Great craic.. shame about the poker

For any Irish poker player, winning the Irish Open is up there with winning a WSOP bracelet in terms of poker ambitions and while we all know how unlikely it is, I think everyone secretly gets a little bit excited every Easter at the thought of it. I wasn't really expecting big things from myself, but I did hope to get some kind of run in the main event or at least do well in one of the side events over the weekend. Unfortunately things couldn't have gone much worse - I didn't last more than four hours in any of the three tournaments that I played.

My brief involvement in the main event came to an end when I was dealt JJ with the blinds at 100-200. One player had limped before me and I raised to 800 out of my 11k stack. Both blinds passed and the limper called. We saw a flop of T64 with two spades and my opponent check-raised my 1500 bet to 4k. I was pretty sure at this point that I was up against a set or a flush draw, which obviously isn't a great spot to be in.

Looking at my opponent I got the feeling that he wasn't as strong as he was making out and wanted me to pass, so I decided to call to see the turn with the intention of putting all my chips in provided a spade didn't come or perhaps an Ace. The turn was a blank and he set me in for all my chips. I still didn't like it much but I made the call and to my surprise he revealed a slow-played pair of aces, leaving me drawing to two outs.

This was the first time I'd played with the guy and while he seemed to be playing well enough before that, I just got the feeling that he had probably satellited into the tournament and it was a big deal for him. For this reason I wouldn't have expected him to be able to slow-play Aces so calmly, in such an important situation.

I don't know if I was right about him being a satellite winner or not, but I was certainly wrong about him not being able to slow-play Aces so well and it's one of those situations where I just have to admit that I got out-played and try to make sure I play the hand better the next time I find myself in a similar spot.

The 1500 euro NL tournament was even more disappointing for me. It's the worst I've played in a poker tournament in some time. I was a little bit unfortunate in a pot early on, when I made a straight on the turn only for the board to pair on the river, giving my opponent a full house. In my defense, I realised that I was beaten and got away as cheaply as possible, but that was the last good move I made in the tournament and I busted a couple of hours later after making a couple of really bad decisions. I played well enough in the PLO, but busted in a 50-50 spot with a big draw against a made hand in a pot which would have given me a great stack.

As I said though, despite the poker I still had a great weekend meeting up with everyone and playing a couple of rounds of golf with Nicky Power and Paul Spillane. Paul's definitely the best player of us, but he was way off with the handicaps and didn't really feature at the business end of either round.

Boylepoker may have the lucky logo when it comes to poker, but we found out that it doesn't translate well to the golf course when Nicky destroyed both of us on the first day, demonstrating his full range of skills by sinking a putt from 60 feet and hitting his drive into the middle of the fairway after skimming it off a lake. I did get a bit of respectability back the next day for team Boylepoker, but I think it had more to do with those two playing worse, rather than me playing any better.

I was pretty depressed about poker after the weekend and for a couple of days I felt like I never wanted to see a deck of cards again, but as is usually the case, I'm feeling a bit better again after a few days back home. I'm off to San Remo at the weekend for the EPT. We're staying at a golf resort a few miles from the casino, so it should give me a good chance to relax while I'm not playing. I don't mind if I don't do so well in the tournament through no fault of my own, but I'll be very disappointed if I don't come away from the event feeling like I played a whole lot better than I did in Dublin.

A big congratulations to all the winners from the weekend and a really big congratulations to Jude Ainsworth who picked up 950k in the big stars tourney at the weekend. I watched the replay of the final table and I was blown away by some of the play, not just by Jude although he definitely was the most impressive. Anyone looking for tips on how to play a final table could learn a lot by watching it... I know I did!