Running bad in green

I should probably have taken it as a bad omen when I pulled the green gear I had to wear for the Irish Winter Festival as part of the Sole Survivor promotion out of the green bag as the last time I ran well in green was back in 2007 at the World 24 Hour Running championships.

And the fact that even then I spent the next 24 hours in hospital suggests maybe even that wasn't that good a run as I thought at the time. Speaking of the running, my old running club asked me to explain myself and this poker mullarkey and you can read my attempt to do so at "I haven't gone away, you know". Thanks to my advisers Andrew and Feargal for some much needed help to stop me making an eejit of myself with this.

Anyway, my main event never got past my starting table or day one. I was happy enough with how I played, just didn't happen on the day. Very mixed starting table that included John Eames and Peter "Knuckles" Higgins. Both played very well and it was Knuckles who got me in the end, one of those cases in poker where someone makes a wrong move at the right time. At 300/600 Knuckles misclicked, inadvertently opening for 4500 when he threw in 3 1000's (rather than 3 100's: they were ridiculously similar) along with 3 500's in early position. I had AK behind and a reshipping stack so my 9500 went into the middle and even though he only had T7s it was obviously a no brainer call getting 3 to 1. Tens kept popping out of the deck on different streets and that was that for me.




Came back the next day feeling a lot more at ease in my trademark look with the Bruce shirt and a new plan for the side event (run better) and executed it well enough until I was chipleader late in the day. Then the ladies started to let me down: lost a 50k pot with queens v nines all in pre, and another chunk with AQs v A5o (the money going in pre when I reraised and on the turn when I hit a straight). Both of them were four flushes which to my mind is right up there with counterfeiting as annoying ways to get sucked out on. Still, I got out of the day with over 50k, below average but tenth in chips with 22 left. Other than that, the highlight of the day was listening to Neil Channing's constant chatter (which tilted the living daylights out of my Italiano neighbour) and tales (apparently some ludramaun is going around telling people like Neil I think it's correct to fold aces pre in certain spots on the bubble of a normal mtt). The other highlight was knocking Neil out to the immense relief of my Italian friend who I think offered me his first born as reward (hard to be sure since his English and my Italian were a 72o/32o type match up for what's worse). I'm happy to say I totally outplayed the Irish Open champ and WSOP bracelet winner in the hand on every street even if that's a blatant fabrication (he made a little speech and shoved sevens with a short stack in late position and I had a no brainer silent snap call with AJs in the BB and hit a jack).

Came back for day 2 with the same plan but didn't really execute. Drifted back a bit in early going chasing draws. I've come to the conclusion that shoving draws in Irish live tourneys is not really that good an idea unless you really dig getting it in as a dog as you have very little fold equity most of the time. At the start of my career I never bothered with suited connectors and maybe I was better off for it. I guess with some steal equity or against calling stations who will let you chase cheaply they're still worth playing but you're probably not losing much if you simply decide never to play them. Pretty depressing since it essentially reduces the game to waiting for cards but then again a lot of the big online winners do exactly that without dying of boredom. After a period of working out what adjustments were needed to go from playing in Ireland to playing abroad or online, I've been thinking a lot recently and talking to my poker pro buddies about the adjustments needed when I play live in Ireland (as opposed to live elsewhere, or online) and I think my live tourney game has improved for it.

Anyway, I did what was needed as far as selecting good plus Ev shipping spots to survive a short stack through the two hour plus bubble. I felt my patience and discipline deserved to be rewarded with a double up on my first called ship, but my AK failed to improve against fives and that was that, 13th for €1400. I wasn't too disappointed though: good to get some sort of a result and I was extremely happy with how I played. I always feel that consistency is a better indicator of quality in this game than any one result no matter how big.

Was thrilled to see Tom Finneran get a result in the main, and also well done to everyone else who cashed, especially eventual winner Nicholas Newport. Also well done to the organisers: this used to be a bit of a meh event but they're doing a job building it as the one of the few big buyin tourneys of the winter season. As great as it is to see all these relatively modest buyin games in Ireland, for balance it would be nice to see more big buyin events. To give live players a chance to develop their skills and make a living in the bigger games you need more than a couple of monkey events a month. For a country that quite rightly prides itself as a poker nation, it's a real shame that Ireland doesn't have an EPT leg when you look at some of the smaller countries that do.

Online continues to go very well, but I won't bore you further with exact details (that's what my Twitter and Facebook are for). Or I might run into you at one of my next live outings (Fitz EOM or JP's WSOP mini series) and get the chance to bore you with them there.

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Bomber in the Port of Roses

This blog entry is coming to you from the front seat of the courtesy shuttle taking me and my companions from the Hotel Metropol in PortoRoz, Slovenia to our flight home in Treviso.


In the row behind me, my beloved wife is snoozing. In the row behind her, Thomas "Bomber" Nolan and Vinny "Vincinio" Burke are performing a snoring duet. I'm hoping I'm not the only person awake at this hour but I can't be certain since the driver appears not to have moved in 20 minutes and is wearing a pair of Fly sunglasses.

We got here Wednesday and basically chilled until the supersat on Thursday evening. We had a pleasant few drinks and went out to dinner with Mike and Brian from D4 Events, Ben and Jonno (two young English pros), and two young French guys who have some great results in D4 Events. The live supersat was a fairly quick affair (6K starting stack, 15 minute clock). I crapshooted badly, running AKs into QQ the first time I pushed. This left me short and the next time I pushed, with A7s, I was dominated by AQ. I like to play these live supersats as a sort of advance scouting mission to gather intelligence on how the locals play. The main impression I formed was the LAGs played mostly the same as most LAGs everywhere, bluffing far too much in bad spots and getting unnecessarily tricky slowplaying monsters. The rocks played like most rocks but did the occasional random and usually ill-timed move. Most of both camps seemed to play push fold reasonably optimally.

The main event kicked off on Friday with 74 runners. Poker is clearly in its infancy in this part of the world but I was impressed by the local organisation and think that in a year or two it's likely to be big here, and will breed a lot of good players as central and eastern Europe is already doing.




My basic plan was to revert to the strategy that won me the very first European Deepstack: start tight and then tighten up. Most of my Italian opponents seemed to have no Fold button so bluffing didn't seem like a good idea. I stuck to trying to play hands with nut potential in position, hoping to flop the nuts and bet like billyo. Nice plan but it's fair to say I got nothing like my fair share of playable hands so most of the day was spent mucking 62o pre. I did catch JJ at an opportune time. A loose local opened for the standard amount, another guy playing almost every hand flatted. We were still very deep so I elected to flat in the cutoff. My main reason was the button, an Italian who had clearly read the chapter on squeezing, never seemed to see a squeeze he didn't like. As expected, he stuck in a hefty reraise, my two opponent folded their spanners, and I flatted trying to make it look like a stubborn "you've done that once too often so I'm calling out of position with spanners here" syndrome. Flop was a rather pleasing KJ4 and I checked. To my surprise, my opponent checked behind. Turn was a 3, a second spade to join the two diamonds that had flopped, so I now fired fairly big and my opponent quickly called. River was the ten of spades, I fired again, and after some thought my opponent raised most of his stack. No longer feeling too good about the hand and fearing a slowplayed set of kings, I studied my opponent for a while and eventually decided he seemed to be exhibiting a foot tell and in any case I couldn't be folding here so I shoveled the chips in reluctantly. To my surprise, I was shown 23o. That hand pushed me up towards 100K and by the end of play I had nudged through it to 123K.

I would have had even more but Bomber got moved to my table. After following an early strategy similar to mine of sitting tight, his patience was rewarded when he was on the right side of an AA/QQ cooler. He then pressed on to over 200K running all over the table. We skirmished just a few times and he got the better on two occasions. I raised my button after he limped utg, the BB flatted, and the Bomber now unexpectedly reraised. I've played with the Bomber a few times and never seen him do this move before, so I frankly admitted to him "I have no idea what that means" and decided on a prudent fold as I had a hand that played pretty horribly against anything other than a bluff. It can of course be the old "limp a monster" trick (which he did with his aces later versus the queens), more recently in Ireland it seems it can be a medium pair, or on the Internet it can be air (Assisanato pulled this move at my table in the Berlin EPT with T9s). After the BB folded showing AQ, Bomber showed 54s. I should have known: these pesky Internet kids

I've sung the Bomber's praises before on my blog: I think he is a pretty phenomenal player. Some players are good but relatively easy to play against, some are bad but hard to play against, a rare few combine the best of both types, and Bomber falls in this camp. To illustrate how hard he can be to play against, towards the end of the day I raised A9s in late position (A9s is the Doke nuts incidentally), and both blinds defended. Flop came 983 and Bomber led at it for 3K from the BB. I quickly raised to 7500 and after the SB folded Bomber snap called. Turn was a ten, and Bomber led again, this time for 10500. The ten was a rather horrible card that slams into the Bomber's range, there are hands he can have that have now moved ahead (T8, T9) and hands that I'm actually drawing dead against now (QJ, J7, 76). Most players wouldn't bet their really strong hands like this but Bomber has caught me on a couple of occasions in other tournaments by betting the nuts or second nuts so strongly it's convinced me he can't possibly have it. His turn bet here has leverage as I need to decide right here right now whether my hand is good. If it's not, it's going to be a very expensive river, so again I chose the prudent fold. I showed my hand hoping it would encourage Bomber to show his and he obliged with 44. So I was basically owned. The difference between Bomber and a lot of players who try that sort of move unsuccessfully is that he recognised the ten as a good bluff spot (he said so after showing the hand) rather than just mindlessly bluffing come what may, and realised that I would see it as a card that would have helped a lot of his range. And because he plays his strong hands the same way, it protects his bluffs, and forces you to guess.

I came back for day 2 eighth in chips and glad of a redraw that took me away from the Bomber to a more Italian table. It was all going to plan when I motored up to 170K without showing a card until I caught my first and only real hand of the tourney, KK. I opened for my standard 2.3x utg, and utg+1 flatted. He was relatively short so when the flop came QT3 and he shoved over my cbet I had a no brain call. Unfortunately he had setted up (tens). A short while later a flopped nut flush got overturned by a straight flush and that knocked me back to 110K. The rest of my tournament was spent essentially treading water around 110K until I reshipped 99 over an Italian raiser who I thought was playing 40K. Unfortunately when he called two yellow 20K chips appeared from behind his stack and it turned out he actually had 80K. The nines were still probably a theoretical reship there, although live there's a case for folding too, particularly when you feel you have a significant skill edge over most of the field. He had queens and held.

After a shipping flurry that saw me rally back up to 70K, I shipped A9o into aces to exit in 18th and that was that. Time to spend some time with the wife, as Mike pointed out.

While I was disappointed that my 100% record of cashing in 50K starting stack events was at an end, I was very happy with how I played. Since Vegas, I think my live form has been patchy at best, with the top of my game performances (Vilamoura EPT, Fitz EOM) being outnumbered by some more lacklustre efforts. I think this is largely a kind of winner's tilt from how well the year has gone for me online engendering a kind of "ah sure it doesn't really matter anyway" attitude, but that's not an attitude you ever want to take into any tournament. I felt this was one of my rare recent perforces where I was focused and at the top of my game picking up good reads. That's the nature of tournament poker: you can play very well or even perfectly and lose a lot of the time, and occasionally you can even play very badly and win. The fact that I managed to build a stack with little or no help from the deck is encouraging. These deepstack events are pretty unique tournaments that allow you to explore the full range of your poker game, and the fact that the high quality "foreign" contingent did very well (the ever impressive Paul Jackson finished third, and Bomber was second, with Paul's young English travelling companion securing the win), while myself, Vincinio and Ben Jenkins all went reasonably deep will hopefully encourage others that these events are worth travelling for.

Slovenia itself is lovely, populated by friendly people who all seem to speak four or five languages, even if they're not familiar yet with Dublinglish. In the lift at one of the breaks, Bomber gave me a quick hand history between floors. After he left the lift, a bemused looking local asked me in Italian what language he was speaking. When I said English, she clearly didn't believe me

Well done to Mike and Brian for putting on this event which will surely go from strength to strength, and to Bomber for his performance both pokerwise and at the table (he had all the locals in stitches). He apparently knocked all but one out at the final table and got headsup with a massive chiplead but then got unlucky after getting it in ahead a number of times. Before he dozed off in the back, he asked me about the Barcelona EPT and expressed a desire to play an EPT. Somebody needs to warn the Scandi versions that there's a madder version of themselves on the way

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Planes trains and automobiles

These days I always seem to be writing these blogs on some mode of transport, and this edition is being written on a plane to Venice. Early morning flights are just the best.




The ultimate destination is Porto Roz in Slovenia for the Mediterranean Deepstack. A long way to go for a monkey game with a sick good structure, but this is doubling as a romantic getaway with my better half (think of it as a kind of reward for being the only woman mad enough to not only put up with my insanities but positively glory in them) and Mike Lacey got us a sweet deal on the whole thing. Given the way I've been running live since Vegas, sick structure or not, the poker shouldn't take up too much of my time once it starts on Friday

So it was in Killarney. After a good start which saw me breach 30K by the end of level 2 (mainly thanks to being on the right side of an AA v KK cooler: I played it in such a way as to avoid being all in by the river if at all possible but was near enough to all in as it happened), nothing went right and I'd fizzled down to 12K when I thought I saw a good reshipping spot with AK (I should have known: see recent Anna Kournikova blog). A young aggro from the North raised to 1650 utg at 300/600. He was opening a very wide range from any position (he'd already turned up with J6 in a similar spot) so with 20 bigs and the Big Slick it looked like the perfect reship until my immediate neighbour chirped "All In". He was playing so tight I immediately feared the worst. I thought even QQ was unlikely so I was basically hoping to see KK but my worst fears were confirmed and I failed to bust his aces. He went on to win the tournament: I seem to have the knack recently of busting to the eventual winner.

I hung around for some raucous wine drinking with the likes of Sean Prendiville, my friend Michelle, Mick McCloskey, (no, he did not buy me a drink), Bruce teammate Wally and the IPB blogging team (who once again did a wonderful job). I was undecided as to whether I wanted to stick around for the side event: in the end the fact that the first one up was a 2 day event and I really wanted to be back home on Sunday for some online tourneys tilted the balance towards a Saturday afternoon train home. A solid profitable Saturday night session followed by a mildly unprofitable Sunday was a reasonable result. I made the second last table of the Merge network's 50K before going from hero to zero in a few hands. My style deep in online tourneys depends very heavily on not running into monsters when I make the big move, and on this occasion there was always a KK or an AA out there. That's poker as they say.

Most of the rest of Sunday was spent anxiously following the updates from Killarney and getting texts and calls from my amigo Feargal. I was praying to the poker Gods that this would be the day he finally won a big live tourney he so richly deserves to go with his prolific online record, but alas he was coolered again. I know myself the awful pain of the second last table exit when you can smell the final table and the big prizes and when I got the news of the exit it was like a kick in the stomach. Mrs Doke, bemused at the sight of her self centred lesser half getting so upset over someone else's misfortune, asked what percentage we'd swapped. When I told her we hadn't swapped on this occasion, she was even more bemused. I honestly don't think there's a better tournament player in the land and it's only a matter of time before Feargal lands the big live one, but unfortunately you can never be sure in this game where live is always far too small of a sample and I know several brilliant players who never won a big one. All you can do is keep playing the best you can, and Feargal played brilliantly on the final day and made some massive calls. A lot of people go to pieces towards the end but like all true champions that's when Feargal comes alive. Well done to Paul Lucey for his deep run too: Paul's a gentleman I have a lot of respect for.

There was a bit of soul searching after my only early bath. Bad running is an easy excuse to fall back on, but you always have to be on guard that there's not bad playing involved too. One hand in particular troubled me as I realised afterwards that I'd play it totally differently online (where I continue to crush), and I couldn't help but wonder if I should just play exactly same live as I do online. But I'm also conscious that live plays differently and you have to adjust for that. Having taken the hand round my most trusted poker peers, one plays the hand exactly the way I played it and while the other two play it a bit different, they both felt my line was a more than acceptable alternative. Nevertheless, I feel a bit like a golfer who has decided to remodel his swing: he may be better for it in the long run but in the short term it seems at times he'd be better off just forgetting about it and going back to the old swing.

Special thanks to Carlo Cretaro for getting myself and Feargal plugged as "online superstars" in the Irish Indo. The journalist may have misinterpreted his remarks though, in which case it's the first time I've ever benefited from a journalistic misunderstanding. But it won't stop me badgering all short term visitors to Doke Manor with the clipping

There's quite a few good tourneys coming up in Ireland in the next month or so. As I've said previously, I've already satellited into the Winter Festival, and I'm particularly looking forward to JP's WSOP mini series. Some of the side events in that look particularly juicy, including a HORSE event. JP's s great man for trying new things and I hope he gets a good turnout.

Hearing that 5 Irish cashed in the London EPT gave rise to a slight pang of regret that I'd decided not to try to qualify for it, but I still think there are better value EPT stops out there and I hope to hit one or two before the end of the year. Well done to the 5 who did cash, particularly John O'Shea who proved himself to be the man for the big occasion with his deep run to the second last table. It'd be nice to see an Irish player final table one before the end of the year. And even nicer if it was me :)

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WCOOP < BPO

Last weekend was a real rarity in my life at the moment: spent at home. I played the WCOOP main event after satelliting in the previous night from (of course) a 3x turbo.


I slept late to be as fresh as possible for the year's biggest online tourney. After a false dawn start that saw me edge up past 30k, I basically didn't win another pot. I'm not too happy about my exit: I thought at the time it was marginal and on reflection I don't really like it. The loosest player on the table opened utg, another guy playing very solidly flatted behind, and I'm in the small blind with A9o and a reshipping stack so it looked like a reasonable squeeze. I clicked the timebank while I tried to decide whether it was a good spot. I reckoned I was miles ahead of the opener's range (and he's folding the vast majority of it) but the flat from the other guy who was playing well was more of a worry. Eventually I clicked the Allin button and my worst fear was confirmed when the first guy folds and the second guy snaps with queens. He flops a house leaving me drawing more or less dead. Wp sir!

I don't think it's too bad: I had a major leak until recently involving passing up too many reshipping spots. In fastish structures with antes and aggro opponents you can leak a ton of equity and find yourself short stacked very quickly if you do this. However, I don't think this was that good a spot: I should probably have trusted my gut instinct suspicion at the flat from a player playing tight and very rarely limping or flatting, who seemed very capable and would therefore be aware that there was a reshipping stack lurking in the blinds. Stayed up a bit longer to rail Feargal Nealon who was flying til he got sick coolered headsup against the BB (he flopped a 9 high flush only to find his opponent had a J2 flush). I was curiously philosophical about my exit afterwards which I guess says something about how well the year has been going online. Essentially I felt like I was freerolling with no real pressure to get a result. It's a nice change from last year to be playing the bigger events with that mindset, but at the same time you don't want to be complacent and I am hungry for a really big one. One of the more interesting hands I played early on was posted by my opponent in the hand on TwoPlusTwo and reposted on IrishPokerBoards: some interesting discussion and points raised.

Apart from that, I won't bore you by reciting a list of online mtts won in the last week (that's what Twitter and Facebook are for imo) but it has been an extremely good (read profitable) week. Highlights included winning the same tourney on the Merge network back to back (consecutive nights), winning a couple of Bruce nightlies, and winning BPO event 5. BPO is Bodog's version of WCOOP/FTOPS and after finishing third in the 6 max the night before, I took down the rebuy for just over 6K. I ran ridic good for most of the last two tables to have an imposing chiplead until headsup. Some very good difficult players on the last two tables so a bit of run good was needed and on this occasion the trademark Doke gear shift from small ball to big pot poker at that point in tourneys got the job done. I got headsup with a guy from Bucharest. He wanted to deal after he chipped his way back to level in the early going and I was amenable but it doesn't seem to be possible to deal on Bodog. I was cursing this fact when he worked his way up to a 3:1 chiplead but we were still very deep so I wasn't pressing the panic button just yet. He was following a curious tactic of stalling: using the maximum time allowed for each decision. I saw this tactic quite a bit when I used to specialise in headsup stts: it generally signifies an opponent who feels outgunned when it's deep and wants the blinds to go up to the point where the only decision is push or fold. Sometimes with a twist of "drive my opponent mad and tilt him" thrown in.

We toed and froed a bit more to no great effect when suddenly my opponent switched tactic and started overbet shoving a lot. This happens quite a bit when you play headsup the way I generally do (smallball hyperaggro): there seems to come a point when a switch gets flicked and the other player goes "I'll show him: I'm allin. How do you like them apples?". This isn't the worst tactic in the world when the stacks aren't deep but isn't as effective when they are. I've seen and heard this tactic hailed as "taking a free shot" by people who really should know better. I think it's more accurately described as giving the shorter stack the chance to sit back and wait for a very good double up spot. Under normal circumstances someone with a 3:1 chip deficit headsup can only expect to win 25% of the time, but if the chipleader is going all in willy nilly a likely 70/30 spot will eventually arise. So the chances of the shortie winning increase from 25% to almost 50% (the chance that they'll win two 70/30s). This is more or less what happened, except in the second big (and final) hand, the guy called it off as an 18/82 dog. I love headsup as it's the ultimate psychological game that often boils down to getting into your opponent's head and deciding why he's doing what he's currently doing and what you can do to get him to start doing what you want him doing.

My only live outing this week was the Fitz End of Month and I managed to be out within an hour which I think is a new personal worst. My exit was pretty marginal to say the least: I needed 30% equity against my opponent's range to justify the shove (which was essentially the same as calling as Barry can never fold for the price he's getting after I shoved), and after a minute pondering what the range might be and another of couple minutes calculating my overpair's equity against it, decided I had the bare price needed (32%). In a slower structure I'd probably fold but in that tourney I'm happy enough to get it in with some sort of pot odds justification rather than folding to a 20 bb stack. There's no worse place in the world of poker for a 20 bb stack than the Fitz.

This is being written on the train to Killarney where I'm hoping for a better showing, if for no other reason that myself and amigo Feargal have lumped on some side bets. I'm not really a big sports better these days, well not compared to most of the degens knocking round the upper echelons of Irish poker anyway, but more on those bets (maybe) in my next blog

Well done to a couple of Facebook friends, Brian Barnes and Adrian McCarthy, for good showings in a couple of Bruce mtts. It's good to see more people taking the route I constantly advise of tackling the small and medium stakes on Bruce which are savage value. My friend Rory Brown very quickly graduated from crushing them to crushing the bigger nightly games I play: it can be done if you go about it the right way. I never deposited a cent online: my entire online roll and the money pulled off the last two years for the life roll was spun up from $171.42 I got for luckboxing second in a 2000 runner online freeroll. I moved from there via $5 tourneys to where I am now, not getting too worked up when a $5k buyin online tourney doesn't go to plan.

Finally, I met Gary Clarke for a chat before the recent Dublin UKIPT and the fruits of that meeting are a really insightful piece Gary wrote on me for Poker Ireland. Probably the highest praise I can give it that those who know me best think it sums me up perfectly. Thanks Gar.

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