It was back to Killarney last weekend for the 250k guaranteed €500 game. There were rumours of large wagers between Connie and Fintan Gavin on whether this one would get a bigger field then the UKIPT Dublin.
When I was a child, one of the earliest doctrines my father taught me was never to bet with a cute Kerrymen and sure enough Connie scooped that bet with 633 turning out. This number is slightly down on previous years but still a great achievement to produce that size of field.
A golf day was arranged on Killeen for Thursday and yours truly scooped the first prize of €200 into my Ladbrokes account with 35pts. I love that course, it really is something else.
The danger of going to these festivals a day early is inevitably you end up on the lash. You can have the best intentions in the world but meeting up with everyone generally leads to a few beers.
The result of Thursday night meant I entered the tournament a little hung-over. This isn't the worst anti-spew mechanism in the world, as I'll usually start a little tighter in that condition.
I was plodding along grand and had added 66% to my 
15k starting when in the final hand before dinner, I got dealt the Kings. The big blind was dealt Aces and after the usual raising procedure we got it in and I was lucky enough to bink a straight on the river, thus adding his 16k stack to mine.
The rest of day one was uneventful enough and I finished the day on a healthy enough 44k with the average around 30.
I got off to a great start on day two when I flopped gin-holding 33 on a 773 board and managed to get the full double through from an over-pair. This table broke soon enough and I ran pretty well on my new table.
I won a massive pot with 
verses 
a few hours into the day. I had 4-bet my opponent recently enough and he must have felt I was bullying him when he shoved the over me when I did it again. Understandable enough, but I had Aces the first time I did it.
I was playing about 180k now with average around the 50 mark, so a massive stack. Unfortunately that was as good as it got. On a new table not much went right for me and eventually I ran Queens into Aces about a dozen off the money for my last 90k with the blinds at 2/4k.
That's three of the last four major events I've played in Ireland where I've amassed a super stack midway though day two and haven't converted to even a min cash.
It's all very depressing really but you get plenty of time to mull over things on the drive home from Kerry and my conclusion is I didn't do a single thing wrong, it just went against me. At least I'm getting my hands on chips and if I keep doing that a conversion isn't far off.
Big well done to Marty Smyth and John O'Shea on their great performances in London for the EPT, it was getting very exciting following the updates and great to see both hit the money.