happened in quite sometime, it's been at least a year anyway. I think I lost about $40k over the 5 weeks, which isn't really that bad and if I could have engineered a dogging or two in London, it could have been a different story - but we are where we are.

Well I busted 5 off the money in the £5k WSOPE PLO. Don't think I have ever been as gutted after a tourney than I was yesterday - not just because I didn't make the money but because there were several times in the tournament where I was simply out classed.

I am not sure if this refers to my life or my trip to London. I'm getting quite tempted to walk out in front of a bus. Got knocked out of the £2.5k round of each in a tourney that was pretty uneventful for me and exited in a pretty standard hand.

Didn't get a blog up on Friday as it was 10 in the morning before I was knocked out of the $2,100 WCOOP PLO 6 max in 22nd place and was in no mood to write.

Played the WCOOP main event last night, $5k NLHE. Durr knocked me out. Obviously I was ahead (marginally 56% v 44%), it's so sick how I run against that guy. The WCOOP was a mixed bag for me, I cashed in five events but probably still only broke even for the series, actually, could have even been a loser for the series.

The last few days have been pretty hellish. After getting off to a good start and moving a few k ahead for the week, I hit a brick wall.

I recorded my third losing poker week in a row. Chilled out, played golf and went on the piss over the weekend. I'm looking forward to getting back into it today.

Well, we're down to the last five and seating and chip stacks are as follows - young aggressive northy kid in seat two on 400k, rock with some moves in seat four on 280k, Knuckles, the chip leader, on 1.4 million, me in seat nine on 700k and old rock with 250k. Knuckles is using his big stack to get chips and I want to get some soon before it's too late.

Pretty annoyed with how I played last week, other than winning big in an ill advised drunken spin, I would've done my bollix in. In an effort to refocus myself, I took a fair bit offline. I generally play better when I can't piss buy-ins away.

Headed out for Chub's going away dinner on Wednesday, had a few pints and then on to D2. It was a student night in D2 but in our defense, we were two students in our mitts. We wandered into the queue which was quite crowded, but that's par for the course on 'Fresher's Week'.

The remaining 4 hands of my review of the Irish Poker Classic come from the final table. The first two occurred in the early and middle stages of the final table.

I arrived at the final table with 650k of the 3 million chips in play. Here's a quick bit of history. I had been very active at the 2nd last table and chipping up nicely. I had position on Peter "Knuckles" Higgins two tables out. He is pretty aggressive as well and is in trap 7 with me positioned in trap 9. He had been opening a lot so I tried the old 3 bet which was about as good an idea as buying a dildo for your granny at Christmas. I got quickly 4 betted. I changed tacked and started peeling behind him. This was working very well and was getting Knuckles a little annoyed, it also calmed the frequency with which he opened pots, hence allowing me to take down more hands pre-flop.

I've got the old driving test coming up again on Wednesday and hoping for a different result from last time. Found out how to open the bonnet so feeling a bit more confident this time. According to my driving teacher, if I take the gamble out of my driving I should be ok. Easier said then done.

Did about $3k for the week. Lost €3k as well on the old sports betting. Paddy had some mare this weekend bagging 5 losing bets from 5 picks. At least my rugby radar is still sharp South Africa doing the business yet again. Fair play to Dermot Blain doing the business in Macau, taking home the cool $550k!!!!

The last 2 days have been pretty meh. Just grinding my losses back in the 75/150 Hi/Lo limit game with a reasonable degree of success. Probably breaking even now after my Monday blues.

Both these hands occur on day two with the blinds at 500/1000 and antes at 100. The table is weak passive, which is a dream for me, and I have my favourite seat, seat six.

I don't know any of the players at the table except for seat nine, which is being occupied by the great Nicky Power. Nicky has 50k and he tells me that he's in reverse as he was up at nearly 100k. I have read quite a few of Nicky's blogs where he gives tournament reports so I have some idea how he will play from this spot despite having very little table time with him.

I've been doing a fair bit of chipping on the golf course and at reaching my goal of $200k before Christmas. I played 9 holes, three times over the weekend. Didn't really shoot anything special but Rory has my swing in transition, so I've been working hard on the pointers he's giving me.