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.

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.

After Tramore, myself and Marty went to the Carton House for a couple of rounds of golf with Paul Spillane and then headed onto Galway.

We had the second instalment of the Waterford Masters over the weekend. This is my local tournament, and with some personal involvement in putting it together, it was great to see it filled to capacity again this year.

As Andrew said in his wrap up, when you bust the Main Event - it's get out of town time. It's an odd dynamic really. One minute you're plugged into the biggest of them all, then one hand and ten minutes later you're looking for the fastest way out of the place.

Derek Murray said to me earlier in the week, that the day you bust from the main event, is the worst day of the year for a poker player. He's right but you have to put it into perspective. If the worst thing that happens to you in a year is busting from a poker tournament, then things ain't too bad.

It's all becoming a bit blurred here at this stage, with my head now unable to differentiate between tournaments and such. How the hell some players play everyday for the series without going bonkers is beyond me, but I guess they all go a level of nuts.

Somebody really needs to put together a 'Dummies Guide to Hookers in Vegas' for the Irish. Every year out here you hear three or four stories of Irish poker players being fleeced while pissed.

I just busted another shallow starting stack WSOP event a couple of hours ago. Again I broke well out of the starting stalls, amassing more then 3x starting stack after two levels but once again couldn't kick on.

The flights over to Vegas were fine and without any turbulence, thank god! Played 27 holes of golf on Thursday morning with Marty and Tommy "Nine Lives" Finnernan.

I'm flying out today to Las Vegas. I'd say I'm going with the mindset of pragmatic confidence. Anyone going there thinking they're going to burst the place up is just being unrealistic.

No poker of any consequence to report on as such. I've been playing the big Sundays for the past few weeks. I seem to be amassing stacks early enough and converting to a few cashes, but nothing decent.

"Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine"  ~ Robert C. Gallagher.

It's that time of year when every poker player's thoughts turn to the bright light city.
With the English having such a good year last time round, it's time for us Irish to stand up and be counted.

My WSOP fantasy league picks are fairly unoriginal. I've chosen players that play all games and specialise to some extent in the less popular variants of poker. This means that the average field size they play will be a lot smaller than their counterparts, who just play NLH or PLO.

I love this festival - JP puts a huge amount of work into getting every detail right and constantly strives for improvements.

Firstly, huge kudos to John on his magnificent run at the WPT Championship. I know John will be gutted, but he can take great pride from such a brilliant performance.

I headed to the Burlington Thursday evening, full of the hope that the poker gods would shine on me and my name would be on the trophy come Monday evening. I'll be back next year with the same optimism.

Easter weekend is the most important annual religious feast in the Christian liturgical year. For poker players in Ireland, it means one thing; the most important tournament of the year is upon us.

Kerry men have in general attained a reputation for playing tight poker. I saw this taken to a new level at the Paddy's day Deep Stack extravaganza at the Macau Casino Cork.

The Jackpot was the venue for this wonderful event. It's a great testament to the players that numbers were up on last year in these recessionary times and €15,000 was raised for a worthy cause.

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.