There were
two games on last Saturday. A €120 game in the City West and a €350 two day
game which was part of a ‘Summer Festival’ in the Fitz. I opted for the latter,
which unfortunately only attracted 26 players, the game in the City West got a
massive 500 players.
The Fitz
game started with two tables and when a few more entered, I was moved to the
third table. After 20 minutes on my new table I ran a King high flush into the
nut flush of James 'Hawkeye' McManus. Meanwhile I looked across to my old seat, which was
filled by Fintan Gavin, and he had quadrupled his starting stack in that time.
I kind of felt it wasn’t going to be my day.
Nothing
went right after and I exited in 16th after roughly 3 hours play, at least I
lasted long enough for the legendry Fitz feed. I had travelled up with Ian
‘Bops’ Ronan and although we had swapped percentages, I’m ashamed to say I was
more hoping he got knocked out quickly rather then win the thing. Bops is never
one to hang around short-stacked, luckily he finished 14th.
I had
dropped into the City West on my way to Dublin and the numbers for that game
were astounding. Celtic poker tours with their regional partners, JP and Nick
O’Hara in this instance, have been putting on these €120 buy in $25,000
guarantees for over a year now.
These games
have become hugely popular attracting more and more recreational players to
them, rather then playing the expense laden multi-day festival event.
Professionally run; low buy in, softer fields, with a chance of a decent score
at the end. What’s not to like? With the economy in the state it is Celtic
Poker Tour have clearly produced the product that fits the current market well, and these
event will be where much of the poker playing community will be getting their
fix for the foreseeable future.
Well done
to Jason Tompkins on his WSOP final table in event #54 last night, a great
performance getting through 3,200 players to finish 6th. BigMickG aka Mick
Graydon is currently 12/22 in event #56 so hopefully another late nights
railing lays ahead tonight.
