Galway

Despite my best intentions, it didn't quite work out like that. Fintan decided to organise a €1000 buy-in, winner-takes-all, single table tournament in the Eglinton club and asked me if I fancied playing. It was a pretty tough field, but I still thought it would be a bit of value for me as there was 1k added by the club, and I thought I'd know that format as well as any of them.

There was also the small matter that I was driving down that night and knew that I'd be one of the few sober players.

Things were going completely according to plan until with 4 players left, Roy Brindley raised all-in first to speak and I found TT on the button. My tens were well ahead of his 2 under cards, but unfortunately Martin Silk who was Big Blind looked down to find JJ and they held up.

This left him heads-up with Padraig who went on to win the trophy after they'd done a bit of business. Despite being sober when I arrived in Galway at 9pm, I'd managed to drink myself into a pretty bad state by the time the tournament had finished, and either decided I was too drunk to play the cash game or else forgot to play the cash game. I'm not really sure which, and I actually had to double-check with Padraig the next day whether or not I had played.

I spent a lot of the next day in bed, then went for a couple of pints in the evening to prepare myself for the cash game. I'd heard that there had been a 38k pot the previous night (in a 5-10 game), so I was a bit apprehensive about sitting down in this type of game. I was still determined to give it a go though, especially since I'd heard that Tom Hanlon, who I'd have been most worried about, had gone back home. I put in a good eight hour session and made around 3.5k after being stuck a few grand at the start so it was a pretty decent night.

The game was playing much smaller than the previous night, but it was still pretty crazy. I made a couple of big calls - both for bets of around 600-700 on the river - in 2 pots when I could only beat a bluff, once holding a 9 on a JJ9xx board, and another with KTT3 on an AK987 board.

I was correct both times in that I was facing total bluffs, but unfortunately in the first case my opponent was bluffing with a better hand than me. I thought he'd missed a wrap after calling my bet on the J9x flop and he had, but unfortunately he was holding QTT8 and was 'bluffing' with a pair of tens. This is always a risk when you make a call holding less than top pair in Omaha and in the second pot I knew that my opponent could easily have an ace or even a king with a better kicker and be thinking that he had to bluff to win the pot. Fortunately for me he had QQxx and I ended up feeling pretty good instead of looking like a complete idiot.

It's the first time I've been to Galway over the week of the races, and I couldn't believe the buzz around the place. I'll definitely try to get down for more than a couple of days next year.