Drawless and Pairless

Connie runs a €250 event in the Cue Club, Killarney every year and I've attended the tournament since 2006. It's always a lovely weekend, with a really good vibe in the club.

I headed down Thursday night as myself, Con, Dave and Keith Cummins had arranged to play two rounds of golf on the Friday. The first round was on the truly magnificent Killeen course, which recently held the Irish Open and after lunch we spent the evening on its sister course, Mahoney Point. If there's a better setting for golf I've yet to see it. The scenery is really something else.

The tournament started Saturday and for the first four or five levels I was going nowhere. As the blinds rose, I started to get a few spots to pick up chips. In one particular hand, I shipped with from the small blind after a few limpers and Eamonn Foley was kind enough to pass AK in the big.

This came back to haunt Eamonn, as a while later I won a race to knock him out. I was going along grand with about a half an hour's play left in the day, when I raised UTG. I checked shoved on a J 4 2, two-heart flop hoping my opponent would put me on the flush draw. This ruse worked perfectly, as he called with .

The 60k pot would have put me over 100k and given me a top three chip stack the next day, if a three hadn't hit the turn. As it did, I went back with forty. My opponent told me later in the hotel bar, that he knew he was behind but felt the three was coming. That conversation was enough to send me to bed early, well about 4am anyway.

Eighteen returned on Sunday, with a 44k average - my stack exactly - and eight people paid. With ten left I had worked it up to about eighty. Cue Club regular, Shella, had been on my table the previous night and all day Sunday. The lady was a min-raising machine and was having a good day.

I raised the button with K3os and Shella min-raised me for about the thirtieth time in the tournament. I peeled a flop, as I was sure of my read on her, when she missed a flop and sure enough she missed it - so I shoved an extra 22 bigs over her 5x lead.

It had never crossed my mind that Shella might have had the same read on me, as I had on her but obviously she did. She called me with AQ no draw on the rainbow flop.

As always, I really enjoyed the few days in Killarney. It's a great place to visit for a festival and with the big one in October on the horizon, I can't wait to get back.