My favorite online site, Brucepoker.com teamed up with my favorite tournament organiser to bring us this years Lakes of Killarney Festival. With €5,000 added by Brucepoker and 145 starters, a tasty prize pool of €77,500 was on offer for the €500+50 buy in.
I started very well and had my 15k starting stack up to 20k after the first three levels leading to the dinner break and I was feeling pretty good about my game and table. My disposition was changed by external factors when a dope tried to cause trouble for me in something that had nothing to do with the game in Killarney. When I returned to the table my focus wasn't great and I played pretty badly losing all my chips before level six.
I played the €300 side event on Saturday which had 50 starters and enjoyed my table although again I didn't play well. I did manage to get my chips in good on my exit hand; AQ v A8 AIPF. Pat managed to grind his way into 5th for €1500 which was a good achievement given the stack he had the whole tournament.
There was one or two rumblings about the quality of the hotel which I thought were ridiculous. It cost €31 a night PPS, served breakfast til noon and the bar stayed open til 5 am. The carvery was available in the bar all day into the evening and was top class so no complaints from me on the hotel front. The tournaments were run to an excellent standard, with great structures but you know your always going to get this with Connie and Matt at the helm. I think Killerney is the only spot in Ireland where major tournaments are run that I have never had a result. If I was told that I would never get a result there, I'd still be first registered for any event the lads run because your always guaranteed a great weekend in the Kingdom.
Although the poker was no good for me I still managed to sneak a profit on the weekend. Flipper set the under/over for the number of starters at 138 and I jumped on the over. I also had a couple of bets on the event when 20 players remained, namely Derek Murry and Paul Coyle both at 14/1, €100 each way on each ( 1/5 odds 4 places ). The lads did a deal on chips heads up with Derek taking the Trophy and a few quid more then Paul.
Mr Coyle first came to my attention at the JP Masters last May and has impressed me every time I've seen him play. Paul took a huge hit early on the final table losing a 600k pot AK v AQ but showed great character and resilience by not letting it affect him. Myself and Derek have been good mates since we Both final tabled the winter festival in Cork 2005. Derek became predominantly an online player in 2006 but has in the last year rediscovered his love for live tournaments. That's two victory's in the last three big tournaments in the country and an IPC final table in between for Derek so he is definitely making his presence felt. Both lads are smashing players but also great blokes and with young players of this nature, quality and temperament coming through, the future of Irish poker is in safe hands.
The starting table I was on at the IPC was the focus of last nights show on RTE, These were my thoughts on the table after the tournaments; "This years IPC is scheduled to go out in eight one hour episodes on RTE and when we moved to the TV table the production guys were hoping to get an episode from the table by the end of play. Well if they do achieve this it will be the worst hours TV poker of all time. While there was plenty of banter I don't think there was one interesting hand occurred during our two hour plus stint". So if you want to watch a very boring hours poker show then heres the link. I should be back on the show this week or next week and it should make for better TV.
