Marty brought a bandit to the K Club last week for the golf, but he didn't do it right. Kevin played off twenty and did what all good golf hustlers do, just scraped home for his team on day one. Then on day two when the stakes were up, he shot the lights out, hitting a magnificent 38 points on the Smurfit course to secure a 14 point victory for his team.
What did Marty do wrong? He teamed Kevin with me, TY TY Mr Smyth.
Over dinner he told me the story of how the week before he laid his mate 50/1 on Marty to win an arm-wrestle. The mind boggles that he actually went on to win it, the arm-wrestle, not the bet.
I woke last Sunday refreshed after the two days at the K Club and mad to play poker. I was very happy about this, as it's a zest I've always had, but has been sadly lacking a bit lately.
I had a good look at Irishpokerboards.com to see what was on live. My choice was a €50 game in Tramore, or a €100 game in Dundalk. Instead, I decided to give the bigger online Sundays a spin.
Played about $1,200 worth of buy-ins and got a decent sweat in the warm up for a while, but ultimately died in 72nd for $1,600.
I travelled to Cork Friday night for the €275 Macau monthly tournament. Played well enough and hit the final table with the chip lead. With nine left and six paid, a few of the lads wanted to pay an extra three places for their buy-in.
I refused, as it just gave the three short stacks free reign to launch their chips. Within twenty minutes, I had doubled all three up, dropping from 
180k to a shortish 60k. Over the next two hours I managed to chip it back to 220k and at 6 AM with six players remaining, I agreed to a chop based on chip counts.
This is always in favour of the big stack and I picked up €3,000, which was the second place money. Not going to retire on it, but always nice to hit any type of result when you haven't been making the first break for two months.
I had hoped to get to Dublin on Saturday but the late finish killed that plan. JP was running a tournament with a new innovative structure that by all accounts, was a great success. Hopefully I make the next one.
Not much on the calendar over the coming weeks. I won't go to Galway for the PLO, as I don't play the game and can't see the point of throwing grands away.
Friday the 12th sees the Simon charity game in the Jackpot and everyone should really try to get along to support this worthy cause.
