The craziest man in Ireland...

Well, the IPR live final didn't really go to plan. Or rather it did for a while, I moved fairly comfortably from 21k up to 27k in the early going before the big hand that scuppered my chances. Chris Dowling opened in early position, and I flatted with AQs behind. I prefer the flat to the raise here for a number of reasons: it disguises my hand, I don't really mind if a few people call as the suitedness makes it a decent multiway hand, and if I raise it probably folds out most hands I dominate while if I get 4 bet, it's a tough spot (I probably have to release the hand in the absence of any strong read). Another factor was that it was Cat O'Neill's big blind and she had a reshipping stack. Cat's good enough to squeeze worse aces and kings here that she'll just fold if I 3 bet. There's also a very strong chance Chris has no real hand: he sees Cat as a rock and Chris tends to raise blinds he perceives as rocks with any two. There was a time when Chris used to make donk sized big raises with rubbish which made him a more profitable 3 bet target, but these days he's much less exploitable as he's joined the "less than 3x" camp.

As it happens, everyone folds. The flop comes AQ4 with 2 diamonds. Chris leads at it, I raise, he reraises and I now have choice between shoving or folding. To be honest I don't think there's any real decision: if I'm going to fold top two in a headsup pot on a draw heavy board against a loose aggressive like Chris to a reraise, he can profitably reraise 100% of the time. The only reason I even paused was because of some speech play that convinced me Chris had a hand: people who don't want action on a hand don't usually talk much, and it smacked more than a little of Hollywood. However, realistically 44 is the only hand that beats me here, and Chris can show up with A4s or KdJd/KdTd/JdTd. I shoved and Chris' snap call confirmed my worst fear that it was 44. I still have 4 outs twice but I obviously didn't hit. That left me with just over 5k which shrunk to 4k when the blinds went through. Utg I picked up Q9s, bottom of the profitable shoving range. The structure was getting fast and I really didn't want the blinds to go through me again so I shoved and hoped. Nicky Sinnott called with AK on the button, first card I saw on the flop was a queen but a king also featured.

In the end, Nick Newport was a very deserving winner. He's been on a real heater since winning the Winter Festival and his results on their own merit a sponsorship deal. I'm sure he'll do very well.

I had another good five figure week online which definitely helped cushion the blow. I see online very much as the day job (or more accurately night job) so so long as that's going well I'm happy enough.

When I'm grinding, I don't usually even look at the chatbox (in fact I usually don't even have it open) but as my night winds down I become aware of it. So it was the other night when the last tournament I was in was the 20r on Stars. I was feeling pretty good and social as I'd final tabled two 10k guaranteeds on Party already (winning one, the 30r). Dean Price was hyperlagging it up (playing 42/38 full ring) with a big chiplead and I was 3 betting every so often. Suddenly he called me out in the chatbox, and said that allinstevie had just told him I was "a lagtard" and "the craziest man in Ireland". I said "sounds about right", he said "I can never fold to you again now", I three bet him next hand and he folded. Quite amusing, but Dean had the last laugh, I ended up busting on the second last table while he ended up winning. Respect.

In other news, I've managed to shift some of the weight I piled on recently. After Christmas, I'd ballooned up to an unprecendented 85 kg. At my running peak (which lets not forget was only 4 years ago) I weighed 70.7 kg. It's unlikely I'll ever get that low again unless I get cancer or something but I'd like to get back down to 75 at least. Anyway, half way there: I dipped back under 80 kg.

Plan is to play the Fitz EOM on Thursday and then just play online until Manchester. The second half of March is fairly hectic on the live front with Manchester, Lisbon and Malaga. I'm particularly looking forward to Malaga as it looks like there will be a good crew going. Jono Cruze and Ger Harraghy are both already confirmed, as is my roommate Mick McCluskey, and hopefully my consiglieri Feargal. Kudos to Feargal who continued his phenomenal track record in CPTs by scooping the Sligo CPT just before jetting off to the Alps for a skiing holiday. It's a tough life at times :)

I believe the Channel 4 coverage of the Galway UKIPT starts next Tuesday night. I may feature on it: was on the TV table for a while three tables out, and did an interview with Channel 4 immediately after my exit. Remains to be seen whether they use it or not: I have no real recollection of what I actually said :)

In other news, I've been asked to contribute a monthly column to Player Ireland from here on in. It'll be a mix of strategy pieces and reports and tales from tournaments I play in. First column will probably be on strategy for satellites which is topical with so many people trying to satellite into Irish Opens, UKIPTs and what have you these days.

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Professional bumhunter

One of my friends and colleagues, Jono Crute, recently described what we do as professional bumhunting. Sitting down with the best might do wonders for the ego, but is a potentially disastrous bankroll management strategy. In any zero sum game, the profit of the winners has to come from the vaults of losers, and online poker isn't even a zero sum game. The sites will always take the lion's share of the bum money. Staying ahead of the rake, the reg and variance means making decisions on which sites, times and individual games to play based entirely on the whims of the bum. In this game, the bum pays the piper, and therefore calls the shot. The bum is king.

Online satellites are always great bum magnets as you get a lot of live players trying to qualify for the target event who don't adjust very well to online. One recent example is enough to illustrate this point: eight left in an Estrellas Malaga satellite on Stars with 7 packages. One guy has let himself get too short, 10k, 6 bbs. Everyone else has at least 40k so logic suggests that the table will wait til he makes his move, then everyone behind will call and check it down. Well , that's what should happen. What did happen was 3rd in chips playing 70k opened for 4x, and the chipleader playing 120k shoved from the sb. Aces is a fold here now but our Spanish friend was made of sterner stuff: he snapped with eights, lost to the chippy's queens, literally burning €1700. (It would have been funnier if he did have aces though as the queens flopped a set).

Irish Open qualification: remembering how it's done

In the last week since the deepstack, I've been a little lazy playing mainly online sats. In that time, I've scooped four Malagas, a few Nottingham UKIPTs and a couple of Manchester UKIPTs. I also finally nailed down my IO package. I say finally cos it took me a lot longer this year: at least 10 attempts I think. I was starting to think I'd lost my touch and just before playing Tuesday's rebuy on PP I came across an old strategy piece I wrote on supersats three years ago when I was still very much in nappies as a player. The piece reminded me of some things I'd managed to forget and I realised I was playing these too aggro early doors and making too many big rash moves late on rather than smallball coasting across the line like I used to. So I went back to basics for the Tuesday rebuy and a few hours later qualification was in the bag. Also, fair play to Evan Frisby of PP who automatically credited me with the cash for the hotel as he remembered I always ask to this. PP's flexibility on this matter is in stark contrast to another site I won't mention (Stars).

Friends and enemies
Speaking of the deepstack, I played a couple of sides to no great effect. I had my fingers crossed for my friend Feargal Nealon who amassed a gigantic stack that would be well above average at the bubble long before the bubble on day 2. Unfortunately this wasn't to be his day. He asked me for my opinion on the hand that did the damage and I gave it to him the next day, as he mentioned on his blog. I generally don't hold my punches when a friend asks for my opinion, enemies are a different matter (let them go on thinking everything they do is brilliant), but I don't think it's bad per se given his read, just unnecessarily risky when he was hoovering up soft chips without big risks. Feargal's a lot more fearless than me though in those spots and it's really a question of style more than anything else. Some day all his moves will be well timed, he'll win the big flip, and romp home.

Another friend, the indomitable seemingly unstoppable Sean Prendiville, went deep (std) but ultimately went out just before the final table (atypical). Sean's an amazing finisher so it came as something of a shock that he didn't close the deal here but his record of going deep in these 1000 plus runner fields is unparallelled in the country.

Nits in Notts
On Friday morning, I flew over to Nottingham for the UKIPT. I bumped into Nicholas Newport, Chris Dowling and Mark Smyth and we shared a cab from the airport. There were a few other Irish on the plane: including 3x master Ciaran Cooney, Marc McDonnell and Nick Heather.

I was a little apprehensive about a long day of live poker after a sleepless night, but it was actually a fun day 1A for me. Got a lot of early chips from guy to my immediate left who was hilarious. First hand we played set the tone: I raised A7o in lp, he flats button, flop comes JT7, I decide not to cbet and it goes ch ch, turns a 2 so I make a smallish bet which he calls, rivers another 2 and it goes ch ch. I have his 75o outkicked. When he sees my hand he goes on tilt. "You raised with that shite?" I pointed out he'd called with 75o. "Yes, but I only called. You raised!" No arguing with that and the Brucey bonus was now every time I put a chip in a pot, he called atc. Also helped he was a monumental tellbox to the point I always knew his cards before showdown.

I chipped up steadily through the day using a smallball strategy. I deliberately avoided probable races for decent chunks of my stack, I even folded AK twice pre which you'd rarely if ever see me do online, and shied away from high variance moves like light 4 and 5 bets as the field was so soft it was possible to chip up steadily without showdowns. The value in the field is illustrated by one of the last hands of the night. A loose goose who had already spewed off 75% of a 200K stack he somehow luckboxed limped utg, good Dutch internet kid flats, good Scandi internet kid flats, and I get a free ride in BB with K8o. Flop K97 with two hearts, Dutch kid 75% pots it, Scandi calls, I get out, goose calls. Turn is Jh, check, check, Scandi pots it, goose shoves, Dutch kid reshoves, Scandi snaps. I'm wondering what the three big hands are. Dutch kid, Th8h, made straight and open ended straight flush draw, fine. Scandi nut flush, yup. What does the goose have? Pair of fours!

Afterwards, I stayed on drinking with the Irish contingent that included Chris, Mark, Peter Barable and the Mcleans, and we were joined by my Scottish mate Dave for a while. I don't normally drink during events but had the next day off so I decided to let my hair down for once.

I'm not very good at chilling but I'm willing to try
The following day I just chilled out in the hotel with a non poker friend based in Leicester these days who came to see me for the day. I was struggling with a head cold (I still am) so a day off with good company was just what the doctor ordered.

The plainclothes detective strikes again
I came back for day 2 feeling confident with just over average. I had breakfast in the hotel with Larry Ryan and even though there were almost 100 to go before the bubble, he predicted it would burst within three hours. In the event it took only two. I was pretty card and spot dead in that time except for one hand (kings on the button, called by the BB and I got two streets of value on a jack high board) and basically treading water. That continued after the bubble and my 60K was just 20 bbs and M 8.5 when I decided to reshove the plainclothes detective (KJs) from the blinds. Unfortunately I was called by AK. I had a flush draw and a gutter after the turn but the river bricked.

When bumhunting turns bad
I jumped straight into the High Roller which was definitely a mistake. Talking to one of the English lads before, he pointed to the bar area where a bunch of mad looking yokes were playing a turbo sat to the game and said "that's where the value is coming from". They did indeed look like the kind of mentalists who'd be getting 400 bigs at level one with KJ on a jack high flop, but because of a scheduling error the supersat was still running when the high roller kicked off. To make matters worse, when it did finally end, they roped the 9 qualifiers off at the one table. Meanwhile, I'm at a table that includes Max Silver, Jake Cody and James Mitchell struggling to spot the value and remembering Doyle Brunson's truism that if you can't spot the value you're it. I was pretty card dead til my exit, which saw me raising AK from the small blind with 20 bigs. I raised rather than shoved to induce a shove from a hand that I dominate and got what I wanted until my opponent's A9 binked a 9 on the river. The positive was I got to play against a bunch of really top class players and see some great poker, but that's not a good reason to fork out two grand to play an event where your edge if it even exists is miniscule so I don't see myself playing any more of these at future UKIPTs (unless there are more satellite qualifiers). Highlight was one of the sickest calls I've ever seen. A pensioner with about 100K arrived at the table. I initially assumed he was a rock hitting hands or catching fools trying to bluff him, but that read was quickly challenged by the fact that he was in every hand. When he bet he overbet the bollocks out of it, with the nuts whenever it was showed down. Then Jake Cody (who it must be said wouldn't look out of place in the Stars Wars universe) raised in the cutoff, the old lad flats on the button, and the two blinds come along. Jake cbet a 996 flop, called by the pensioner. The pensioner ceized the initiative when Jake checked the 4 turn. A third nine appeared on the river and after Jake checked again, the OAP thought about it for not very long and then massive overbet shoved. Jake looked like he'd been light sabered, then started laughing. He giggled to himself for a while, every so often looking at the old guy. After tanking for a few minutes he called with a shrug and showed ace 5 for ace high. The old lad had 23 for the nut low.

At the dinner break in the High Roller, I was chatting with Owen Robinson. Obviously I know of Owen but had never really been chatting to him before. I was very impressed by his attitude towards the game and his obvious knowledge. I'm pretty sure we're going to see a changing of the guard at the top of Irish poker pretty soon with Owen and other young guns more attuned to recent developments in the game and with a more disciplined approach to it coming to the fore. Owen told me about one lucky soul who galloped up to 60K in the early going, then got moved to the table with all the satellite qualifiers. That folks is running good!

I Heart England
Plan on Monday was to take it easy and play online, but I got roped into a sit n go Liam Flood put on with most of the Irish contingent, honorary Irishman Neil Channing, and an English kid who clearly had us down as value. He was obviously a shark as he played perfect sit n go strategy (and ended up winning). I walked back into Nottingham and traipsed around for a while looking for an I Heart England t shirt (I made the mistake of asking my daughter what she wanted and she nominated this: it may have been a level but no Irish daddy in his right mind would say no to his only daughter no matter what his suspicions are). I played a bit online and binked another Manchester seat. Meanwhile, Chris Dowling was getting horribly unlucky on the final table of the main event. I said to another player recently that I think Chris is possibly the most underrated tournament player in Ireland. His results speak for themselves: he is remarkably consistent in going deep in these large runner fields. His style is a little unorthodox at times but that makes his all the more difficult to play against.

Also well done to Peter Barable who took down the charity side event playing like, in his words, "a tramp". It can only be good for Irish poker to see more Irish travelling to UK events and getting results.

I met Chris in the airport the morning after and he was admirably philosophical about his sick exit. There's never any point dwelling too long on sick beats or what might have beens in this game.

Forthcoming attractions...
Next up for me is this year's Irish Poker Rankings final. I think Irish Poker TV is covering it. A few friends got on me to win at 14 to 1 on Boyles so that's an added incentive for me to go in all guns blazing for the win.

After that, the plan is to concentrate on online until mid March when I'll have the Manchester UKIPT, the Lisbon EMOPS and Estrellas Malaga in rapid succession. Lisbon clashes with the EPT Snowfest so I won't be playing that this year. At this stage it's looking likely that San Remo will be my only EPT before Vegas.

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The wisdom of Bob Battersby and the Daniac

Early this morning, I busted in the last level of the European Deepstack, a very painful experience for me. While rationally I'd rather win the WSOP ME or an EPT or even an Irish Open, the wrench I felt in my gut as I walked away told me that personally on an emotional level, this tournament means more to me than any other on the live calendar. I guess that's not surprising since in a sense it's where it all started for me, and I have so many happy memories and moments of drama from this tournament since I won the inaugural one. And, as Mike Lacey said to me immediately after, I still have a better record in it than anyone else.

I got off to an absolute flyer, racing up to 65K in the very early going. At that stage I was loving my table. I was opening a lot of pots, and the table seemed to adopt my 2.25x open size as the standard. I'm happiest in tournaments when everyone is playing smallball and we're all very deep, so this suited me down to the ground. My timing seemed to be immaculate: all my value bets were getting paid and all my bluffs getting through. To make things even sweeter, there was an empty seat to my left which meant two buttons for me every round.

It all changed when the empty seat was filled by a Danish guy. While they're invariably lovely people, you never want to be seated to the right of a Dane at a poker table. This particular one told me he used to crush high stakes online cash (and I believe him) before he gave it up to study, and was staked into EPTs by Gus Hansen at one point, so basically unlucky me to have one of the best and most aggro players in the room with immediate position on me.



Suddenly most of my light opens were getting 3 bet or flatted. When that happens, you basically have two choices: you can either tighten up, or you have to be prepared to start 4 betting light a lot. I'm not a fan of high variance moves like the 4 bet light at that stage of a live tournament, so I opted to tighten up. This meant a period of treading water until my first big hand against the Daniac (as I jokingly chistened him) just before the break. There were a couple of funny hands at the table in this period, none of them involving me. Pride of place went to one that started with a French guy playing reasonably solidly opening at 75/150 for 400 utg, Italian makes it 1300 two behind, Daniac flats, tightest player on the table who has no raised yet preflop 4 bets to 5k on the button. French kid folds and as the Italian tanked I was thinking god I'd hate to have queens or even kings in his spot. Italian did the whole stare for a read thing before shipping in the loot (60K), and after the Daniac folds the tight guy has aces and the Italian looks a little distraught as he turns over his cards. I can only see the top one and it looks like a 5! I'm thinking my eyes must be deceiving me here, how can he have a five in his hand when the dealer spreads the cards and I see, yeah, pocket fives. Not a hand I'd be happy getting 400 bbs in against a nit's first 4 bet but the great thing about this game is we all play it differently.

The advantage of being able to play loose early in a tournament like this is the very strong possibility someone's going to spew off like that. Greg Raymer pointed out once that while in a world where everyone is playing perfectly, tight may be theoretically right in the early stages of a deepstacked mtt, in the real world where many are playing atrociously, it's better to get in there and mix it with them before someone else has their chips. Two years ago I doubled up in level one of this tournament when I opened JTs utg and got a guy's stack after flopping a straight versus his top two. Although I ended up running deep that year, I had a bad patch in the middle when I got moved to a table with two maniacs who just ran over me and the rest of the table. In poker as in life, you learn from your mistakes, and the big lesson I took from that tournament was I needed to learn how to counteract maniacs better. These days I think I play very well against them: the most profitable of the nightly mtts I grind for me are the rebuys full of maniacs, but no matter how good you are, you're always going to be under pressure when you run into a skilled maniac with a stack and position who will readjust to anything you do rather than just bang it in with air every time, and so it proved with the Daniac.

The key to playing these players is to check more and call lighter when you have something, and be prepared to bet and raise more with total air. On this occasion I managed the second part better than the first. When I look back on this tournament, the crucial pot was one where I almost found a hero call on the river with just bottom pair but didn't. It started with the button raising, me flatting in the SB with Ah3h and the Daniac flatting in the BB. Flop came 9h5h3x, basically a great flop from me and if we were shallower I'd be trying to get it in here, but we're so deep that check calling is the better line. After the raiser bets 1400, I call as does the Daniac. The turn is a non heart ten, I check again, as does the Daniac, the other guy bets 3600, I call and the Daniac now raises to 8500. The other guy tank folds (A9 he claimed), and I called, mainly hoping to either hit the river or for the Daniac to be on a move and give up. The river pairs the five, I check, and he now bets 11500. My plan on the turn was to give up on the river to any decent sized bet if I didn't hit, but this river bet made little sense to me. Most of his value hands would be alarmed by the appearance of the five on the river (I can very easily have a five here) so I thought his range was now really polarized to bluffs and monsters. The only real monsters are flopped sets, but would a flopped set really check raise the turn, taking the risk that the button raiser just checks behind giving a free card in a three way pot? My gut was saying a large part of his range was worse missed flush draws. I agonised over the decision well into the break. There was all sorts of metagame to consider: he'd just been caught bluffing so that should make it less likely he's bluffing here. His bet size (40% of pot) was more consistent with his previous value bets than his bluffs. These two factors pushed me towards the fold in the end. Encouraged by his friends to show the bluff, he did Kh6h as I suspected. He apologised after the break saying no disrespect was intended but really there was no need for an apology: I was happy to see his hand and he played it immaculately.

At the break I had a pizza with a Dutch pro at my table. He felt the fold was fine normally because of the metagame and recent history. I don't think it's a massive mistake by any means, the Daniac needs to be bluffing about 30% of the time there for the call to be correct and I think in reality it's somewhere in that region, but I do wish I'd gone with my gut and made the call. If I had, I'd suddenly have been up to 100K, the Daniac would no longer have a stack, so I think that one decision was crucial to me not getting through day one.

Shortly after the break, the Daniac took a number of hits with badly timed bluffs and light 5 bets and one poor light call (which goes to show calling light against a maniac isn't always a winner). That hand started with me opening light to 1625 at 400/800/100 with 85s (not having played a hand in ages), Daniac flatting, and a French maniac who had joined us 3 betting from the blinds to 4250. Small reraise and I'd sometimes flat here if I was up against hopelessly bad players, but didn't fancy playing this hand for this much out of position against a skilled Daniac. He's never folding if I flat, and there is the alarming possibility he'll 5 bet shove if I do and suddenly there's 12K in the middle. So I folded and the Daniac calls. Flop came 762, Frenchy leads, Daniac flats, turn's a Q, French leads, Daniac tank flats, rivers a brick, French leads against and Daniac calls muttering that this is a bad call. It is, his eights or nines are no good against the Frenchy's Q6. Having done half his stack this way, I'm thinking he has less leeway to make loose calls and raises preflop. I've recovered up to about 60K so when it's folded to me in the cutoff and I have 43s and there are two nits in the blinds I figure it's a decent spot to open. The Daniac is relentless though and calls, as does one of the nits. Flop comes KQ5 which looks like a decent one to cbet once it's checked to me given my opponent's likely ranges here (Ax or small to medium pairs for the nit, any two for the Daniac) and their perception of mine so I fire. The Daniac flats, and my plan now is to just give up as he doesn't fold much once he's called the flop as the previous hand against the Frenchy proves. However, an ace hits the turn and this is now a great card for me to bet, so I fire again knowing he's going to find it hard to call as if he does he thinks he'll probably have to call a large river bet for most of his remaining stack. He shows a king and folds.

This proved a slightly pyrrhic victory as it reduced his stack to a reshipping one, which he was doing at regular intervals when I opened, and I never found a hand I was happy to call with (Q9s was the closest). However, I got enough through to get up to about 75k which was my high point for the tournament. By now you were losing 4-5k a round so you didn't want to be going card dead but unfortunately I did just that. This is why there's a huge difference between having 100-120K at this point in a tournament like this and having 70k. I'd drifted back to 55K when I decided it was time to use my image. A serial French button raiser did so again, I had A2 in the BB and it looked like a good spot to 3 bet light so I bumped it up to 11K. Unfortunately he jammed it back in my face so now I have 45K. That becomes 35K before I find a hand or spot. I pick up sevens in the cutoff. With an M of 7 it's a pretty standard shove. The only other reasonable option is to raise. Raise folding this shallow is not a great idea but there are some cases where it may be better than shoving, notably if you have just nits behind who will only play the same very tight range of hands as if you shove. The two blinds were nits but I still had the Daniac to worry about and I really don't want to open the door for him to reshove the likes of T8s so I did shove. That said, there is a case to be made for just opening normally with the plan to call if he does shove (and there probably are some hands in his range I'd love him to shove like Ax where x < 8) but maybe folding if one of the nits does (although this opens up the rather nasty possibility of folding the best hand if they shove AK or AQ).

As it happened, the nit in the SB groaned when he looked at his hand, and eventually reshoved. At this stage I know I'm racing at best but I wasn't. He had jacks and there was no seven from Heaven. I guess it pretty well sums up my tournament that literally the first time I stuck the loot in, I did so with a hand that would be best 91% of the time, but this was one of the other 9% of times.

Looking back on my tournament, I'm satisfied that I played well for the most part, but as I said you learn from your mistakes, by identifying them, examining why they are mistakes, and why you made them, so that hopefully you won't make them in future. The A3 hand was the crucial one and I came very very close to making the call that would have set me up. The important thing when reviewing a tournament is to focus on your decisions and your performance rather than the outcome. Some days you make the right decisions and lose: other days the wrong decisions win it for you. But the job is still to try to get as many of the decisions right. Your result in a tournament depends not only on the hands you play and how you play them but on a myriad of other events of chance that feed into what hands you play and how. In an alternative universe somewhere, a seven from Heaven comes. In another, I decide to raise fold rather than shove the sevens and live to fight another day. In another, I make the call with A3, the Daniac is crippled, and I run over the table and end the day as chipleader. In another, I respond differently to the arrival of the Dane, I start four five and six betting him light and I either slap him down or we get it in and I win and proceed to run over the table and end as chipleader (and of course in another we get in, I lose, and I'm writing a blog saying what the Hell was I thinking getting 400 bbs in with JTs). In another, the Italian doesn't go mad with the fives and double up the nit to the point where he's still around and covers me when I shove (or does but sucks out). And so on and so on. In some of these alternative universes, I go on to win the whole tournament. Does that mean I played better in those universes? No. It just means my decisions coincided with fortune. The challenge in this game when you've mastered it is to make choices between different strategies and lines all of which are plus Ev and none of which are clearly or demonstrably more plus Ev than others. If I can do that, then the Doke of this universe will ultimately make more money from poker than any alternative universe Doke.

I'll probably play a side event or two. Next week I head to Nottingham for the next leg of the UKIPT. The week after is the IPR live final, and it's looking like a very busy few months live. I've qualified for the Estrellas Malaga at the end of March and I'm planning on playing the EMOPS Lisbon just before that too. I've already qualified a few times for the Manchester UKIPT in mid March. Online's still been ticking along nicely and there are times when I think I should just give up on this live poker mullarkey as unless I bink a big one it will never be as profitable as online.

I'll leave you with a choice Bob Batterbyism. Bob was moved beside me in the latest Fitz EOM (where I didn't trouble the scorers). An amusing BSB hand developed. The button raised and the two blinds defended. The flop came jack high with two hearts and the SB led at it for pot. The lady in the BB shoved, the button reshoved, the the SB tank folded AJ. His dismay when the hands went over (KJ and a flush draw that didn't get there) was vocal and loud, and as he continued to beat himself up at it, Bob looked at me and said "It's very hard to win if you don't call". I wish I'd remembered those words when I was looking at A3s and a little voice in my head was saying "call, he's got a worse missed flush draw".

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