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I think people might believe that I was lying, or maybe just trying to be modest when I said before my semi that I really didn't expect to get through to the final, but that honestly was the case. It's not that I felt out of my depth or anything, but I knew that it was a tough heat, and with only the top three players qualifying out of eight, I reckoned my chances of progressing were only about 40% or so.
As well as that, I really just had a terrible feeling about the whole thing. For a lot of reasons I felt a huge amount of pressure on me to do well. With being in the last two finals and finishing second last year I really wanted to make it three finals in a row, as I know that's a record that will stand for a long time - if not forever.
I also really wanted to get to the final as it would have been such an anti-climax for everyone who had made the trip across to watch me and regardless of what they would have said, I'd have known how disappointed they'd have been.
I've watched every Poker Million tournament on TV since its inception and it's one of the big three tournaments that I'd always really wanted to win. Also, with not knowing how many more years the tournament is going to run for, it was in my head that this might be my last chance to win it. However, I knew that I had to try to put all this out of my head, and not just play to make the final, or worry about looking silly or letting people down. I just had to try to play my own game which is easier said than done though.
Things didn't start well. I arrived at the hotel on Wednesday at about 3pm and started getting ready to out to the studio to do the interviews and photos for the next day's semi-final. After having a shower I went to brush my teeth and realised that we hadn't packed any toothpaste, so I walked over to the convenience store across the road to pick some up. I'd left the shop and was about to get into the hotel lift when I suddenly realised that I'd bought another toothbrush instead of the toothpaste that I'd gone over for... no big deal I know, but I didn't think this was a terribly good sign as to the state of my head going into such a big event.
Later that night we had a nice meal at the Thai restaurant in the Metropole hotel and went downstairs to have a few drinks at the hotel bar until about 2am. I knew we had to be up at 8am the next day for the heat, and strange as this sounds I wanted to make sure I was a bit tired and a little bit hung over for the semi-final.
I much prefer to be tired and subdued in this kind of situation rather than wide awake and have a lot of nervous energy - I just find it's easier to make big decisions and trust my judgement. In fact, ideally I'd like to have had three pints or so to calm my nerves, but I didn't want to worry my parents by drinking three pints at 8am. I know this probably sounds a bit stupid and I wouldn't advocate this approach for everyone, especially not if you're going to be playing all day long in a regular tournament, but that really is the way I like to play a high pressure, fast structured televised tournament like this.
I don't usually get nervous at all in tournaments, but the Poker Million is the exception. I think it's because of how long the wait is from the time you win your first round heat to the time you play the semi final. Five months is much too long to be thinking of how you're going to play, worrying about busting out, and dreaming of actually winning it etc.
At the start of my semi final I was very nervous. My game plan was to trade on my tight reputation to steal a few pots early on and try to build my stack a bit so that I had chips to get busy with near the end. However, as it turned out, I didn't play this way at all.
In the first level, I lost 19k in a pot that I really didn't need to get involved in. It wasn't a particularly badly played pot by me - I raised preflop with a small pocket pair and continuation bet the flop. My opponent, who had flopped a straight, raised me and I passed - reasonably standard stuff, but now I only had about 80k left of my starting stack. The blinds were about to go to 2-4 now, so I knew there wasn't going to be much room for manoeuvre. This pot dented my confidence a bit and I decided to tighten up a bit and wait for a better situation next time. Fortunately for me it came along quite soon.
I had already picked up some chips re-raising preflop with AQ, when a few hands later, I looked down to find AA. I made a standard enough raise to 10k and was called by Devilfish on the button. The flop came 8 high and didn't look any way dangerous - I could only be behind if he flopped a set. Any time I've played with him before, I usually continuation bet the flop in a situation like this, so I decided to attempt a check raise here, hoping he had a piece of it and it looked like a move.
I checked and he bet 13k into the 26k pot. It was a little less than I had hoped for, but I was still glad he hadn't checked behind me. I had 73k remaining and it was a situation where I thought that an under-raise would have looked too suspicious, so I stuck it in, making it 60k for him to call into a pot of 112k. I really thought that he had a medium pair and would interpret this as a move with AK, or else put me on a small pocket pair.
At first I thought it was going to work out perfectly as he counted out his chips and mumbled something along the lines of "this really looks like a move - if you had a hand you would have bet small and hoped that I made a move". I don't know what changed his mind - maybe I gave something away - but he eventually decided to give me the benefit of the doubt and passed top pair. People have different opinions about the Fish, but I've played with him a few times and he's always been very impressive. I do think he might play a few too many hands that he doesn't need to in this sort of format, but you can see that his feel for the game and intuition is on a different level.
My only other really big hand was against Tony G. First to act, I raised with AK and he moved in with AQ. It was a huge over-raise and I didn't really want to call as I really felt he had 99/TT/JJ. After thinking briefly, I decided to gamble on what I thought was a 50-50 because of the chips I had already invested in the pot and also because the size of 1st prize relative to the rest of the prizes made it important to have a decent stack in the final (or so I thought - I mean what would be the point in scraping into the final with 15k or something... you'd have no chance!!!).
My AK held up and from that point on my chips were pretty much locked up. I played a few more pots and got a couple of half-decent hands, but didn't really risk a large portion of my stack at any point and managed to creep up to 282k by the time it finished. Eoghan O'Dea played superbly to finish on 339k and internet qualifier Svien Neilsson knocked out the card-dead Roy Brindley on the bubble to go through with 179k in chips. Amazingly enough that meant there would be four Irish players in the final - Liam Flood and Ciaran O'Leary had both got through the previous day along with the internet qualifier from their semi-final, Kevin Allen.
This was great news and an amazing achievement for Irish poker. However, I was very disappointed for Roy Brindley and Ryan Fronda who both bubbled in 4th place. They're both guys I have a lot of time for and I know how gutted they must feel.
Check back Friday to hear about the rollercoaster ride that was the Poker Million final.
Comments (7)
good luck JD... if u want to get better than me though, u need to practice your "50-50s". that's the real key to making it.
i might have a book coming out about it next year. watch this space.