Let's be careful out there...

There's been a bit of talk around Irish  poker recently about acceptable behaviour at the table. As you might expect from a game where the object is to deceive opponents, poker is not exactly known for sportsmanship and there is no universally agreed code of conduct.

Most of the comment has focused on perceived bad behaviour by pros or wannabe pros towards recreational players. There's no doubt that some of us on this side of the fence sometimes let ourselves down. At a recent event one top Irish player tweeted the following:

Table move. Stuck in seat 1 with big fat guy in seat 2. Can barely see my cards. #ipo2012

and also:

Some cross eyed woman got my off 1010 on a 842 board by chk raising. It went to showdown as she had k8. I reckon her eyes deceived her!!

These were obviously meant as humour but there's a growing consensus (of which I consider myself part) that all these types of comments complaining about recreational players (sometimes by name, or with a surreptitious photo attached) not only display a lack of class but are also bad for business. In financial terms, poker is a game that requires far more people to lose money than to win money. In any given tournament 80 to 85 per cent of people lose their entire buyin. In the long run, over 95% of people lose. While some are delusional and believe themselves to be the victims of bad luck, I think most recreational players realise that barring a lot of good luck they can expect to lose. They are willing to do so because they enjoy the game. Part of this enjoyment comes from getting to play against players they see as top players. In no other sport that I can think of can any level of player compete equally with the stars. That's one of the best things about poker: anyone with the entry fee can play anything they want. If you're a club tennis player you can't just show up at Wimbledon hoping to get Rafa in the first round.

The first time I ever entered a big tournament I was myself essentially a recreational player. I was a little star struck when I found out I was going to be at the same table as two big name pros, Neil Channing and another guy it's probably best I don't name. Over the course of the day I saw a stark contrast in how pros behave towards casual players. Neil was witty, charming, friendly and made everybody feel they were getting value for their money as he slowly took it off them. The other gentleman who makes a habit of not being mentioned by name in blogs .... Well, let's just say he proved himself to be no gentleman as he sneered, mocked, derided and condescended.

Twitter is a brave new world of social interactions for which the accepted norms of behaviour are still to emerge. In the past I've thought of it as a conversation with close friends and as a result tweeted a few peeved hand histories on tilt. However I quickly realised that Twitter is an audience that extends well beyond your inner circle so if you say something unkind about an opponent's play and mention him by name (or include a surreptitious photo) there's a very good chance it will get back to him. So I've adopted a policy of just factual descriptions of hands with no names no photos no snide comments. That may render them a little less colourful but I'd rather that than offend the people who essentially pay my wages.

It seems though that not everyone agrees. After a recent live event my friend Sandro posted this on my Facebook wall:

yes he is a a true gent who understands the scope of many players who show up for an entertaining weekend only to suffer derogatory and condescending remarks from some of the so called "elite" who are just plain obnoxious nasty and rude!.....Teach them some manners Dara!
I have no idea who if anyone Sandro is referencing but I did see a few tweets other than the ones quoted above from so called top players that made me wince.

There's a certain sort of tweet might be hilarious to you and your 4 or 5 closest friends but in my opinion has no place on a public forum where there's an excellent chance the target of your "humour" will see it (to make matters worse, tweets were being displayed on a giant screen at this particular event). In this context I think the rule of thumb should be don't tweet anything you wouldn't say out loud at the table within earshot of the person.

I should point out that I don't think that pros or winning players or whatever you want to call them have the monopoly on classless behaviour. Both sides have their fair share and in fact if anything I've noticed as a general rule that the lower the buyin (and the higher the recreational to pro player ratio) the lower the table etiquette. Most pros learn a certain amount of emotional control as they go whereas most recreational players by their very nature invest more emotionally in an event. At a recent live event, a recreational player crippled me when I raised kts from the small blind for most of his stack. Apparently not realising that meant I'm never folding to a shove no matter what I have, he shoved an unsuited king with a bad kicker, which he immediately started calling for when I turned over my hand. The poker Gods were obviously listening as he hit his kicker on the flop. They also heeded his impassioned shouts of Hold. After he had "held" he fist pumped less than a metre from my face, snarled something I'd rather not repeat, did a little victory dance and shouted to a friend on the rail "They keep trying to knock me out but they always fail. BRING IT ON!" As I sat there looking at what was left of my stack that meant I was now a short favourite to bubble yet again on the worst cashless streak of my career live, the temptation to respond and bite back was there.  I'd played with the gentleman in question for almost two days and had seen him react emotionally to everything to the point where I can't imagine him ever being anything other than someone who is going to have to keep paying in the long run for his poker fix. For him to remain willing to keep doing that he needs to keep finding ways to enjoy losing his money and if that means more suckout dances and macho war cries, then so be it. I'm no saint and while I don't enjoy being on the receiving end of this sort of behaviour, I see it as part of my job as a professional poker player to be able to take it and not let it affect my play. So I bit my tongue, tried to force a smile, said "Nice hand" and let him enjoy his moment.

Read More

We are Family

Almost a year ago, I had coffee with David Lappin to tell him I was thinking of getting into the staking business. David has experience in this area so I wanted to pick his brain on how to approach it. As we concluded our chat, I  told him I intended to start slowly in 2012 and see how it went. David laughed and remarked that given my tendency to do things to extreme I'd probably have a full stable by the end of the year. In fact, he overestimated my ability to do things by halves and as 2012 draws to a close, in addition to my own staking, I run two other operations, one with Jason Tompkins, the other with David and Daragh Davey.

At dinner in Clontarf Castle on Sunday, there was a bit of discussion among what we jokingly refer to as "the Firm" as to what Firm member Smidge's strategy should be now he was headsup against an unpredictable recreational player in the EMOP. Smidge had a chiplead of over 3 to 1, his opponent had less than 20 big blinds, and the general consensus was to try to grind him down even further using smallball before getting it in preflop. Against a more experienced opponent the plan would have been to get it in sooner rather than later, but the last thing Smidge wanted to do was let his opponent flip his way to the title.

With that agreed quickly, the conversation moved on to David Lappin's attempt in a recent blog to stake a claim to the Daddy role and attempt to assign me as the mother hen. This was met with general derision: the general consensus was that Lappin is less Daddy and more creepy uncle. The discussion moved on to what that made my role, a discussion ended when Daragh declared me to be Daddy and Mammy all rolled into one. All small social units end up functioning (or dysfunctioning) like a family for a reason: the family unit is the one we know the most about.

After dinner, we trouped dutifully back to watch the baby of the family finish the job. As David put himself in charge of capturing the moment of victory on camera, I took to tweeting a detailed hand by hand description of the headsup battle for friends and Firm members not present in Clontarf. A little too detailed perhaps: again with the problem of not being able to do things any other way than to ridiculous extreme. I am, after all, a man who started running in his early thirties with the idea that three 20 minute runs a week would take some weight off and strengthen a genetically iffy heart, and ended up  ten years later running the distance from Dublin to Galway in my early 40s in one day in the sweltering heat and 90% humidity of the North American summer. When I tweeted that Smidge had just folded his big blind, this was met with quite reasonable derision on the Twitter community, with Ben Jenkins tweeting back "Can't wait to see what he does in the small blind".

The headsup wasn't all smooth sailing (the gallant and game Frenchman almost clawed his way back to level after an ill timed bluff by Smidge went wrong) but after just over an hour, Smidge had ground him down and all the Frenchman's chips  were in the middle with a dominated hand. Last year in EMOP Dublin, I also got it in good in the last hand of the tournament, but didn't manage to hold. Smidge thankfully did, and so became the first (and almost certainly last, since the tour appears to be finished) Irishman to claim an EMOP title. We lined up behind Smidge for his victory photo and thanks to IPB's Danny Maxwell we finally had a sort of family portrait.

My own involvement in the event was essentially a cameo. Arriving there a few minutes after it had started due to unexpected traffic, I rushed to table 2 seat 1, thinking at least I knew where table 2 was as I'd spent a few hours the previous evening at it (in the supersat). What I didn't realise was that the numbering scheme for the tables in the main was different from that in the supersat. As a result, I ended up taking my place at table 6. This was unfortunate as it seemed to be about the toughest table of all, with Ross Johnson, Aki Pyssing, a number of good young Scandis and later David Lappin. It was David who ended up taking me out when I reshoved jacks over a loose raiser and ran into David's queens. Another queen on the flop ended any hope of the suckout, and I left the scene quickly, disappointed at such a brief effort to end the year on a high live.

All of the highlights of my year on the live front have been watching friends and Firm members from the rail, and so it was again last Sunday. Smidge ended day 1 and day 2 as chipleader and went to the final table with a commanding chiplead. He was joined by Daragh Davey, who was short. Daragh's so good though that the comeback was always likely, and until he was coolered by Smidge (running sevens into aces) he had actually forged slightly ahead. When I first cast my mind around the Irish poker scene a year ago trying to think who I would most like to stake, it alighted on Daragh, not just for his game (which was already top class) but more for his calm composed approach and ability to deal with setbacks and just get on with it. You'll never see Daragh kick or throw a chair after a beat or swear at an opponent or dealer. You'll never see him tilt off his stack after a setback. What you are likely to see him do is win a big live tournament soon.

The first time I saw Daragh was when he was to my right in a Fitz End of Month. At the break, I asked my friend Rob Taylor who the quiet grumpy kid to my right was. Rob squinted and then announced "Oh, that's Daragh Davey. He's very good". This stuck out as high praise indeed as Rob's private assessments tended to run from atrocious to not bad. I'd never heard him describe anyone as very good before, and I secretly suspected that if Phil Ivey somehow strolled into the Fitz, Rob would tell me he was only half decent.

The first time I almost struck up a conversation with Daragh was when I found myself sitting beside him on a sofa in the D4 bar at a D4 event. I say almost because as affable as I consider myself to be, the Davey glare trumped it with an intensity that proclaimed "I do not want to be talked to". From that inauspicious start, Daragh has somehow become one of my closest friends in poker, and one of the very few people I desperately want to see do well independent of any financial interest I might have. So every time he was all in on Sunday, my stomach knotted up, and when he lost a race to exit in 5th, I felt worse than I did after my own exit. He took it in his stride though: his transformation from live cash grinder to online mtt beast is complete with the two majors he has captured in recent months, so he has a lot to smile about these days, even if he admits the fact that he's still only learning to smile can make that smile a quite disconcerting one at times.

By contrast, Smidge is just about the smiliest player in Ireland, and as he follows his UKIPT Dublin final table in May with his first major title, he has much to be happy about. He showed tremendous poise and talent to lead from post to post, and after a difficult recent spell, it took great character. His close friend James "Jaymo" Noonan has flown the flag online recently for the Firm as he tore up online poker.

Before I played poker, I played bridge, with my brother as my partner. Bridge in Ireland is almost the mirror opposite of the way poker is going. It is (or at least was at the time) dominated by old dears (the kind that talk about countries like Rhodesia that don't exist any more), so as a couple of young guns myself and the brother stuck out. The old folks regarded us as curiousities, and it was their curiousity that prompted them to ask us 40 questions every time we sat down at the table. After my brother realised that most of them couldn't remember having already done so we sat down at their table, he decided it would be more interesting to answer their questions with brazen lies rather than repetitive truths. Thus, we were the brothers from Tammyhill, Kiljaykenny, Instaseabay and a number of other fictitious places my brother invented on the spot. I had never heard of Drumlish before both Smidge and Jaymo unexpectedly claimed to come from such a place. Descriptions of where it actually is are very vague. It seems to be about 20 miles from a lot of places but near nowhere, and on the way to nowhere. So I continue to harbour the suspicion that the two lads made it up, and they're actually from Athlone or somewhere like that. But I guess so long as Jaymo keeps crushing online and Smidge live, it doesn't really matter whether there's an actual place called Drumlish.

Read More

Bristol hillbillies

Around noon on Saturday as David Lappin and I were having a lie in to recover from both having busted the UKIPT main event the night before, I got a call from Feargal Nealon asking if we wanted to go for breakfast. We'd both already had breakfast but Kowby is always good company so we dragged ourselves out of bed for some coffee. Over our coffee and his breakfast, Kowby brought up the subject of David's final table appearance in the Big 55, his biggest result recently online, which it turned out he had railed. He was openly critical of David's play late on, and in particular in two big hands. Typically, David didn't react defensively to this criticism but listened carefully to Feargal's thoughts and reasoning, explained his own, and there was a healthy discussion between them in which I mainly played a listener role. David commended Feargal for having identified the two hands over which he had the most uncertainty afterwards, and as Feargal shot off to play a satellite to the High Roller, the discussion was inconclusive.

As we strolled back to the hotel, David suggested we go for a walk around Bristol as we were both at a loose end until the 300 side event that evening. As we walked around beautiful Bristol (one of the nicest cities I've visited ) David asked me for my views on the hands. In these situations, I tend to revert to mathematics rather than give my instinctive opinion. The first hand was a relatively straightforward choice between trying to induce a shove (with the intention of calling) or getting the chips in first. Although the line Feargal suggested would be supported by several other top players, a quick Ev calculation of both options indicated that the shove favoured by both David and myself is more profitable long term, and lower variance.

The second hand was a lot more complex and difficult to assess. It was a situation where David had to choose between a check raise or a check call with a set on the river where there weren't many worse hands that could call a check raise. David had opted at the time for the more cautious line (as he tends to do when he thinks its close), but Feargal was adamant it was a clear check raise. My instinct was that Feargal was right on this one, but I kept that to myself until we did the maths. That was easier said than done. Despite constantly teasing me for being a self proclaimed math genius, David isn't shy about using me as a calculator in these situations when he has no access to Pokerstove. The math on this one was quite tricky as it involved identifying the range of hands that could call a check raise, working out how many hand combinations in there that bottom set beat, assigning a weight to each possible combination (some hands are always in the range, and others may or may not be, so you have to estimate the probability that they are), estimating how big a factor ICM was, and converting the result into equity in actual money. This took us the full length of the walk, and engrossed us so much that we arrived back at the hotel with little or no memory of what we had seen on the walk. However, we had worked out definitively that Feargal's instincts were correct and that David had made a $750 mistake in this hand.

This level of attention to detail of one hand played weeks ago and level of reliance on the math strikes many as obsessive and probably is, but I think it also helps explain why both of us remain highly profitable online players  in the face of rising general standards and smaller and smaller edges. Poker is a game of situations and having analysed this particular situation thoroughly we both now "know" the correct answer the next time it comes up.

One of the easiest mistakes to make in poker is to let the variance obscure your vision of how well you are playing. Most players assume they are playing well when they are running well. It is to David's credit that he doesn't allow himself to think this without questioning. On the other side, it's easy to assume you must be playing bad when running bad. Personally I find it harder to be objective about how well I'm playing when running bad, so my solution is always to run more hands by the brains trust. I'm lucky enough to be close friends with players of the calibre of Jason Tompkins, David, and Daragh Davey.

As my recent run of non cashes extended from longest ever (I'd previously never gone ten live tourneys without a cash) to an alarming 24 (after I busted UKIPT Bristol main event) my friends had to put up with me asking them about a lot more hands as my faith in my own judgement came under attack from results. Guys like Jason and David possess the ruthless streak all great players have and would never hesitate to crush an enemy, but both are generous above and beyond the call of duty with their friends. Running hands by them in this situation is a win win for me. If they confirm I played the hand as they would, it boosts my morale. If one the other hand they identify some mistakes or flaws in my thought process, I'm now aware of the types of errors I'm making so I'm better equipped to cut them out. They don't need to help me out in this way and at the end of the day in addition to being their friend I'm also a direct competitor. In no other business I know of do people give as much help to their competitors. But I'd do the same for them and I'm sure they know that too. At the end of their lives, I think most people would prefer to be Albert Finney in Big Fish rather than Orson Wells in Citizen Kane. I certainly would.

My exit from the main event came a few hours in. I'd already made one massive fold (which I'm almost certain was correct), an uncharacteristic river check raise bluff (which got through), and an uncharacteristic light 4 bet followed by a couple of barrels (which also got through). I felt like I was playing really well and giving myself the best possible chance to end the streak, but it wasn't to be. My exit was an unclear spot where I flopped the nuts, let my opponent get there and then paid him off with my tournament life. Obviously I ran it by the brains trust and was reassured by the consensus that the only thing wrong with it was the result.

Things weren't looking good for an end to the streak when I got off to what might euphemistically be called a slow start in the side event (although there was nothing slow about the pace I seemed to be leaking chips) when Kowby came over to talk to me having just busted the High Roller (since he left us, he'd binked the satellite). As he watched, I got into a threeway allin and after I emerged victorious he immediately claimed the credit for reversing recent luck. After that I chipped up steadily and it was looking good until I lost a race which should never have been against Andrew Fleming. Lack of good spots saw me wither back. I refuse to stick it in in a bad spot just to save myself having to come back the next day with a tiny stack, so I did end up having to come back to play six big blinds.

Operation Spin Up got off to a good start. As Jason strolled over with the bad news that he'd busted a big stack in the main (after a series of setups and coolers), he was in time to see me win a race against the impressive James Rann. Maybe I should forget all about maths and game theory: what I really need is a steady stream of friends who have just busted another tourney to suck all the bad luck up.

From there I chipped up constantly (I did have to get lucky on the river though) until I was crippled a bit short of the bubble by the action player at the table after a very unusual hand. Folded to me, I had a hand strong enough to shove into his short stack (KTs) but rather than shove I elected to do the Lappin chop (a move David favours where you make a big pot committing raise but don't actually shove), and raised to 75% of my opponent's stack. Apparently nobody told him this meant I was committed though as he shoved K9o apparently under the misapprehension that I might fold. When I didn't, his courage was rewarded with a nine on the flop while I thought very bad thoughts about my friend David.

At this stage I could feel another bubble in the offing. However, I put that from my mind and just stuck my chips in when I felt I was supposed to. This worked out well as I got through the bubble with an above average stack. I've never been as relieved to min cash, and my friends seem to share this relief as it meant I was now fair game for having the piss taken out of me. Funniest tweet (as usual) courtesy of one DKLappin:
"Congrats to @daraokearney! Your Henson mob no longer looks like that of someone who died in July."

Another highlight was Team pro and online legend Mickey Petersen apparently calling me out as a nit on Twitter, pointing out I always seemed to have tens plus or an overpair in the big pots. When the great mementmori is laying the nit charge at your door, you take notice.

I peaked at 125k as the final table formed, about average. It's fair to say the final table didn't go to plan. I was basically card and spot dead, and the first move I made saw me shoving the absolute bottom scrape of my range (fours: take note Mickey) from early position. It went all the way round only to smash straight into the top of the big blind's range (kings). There was no suckout and I busted in 8th. I wasn't as tilted as I'd normally be in those spots: I guess as a result of a combination of at least having got the monkey off my back as far as the streak goes, and also having had to recover from fumes several times to even get that far. With the streak now consigned to the history blogs, I can hopefully go back to being tilted every time I cash but don't win.

Well done to everyone who outlasted me, especially James Rann and Andrew Fleming (who got the lion's share of the chop). After an initial unimpressed impression of Andrew the previous night when he 3x opened KQo and then 4 bet shoved it with no fold equity but won the race to cripple me, I was more impressed by his subsequent play throughout day 2. In fact, I can't remember the last time I've been as impressed by a self professed recreational player. He was pretty careful about giving away information at the table, but did let slip at one point that he's an actuary. I guess it's no surprise that someone who plies his trade in the Mines of Probability would be handy enough at poker.

Stars deserve a lot of credit for what they've created with the UKIPT. It's a good balance between hardened professional players and recreational players there for the craic.  At a time when several other organisers are charging more and more exorbitant reg fees, I give Stars credit for keeping them at a reasonable 10% across the board. Bristol is a beautiful city, the locals are friendly and hopefully it will stay on the calendar. Thanks to everyone who took the time to say hello or talk to me at the weekend: too many to name but you know who you are. Special mention to Chihao Tsang who provided me and my roommate with delightful dinner company and then took it in good grace as he got dogged left right and centre by his dining companion. I met him for the first time in Vegas this year but Chihao has quickly become one of my favourite people.

It was a good trip overall not just for me but also for a lot of my friends. David final tabled two side events, and was joined on the PLO final table by Liam O'Donoghue. Liam is one of those young players who impresses me not just with his game but also his maturity, temperament and measured approach. Jason, who only gets out of bed for main events or high rollers, made a strong challenge in the Main and with a bit less bad luck when it mattered would have made yet another final table. Marc McDonnell notched up another cash and reportedly tilted Vicky Coren out of the tournament and Danloulou final tabled UKIPT online. Different kind of props to Jwillo who took a leaf out of my book (you know the one, "How To Mess Up The Most Simple Travel Arrangements") and spent the night on a bench in Bristol airport grinding Twitter.

I might prefer to end up more like Albert Finney in Big Fish at the end of my life rather than Orson Wells in Citizen Kane but at the moment I seem to be more like Jed Clampett in the Beverly Hillbillies. The complex inter-relationships within my inner circle of friends where we all own different bits of each other resembles a sort of modern poker equivalent to a white trash family. The culture within the group is very supportive: independent of who owns what I think we are all genuinely delighted when one of us does well and all supportive of those struggling on the flip side of variance. On the other side, nobody is above or below criticism or having the piss taken out of them when the occasion demands it, but as a group I genuinely think there's a higher level of mutual respect than is often the case in these peer groups. Our spirits were further lifted as we passed through airports (Bristol and Dublin) to the news that Daragh Davey was having a stormer of a Sunday. We landed in Dublin to news that he had won the Lock major, his second major since Vegas.

After a few hours sleep, I was up and ready to grind with renewed confidence. I decided to ease myself in with just a few satellites and mtts for a short session. I ended up winning a ticket to the next UKIPT (in Edinburgh) and final tabling two 10ks, one on Party and one on Ipoker. I was third on Ipoker but managed to win on Party, another nice confidence boost. So I should be going into EMOP Dublin in Clontarf Castle on Friday brimming with confidence. I feel like I'm now back playing my A game, and for that my closest friends deserve all the credit for providing me with the support to get through a difficult patch. Mr Lappin in particular may be known for his devilish wit and his sharp tongue, but he's also a great friend who knows when to not put the boot in. One night last week in a drunken moment of weakness he posted one of the most gushing and mushy tributes ever made to me in a Skype group chatbox. As a measure of thanks for his understanding and support, I won't repeat it here, as he would be very embarrassed if I did (and rightly so).

Read More

Streaks and stakes and punting stacks

I was chatting the other night with a friend who has left his job to try to go pro. He's been having a good year so far so fingers crossed for him. His preferred games are the bigger guarantee Stars games with lots of runners. I advised him that while these are some of the most profitable games out there, they are also the highest variance. So he needs to be prepared not only financially but also emotionally for long periods of downswing doldrums. I pointed out, for instance, that he needs to be able to deal emotionally with periods where he keeps bubbling or hitting the crossbar (getting close to the big prizes).

I know what I'm talking about here. That basically describes my live year to date and my current run of live tourneys without a cash. The key in those periods is to try to not let it affect you. The current streak includes several bubbles or near bubbles. If I was just focused on ending the streak there were several times during it when I could have shut up shop and locked up a min cash. Contrary to what some might think though I base my decisions in running in tournaments entirely on what I think will make the most money in the long run rather than what will get me into the money the most often.

I had one such spot about 20 from the bubble in the Irish Winter festival main event at the weekend. Comfortably stacked with almost 100k I could have battened down the hatches to ensure getting into the money. Instead I kept playing my normal game. It didn't work out and I ended up short and open shoving nines into queens and ace king three spots from the money but I have no regrets. When I told my friend David after how I'd gone from 100k to 30k he summed it up perfectly as "So you kept playing poker". I hope to keep doing so no matter how long this streak lasts.

The one adjustment I have made is I am tending to play a lot tighter than I normally do live. At dinner the next day with David, Jason, Daragh and Smidge I told them  the reason for this was I don't feel I'm playing my A game at the moment and one of the hidden advantages of playing tight is you will have less unclear marginal decisions to deal with. When I said this David challenged me on my assessment that I'm not playing my A game and asked me to back it up with specific hands I'd butchered. I wasn't able to but that's not the point. I don't think the difference between my A and B games is how many clear mistakes I make. It's more a case of getting more than my fair share of the marginals right (where a decision is so close that in the long run neither option is a mistake) and my spidey senses telling me when to diverge from "standard" lines. I actually don't think it's possible for anyone on a bad run to continue to play their A game. The more important question is how good your B game is. I know several players whose A game puts mine to shame, but not as much as my B game puts their B game to shame. In terms of long term profitability, the B game is the bigger factor.

A curious anomaly in the betting markets saw me stay at the same price (80 to 1) as I had been before the event at the end of day one despite having almost trebled my stack. Anyone following me on Twitter knew that early on day 2 I had virtually doubled up again early on. With almost 2% of the chips in play I think the price was very generous and apparently several others did too, plumping on me before the market was suspended. All of which meant immediately after my bustout I felt I should go around  apologising to people like Reggie Corrigan who had told me they'd bet on me. I changed my mind though when I ran into Parky who pointed out with his usual pith "Apologies are no good to anybody mate".

I busted just before the doubles kicked off. Jason Tompkins had asked me ages ago if I'd like to enter this with him. Teaming up with an EPT and WSOP final tableist seemed like a good way to try to break the streak so I went for it. Things were going to plan early when Jason kept leaving me with 20 big blinds or less. I'd spin it up and come back after his level to find Jason grinning guiltily and leaving me 20 bigs again. That was working nicely till a bit of a rush saw him leave me a good bit more than the 20 bigs. As he tagged me in he reminded me that I could now raise fold. I did a bit of that till it was a shoving stack again and then lost a three way flip with sixes v ak and aq despite flopping the 6. Jason seemed pretty relieved at the news as for some reason he was not being allowed to play cash in the levels I was playing even though at least one other player in the tourney was doing just that. In general I give credit to Paddy Power for the way they ran the festival and apart from this the only other criticism I would have is that if you are running a novelty side event like this, you should try to prioritise the novelty and fun aspect rather than turning it into just another side event. While I understand the rationale behind it I think the rigid enforcement of a rule preventing the non-playing partner from interacting with the playing partner (or even being in the area) detracted a lot from the banter possibilities. It felt less like doubles and more like two guys playing half a tournament each punctuated by long breaks.

I was very happy though to find out later that two of my favourite people in poker Jen Mason and Rebecca McAdam ended up shipping the doubles. I joked to them both afterwards that Jason and myself could never admit to having played the event now that it had been won by a couple of girls, but I was joking. I know from comments Rebecca made that the ladies had to put up with some boorish chauvinistic behaviour so I imagine that made the win all the sweeter (there's been a lot of debate recently about acceptable codes of behaviour and I intend to give my views on the matter on this blog soon, but I will say for now that there are few things that offend me more than chauvinism in poker, and as a particularly male bastion it's unfortunately all too prevalent). It was also good to see Jen back on the felt. When I started playing she was already one of the top UK players. She is possibly known more these days for her excellent blogging skills but remains a top player.

A few of the better Irish players had deep runs and it was looking good for a home win. Sadly it wasn't to be but honourable mentions for Marc McDonnell and Ronan "Gilly" Gilligan. Gilly continued his amazing year and whatever his secret is, we'd all love to know it. Marc is someone I've known, respected and liked both as a player and person since the start of my career. He has something special that arguably no other Irish player has. Certainly none of the rest of us puts together monsters stacks in live tourneys with the frequency he does. Some feel he has a similarly unrivalled capacity to punt these stacks once he has amassed them, but in my experience more often it's a case of him simply getting unlucky deep. I played with him in the IPC at the start of the year and was impressed how he readjusted and geared back down after being crippled on the bubble. This latest run is further evidence of his maturing as a player and I think it's only a matter of time before he wins a big one.

In a mini reflection of how my year in general has been, at least live, my weekend was saved by a bit of staking. I took a very large chunk of one player who final tabled which gave me reasons to be both thankful and hang around. As I sat railing the final table with some friends, Daragh Davey remarked that it must be nice to be earning money while just sitting there. While it is a nice second best option to sitting at the table making money for myself, the reality is I would much rather be doing my own earning. I'm not a great railer at all: I find it intensely boring and I'm always left thinking I'd much rather be at the table making the decisions myself. So while I'll happily accept for my money to keep running well when put into staking others I'd also like to see my return to being my own most profitable horse.

Finally, a big well done to Jaymo. When I came back on Wednesday night a little tilted from having extended the live cashless streak even further, I was pleasantly surprised to find Jaymo deep in the latest FCOOP, the 4 max. He was fairly crushing it and until he lost a massive flip a few tables out was a strong favourite to win. Consummate pro that he is, he took the setback in his stride and grinded his way all the way to the final table and extracted the maximum he could from the situation (fourth for over €7k). He may not be widely known yet, but in my opinion Jaymo is already one of the best ten tourney players in Ireland. Still only 20, his work ethic, temperament and desire and ability to learn is second to none. It's truly frightening to think how good he could become. The first time I met him (in the Fitz about a year ago) I had an immediate instinctive sense I was looking at a very special talent and prospect. While I give myself credit for spotting that, I have to give more credit for his development into the online beast he is now to himself and David Lappin. Lappin is very much the coaching brains of the firm, and has the uncanny ability to improve the players he works with almost instantly. I rate him as the best online coach I know of, and his record and that of the players he's worked with speaks for itself. To be frank, I'm surprised more Irish players don't seek to hire him for his coaching expertise, but secretly kind of glad about it since it leaves him more time to coach the guys I have a financial interest in :)

When I got word back to Lappin in Tallaght that our boy was deep, he persuaded the ever accommodating JP to put it up on the big screen out there. By all accounts a rowdy rail developed as the punters watched Jaymo chase the FCOOP on the big screen. If he continues to work, show the same dedication and develop as he's going, I expect us all to be watching a lot of Jaymo on big screens in the years to come. And not just online. Watch this space.

Read More