I met John O'Shea, Tom Hanlon and Marty at the K Club on Thursday and thoroughly enjoyed our game, although I didn't bring my best. After nine holes I looked like getting 
stuck a monkey, but a better back nine and an impressive partner in John got me out.
I played the turbo on Thursday night, where I got a hell of a lot of big blinds in pre-flop holding KQ with about half the field gone. Well, you can't really fold a hand as pretty as KQ in a turbo I feel.
In the main event, I was a bit surprised to see EPT former grand final winner Pieter De Korver sitting two to my left on my starting table. One of the commentators described him as the best player in the tournament. In reality he wasn't even the best player at the table and was schooled freely on numerous occasions by Ian 'Bops' Ronan.
My tournament ended at level seven, playing 30k, blinds 300-600-75 ante. A relatively new player to the table who was frankly awful had been there four orbits and on each orbit had limped called a raise from UTG, and did so here. UTG + 1 called and I made it 2600 from the button with QQ; both called to see a 1022 rainbow flop.
First to act check-shoves covering me after UTG+1 had raised 4500 and I had called. I folded QQ on a nine high board the previous week in Cork but I just couldn't get away here. In my head I could see this guy showing up with 10J or even under-pairs to the ten, although I did consider the A2 he did show up with. I'm happy with my call.
I was asked to commentate for the live stream for the last two levels play on the day and had to endure watching the guy butchering his healthy stack. I'd done some live commentary in the past but I really didn't enjoy doing it here. I think it was the fact that it was a very dead table and I knew none of the players, along with having to watch my chips being spewed made me jump ship to the bar after an hour.
I didn't play poker for the rest of the weekend but had a decent sweat from percentage swaps with Marty Smyth and Derek Murray. Marty fell just short of the Money after losing a healthy stack in a couple of coolers. Derek had a great run finishing 15th for €5,000, and but for a beat with twenty left would of went very deep.
The button shipped 20 bigs in the hand, which was nearly average stack for the tournament at the time. Derek said he didn't like risking the chips with 88, as he felt he had a good edge on his table but after observing the pusher for a while, read him as very uncomfortable. It was A4 os and seeing fours land on both turn and river was a horrid way to lose the hand.
All in all I enjoyed the weekend; you can only run deep in a certain percentage of tournaments you play and just have to suck up the inevitable ones you exit early.