Marty brought a bandit to the K Club last week for the golf, but he didn't do it right. Kevin played off twenty and did what all good golf hustlers do, just scraped home for his team on day one. Then on day two when the stakes were up, he shot the lights out, hitting a magnificent 38 points on the Smurfit course to secure a 14 point victory for his team.

Following on from the deep stack festival, I was heading across the water for a week. Monday to Thursday was spent playing golf in Celtic Manor, then onto Manchester for leg two of the UKIPT.

Marty Smyth may be scuba diving on an island off Oz and John O'Shea at the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but I think I drew the long straw getting to go to Clonmel for the coursing festival.

I go to Killarney at least three times a year to play poker and in general find if very difficult to extract any money from the place myself. On the other hand Pat Storan whom I always go with, has an excellent record down that way. As we generally swap a decent percentage, the petrol money usually gets covered at least.

Travelled up to Galway last weekend for the Eglington Casino's party in honour of Misters Parkinson and Marrow. It's a long drive, especially in the current weather conditions, but was well worth it as I had a great weekend - mostly spent in McSwiggen's pub.

The only thing I played in September was the TV LNSP. My table was epic for all the wrong reasons and I didn't cover myself in glory. I got an awful lot of slagging after getting knocked out by Bernard Dunne, so it was fun seeing him go on to win the thing outright.

May is JP Masters month. I played well in the main event but exited close to the end of play on day one. I did somehow manage to win the PLO event though. It was my first live PLO tournament and 100% fluked, but felt good nonetheless.

The other game I played in May was the GUKPT Newcastle. Myself big Pauly, Keith McFadden and Chris Dowling headed off by road for this one, although we had good craic, the car was noticeably light on Sterling on the drive home.

2009 was a very enjoyable year for me. It started in January in Galway, grinding a short stack into the money at the IPC and funnily enough, ended doing exactly the same thing in December. In between were a couple of decent performances, some horrid beats, as well as the odd mind-numbing mistake. A standard enough year I guess for a live tournament specialist.

I headed off to Galway for strangely enough, my second Irish Poker Championship of 2009. I don't know the official line on whether it was the 2010 championship, so we'll go for the 20??

New Boylepoker pro Nicky Power has a nice ring to it - well I think so anyway. I was delighted to secure the deal with Boyles as quite simply, it feels like getting picked to play poker for Ireland.