Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Waterford Open

Went down to Tramore on Friday for the Waterford open. Decided to drive down as its only 2 hours now. Great craic as I expected.
Main event didnt go to well for me though, played pretty shit tbh. and quickly bluffed off about 1/3rd of my stack. never hit a hand from then on and just dwindled away to nothing really. Got knocked out just before the end of the 1st days play. Stayed up drinking till the early hours though and had great craic. All the usual faces were there.

Decided to play the side event the next day cos everyone else seemed to be playing poker so there wasnt much else to do except go on the piss, so i decided to do both. Get pissed and play the tourney. Ended up running really well in this tourney and sucked out my fair share of times. 2 tables out I got my 89 aipf against smurphs AQ and rivered the 8. then soon after my A 3 aipf against Paul Smallwoods QQ. Was sure I was gonna win it then! When you play as good as I do AND! get lucky its impossible to lose! lol just kidding.
Done a 3 way deal in the end for €2850 each. So happy with that obv. although its a bit annoying to run so good in the smallest buy in tourney Ive played in a long time.

Couple of events coming up which im looking forward to. The Irish poker classic in the Macua in Cork which is a €1000+€100 is on the 13th-16th of August http://www.macausportingclub.com/skins/macau_special/eng/home/, and the Team Champiuonship of Poker in the Citywest is on the 21st-23rd of August. http://www.teamcop.com/ We have a really good team in this so I think we have a real chance of winning. Our team is Myself, Jude (j.thaddeus) Ainsworth, Conor Ainsworth, Derek (Greenrizla) Murray, Brian (Sunset king) Rickard and another guy from Galway who is a friend of dereks. Dereks told me hes a great player so thats good enough for me.

Thats all for now anyway gonna just grind online for the rest of the week and play the fitz monthly game on thursday

Friday, July 24, 2009

Back grinding away

Bein getting stuck in since I got home from vegas, Felt I had a bit of catching up to do after going basically a month without any online play. So Ive put in a decent voulme, even put in a few hours on Saturday and Sunday. Bein doin quite well too which is nice. Always good to get straight back into things by winning. Made well over $10k since returning home, thanks mainly to the $4k and $5k milestone bonuses i got for reaching 400k and 500k vpps. Got 100k vpps for playing the WSOP so that helped. So Im exactly half way to elite this year. Would love to make it November some time so I could take December off, but dont think thats going to happen unfortunately. Maybe if I hadnt took 8 weeks so far this year off I would have been able to do it. But hey a man needs his holidays.



Ive also started playing some 6 max sngs recently. Main reason bein just to fill tables when Im playing during the day. playing mostly $119s and $235s. doin really well at them. Way too small a sample size to be making any assumptions but still good to get off to a good start when trying a new game. played 168 of them so far and am up over $5k with a 9% roi. highly doubt this is sustainable for me giving the amount of tables I play at once but will be interesting to see how my stats are after 1000 games.



Looks like I"ll be playing in the Late night stars of poker Tv series which is coming to Ireland later on in the year. http://www.pokerstars.com/uk/poker/promotions/late-night-stars/ sponsored by pokerstars. My chance to become a Team pro??? If I were to win this it would certainly increase my chances anyway. Given that I"ll be playing it as a Pokerstars pro. Dont have too many details about it yet just the ones in the link above. Looking forward to this anyway.



Heading down to Waterford today for the Waterford poker open. its a €400+50 3 day Main event which is expecting around 200 players. There is also 2 smaller side events on Saturday and Sunday. Should be goodfun anyway as Tramore is a good spot. Finshed 6th in this event last year, hopefully I can do a bit better this year.....

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Busto in Main event in 483rd for $25k

Finished 483rd for $25,027, happy enough although dissapointed not to go deeper obv.
Started off great today and picked up chips very quickly. Got moved to the feature table about 1 hour into the day with the man himself Phil Ivey. Picked up a decent amount of chips there too. Before i knew it i was on 450k.
We started playing hand for hand on the bubble and each hand took around 10 mins.

Played the sickest pot of my life today which im about to get too. Pokernews got the details of it wrong so i thought i best clarify exactly what happened before people think im an idiot, anyway were 1 from the money at this stage and the same guy has raised the previous 3 hands. Hes second to act in this pot and I decide if he raises im 3betting regardless of my hand. So sure enough he raises to 12.5k, im 3 to his left and make it 35.5k with Qs 2s folded to the sb who thinks about it for a while and then calls so does the initial raiser. At this point im thinking... oh fuck, ah well ill just give it up. Anyway flop comes down Ks 2d 4c. sb leads out for 36k and initial raiser folds. Im 100% certain this guy is weak and decide to 3bet him to 90k. Again he thinks for what seems like an eternity and calls. AGAIN im thinking ok im done with this hand, but the turn comes As. He leads for 56k. I consider raising cos im still pretty sure hes weak and i can make him fold, but i opt just to call to see the river cheap. River is a 3c and he checks to me. I prob should just have checked at this point but couldnt resist a bet as its the only way i can win the pot. I bet 120k on the river. I know this is very small in relation to the pot but its a large % of his stack and im sure hes weak... and i think given how the hand has played this looks so like a value bet with AA KK or AK, as i would have played all those hands exactly this way. Anyway he thinks about it for well over 5 mins before another player called the clock on him and eventually calls with QQ. Sick call but correct.
Dont really regret how i played this hand except maybe the 120k on the river. anyway that was the key pot for me and i was a wounded animal after this. Never recovered and eventually got knocked out by the man himself Mr Ivey.

Thats all the poker in Vegas for me for this year anyway. Suppose ive got to be happy with how it went considering i made a profit in all areas. sngs, mtts and cash games. Thats it for now anyway gonna enjoy my last few days with my gf before heading home on the 14th. cheers to every1 on boards routing for me and sorry to electra blue for not winning the Irish last longest. maybe next year

Saturday, July 11, 2009

323.5k going into day 4

well im still in which is pretty sweet obv. today went well again grinded away picked up a few chips without any real interesting or big pots. less than 1 hour to go for the day and im sittin on 150k which is actually short at this point av. is over 200k. picked up kk at a perfect time and got it all in against 66. luckily i held and doubled up to 300k. i felt it was soo important for me to get a double up b4 the end of the day. not that 150k is really short or anything but i reckon it will play redic tight as we get close to the money and there will be a sick amount of chips to be picked up if u have a stack. so many short stacks just trying to fold into the money. hopefully i get a decent table draw 2moro and can pick up some chips around the bubble. i have 12% of myself swapped out in this so hopefully i can give them a decent score too.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

132.5k going into day 3

today went well, started today with 75k and really struggled for the first couple of levels. couldnt hit a flop, cbets getting raised etc. the usual stressfull stuff. really felt like it was gonna be 1 of them days! was as low as 37k at 1 point. thankfully things changed and i started accumalating chips. my table was nice, it was pretty weak passive and no real big stacks. so as soon as i got a decent stack i began hoovering up chips. finished up on 132.5k with the average less than 100k. i still havent been all in in the tourney which is nice. lots of small pots. av. stack hasnt been below 80 bbs yet because of the sick structure.

2 days off now before day 3. enjoy vegas and strictly no poker until then. the pokerstars party is on thursday night so that should be good. gonna try not get too pissed though not a good idea showing up for a 12 hour day at the wsop with a hangover

Saturday, July 4, 2009

75k going into Day 2

played the main event today and im pretty happy with how it went. my table draw wasnt easy by any means but i still managed to pick up a decent amount of chips. 1116 players started which is alot less than many people may have expected (including myself.) it was a 30k starting stack and 2 hour levels which is a sick sick structure. not too sure exactly how many players survived today but my guess is around 25% of the field were eliminated so im well above average. im back on day 2a which is the 7th so i dont plan on playing until then. tomorrow is the 4th of july and ive nothing planned but im sure itll be a good night. all the other irish lads who were playing today all survived as far as i know. best of luck to all the other irish playing days b,c and d

Friday, July 3, 2009

The calm before the storm

moved into the palms today and my girlfriend arrived. played very little poker over the past week or so. bein doin alot of partying and chilling out. went the ladbroker party, pkr party and went the palms 1 night with dave lucie and aload of us. was a great night! dave got us all vip treatment free entry free drinks etc. so cheers to him for that.went the pics twice and went bowling 1 night which was cool.im playing the main event tomorrow which is day 1a. thats the main reason i havent been playing any poker. wanted to keep myself as fresh and motivated as i could. had 3 deep runs out of 5 tourneys since i got here but no cash, so that was very disheartening. the main event will defo decide if its gonna be a profitable vegas this year. really happy with my game at the minute so hopefully i can just run good at the right time. ive swapped 2.5% with 4 other players apart from that im playing 100% of myself. considered selling % of myself but decided not too.