No London

Was toying with the idea of going to London for a couple of the EPT side events but decided against it. I do not enjoy playing in England and when I weighted it up I just decided I didn't want to go. Inertia probably best describes my view on poker the last few weeks as I've had no real enthusiasm about playing. I wasn't even going to go to Killarney next week but its to much value to miss and I'll be there.

October is a good month in Ireland with the Killarney festival the IPO and the Winter Festival. Its been to long since I've hit a final table of a decent game so hopefully I can right that in October. I only played one other WCOOP event after the $1k NLH; a $200 NL O8 tourney and cashed for double my buy in. With the long nights and bad weather setting in I really should start some kind of grind online. There was a time I really enjoyed grinding online but seems these days I'd rather open betfair then a poker site.

In another two months I'll have been playing full time four years. I suppose when you've been at something as intense as poker full time, there has to come periods where you just don't want to play and thats where I'm at at the moment. However, I know I'll get the juices flowing again soon enough and be playing with the vigour that I always have.

Moving On

My Sponsorship deal with Brucepoker finished a couple of weeks ago. I had a great year with them and feel I added value for the monies I received. I would like to thank them for the sponsorship and wish Bruces and especially 'head of poker' my good mate, Paul Smallwood, every success in the future.

Haven't been playing much the last couple of weeks. I did play event 28 of the WCOOP on stars. This was a $1050 entry two day game with a 3 million guarantee. I felt I played very well on day one without getting much ammunition in the way of starting hands and managed to reach day two with a near average stack. 176 Players of the 3268 entrants started back tonight; unfortunately I couldn't catch a break eventually going out when my A6 was out raced by QK in a 40 BB pot.

Sick sick structure but you would really expect to be deeper then 87th after playing for 14 hours in an online tournament. I swapped a few % with three people, two of whom, ( Dara and Derek ) went deep in the money also but like me had no luck when it mattered. I satted in for $82 so guess I should be happy with the$4900 but the half million for first would definitely of come in handy.

Whose the Monkey on the Box

Played the late night pokerstars which is going out on RTE late September. Didn't exactly cover myself in glory. My heat was changed from the original line up with Fintan and John Higggins swapping with Padraig and Ken Doherty to an earlier heat. I've seen the results posted so I guess I can blog my unspectacular performance. It's 100k starting with blinds 1/2 going up every 18 hands.

I raise a good few pots early with total rubbish and showed so when i picked up Ak I raised to 7k ( blinds 1k 2k ) as I felt there was a decent chance I'd get three bet so wanted to inflate the pot a little so I could four bet shove. Bernard Dunne called from the button. He had spewed about 40% of his stack in the first few hands and I had him pegged as particularly clueless. I miss the two club flop and C-bet 11k which he calls. When the flush completes on the turn, I shove, which in reality is a pot sized second barrel bluff because of his stack. Unfortunately he holds Ac3c for the nuts.

He gets more of my chips when he limps in early as do two others and I complete with KJ, blinds 2k4k. Flop Jxx and I check. Bernard bets 4k, 1 BB, I call. I check/call 8k on brick turn and the same river to be shown QQ. This leaves me with 5bb. I double against Fintan AQ v 89 but go out shortly after pushing 10 BBs with K10 into Bernard's A10. Definitely not my greatest 40 minutes poker and gonna look a bit of a monkey on TV but should have good metagame benefits anyway :-)