So close!....... Yet so far far away..

Still need 80k vpps to reach Elite, so Im nearly there but it feels like Im never goin to get there. Didnt play online at all Friday-Monday because I headed to Galway on Thursday evening for the Irish Poker Championship which was also the 1st leg of the new pokerstars UKIPT which Im really looking forward to.

It got 259 players creating a prizepool of €471,400. All the usual faces from the Irish circuit were there including some big names from the UK. Put some more faces to names after meeting some of the stars regs there including allinstevie, nigdawg, Tmoney0209 and also both vers and chong94 who both made the final table. All seemed like sound guys and some excellent poker players.

Anyway as I was saying I had bein looking forward to this UKIPT and plan on playing all the legs including EPT London. So I headed to Galway really determined to win this and was full of confidence despite doin pretty shit online lately. Overall I felt I played very well throughout the weekend and made few mistakes. Ive really tried to develop my live game this year and am very happy with my progress. So the big score eluded me this year but considering the amount of live mtts I actually played Im pretty happy with my results. Next year I plan on playing more live poker and taking a few trips to EPTs etc.

The tournament went very well for me and I didnt seem to play many big pots at all. It was just a steady accumalation of chips which is the way I like it. I was never under any real pressure and rarely below average stack. It was a well structured tourny with lots of play and I tried to take advantage of this. Alot of people still see me as a turbo sng crapshoot king when in reality Im a much better deepstacked player, in these slow structured tournys I feel I have a big edge and can easily exploit it with so much play in them. even around the bubble when alot of tournys can get very crapshooty there was still plenty of play. Average stack was over 50 bbs I believe at the beginning of the final table.

Eventually finished 4th for €36k after bein knocked out in an interesting hand blind v blind with Ben Lefew (chong94). blinds were 15k-30k 4k ante and its folded to me in the sb playing 830k, I raised to 80k with K2os Ben dwells for a minute and reraises to 230, I thjink for a few seconds and move all in for 830k, he thinks about it for a minute or two before calling with A 5s. His hand held up and so it was gg me. Dont really regret how I played the hand tbh as we had a bit of history and I knew he could be 3 betting me very wide.
Padraig Parkinson went on to win on title which I was delighted about as he was the only Irishman in the last 3.Paul Marrow finished 2nd and Ben Lefew 3rd. Always good to keep these big titles on home soil. Anyways I better get back to the grind.............................