Tuesday, February 12, 2013

The joys of being a Canadian fisherman

I don't like playing any live event, even a hundred quid crapshoot, unless I feel I can give it my best. In particular, I don't like playing side events when you are more interested in how someone else is getting on in the main. Lappin's continued involvement into day 4 of EPT Deauville therefore gave me the perfect excuse to take it easy for a few days. The company was good too, with a good crew of Irish players, some foreign heroes like Laurynas Levinskas, and some non poker degens like Mrs Doke (and her assorted family in France who visited us during the week) and David's girlfriend Saron (who as well as amazingly being able put up with David is tremendous craic). 

David eventually got unlucky with kings against sevens with 40 left. While railing David on day 4 and over tweeting to keep myself from dying of boredom (I'm a terrible railer: watching poker without hole cards just seems like the most boring thing you can do, with the possible exception of watching cricket), I got chatting to Howard Swains, one of the Poker Stars bloggers, who then wrote this very nice well written piece on David just after he bust.

It's fair to say David was a bit tilted in the immediate aftermath of his exit so we went for a consolation ice cream. It was a great run and a brilliant performance in his maiden EPT, but we come to these things hoping to win and as he said to me a few days later even the 16k brick in the safe in his room was no real consolation. In fact it merely served as a visual reminder of what might have been.

David's unlucky demise freed us up to play a couple of side events. In one of these myself Jason and David registered just before kickoff and were "rewarded" by me and Jason being put at the same table, with David at the next table from where he took this snap.

My last side event did at least provide me with some amusement in the form if a minor diplomatic incident after a hand between a very affable (and capable) Frenchman to my immediate left and the only other English speaker at the table, a baseball wearing kid. The Frenchman's flopped set lost out to the kid's turned bigger set and after he had paid off a river overbet, the visibly tilted loser decided to take a verbal pop at the winner.

"Why you bet so big on the river? If I don't have a set I don't pay"
The kid justified himself saying he felt the Frenchman was either calling or folding irrespective if bet sizing so he might as well bet big. The Frenchman was having none of this.
"It's because I am French, you think I am a fish"
The kid said diplomatically that the guy didn't really know what he was thinking but after steaming on for a little while the Frenchman said to his French neighbour (in French) "fuck these foreigners who look down on us just because we are French, we should kill them all".

At which point the kid piped up (in flawless French) "You realise that I'm Canadian so I understand French". That cracked the table up and instantly defused the situation. One of the many charming quirks a lot of French people have is to assume that you (as a foreigner) must understand French when they talk TO you but not when they talk ABOUT you.




We drove back from Deauville to Beauvais on Sunday with Mrs Doke as driver, me in the front  as navigator, and Jason and Lappin as the two kids going "are we there yet?" and playing (open faced Chinese) in the back until they were all tuckered out.


I was interviewed by Evening Herald journalist Michael Lavery last week about the live scene in Ireland. These are recessionary times with buyins dropping across the board and it could be said that with a 2k buyin even the Irish Open is no longer a major international event. But on the plus side we have some good new tournaments from Stephen Mclean like the Super Poker event which allows players to play a Vegas sized tournament with a big prize pool for a relatively modest buyin. I'm also looking forward to the Legends Cup which offers players the chance to build a day 2 stack by playing up to 4 different day ones (and combining stacks).

Before that, next up for me is UKIPT Cork. I am heading down there Wednesday and hoping to reverse my recent live fortunes. Most of the Firm are travelling down for that and occupying the rooms we collectively won in packages so hopefully one of us will do the business. Live players be warned: the baby faced assassin of the Firm, online beast Jaymo, is coming for you. He waltzed in to the Deepstack  for the 300 side event and got headsup. 

One problem with all these live poker trips is they cut into the online grind. I say grind but it's not a particularly apt description for something I love as much as poker. A few years ago, I found myself in a cab with Liam Flood and after he had asked me how it was going and I had said "well live, not so good online", he asked me if I preferred that to the opposite. I said I would prefer to be going well online as I saw that as the core of what I did. I managed to get in three profitable sessions in France (playing on Irish Eyes where I booked a tourney win, Stars Fr and Winamax) and straight off the plane launched myself into the Sunday grind. On my first attempt at the Sunday Million a couple of weeks ago I ran deep into the last 100, busting in 70thish. I went 30 better this time. I was up among the chipleaders with 100 left so wasn't exactly thrilled to bust in 40th. I ran bad at the death but very well to get there so I can't complain. A sizable rail formed online: that kind of support is always great. It's also heartening to know I still have the game to claw myself through these massive runner fields and be in a position to go all the way. One of these days...







Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Ch-ch-changes and choo choos


Three years ago Mrs. Doke accompanied me to Deauville for the EPT. This is noteworthy because since I switched from running to poker, she stopped coming with me on trips.A wholehearted helper in the world of ultrarunning, she gamely did everything asked of her while her husband ran ridiculously long distances (duties which included feeding me what a normal person eats in 8 days over the course of a 24 hour race, massaging me when I cramped up, keeping me informed of other runners progress, and some less pleasant duties it is probably best I don't go into here). With no such role in poker, she quickly decided that following me around to poker tournaments served no useful function.

That year, Stars installed their qualifiers in the Normandie Barriere Hotel, one of the grandest hotels we ever stayed in. Having gamely followed me around the world staying in a variety of hostels, athlete villages (usually just another word for hostel) and B and B's, this was the first improvement over running that she could see in the world of poker. She liked the experience of living like aristocracy so much she asked me to make sure I qualified every year from now on. I failed her the following year, and last year was unable to even try last year due to a scheduling clash with another tournament I was committed to. When I told her I had qualified this year, her excitement was several notches higher than any previous poker "win".

These are recessionary times however, and this year Stars decided to install us in the considerably less regal Royal Barriere, which while being a parfectly nice hotel feels a bit like the poor relative after you have stayed in the Normandie. Cue the lament from Mrs. Doke. I didn't have the heart to tell her that the way things are going in general in poker, we might be staying in hostels again or even worse (Travelodge!) in a few years.

If all is changing away from the table, the same can be said at the table. Last time I played Deauville I prospered on day one at a table where most of the locals thought it was acceptable to get several hundred big blinds in if you hit any sort of a pair, and finished up among the chipleaders. This time, the table talk was all about makeup and backers. It is becoming increasingly clear that the whole staking phenomenon is accelerating the pace with which young talents can move up levels. Guys who prove themselves in low stakes online can progress quickly up through the levels without ever building a roll (they just need to find the right backer) and be playing EPTs and WSOPs in no time. The downside of this is the fields are getting tougher quicker. Far be it for me (as someone who has done pretty well out of the whole staking phenomenon) to complain though, so I won't. Just saying there is a kind of race to the bottom going on at the upper echelons of poker right now.

As for my own main event, well it's hard to bust a 300 bb stack in under 4 levels but somehow I managed it. I actually made a good start, up to 35k in the first level, just through chipping up in small pots. Went into reverse then, and was back to starting at end of level 2.

Level 3 was something of a nightmare. I got rivered in one big hand after turning the nuts (a straight) but at least minimised my losses by checking behind on the river when the board paired. Then a weird hand where I open QQ to 325 in the kidnap (seat before hijack). Tightest player on table who has only played 2 hands to date (and shown down just one, AK, which he threebet pre) seemed to think about threebetting but instead flatted. English maniac squeezes button for 1225, I flat, and the tight guy instantly makes it 5k. Maniac folds as did I after a tank. My read was he had a monster which he considered threebetting but decided to flat with three maniacs behind likely to squeeze. Once the squeeze came in, he raised enough to make it unprofitable to setmine. He looked supremely confident as I was tanking so I figured kings or aces (I think he threebets AK as he had previously). Felt weird folding queens pre but I ran the hand by a few top players after and they all fold so I am happy with the fold.

The hand that did the real damage started with English maniac (good maniac though: won the Brawl recently) opening in MP. Bad French player flats, as do I out of the sb with tens, and the BB comes along. Flop AJTr and I check call a 50% pot cbet. English player had shown (and actually declared to English guy beside him) willingness to triple barrel live so I decided to play the hand passively to extract maximum value from his bluffs. Turn was a 9 and I check call again. River a 2, I checks, and he pots it. I was prepared to call a 50% pot bet quickly but I tanked this one as I'm only beating a bluff. I wasn't able to bring myself to fold against this guy though and unfortunately he had the hand he was repping (KQ). This was the only hand I wasn't happy with. I don't think the river call is horrible but possibly I could have got away at that sizing.

That left me in the 20 big zone a lot earlier than I had hoped. I picked what I thought was a good spot shoving in with sevens over a guy opening any ace any pair anything pretty from any position, and ran into AK behind in the big blind. K high flop, gg me.

As I said, hard to bust a 300 bb stack in under 4 levels, and particularly hard to do it and not feel a bit stupid afterwards. I could possibly have played less hands and nitted it up a bit more but my game plan was to try to accumulate in the early stages (similar to what I do online).

Normally I get over exits pretty quickly unless I made a bad mistake but this one took more out of me than most so I took a few days off rather than relaunch myself into side events. It's very much part of my whole approach and philosophy than no one tournament should ever matter too much, but I suppose I wouldn't be human if the big ones like my first EPT in almost 2 years didn't sting a bit. As I write this David Lappin is still very much in the mix (average stack as the bubble approaches) so hoping he will at least provide me with a good sweat. As ever with David, there has been quite a bit of quality stationing going on and his declared ambition is to become the first person to check call his way to an EPT title. Plan is to rail him and do some online and maybe a few turbo sides. Deauville's not a bad place to spend a lazy week at this time of year.

Unfortunately I had to miss my favourite Irish tournament of the year the European Deepstack due to the clash with Deauville. It pretty much all started for me there 5 years ago. The following year I mounted a credible defence of the title all the way to the second last table, and the year after that I became the first person (alongside Jason Tompkins) to final table it a second time. At the weekend, Marc McDonnell became the latest member of that club. 5 years ago, the final table swung on a big preflop confrontation between Marc and myself, my AK holding against his AQ. More than anyone else in Irish poker Marc always seems to get unlucky right at the death when it matters most. It is to his credit that he keeps picking himself up and coming back for more and I think most of the country were rooting for him at the weekend, myself very much included. Unfortunately it wasn't to be (well done to Declan Connolly who did claim the title) but one of these days Maccer, one of these days...

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