Firstly, a big well done to Lisa, Ciaran, Jerry, everyone else at Boylepoker and Poker Ireland for yet again producing the biggest poker tournament of the year outside of Las Vegas.
I can only imagine the amount of work that goes into pulling off the IPO, but pull it off they did and what a great weekend it was again!
I played golf with the usual suspects (Paul, Marty and Julian) in the K Club on the Wednesday and Thursday before the event. Honours were split but if you saw the trashing Marty and myself got on day one, you wouldn't have backed us at 10/1 to recoup our losses on day two.
We headed to the Regency on Thursday evening and were settled in at the bar for the Montpelier rugby game. Marty said he was going in heavy on them to cover the handicap earlier in the day. I had a grand on and while I shouldn't say Marty's bet, it was 10x mine anyway.
Five minutes into the match, Marty came out with this gem of a question. Are Montpelier in the blue or grey? Something he probably should know, with a five-figure wager involved you'd think.
Montpelier, in the blue, won handily and the rest of the night was spent enjoying a relaxing few drinks.
I really enjoyed the whole tournament. I had a very pleasant starting table and the whole room seemed to be enjoying the game. I never really got going and just before dinner I ran Queens into Aces, which left me with five blinds. I needed to get these in before the blinds hit me and unfortunately I ran my J4os into Kings.
I did, however, last long enough to get a few quid from Mr Smyth in a last longer
Over the rest of the weekend I did three stints of commentating for the live stream, got two rounds of golf in and many more rounds of drinks.
It really was a hugely enjoyable weekend. Mickey May summed it up late in the bar on the Sunday night when she said, "The atmosphere at the IPO is something special, it's the people's tournament".