Good advice

That's what I gave my buddy Danny on the golf course last Tuesday. Danny isn't a punter but was talking about having a few bets. Me having great wisdom on such matters proceeded to inform him that Galway and Goodwood made the last week of July a bookies benefit week and not to consider a bet. Off-course I proceeded to do my total bollix the next day.

Looking forward to the USPGA championship this coming weekend but a bit hesitant to have a decent punt on anyone, probably just pick four or five at big prices for a few speculative bets and if none of my picks get in the hunt have a punt Saturday or Sunday. I was tempted by the 25/1 available on Sergio which looks pretty big compared to his price in the recent Open but decided against it, the guy would break your heart with his putting.

Next week sees the Macau summer festival in Cork. I really love the Macau festivals and this one looks like being the best one yet. The main event has a 75 minute clock and 15,000 starting stack and having played the structure last year its magic. This will be my sixth festival in the place and I've had some kind of a score in four of the previous five I've played, my best result winning the winter festivals main event in Dec 05. That's a little over two and a half years ago and I remember traveling to the event with no doubt in my mind that I would win it even though it was my first €1,000 buy in. I'm a lot more pragmatic about the game these days, its fingers crossed for a good showing next week and hopefully I can bring my A-game in my first outing in the Brucepoker shirt.

Here's a cool Cork montage I found a while back on youtube, the tune is 'make this love right' aka 'ball and chain' by Romanthony and was a huge anthem in Sir Henry's back in the day.

4-bet shoving air

This is something thats been on my mind a bit and a play that should be in every players arsenal. It's a high risk play but if your continuously being 3-bet there comes a time when you gotta make this move. There should be a few factors in place when 4-betting someone most importantly folding equity. It's the type of play when it goes wrong you can look very stupid which is exactly how I felt when I pushed air into AA at JPs mini festival €250 game on Saturday.

There was about 30 of the 104 starters remaining when I shoved light and the fact that the guy facing the raise would of been getting 2/1 on his money regardless of his holdings made it a very retarded play by me. JP didn't help my spot as he decided to turn into bigslick Kelly and for the first time over the tournament grabbed the mike to declare that Nicky Power was all in with shit Vs AA, nice one thanks for that JP!

Truth be told I hadn't played very well and most of the 60k I had lost in that hand were won in a sick four flush suck out on the misfortunate Oz. I have a bit of record of sucking out on that guy but he is a proper player and always takes it very well. In general I feel that I'm playing fairly poorly for a couple of months now and it's something I need to sort.

The new casino in the city west looks a great spot for poker. The venue and facilities are excellent and hopefully JP is onto a winner here as in my book he runs the best show in town.

Brucepoker.com

Well that's whom my sponsorship deal is with. Bruce are one of Ireland's largest independent bookmakers and are launching on the Ongame network. The following statement was posted on the Brucepoker home page yesterday

Brucepoker have signed Nicky Power to represent the New entrant to the online poker market. Nicky will be promoting the Bruce brand at all the major tournaments in both Ireland and the UK Including the upcoming Irish Classic, Irish Masters, the GUKPT final the IPC and Irish Open 2009.

A native of county Waterford, Power has firmly established himself as one of Ireland’s poker elite over the past three years. His biggest payday was when he Final tabled the 2007 Irish Open for 100,000 euro and Nicky has amassed a great number of tournament victory’s in a relatively short time playing.

”Nicky’s popularity, enthusiasm and character at the table’s as well as his great skill made him the obvious choice for us”, said head of poker at Bruce, Paul Smallwood.

”I’m excited to have signed with brucepoker.com and to have the opportunity to represent them” said Power. ”The poker software and choice of games on offer are excellent and being involved with such a trusted and innovative outfit as Bruce’s is a great honour for me!”

The Brucepoker website will include Nicky’s popular blog with regular tournament reports as well as strategy advice and will serve as a place to follow his progress throughout the poker world.

I’d like to thank everyone who wished me well in both threads on boards.ie and in this blog, I’m very flattered by the amount of people who have taken the time to post and really appreciate it.

Thank you to Paul Smallwood and Brucepoker.com for this opportunity. I’ve known Paul for a number a number of years now and we have always been good mates so I’m looking forward to working with him over the coming year. I cant wait to get my teeth into my new roll for Brucepoker.com and cant think of a better place to start than my old stomping ground the Macau for the Classic festival.

It’s a great opportunity that Brucepoker.com have given me, I wish them every success in their new venture into the online poker market. I’m very proud to be representing such a well-respected and trusted Irish company as Bruce and hope to prove myself a worthy investment.

On a personal level being a sponsored player definitely changes things for me. While I feel the deal brings a degree of continuity to my progression as a player it also brings a number of different elements to my poker and how I'm perceived at the tables.

I think there is definitely added pressure on me to achieve results and It's also more important that I behave in a professional manner as I am acting as a branch of a larger entity. I like to think I always carried myself very well while playing but I need to be aware that its not just myself I'm representing anymore. As for the added pressure, well I have always produced my best game under pressure so maybe I can channel this to my advantage.

Sponsorship Deal

I have been in negotiations with an online site for the last few months with a view to becoming a sponsored representative for the site at live tournaments. I'm delighted to report that a package has been agreed for me covering all the big Irish events for the coming year including the Classic, Masters, IPC and Irish Open and a number of events in Briton including the GUKPT grand final.

I'm not going to say just yet whom the deal is with as I think it's only right that the other party be allowed to release the details. I'm very happy about the deal and its a great boost to my confidence to be considered and approached for sponsorship.

On the WSOP front most of the guys are gone, my good friend Gavin in the most unfortunate circumstances. He had to return home because of a death in the family and his stack was blinded away on day two. I have no doubt that Gavin will have huge success in tournament poker in the future as he seems to have recently acquired real hunger for it. This off course will just complement his already mightily impressive cash game success.

I was delighted to see Reggie and Pat O' Callaghan make the money and was very disappointed to see Dave Murry and Gary Clarke just miss out. What a run Hawkeye in on, lets hope his money isn't stolen after this ride.

Goodfellas at the WSOP

Its been a good 2008 Vegas for the Irish, five final tablets including Marty taking down the $10k PLO championship event. I first played with Marty in the 2006 IO in Jury's and really like the guy but it's hard not to like him . I don't think I ever herd anyone have anything bad to say about him and the phenomenal success he has had the last couple of years is testament that the good guys can come out on top in this game.

With the first three day ones of the main event over many of my friends have played and seemingly the the Irish run is continuing. A number of mates who's blogs are linked here are going well. My bud Valor has an average stack and says he is probably Fav to win it now day one is out of the way, he is probably right. Rag2gar aka Gary Clarke has a healthy 80k in chips and what a story a deep run here would be after the saga on boards re the package he won a few months back. I think Dara is still in short but that wont faze him. Reggie has the opportunity to put the cardshark broke wind up merchants to sleep for good as he is in with an above average stack also and Dave roundtower Murry who finished 42nd in the event in 2006 has a near 70k stack. With Marty, Padraig, Ciaran and a few more I think also still in Hopefully the march of the good guys continues.

Random

WTF is going on with the boards.ie poker forum the last few weeks. I've been a regular poster/reader of that forum for the last couple of years and always found it a great resource on a number of levels but jesus its been hard to open a tread the last few weeks. There's basically been a number of people pebble dashing every tread with complete drivel. It's probably the time of year where the forum is most inactive generally but these guys are harming the place I feel. There are some great posters and very helpful people who are only to happy to give there time to new players or help oldies like me with poker software ect. However I cant help feeling that many quality posters will be lost to the place if the current trend continues.

On the poker front having left it to late to go to Killarney, myself Pat and Colin Fardy headed to the Fitz for the €120+5 freezout. The Fitz has seemingly been killing the opposition in Dublin lately for bums on seats and maybe the reason can be seen in my last sentence. A €5 reg for a €120 buy in certainly got my attention. It seems they have a policy in place to get you through the door and keep the place busy. There's a lesson there for other operators, tournaments will always be a loss leader but they are a must; theres nothing more off putting to go to an empty venue and many never return. The Fitz is getting them in with player friendly tournaments and going by the eight or so cash tables running there last night there reaping the benefit.

I ran kings into aces in the €120 early enough. Played the round of each with 4 rebuys which was good craic. Having exited that bought into the 1/2 plh game for €300 and got it in with Ks6s V 10s 3s on a 5s4s7x flop against some danish guy. When he hit a 10 on the river I decided that was enough poker for the night so had a nice feed from the very reasonably priced menu on offer.

On the local scene Seamus who has run caesars palace in New Ross for the last few years has expanded to Waterford taking over the poker room in the Olympus casino. I went down for the opening on Friday night and it looks great and really enjoyed the game there and wish Seamus well as he is a top bloke. I don't know how Waterford can support two card rooms so interesting times for players down this way. I hardly ever play cash but know that the games locally have deteriorated over the last year and as cash is where these places make a bob I cant see both poker rooms being profitable but who knows.

Was just looking at recent wsop results on the HMD when a bracelet winner and second in the last few days caught my eye. They cashed 3rd and 19th in this event which I cashed in last year. Fingers crossed it's an omen for my good mate Mr Murry who finished 5th in the same event.

Common spot

The following question was asked in the comment's section of my last post and its something that all mtt players have to deal with one time or another. My answer is anything but definitive, just some rambling thoughts on the issue but relative enough for a post I think.


Could I ask how you deal with the massive swings in tournament poker? I'm on my worst run ever of 31 games without a cash. From the last 18 I have busted from 12 despite being at least a 70/30 fav.

It's really starting to get to me now and I'm thinking I could be a donkey!

Matthew I don't think anyone has the answer and everyone reacts differently to a bad run. I've played thousands of stt and these give you some idea of how bad you can run as the variance can be pretty sick in them and there is even more variance in MTTS. It's conceivable that someone can run good or bad in mtts over there whole life.

The only advice I can give is if you feel how your running is affecting how your playing adversely then take a break. If you feel your still performing to the best of your ability then just play though it as its all you can really do, it can and has for me in the past changed very quickly.

I was asked my expectations for the coming year in a Q&A I did on boards .ie back in January and answered it "because the variance is so much in mtts i wouldn't be surprised if I didn't say have any results that register for all of 2008 on the hendonmob data base on the other hand i wouldn't be surprised to have ten results on it in 2008, thats the nature of being a live mtt tournament player". We have to expect to hit bad patches its just the nature of the beast.

I read an article by Tommy Angelo where he says something along the lines of downswings or upswings for that matter don't exist as you only play in the present. I like what he is getting at as the game your playing or even the hand is what really matters as whats gone before and the future is out of our control, what we should be focusing on is to play in the present the best we can. Anyhow keep the chin up.