Aces not monsters in Munster

Early in my poker career, my first experience of running bad for a sustained period kicked off in the Macau club in Cork when I had aces repeatedly cracked in their 1K event.
At first it seemed like that might just be a temporary aberration, a hypothesis supported by the fact that my friend Rob Taylor was having the bizarre (for him) experience of running like God (he ended up winning, as all good players invariably do when they run like that). But ever since it seems that the sense of humour of the poker Gods is tickled by the notion that every time I get dealt aces in Munster, no matter how I play them, they will be cracked.


Last year's Waterford Masters was by popular acclaim the best tournament of its kind in Ireland. This year's event, sponsored by Bruce, continued in that vein and was a great weekend. From a personal point of view, it's fair to say the tournament didn't exactly go to plan. I won a fair few small pots, but my tournament ultimately swung on two big pots, in both of which I was holding the pocket rockets.

Early on, I played more pots than I would normally. This may not have been wise as my table was tougher than average, featuring Richie Lawlor (HowardFinkel on Irish poker boards), Andrew Yates, and most of the table seemed pretty competent. However, my plan was to try to chip up steadily with no great risk while the blinds were small. Nice plan in theory but instead I just drifted back. Then I picked up aces. Utg limped for 200, I made it 650 in mid position, he called (live players don't limp fold much), and the two of us saw a K63r flop. He led at it for pot. I figured his range was mostly single pair hands (either Kx or something between sixes and kings), with some sets and bluffs thrown in. Since it's one of those spots where I'm either a mile ahead or a mile behind I saw no real reason to raise and just called. I'm usually ahead and want him to keep barrelling or betting a one pair hand, and if I am behind I want to control the pot size to minimise the damage. The turn was a J which I'm not crazy about as at least one Kx hand in his range has now made two pair, and he fired for pot again. I'm still either way ahead or way behind so again I called. The river was another K which is a truly awful card as now there's not a lot in his range I'm still good against other than random bluffs , and I was trying to decide if I could call a bet when he thankfully checked. I quickly checked behind and he turned over KTo.

That left me relatively short and the rest of the day, and the tournament, was about grinding a short stack. Less than 20 big blind poker is not much fun at the best of times, but on the other hand it's relatively simple to play pretty perfectly if you have the patience and discipline not just to fling the chips in and hope for the best. I picked my spots well and a few hours into day 2 had moved back past starting stack and up to 20k and was feeling pretty good about myself. When you're a professional, you have to be able to do the bread and butter short stack stuff as well as the more glamorous big stack stuff. Then I ran into the aces again. Fionan opened in the hijack and I found aces just behind. I decided to call rather than raise for two reasons. I'd already smoothed him once and given up when he fired the flop so I figured if we got headsup he'd fire most flops. The second reason is all the stacks behind were reshipping stacks and I was hoping one of them wouldn't be able to resist a light bloodrush squeeze. As it happened, the BB who was doing an excellent impression of a rock shipped. Fionan folded after some thought and I obviously snap called. The BB had queens and flopped a queen. No complaints from me as the hand was standard, he obviously should never do anything but ship the queens there so good luck to him. I played the hand to get action from worse hands. The dealer counted down the stacks and he barely covered me so that was the end of my main event.

I went to dinner with the two Micks (McCloskey and Hamilton) in a really good steakhouse. I then jumped in to the side event which was another of those oh too common frustrating tournament experiences where you never get going before the shovefest, and you lose a race with your first called shove. It was time to retire to the bar for some consolation Lucozades. Poker aside, the weekend was a great social occasion in the company of old friends like Rory Brown, Tom Kitt, Andrew Yates, Sean Prendiville, Mick McCloskey, Ray Kent, Kevin Kehoe (who did a brilliant job blogging the event for Irish Poker Boards: it would be great to see this sort of thing at all major Irish events), Mark McKeever, Marty "72o" Smyth and local legend Nicky Power, and new friends like Gavin Stevens (who does a great job running the Bank casino in Cork by all accounts) and most of the people I played with at the weekend who were great craic. The more I play abroad, the more I realise that the atmosphere at Irish poker events is absolutely unique and something to be treasured.

It's really great to see Bruce supporting local events such as this. It's a challenging time for everyone, not least tournament organisers and the Irish online sites, but these type of games are the heart and soul of Irish poker and are vital to the future of the game here. It would be nice to see the other Irish-based poker online sites do a bit more to support the local scene and events like this. Bruce are also sponsoring the forthcoming Leinster championship and the Westbury festival in August, two more local events to look forward to.

Online, I got back into the grind with no post Vegas hangover. It was essentially a week of hitting crossbars translating into a breakeven week: I was fourth in a Villamora EPT satellite (only one package), fifth in an IWF satellite (ditto) and had a string of final tables on Bruce without ever doing better than fifth. In truth I'm probably not at the top of my online game right now: a combination of impatience and rustiness after Vegas.

I'm back running most days and discovering to my horror that after a five week layoff in vegas, I'm in the worst physical shape I've been in years. That will change. Away from the tables, I've been doing a little work on my Omaha HiLo game as part of the grand plan to diversify, and also on a new direction for the Irish Poker Lounge. More on that soon :)

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Life goes on

The first time I came to Vegas was two years ago. I was the reigning European Deepstack champion. I'd also spun up a decent online roll from absolutely nothing (literally, I never made a real money deposit: everything came from a $171 seed I got for coming second in a freeroll) and had just "turned pro".


I hit Vegas with my brother with not just dreams but expectations of taking it by storm. A few draining weeks later (both bankroll and energy draining), myself and the brother found ourselves on our last day of Vegas with so little of the $20K we'd brought over that we weren't certain we had enough to cover cab fare to the airport. So we walked, from our hotel (Circus Circus, way up at the top of the strip) to the airport, a 2 hour ignominious walk of shame through one of the busiest pedestrian streets in the world in scorching heat. My brother more or less retired from poker that day, and who can blame him?

One year later, a more pragmatic version of me arrived for my second tilt at the WSOP, under some considerable financial pressure not to have a losing trip. The previous year's trip had been the first speed bump in my poker career, my first personal experience of that fact that you can't always win at poker, that you can actually lose at this game. Responding to this I took what I thought was the prudent decision to take a chunk of my online winnings offline and put them into "safe" bank shares. My first major online downswing and the subsequent Anglo Irish bank share collapse saw my roll dwindle to the point where simply generating enough to cover my family's monthly living expenses became a major feat, or ordeal. All of which meant I simply couldn't afford to have another big losing trip. I did anyway (I again drew a blank in the official WSOP events), but instead of grinding smaller live tourneys I bailed myself out by grinding online so that what I won online covered what I lost live. All of which made for a rather strange and isolated Vegas experience, most of it spent grinding 45 mans in my box room in the Imperial Palace.

This year I arrived in Vegas under no such pressure. As I said before both here and on the Irish Poker Lounge, I committed a portion of my regenerated bankroll to the trip: buyins, expenses and staking, and was mentally prepared to write the lot off in pursuit of a bracelet, or at least a deep run. For the third successive year, things didn't exactly go to plan. Once again, I've come to Vegas and achieved absolutely nothing that I really wanted to achieve. No deep WSOP runs, not even one min cash. On the other hand, I did win a couple of tournaments (nightlies in the Rio), I did well in the live stts. I'm happy with the poker I played for the most part, and I'm going home with more money than I realistically expected most of the time. The money I dropped on the trip can be entirely accounted for by expenses and staking others: I essentially broke even myself on my poker playing despite not cashing in any event with a buyin over $500. So the nightlies and the stts essentially allowed me to freeroll that once-a-year WSOP shot that all serious mtt players with aspirations or pretensions of greatness must take.

As I walked through the long Rio corridors towards my room after my exit from the WSOP late on day 3, I felt pretty devastated. I made two unsuccessful attempts to psyche myself up and go down and socialise with the other Irish hanging round the bar but my heart wasn't in it, so I went back upstairs and curled up in bed feeling as miserable as I ever have. I figured it might take a few days, maybe even weeks, to shake the depression, but I got up the next morning and felt fine. Life goes on. Maybe the memory of that ignominious loser's walk with my brother two years ago and the realisation that I'd gone as far as I could in the tourney without ever catching more than one decent break made the disappointment easier to overcome.

The general mood in the Irish camp seems understandably downbeat. There have been a few success stories: Nick Heather, Sean Prendiville and Jim Fennell in particular, but most of us have lost money on this trip, and I believe collectively we're also down. For a nation that genuinely believes that we punch above our weight in the poker world, that's disappointing. Some top players are now questioning whether they have any real edge over the field any more. My own feeling is that the number of top class players is rising to the point that in the bigger tournaments there's less and less dead money, but that the edge of those players over recreational players is increasing. But the bottom line is that there are now literally thousands of players out there who know how to play optimal mtt poker, and that number will continue to increase. It's no longer particularly difficult to become a top class mtt player with the myriad of training sites, books and forums so the number of top class players is just going to go on rising. The writing is on the wall long time for mtt professionals in my opinion.

The day after my exit I got up, and by evening felt like playing again so I headed over to the Venetian for the nightly there. As I walked back afterwards, it occurred to me that players probably never know it's their last Vegas at the time. We all assume we'll be back next year, but we can't be complacent. It's time to reflect on WSOP 2010, see what lessons can be learned from it, and begin the preparations for WSOP 2011. On the poker front, I think I need to get away from my over specialisation on NLH. On the personal front, I need to reduce the effort I put in to minor or non-essential poker activities. This Vegas campaign was threatened by personal distractions and political diversions. A falling out with someone I used to consider a very good friend got very ugly and very public. I don't think any of these affected my play or the outcome in the end, but I could certainly have made things easier for myself without them. My biggest personal weakness has always been a tendency to overstretch in every area of my life, and I need to remind myself that I'm first and foremost a professional poker player and that everything else is just dressing. I probably make more mistakes than the average person, but rarely the same ones.

The other positives I take from this trip is I played a lot of live poker in 5 weeks without ever getting jaded. I did not allow the attendant circus of Vegas suck me in: I rarely ventured outside the Rio. I did not allow the fact that I was getting no breaks in the ones that really mattered to me affect me. I wagered not a single cent on table games or slots. I socialised enough to feel comfortable and gravitated towards people who I had most in common with and could socialise with constructively rather than destructively (I particularly enjoyed the regular company of Feargal Nealon, Paddy O'Connor and his lovely wife Tanya, Paul Carr, Rob and Cat, my poker soul brother Mark Dalimore begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting, Sean Prendiville, Theos Rippis, Wally and a few others whose names escape me right now as I type this blog in McCarron airport).

Next up for me is the Waterford Masters in Tramore next week, sponsored by Bruce. I'm also looking forward to getting back into my regular nightly mtt routine on Bruce. Life goes on until it doesn't.

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Waiting for the main

I approached this Vegas campaign with the mindset that it was much more about giving myself the best possible shot at a bracelet than having a winning trip. Cosmic irony therefore probably demanded that I have the trip I've had so far: a winning trip utterly bereft of cashes in official WSOP events.


Thanks to two wins in nightly tourneys (the $340 and the $100) and a number of other cashes, coupled with a steady profit stream from stts, I'm one of the few Irish players in Vegas currently with more cash sitting in my safe than I brought over. And while I'd obviously swap it all for one deep run in a WSOP event, it's still something to be thankful for and proud of. At the end of day the primary objective of this game when you're a professional is to make money, rather than glory or jewellery. Particularly when you have a family to feed.


My edge in live stts and the nightly mtts favoured by tourists and hangers on is humongous so while I'm happy that they've essentially allowed me a number of free shots at the official WSOP side events, I would be disappointed if it weren't so. If anything, I think I've run a bit below Ev in them, particularly the stts. I did end my stt campaign with a win. The most interesting opponent was David Williams mother (who played very well and looks like a woman in her 30s).

I opted for day 1c of the main, which seems to be the day nearly all the Irish have gone for. Among those playing is Cat O'Neill, the only Irish lady (as far as I know) in the field. Cat's making her ME debut and is a tremendous prospect. I'd say she was on a heater at the moment except I'm not sure the word can be correctly applied to someone who appears to be permanently going deep. I'll also be hoping to join my Bruce teammate Wally in day 2A. I'm approaching this with confidence, very happy with the way I've played since I got here (apart from a slight mid season dip) and my mental attitude and focus. Vegas has a way of slowly but surely dragging you down, and this particular year has had more than its fair share of extraneous trivia to distract me, but as I said to someone the other day, I've gotten very good at ignoring distractions. I came here to play poker, that's pretty much all I've done to date, and the biggest challenge is about to start.

UPDATE: Due to the Rio internet connection being down for most of the week, this blog is going up much later than intended. I got up the 48k early on day 1 but ended back on 27k. On day 2, I dipped down to 17k before surging to 70k. I finished the day on 62k, back Monday at midday (8 PM Irish time).

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The world's richest janitor

Poker and life are both games that generally reward aggression, but occasionally present situations where neither folding nor raising are optimal, but the best thing to do is check call and hope that your hand will be seen as best.


Someone said once that the past is like a foreign country in the sense that the people talk differently and wear funny clothes. If that's the case, then my present Vegas experience is similar to emigrating and then running into people you knew from the old country but quite honestly never expected to see again. Some faces you expect: the people you emigrated with if you like. These are the people you have a strong shared experience with, and because of this plus the fact that you expect to go on seeing them regularly, it's in everybody's best interest that even if they occasionally or even often do stuff that pisses you off or you do stuff that pisses them off, it's best to just forgive and move on. It's also easier not to hold grudges against people you naturally like or feel an affinity with.

Some of the unexpected faces from the past that have popped up again are dealers, waitresses, tournament staff, and players. It shouldn't be unexpected to see them, yet when you've consigned them mentally to the past, it's still surprising to see them again, talking and looking slightly differently from how you remembered then. When I first visited Vegas for the WSOP two years ago, my brother railed me all through my day and a bit of the main event. The best player on my starting table was a guy whose name I forget (I'm useless at remembering names) from some small state like Wisconsin (or Milwaukee, or Montana: I'm as hazy on geography as I am on names but I never forget a face). His girlfriend was railing him and got to know my brother as a result. At the time, her boyfriend was a blue collar online qualifier who didn't play online very much. I ran into him and his girlfriend (now his wife) in the Rio a few days ago and they seemed as surprised to see me as I was to see them. She asked about my brother: I told them he had drifted away from poker. I asked if he played more poker these days: it turns out he's now full time and made over 300K online last year. This didn't surprise me on the grounds that I could see even two years ago he was a top class poker player with great discipline and focus, but rather on the grounds of how unassuming he still is.

On the poker front, it's been a relatively quiet week of regrouping before I play my final batch of bracelet events culminating in the main. I've been mainly grinding stts (with some limited success) and the daily mtts (ditto, I final tabled the nightly $340). I think my mtt form dipped a little for a few days, mainly down to losing patience in certain spots and making lazy gambley calls, and I've also been more prone to making one or two gross errors. I'm confident (or at least hopeful) I'll be back playing my A game in time for the last few WSOP events.

Fair play to Paul Lucey for throwing the party of the year in Vegas. It was a great night with a great crowd, all the expected faces and a few unexpected bonuses like my mate Mark Dalimore and Ozzy. Me and Rob are meeting Ozzy again on Monday evening for dinner. Hopefully we'll find something different to order on the menu. We've fallen into a frankly alarming pattern of me ordering something, and Rob peering at the menu before saying "Same for me" that surely has people thinking we're a gay couple. Rob's manbag is not exactly helping on that front either.

Also fair play to Paul for his part in the funniest Vegas story I've heard this year. He was with my Bruce teammate Frances "Wally" McCormack. Wally was looking for the Full Tilt lounge to collect gear. Spotting Phil Ivey, the never shy Wally asked Phil where the lounge was. As they walked away afterwards, Paul asked Wally, "How did you know that janitor?".

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