Trying to make colour blindness work in Vegas

So I've been in Vegas a couple of days and played a couple of tournaments, neither of which went well.

I eased my way in yesterday with the Rio Derpstack, a daily $235 touristfest that people keep saying plays like a live version of the Sunday Million (actually the standard is more Sunday Storm if you ask me). My own tournament was so dull it would be hard to construct an interesting sentence about it let alone an entire blog. One particular feature of this tournament which attracts people who want to say they played the WSOP but don't want to pony up a grand for the privilege is that these guys talk talk and talk, feeling the need to explain every aspect of their thought process in every hand. This can be quite tilting if you don't enjoy being lectured and hectored by someone who knows little or nothing about poker, but can be quite amusing if you enter into the spirit of things, which is basically a bunch of wannabe but never gonnabes living out their poker dream. My personal favourite was a young guy with an accent straight out of Deliverance who got moved to the table with just half his stack left. After the first hand he saw took a good 90 seconds (it involved a river allin decision) he immediately started berating the table for slow play. A few hands later he trebled up having gotten the lot on pre with 22 v aces and tens accompanied by an appreciative "yeah that's poker baby" whoop when the 2 flopped. When you stick to a strategy of playing every hand at a ten handed table you tend to have a lot of ups and more downs, and he had stumbled back to short in no time. I was similarly stacked and decided to shove my 9 bigs over a raise with kjs having seen the same guy show up with 52o in similar spots before. Our impatient friend who had spent the last ten minutes berating the table for not knocking out more players ("No chips on this table. We're at a huge disadvantage to every other table. Huge!") woke up and triumphantly called my shove. The original raiser had aq and flopped an ace to send me and my impatient friend (who had nines) to the rail. As we departed he complained to me "So sick. I play patiently for hours and then when I finally get a hand two motherfuckers shove on me". I don't think I'd like to see this Southern gentleman on one of his less patient days.

My first bracelet event was short and not sweet. When I sat down the table looked like it might be tough purely on the basis of age profiling. However, while it is generally true that you're much better off sitting down at a table of old guys than young online beasts over here, there is another category that tends to be even softer: young guys who have never played online. There's a whole generation of under 25s in the States now whose total lack of online experience not only means they can't match online players, but in terms of skill they also lag behind older live players who at least have a lifetime of live experience.  I had cruised up to 6k from 4500 on one of the softest tables I've ever played on mid way through level 2 when I get in with 88 v a8 on a86 flop. A third player in the hand folded ak to the heavy flop action so the ace that popped out on the turn was the case one. Very annoying as if I avoid the one outer I have 13k at a soft table where nobody else has more than 6k and in a great position to kick on. No point in complaining though: my job is to try to get it in good as often as possible and I will happily get the lot in as a 95.5% favourite any time. My running coach Norrie Williamson used to always say you should focus only on the things you can control as there's no point in worrying about the things that are outside your control. Annoying as it is to be on the wrong side of a 20 to 1 suckout, all I can do is focus on the positives and how I played, rather than how the cards ran out after the money went in. I would be a lot more upset if I went out after a bad mistake.

Next up is Saturday's 1500, where hopefully I can run a bit better. There's a very good atmosphere generally among the Irish contingent here with now successes already to celebrate than in recent years. Well done to all those flying the flag so far, especially Dan Wilson (whose win makes me look like a genius in this blog) and Tom Kitt, both of whom took down Venetian Deepstacks.

Even though my Vegas campaign this year is shorter, I'm making a greater effort than in previous years to pace myself. In previous years I've probably been guilty of playing too much and being burnt out at the end. With the main event coming right at the end, that's not such a good idea, so I'm taking it easy today to be mentally fresh for the weekend events.

I had warned people in advance that my wardrobe (or rather suitcase) for Vegas this year featured some rather gaudy shirts courtesy of Mrs. Doke. Fair play to dude Danny Maxwell who managed to snap me in one for PokerNews. I have long wondered how I could turn my colour blindness to my advantage at the poker table. My search may be over.

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The Year of the Crossbar?

After taking a complete break from live poker after Berlin, longer than I've ever taken since I started playing, I was raring to go when I sat down for day 1a of UKIPT Marbella. Lappin wrote a great blog in the runup to this event where he spoke about the need to approach the tournament like a cricket match and "build an innings" (thereby more or less guaranteeing an early bath for himself: he spent more time on the bus travelling from the villa where he and Saron stayed for the week than he did playing in the tournament). In truth I made a bit of a ropey start myself. The only decent hand I got early on had to be folded to heavy action post flop, and the results of my assaults on pots without cards were somewhat mixed, all of which meant I made the dinner break with only 75% of my starting stack of 15k. Dinner companions Big Mick G and Peter Barrable were similarly stacked so while the more comfortably stacked Chris Dowling and Nick Newport were happy to shoot the breeze, the three of us were more focused on hustling the staff into bringing us our food pronto.

Rushing back to the rush

I did make it back to the table just in time to look down at my second decent hand of the day, tens. The big blind hadn't made it back so after a loose player opened in mid position and got threebet by the player to my immediate right, tens were clearly big enough to cold 4 bet shove for value as there was a decent chance the action to date represented a steal and a resteal. As it was the 3 bettor had a hand, AQ. Things weren't looking good when he flopped top 2 but I hit a ten on the river to stay alive.

I had a very good few levels from there to the end of the day, so when I told blogger extraordinaire Jen Mason as I walked out that I had over 90k, she figured that must be top 10 at that point.

Day 2

Day 2 saw me start pretty quickly and move up to 150k in the early going, until a bad read prompted me to make a bad river fold (top pair, dubious kicker). After my worst ever year live in 2012 I did a lot of thinking at the start of this year about what improvements I could make. One thing I decided to focus more attention on live was physical reads. I was very good at this when I started playing and in fact in the early days I had to compensate for some considerable technical deficiencies purely through proficiency in reading people physically. At the end of each trip to the Fitz with my brother, I would sit down with him and compare notes on physical stuff we had picked up on the people we played against. As I expanded my play to festivals, I continued to update the notebook with reads on regulars on the Irish tournament circuit, until it became quite voluminous. At some point, I stopped updating the book, around the same time I started paying much more attention to technical aspects like betting lines, ranges, bluffing frequencies and other such tendencies. I still think these are highly important, but I also feel that concentrating on them exclusively rather than watching people for the physical stuff means giving up an additional tool that increases your prospects live. So during my recent layoff from live poker, I went back and reread my old notebooks to remind myself of the kind of stuff you can pick up if you watch for it.

In this tournament, I had 12 relatively minor decisions (minor meaning for a relatively small part of my stack) and 2 big ones (for all my stack) that were all very marginal and where I was ultimately swayed by physical stuff. I finished 10/12 on the minor ones and 2/2 on the major ones, enough to convince me that it is indeed worthwhile watching like a hawk for anything physical I can pick up.

This particular fold was one of the ones I got wrong, although it was interesting that Jason Barton beside me (who impresses me as someone who reads people very well) also had the exact same (incorrect) read that the villain hated the turn but loved the river.

I then lost a 60/40 to knock me back to where I had started the day as the table got tougher with the arrival of James Mitchell. I wasn't unhappy when our table broke as the presence of James, Jason, Noel O'Brien and some of the more capable locals led me to believe we were on one of the toughest table. My new tables seemed a lot more welcoming initially, with Dan Willis as the only recognizable face, although when eventual winner Ludovic Geilich arrived things got a lot murkier. Initial gains at my new table drifted back in the face of card death and having to fold to 3 bets when I opened light (and getting jammed on when I 4 bet light) as the bubble loomed. There was a time when upping the aggression near the bubble was almost guaranteed to increase your chip stack, but these days more and more players are aware of bubble strategy and not as desperate to fold to a min cash, so it's a double edged sword. Things got even worse when I made a correct read and made a stand with A9o shortly before the bubble. Suspecting the villain was light having seen me raise fold quite a bit (and he looked uncomfortable as I tanked) I made the call but lost to his KJo.

Hello cold 4 bet my old friend

That left me in no position other than to play honestly til the bubble bust. Thankfully it did a lot quicker than usual (another indication I guess that bubbles ain't what they used to be) and I got through it short but not critically so with 14 bbs. Operation Spin Up got off to a good start when I doubled up immediately. When I caught the right side of a cooler shortly afterwards (my aces holding in a threeway allin versus Dan Willis' 77 and a Scandi's JJ) to almost triple up, I had suddenly gone from short to well over average with 375k. From there I worked myself up to over half a million by the end of day 2, with no cards and just the occasional well timed cold 4 bet as my only friend at a table that was playing very loose but at least respecting cold 4 bets from the tight old guy.

That left me 7/48 overnight and pretty stoked to have not only cashed in my third consecutive UKIPT main event of 2013, but also a third consecutive day 3. With something of a stack I fancied myself to go further than I had in Cork and London, hopefully all the way to the final table.

But which one is the lucky seat?

Unfortunately it wasn't to be. When I arrived for day 3 I found my bag had been placed in the wrong seat (1 rather than 2). It's funny how the mind works because as I informed the dealer of the mistake and switched seats with another player who hadn't realized the mistake, I couldn't help but wonder which seat would get the better cards and spots. As it happened, it certainly wasn't mine, as the only decent hand I got on day 3 was my exit. However, I can't really complain as I had run well to get that far, and there's more to luck than getting big hands and winning flips, there's stuff like what you run into when you open or 3 or 4 bet light.

I lost a 60/40 against a shortie early on, and had drifted further back as nothing was working for me (for example, when I 3 bet Geilich first hand after I got moved to his table aware of the fact that he knew he was opening close to 90% while I hadn't threebet him at all the previous day leading me to believe I wouldn't get 4 bet light, I had to reluctantly fold to his 4 bet), until I doubled back up to where I had started the day with three tables left. Geilich opened from the small blind, I shoved AJ from the big blind, he called and tabled A4, hit his 4 on the flop but the river again saved me.

I then tread water for a while until we were down to 19 and I finally picked up a real hand. After a Scandi min raised the button, I found tens in the big blind. After some quick pot and stack size calculations to decide whether it was better to raise and call a shove, or just shove (I'm never folding tens with 20 big blinds in that spot), I shoved, expecting it to get through most of the time and be in decent shape even if called. However, the speed of the call suggested otherwise. My opponent had kings, and after the king high flop I was drawing to runner runner quads,  tough ask even for me.

Return of a Masters

As I tweeted my demise and wished the sole remaining Irish player Dave Masters good luck, I was joined in the payout queue by Dave who busted just after me. Great to see Dave back on the scene and going deep. Always larger than life, he generated more blog coverage than anyone else in the field on day 2 and 3 with a ready stream of memorable quotes and quips. Also great to see Gavonater (and his wonderful girlfriend, another larger than life character) back on the scene and in the money, and well done to the gentle giant of Irish poker Big Mick G who underlined his incredible consistency with another deep run.

After a few hours feeling sorry for myself in the hotel room, most of the rest of the trip was given over to socialising. Stars have created something fairly unique with this tour in terms of the camaraderie between regular players, both professional and recreational. You run into the same friendly faces at different legs, so that they feel less like "work" and more like a social occasion. I was very grateful for the constant support and enquiries as to how I was getting on from not just other Irish players but a lot of English and other nationalities. On my first night there, I went for dinner with Lappin, Nick Newport, Feargal Nealon (who cashed the Marbella Cup), and Richard Evans (fresh from his well deserved Champion of Champions triumph), and the company and conversation was both fun and stimulating. Throughout the weekend, I ran into Neil Raine, Tim Davie, Bob Malvasi and Neil "Granite" Rawnsley(who provided my favourite line of the weekend, more on that later), all great guys to run into, and people who I didn't know kept coming up to introduce themselves saying they had asked someone to point out SlowDoke to them.

Scots and suits in Spain

On Sunday, the hotel delivered champagne and cake to my room with no explanation other than "on the house", and Gary Clarke arrived to help me drink the champagne and have a good natter. Monday was Scottish day, as I spent it in the company of Ian Le Bruce, and Willie and Dode Elliot, simultaneously the most dissimilar and close brothers you could ever meet. Willie, one of life's true gentlemen, is a legendary railer to the point that if you make a final table online and Willie isn't there to rail, it feels like it never happened (and on the flip side, when Willie took down the Big 22 not so long ago on Stars railed by half the Firm, it gave most of us on the rail a bigger thrill than any of our own wins this year). Continuing the theme, I ran into Fraser McIntyre in the airport, who I first met years ago in my first deep run outside Ireland (in a GUKPT in Newcastle) and we had a quick coffee before departure.

While I am much happier with my live game than I was last year, it's a bit frustrating that it hasn't really translated into real success yet. 2013 is feeling like the Year of the Crossbar so far, with three UKIPT day 3's (but no final table) and a similar run in the JP Masters. As much as I tell myself that consistency is the hallmark of class, I would gladly swap 4 crossbars for one final table, but at least the consistency is there, and hopefully it will translate into something big in Vegas. The plan now is a quick final online burst before heading to Vegas next Monday.

I must admit I was very wary of this UKIPT after previous bad experiences in Spain. Essentially what Stars have done is add the UKIPT tag to an Estrellas (the Spanish equivalent) but that's not necessarily a bad thing and Marbella is a very pleasant place to spend a week. One thing though which does need improvement is the dealers. Admittedly we are spoiled most of the time in UKIPTs with the best dealers in the world but to be brutally frank the local dealers not only weren't up to scratch, but they showed no desire to be. Other players I talked to relayed similar impressions amid tales of players being told to shush when they tried to correct dealer mistakes, dealers refusing to call the floor, or respond to anything said to them in English. I saw a lot of dealer errors myself, one of which could have cost me if I hadn't been on guard. After an allin on my table had been won by a short stack, the dealer counted down his stack, then proceeded to pull chips from mine. After my experience in San Sebastián where I lost my tournament life to a player after his hand had been mucked and then retrieved from the muck, my reaction in pointing out that since I wasn't even in the hand I couldn't be expected to cover the losses of the guy who was and lost was immediate and vociferous.

On the plus side, the floor staff (headed by the ever professional Toby Stone and Nick O'Hara) were top notch, as were the hotel staff in general, and the Stars UKIPT team led by Kirstie and Jamie are always on the ball. The blogging crew led by Jen Mason and the media team are all top class too (I recorded a short interview with the man who once compared me to a badger on national TV, the ever witty Nick Wealthall, which I'm hoping will surface at some point) .

Edit: Now available at

Granite's guide to the Isle of Man

I had breakfast with Fintan Gavin too who was very upbeat about the next UKIPT on his turf in Galway so that's definitely one to look forward. One I need a bit of convincing on is the Isle of Man, so I was asking my English friends if they had ever been there. Neil Rawnsley's response was the most memorable and I ready warned him that it was going in this blog so here goes, The Granite Guide to the Isle of Man:
"You know how beautiful San Sebastián is? Well it's just like that as you come in, with the crescent bay and the panoramic view of Douglas. But then when you get off the boat and into town, it's ...... shit".

I don't believe I have many (any) readers in the Isle of Man. Hopefully not for Neil's sake at least: otherwise he runs the risk of being confronted at the port by the locals and promptly Wicker Manned.

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Jesus is it that time already?

As you get older, Christmas seems to come around quicker every year. As you become an older poker player, Vegas and the WSOP does the same. And here it is again....that time of year when Mrs Doke is dispatched to request an amount of dollars that makes her an immediate "person of interest" to our bank, guaranteeing she will be asked all sort of questions about why someone would want that many dollars by suspicious officials.

After Berlin, I was feeling pretty burned out from live poker, so I decided to take a lengthy break before Vegas, committing only to play Marbella since it became part of the UK according to Stars, for a couple of reasons. First, I figured a break from the live game was the best way to recharge the batteries and ensure I headed to Vegas raring to go. Second, and probably more importantly, I wanted to get in enough volume online to cushion me from the likely damage in Vegas (and the opportunity cost of not being able to grind online while I'm off chasing bracelets). Yes folks, just as you move from childhood to parenthood with a perspective on Christmas that changes from "What will I get this year?" to "How much is this going to cost me this year?", as a poker player you go from a state of virginity blissfully thinking only of bracelets to be won to a more realistic view that in most universes you will come home without a bracelet and without most of the cash you carried out there. That's not defeatism: I personally think my chances of success this year are higher than ever, but as a NLH player I know I'm going to have be very lucky to come through any one of the several thousand runner fields I will be in. It's the live equivalent of any given Sunday online: you're hoping it's one of those where you win a major, but usually it's one where you'd have more money on your accounts if you hadn't played that day.

One of the upsides to my break from live poker is I've been able to get myself into better physical shape, running more, and eating better.

I'm going to depart from the tradition of picking 5 to watch, because let's face it, with most Irish players being NLH specialists, you might as well be picking 5 horses in the Grand National, if the Grand National suddenly had 100 times more runners. We're all hoping to be the guy that gets the clear run and gets safely across each fence.

Instead, what I will do is pick my two young guns to watch. In so doing rather than just reeling out a list of the current established names, I'm hoping that when one or both of them does bink, I will look like a total visionary genius. So without further ado, my two to watch:

1. Padraig O'Neill

Known to his friends as Smidge, Padraig is in my opinion the pick of the younger crop of live Irish tournament players. It's odd to me that his name rarely crops up in these types of discussions, but I guess that's in part down to his (largely misunderstood) style of play, and his personal manner, both of which are unfussy and deliberately lowkey. He chooses to fly under the radar both at and away from the table, and as a result people don't pay as much attention to him as they should. If any other young player in the country had the same results Smidge has had in the past 2 years (EMOP champion, UKIPT final tableist) I think they would be universally hailed as the next big thing, but the fact that Smidge chooses not to shout his accomplishments from the rooftops leads to many underrating him. He's not on PocketFives so people don't realise how well he does online.

This will be Smidge's second Vegas. Last year he concentrated his efforts in the Venetian where he went deep in two Deepstack events. This year he will move his focus to the Rio and make his main event debut. As one of the best live cash players in Ireland, he has a wealth of experience of playing deepstacked that will serve him well there. If I had to give my last 10 grand to any Irish player to go play the WSOP main event, Smidge would be my choice, as he has both the game and the level temperament to succeed on the biggest stage of all.

2. Dan Wilson

If Smidge is a pretty safe choice, Dan is a total wildcard, as he has no live results at all. He is, however, a proper online beast, and as anyone who reads the IPB Strategy forums will know, there's nobody in the country with a better grasp of the theory than Dan. All of this leads me to believe his lack of live results to date are down to "lol sample size" grounds. Having seen him play live, I am impressed by his temperament and presence. Having spoken to him at live events, he impresses me as someone who won't need much time to adjust from online to live. This will be his first Vegas and I will be the least surprised person in Ireland if he ends up being our surprise package there.

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The world's most hateful airline

It's something of a cliche that pride comes before a fall. Recently and personally it came both before and after

When you're away on a poker trip with your closest poker friends, there comes a point where you have to be a little more creative when it comes to conversational topics. You know all their stories, you've told them all of yours, and there's only so many times you can debate the merits of the check call versus the check raise. So in London I sat mostly listening to Jason and David recount tales of flights they had missed in the past. My only contribution to the conversation was a boastful one full of pride: that I had never missed a flight in my very long life. If years were chips in our group, I would have almost half the chips in play.

Pride came before a fall as thanks to the fiendish machinations of the world's most hateful airline Ryanair I was no longer able to truthfully make such a claim 24 hours later. I was at my gate in plenty of time, where I joined the back of very long queue. When I got to the top I found it was actually 2 queues and I was in wrong one. The other gate was more or less hidden behind one I queued for. I went to the right gate and even though screen over it said Final call and I could see the plane outside the  bit... of a Madam working for Ryanair said it was closed. After a bit... of a heated debate over how tenable her position was in light of the screen saying Final call right over her head and the fact that we could see passengers still filing onto the plane before our very eyes, I realised that while I might be the one wearing the Poker Stars badge (slapped onto my shirt at the UKIPT Champion of Champions the night before) I was also the one drawing dead in this particular game of poker.

After mucking my argument I asked her how I got back out now I was plane committed but drawing dead to a departing flight. She gave me a look of disdain similar to the one Lappin gives people who try to check raise bluff him and sniffed "Back the way you came from". This turned out to be as much of a gross oversimplification as the statement you should always shove with a flush draw.  It's a nightmare getting back out. I basically had to be escorted out by security.

A long argument with Ryanair desk about how much I had to pay for a new flight ensued.  Then when I thought things couldn't get any weirder, just after I got my new ticket an Italian guy asked me if I was a professional poker player. When I said yes he said I love watching you on tv. At this point I figure he must be mistaking me for someone else as I have the Pokerstars badge still on from last night. As gargantuan as my ego is it doesn't allow me to believe that I'm "big in Italy".  I nevertheless decided the easiest thing was to play along with it and let him go on believing I was Marcel Luske or whoever he thought I was.  I chatted to him in as friendly a manner as a man who has just been gypped by the world's most hated airline possibly could, asking him his name, where he played and so forth. I figured I owed it to Marcel or whoever he thought I was and him to leave him with a positive experience and impression of his poker hero.  He asked me if he could have photo taken with me.  I said yes of course, giggling inside at the thought how easy it would be to smile in this photo thinking about the lengths he would have to go to to try to identify which particular TV poker hero he had been fortunate enough to run into. My smile widened as I thought about the fact that he was basically drawing as dead as anyone expecting a big  display of humanity from a member of the Ryanair Ground Gestapo when he got round to showing the photo to all his friends in the vain hope that one of them might recognise the not really that well known grafter in the online poker mines.

Good luck with that, Michele.  Finally, a shout out to my oldest son Paddy, the one member of the O'Kearney family who was on TV this week. Long time readers of this blog may remember that Paddy is a bit of an ecowarrior type, and his latest project, an urban farm in the centre of Dublin, came under the spotlight this week on RTE's Local Heroes. I don't know how long this link will last for, and I'm pretty sure it won't work for those of you outside Ireland, but here goes anyway.





http://www.rte.ie/player/ie/show/10152681/

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