General

Well leg one of my three part tour is over. A nice week is a fair way to describe it. I really liked Vilamoura last time I was here and it was even nicer in the summer.

The Friday after my last blog was one of the worst days of my life, well on paper anyway. I had my worst day of poker ever, dropping about $17k.

I heard there was a big gambler in the sports on Sunday night, so I decide to head in Monday night and see what the craic is. He sat into the 2/5 NL Hold'em game and made it €50 to go pre every hand. He started off sitting about €15k deep. I couldn't make a hand and was down about €1k in the game.

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.

The main event at Macau is a great tournament, with a pretty good value field and a great structure. I was intending to take it a bit more seriously than I did the PLO.

Well last weekend just went from bad to worse. On Friday, I was doing alright online until a disastrous period hit. I ran pretty bad, but certainly didn't minimise my losses and made some very poor decisions. I dropped $50k of the $60k I was up for the last 2 weeks.

I've finally gotten off the mark for the year, winning my first live tournament at the Castle Card Club in Castlebar. In fact, it's the first live tournament I've won since the Poker Million in 2008.

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.

I've had a nice week of poker, with last Friday being the highlight when I scooped about $10k. It was like the old days on Boylepoker, with a good few $5-10 and $10-20 PLO games running and plenty of fishys about.

Well, as planned, I put another €10k on Boylepoker with the full intention of abandoning the grinding approach.

Well, when I came back, I put about $7k on both Boylepoker and another site. The plan was to grind it up.

Well, I have started back slowly and haven't been really playing any long or grueling sessions. Played about 8 x 2/3 hours sessions so far, playing mainly 2/4, 3/6 and half stacking 5/10 PLO.

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.

Finally, I have some good news regarding poker. I feel like I'm kind of clutching at straws, when I'm reporting a couple of results in 1 table S'n'Gs as good news but after Vegas I'm happy to take any result I can get.

I'm back home and back to the grind. Got home Sunday morning and have just been running errands since then. I've also put in three sessions.

Well, I'm in the airport heading back to Vancouver after a great week in California. It seems like déjà vu, as I write this blog in the airport because I've been doing it so many times this year.

My view on poker is that it's my business and I try to run it like a business. The last blog was as such, a review of the business and an assessment of its ability to continue to be profitable.

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 everybody else seems to be doing a Vegas trip review, I thought I might as well throw in my lowballer experiences from my WSOP visit. My flights took me from Dublin to Gatwick to McCarron, with an overnight in Gatwick.

I played my last tournament on behave of the BOSP II promotion last weekend. It was the UKIPT Brighton Main Event. I was happy overall with the way I played. I always take a while to warm up but I felt really comfortable for most of Day 1, setting up a tight image, controlling pot sizes well with marginal hands and then making some well-timed bluff and semi-bluff raises, particularly on 4th street.

Well, when I quit the job just over two years ago, the plan was to give poker a lash for two and a half years. I felt that even if it didn't work out, I could return to the work-force at 25 with a masters degree, leaving me in relatively good shape for the game they call life.

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.

Well, I've finally left Vegas. It's the same every year, after I bust the Main I just want out.

Still in Vegas at the moment and it's pretty much all winding down. Everyone is leaving and there are only a few of us left here.

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.