This was the question I was asked returning from a smoke in Clane from a random person I didn't know.

I think we've seen this event change in one way or another every year since it's inception in 2006.

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and got over the New Year without too bad a hangover.

I usually do a long annual review but like John, I just can't be arsed, as it wouldn't be interesting for me to write or for anyone to read.

If I'm ever feeling poker isn't going great, the answer is always to go and play in Cork.

I suffer from a golf watching addiction, if there's golf on the TV from anywhere in the world I cant not watch it.

As I said in my post IPO blog, I thought this year was the best so far and it isn't over yet for eight lucky souls.

It seems there's been a poker festival in one form or another every weekend for the past four months in Ireland and quiet frankly something had to give. Unfortunately it gave at one of the best value, best structured and most professionally run tournament of the year, JP's mini WSOP.

The weekends Irish Winter Festival was a bit of a non event for me, disappointing as it's one of the best chances of a touch each year.

I think it's fair to say that last weekends IPO was a resounding success; it certainly ticked all the boxes for my own criteria for a magic poker festival.

Well it's time for another Boylepoker IPO festival, or 'the peoples tournament' as I call it. This is probably my favourite poker weekend of the whole year.

Ciaran has chosen Cal McCarthy ( Cal32 ) as my player for the mentor match up.
Cal is a loyal Boylepoker customer and was one of the be our sponsored pro finalists, he also qualified through Boyles for Killarney festival last year.

Well Dagunman kicked my arse and hurt my pocket in the 5-aside but I'm out for revenge at the IPO. Both John and I have agreed to take on one loyal Bolylepoker player and mentor then through the tournament.

I got to play Killeen Thursday for the Kerry mans price of €30, thanks to Keith Cummins for organising it. The extra €30 I lost to him was still well worth it. Derek Murray had booked one of the apartments for us at the Gleneagles complex and this was definitely the way to go, they're a great option and 10 times better then a hotel room.

The last two weekends were spent playing poker in Maynooth and France, well the Ballsbridge Inn that turned into France for the weekend.

Maybe it's the fact that there's so much on these days but the thought of staying in the Ballsbridge Inn for last weekend's UKIPT just didn't appeal to me.

The City West is in my top two favourite venues for a poker festival in Ireland, so I was happy to see a major event back at the venue after a two-year absence.

The Classic festival in the Macau runs all week and is Ireland's largest casino based poker festival.

No, I'm not plugging Google +, rather circles casino Clonmel where I played a €275 summer game last Sunday.

Clontarf Castle Hotel was the venue for the inaugural visit to these shores of the European Masters of Poker Tour. It proved to be a fantastic venue, with a top room for a poker tournament.

It's not everyday you get to sit at a poker table with a former winner and runner-up of the Irish Open, but that's what the table draw threw up for me on day one of the Waterford Masters.

On the poker front I played twice at the weekend; the monthly game in the poker lounge, Waterford, where I came third and the summer game in the Cue Club Killarney, where I lasted about a third of the time it took me to get there. Still, Killarney's always great craic to go out in this time of year so it wasn't a wasted trip.

Well, it's no final in the Five-A-Side for team Power. The semi-final games went pretty shitty for the team last night. Some of the lads never got going but there's not much you can do.

That's the group stages finished in the Five-A-Side. We put in our best team performance of the eight sets of games on Thursday night, with four final tables and a very respectable 14th.