I said in my last blog that I was gonna be staying at home for a few weeks and grinding back the money I'd lost in my disaster of a night in Brisbane. It hasn't quite worked out like that, but it's not for the want of trying.

I'm just starting to settle back into things at home again. I had a couple of days back in Belfast last week, then went to Newport in Wales for a golfing trip with Paul Spillane, Nicky Power, Julian Gardner and a few of Paul's mates from England.

In the 1650NL event I had been playing very tight and re-raised from the BB with AK, after an opening raise from mid-position. The flop was Q63 and I made a normal sized continuation bet which he called after thinking for a while.

This time last year I wrote a blog in which I mentioned some aims for the year ahead. I don't generally like to do that and when I do, I always try to set the bar pretty low to avoid disappointment.

It's been a pretty quiet couple of weeks for me. The last poker tournament that I played this year was also the first one that I played in 2009, as we came back to Galway for the IPC.

Apologies for the lack of news lately, but it's a lot harder to think of anything to write about when I haven't been playing much, and when I have played I generally haven't lasted very long.

The World Open was a similar story as the Poker Million, that I described in my last blog. I played well at the start of the tournament, at one point making a winning call in a pretty big pot with just A-high on the river, when there was four to a straight on the board.

I went into this year with 4 titles to defend: The Poker Million, World Open, WSOP Omaha and of course the 300 euro Macau Festival PLO side event. As I write this I'm still technically the Poker Million champion because they haven't got around to playing the final yet.

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.

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.

I've been fairly busy since my last update, but still not much success on the tournament front. I travelled to Galway to play a bounty tournament and cash game in the 4 Aces Club, then stopped off in Dublin on my way home for a charity tournament, before flying over to Nottingham the next day for the $1 million guaranteed English Poker Open. From Nottingham, I got the train to London for the WSOPE and now I'm at home for a few days rest before I go back to London for another two week stint for the EPT.

I started writing my last blog with the intentions of writing about my Late Night Poker heat in Cardiff, but as I said at the end, there wasn't much of any interest to report. It was a pretty tough heat with Tony G, Soren Kongsgaard, Andreas Hoivold, Joe Beevers, Roberto Romanello, and an internet qualifier from Slovenia who was a full time online pro.

I've played a lot of 6-seater TV tournaments now, but this is the first time that I'd had the pleasure of being invited to Late Night Poker. Everyone's familiar with the poker boom that was created when unknown everyman Chris Moneymaker fluked his way through a couple of online satellites and then 839 players in the 2003 WSOP main event to win $2,500,000. (no offense meant - I know he's improved a lot since then and is now a decent player). However for me, Late Night Poker, with their introduction of under the table cameras, was just as important a part of Poker's history as the so-called 'Moneymaker' effect.

I stayed at home last weekend, the first one I've spent in Belfast since before I went to Vegas. We went to the Belfast Food and Music Festival in Botanic Gardens on Saturday night and then again Sunday afternoon. It was a great set-up and some of the food was fantastic.

I only played cash for a couple of hours over the weekend of the Waterford Masters and despite losing in the game, I could still see that it was good value. I was too drunk to take advantage of it, but I'd like to think that if I'd put in a few sober sessions over the weekend then I could have done pretty well. With this in mind I decided to drive down to Galway over the racing week to play cash games for a couple of nights.

The craic over the weekend was as good as any tournament I've been to in the country. I met a lot of nice people, the tournament was well run, and the dealers and hotel staff were great. The standard of play in the tournament was also surprisingly good. There were a few bad players around early on, but by the time it got to the later stages it was pretty high.

So, things are looking up a bit... I've now played about 15 tournaments this year and managed three cashes including two 2nd place finishes, which is a pretty respectable ratio and a record that I'd have taken in a heartbeat if I'd been offered it at the start of the year. Unfortunately my timing seems to be a bit off though, in that the two tournaments that I've got my best results in have been the two with the smallest buy-in.

My own experience of the main event was a little bit frustrating. I think I played ok, but overall I had reasonably easy tables and I kind of feel that I've missed a good opportunity this year.

On day 1 I started off badly, losing a few small pots and then a biggish pot when I check-raised with top two pair on the flop and followed though on the turn, only to pass on the river when the worst possible card appeared leaving me with about 17k out of my 30k starting stack. After that, things went quite well though and I managed to work my way up to 46k by the end of the day.

So Vegas is pretty much over for another year. It's been a little bit disappointing in terms of poker, but not overly so. I played five tournaments in total - the 5k and 10k PLOs, two $1500 events and the 10k main event. I said before I came out that I would be reasonably happy if I had a good run in one of the tournaments and picked up a bit of cash and although that's what happened, I still feel a bit disappointed overall.

If my only cash had come in the 10k PLO or main event then I'd probably have been pretty satisfied, but instead it came in the 5k PLO where I went out just after the bubble for a relatively small amount.

Things have been fairly quiet for me by Vegas standards this year. Since the 10k PLO, I've played a $1,500 Omaha Hi Lo event, and a $1,500 NLH event, both of which didn't go terribly well, despite a Poker Million-style comeback from 100 chips in the NL event. I lost a big pot with QQ v AA that left me with 100 when the blinds were 75-150, and managed to fluke my way back up to 4200 before busting out on a 50-50 hand.

Apart from tournaments, I've played a few single table satellites in which I'm ahead a small amount. I haven't bothered playing any cash at all yet, and I'm not sure if I will. Even though I've won a little bit on cash the last few years, I've never felt the games were much value.

Not only has it been a decent start to the trip for me personally, but the Boylepoker team as a whole appear to be firing on all cylinders, especially on the PLO front.

I thought I was doing well by cashing in my first tournament of the series, the 5k PLO, but obviously John O'Shea had to out-do me by finishing a few spots higher, although to be honest I think I might have to get used to being upstaged by John with the form that he's in this year. Anyway, neither of us had much time to enjoy it, before Padraig came along and upstaged both of us.

It's been an eventful enough first weeks in Vegas and overall I'm fairly happy with the way things have started. Before Vegas, I'd played about 10 tournaments this year with pretty much no success whatsoever.

I know that isn't really a cause for panic, but I have to admit it was quite a big relief when the bubble burst in the 5k PLO event and I recorded my first tournament cash of 2009.

We've just arrived in Vegas for the WSOP. Again we've rented a house for the duration of our stay, which is a little bit away the Strip. Last year was the first time I'd rented a house and I much preferred it to being in a hotel.

Any time I've stayed in a hotel in Vegas there's always one or two nights when I come back ridiculously drunk and end up getting stuck into one of the table games. I suppose with staying in the house there's the problem of coming back ridiculously drunk and having an accident around the swimming pool, but overall I think the dangers of drunken blackjack are much more serious than the dangers of drunken swimming.

Apologies for the lack of posts, but there hasn't really been much for me to write about lately. I haven't played any live poker at all since the San Remo EPT, because Monte Carlo cancelled all their PLO tournaments and then another couple of tourneys that I had hoped to play clashed with a friend's wedding and also Karen's birthday.

The plan for this month was to play very little and to devote a bit of time to trying to get used to some of the software that everyone's using these days. On a friend's recommendation I downloaded 'holdem manager', but found it totally impossible to set up. After a lot of effort my brother eventually managed to set it up for me, only for me to slip going down the steps at the front of our house whilst carrying my laptop out to the car, completely wrecking it.