I'm no Jessy May-Unibet Dublin

The City West is in my top two favourite venues for a poker festival in Ireland, so I was happy to see a major event back at the venue after a two-year absence.

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.

Irish Classic

The Classic festival in the Macau runs all week and is Ireland's largest casino based poker festival.

I just played the PLO and Main Event this year. The Omaha was on Wednesday night and had a poor turnout with a field of only seventeen.

I finished fourth for nought at five am, which made for a depressing drive home. The tournament was won by Alex 'The Prof' Lopez, with Chris Dowling taking second after some business heads up.

A sign of changing times could be gleaned from the weekend's prize pool; in 2008 the winner's prize for the main event was €81,000, this year the 'total' prize pool was less then that figure. The Macau had decreased the buy-in as a reaction to the current economic climate and a saturated calendar of poker events; they also added a re-buy option this year. The tournament was a still a great success and with 17 players choosing to buy in twice, that seems to have worked well also.

I said in a blog recently that I was unsure about these tournaments that give players the option to re-buy, when multiple day ones are in place. It's clearly an advantage to the top players who have large bankrolls, however is it fair to increase such players edge? I still haven't made my mind up, but it's definitely a topical subject as this type of event is becoming more prevalent.

My Main Event was going well for the first half of day one and into level four I had almost trebled my starting stack. Things turned on me after this however and I had a serious of unfortunate reversals which saw me finish the day with less then what I started. I rallied early on day two but was out just before dinner in a flip against the impressive Nelius Foley.

Seven on a Saturday night isn't the worst time to get knocked out of a tournament in Cork, and a big gang of the tournament causalities including Big Al, Paul Carr and Eoghan O'Dea hit the town for a messy night's drinking.

I returned home early Sunday morning but followed what looked a cracking final table online. Two of the south's favourite poker players; Peter 'Knuckles' Higgins and Brian 'The Fox' O'Keefe had good runs but fell short of the real money finishing 9th and 7th respectively.

Limerick player Con Collins followed up his recent 4th place finish at the JP Masters by filling the same position here. Upon Con's exit, the three remaining players agreed to deal, where Pat Curran took home €19,000 and the trophy, Tony Collins and David Croke both picked up a very healthy €15,000.

Circles

No, I'm not plugging Google +, rather circles casino Clonmel where I played a €275 summer game last Sunday.

51 players turned out for the one-day event and I got the most in a 4-way chip equity chop at 5 am. I took home €3,300 which was 26% of the total prize pool, so not a bad day's work.

I was treading water early on in this event, but got lucky three tables out when I squeezed KQ into a limpers AK. I never really looked back after this and although I was short enough going to the final table, things fell my way.

One sweet hand that I'll remember from the tournament occurred six handed. I raised 10 7os in the cut-off and hit the old 89J flop. I got it in on the flop against the BB's top pair. This gave me the chip lead and I was happy to chop shortly after, when we lost another player.

It was an enjoyable, well-structured game and the staff at Circles were top class, I'll be back for their Winter Festival in early December.

My next poker outing is the Irish Classic in the Macau Cork next week. You have the option here to play Day 1A and if it doesn't work out, you can buy back in on the second day one. I'm not sure how I feel about these tournaments that you can buy back into, but I don't think I'll be availing of the option. I just don't like the idea of being in for a grand in a monkey game, where realistically a maximum of 10% of the field will only have re-entered.

On the golf front, it's the last major of the year this weekend. I had a nice touch out of Kaymer in this one last year but I haven't really gotten involved pre tee this time - I'll see how the first two days go and have a punt Saturday. TBH my confidence in doing anything-right punting wise isn't great. I'm in a trough for about ten weeks on the golf and not attacking this major with my usual vigour.

Not up to much this weekend, the highlight will be a trip to Killarney Friday to play Killeen. Just looking at the forecast now and it's not great but I'll put up with some rain to play this smashing course.

EMOP Dublin

Clontarf Castle Hotel was the venue for the inaugural visit of the European Masters of Poker tour to these shores. It proved to be a fantastic venue with a top room for a poker tournament. Having played a few of the tours events overseas I knew what to expect- 200 or so Scandinavian online qualifiers most of mediocre ability and hopefully boosted by a good turnout form the home team.

Connie O'Sullivan's, Cue Club events team were running the show and as you could expect with these guys, all targets were met. 300+ players sat down over the two starting days to fight it out for the title. I opted for day one B and my starting table seemed tough enough initially but I warmed to it as the levels progressed.

At the first break I commented to a friend that I expected an Asian kid on my left to start playing back at me soon. First hand back he did, I can’t see how I could of folded my jacks after just making this prediction and his aces held in a 28k pot. Thankfully I doubled immediately after with kings to get back to starting stack of 20k.

Over the next few hours I hit a brilliant run of starting hands, unfortunately they kept getting smashed. I had to give up on Aces three times over the next four levels, costing me plenty on each occasion.

Seven levels into the ten level day I got a table move, I had only about 15k at this stage but was stagnating and hoping the move could ignite me into the tournament. My new table covered the spectrum of Irish poker. On my left was tall Michael Graydon, Mick is having a sick year online and is topping the pocket5s Irish table for 2011. On my right, legend of Irish poker, former WSOP main event finalist George McKeever, so quiet the contrast.

Funnily enough I had never played with George before. I must of impressed him somewhat as after two hours of playing on the table he asked me if I'd like to swap 5% in the event.

I was going along OK and had doubled my stack when I ran AK into A9 just before the last level of the night. I'm well used to losing 30-70's, so it wouldn't bother me generally. However, the fact the dealer burst out laughing when my opponent hit a flush on the river had me steaming I must admit.

Just into the final level with ten big blinds left I got a lucky double shoving A5 into A10. But it was to no avail as thirty minutes later I lost a race for 60k, which was average stack, AK v JJ.

It was a difficult days poker for me as every time I looked like getting something going the deck swung against me. I feel had I won the late race I could well of have had a run at this one, but wasn't to be. I'm never too disappointed once I've played decent poker and I was very happy with my game over the day.

I'll be writing on the event for my columns in the star and bluff and will have a more macro-based sum up of the tournament in those. But big well done to all the Irish that cashed, especially The two Micks and Doke who nearly held off the invaders.

Other Stuff

This isn't a blog that's going up on Boyles. I seem to be getting caught up a lot in writing over the last year - the bluff column and more recently for the poker supplement in the star and while I enjoy it - I need to be a bit more reader focused then having a good old waffle like I used to here. I always liked blogging but never envisaged my bull being published in magazines and newspapers. The only real conclusion I can come up with on those happenings is the community is severely starved of literary talent.

I never made Vegas this year which I dont really regret, there was a number of factors why I didn't go but the main one was I hit a bad run punting and didn't have a spare 25k lying around. I could of went down the road of selling action but just didn't fancy it, the enthusiasm just wasn't there and I have no regrets of not making a better effort to get over.

The few games I did play over the last month were more piss ups then serious games. Not very professional I know but the buyins were small and killarney and tramore - well its hard not to hit the beer in those spots. I'm a bit involved in putting on the tramore tournament so I'm not 100% comfortable playing it for that reason and might not play it next year.

There's a couple of really good games on the horizon and you wont see me touching a drop at these starting with the EMOP this week.

There's a real change in the landscape of Irish poker this year and while I'm happy to see tours like the emop and unibet hitting these shores. Along with the ukipt They're definitely squeezing the traditional events that existed but if it gives players shots at bigger prizepools then I suppose that's what we want.

The other side of the coin though is I hate seeing tournaments like the winter festival and the Irish Classic dropping buy in to try compete. The classic had a near 300k prizepool in 2008- it looks like it will do well to have 100k one this year. I guess its survival of the fittest and if you dont have a way of mass producing qualifiers your going to suffer in the current macro-eco climate.

On the punting front I lost the plot completely on the golf for a while- punting in grands pre tournament on outright market is just too high variance for my liquidity and that's well reined in. TBH if I spent the time I spent watching and punting golf on my poker game over the last 18 months.......you get the picture.

I'm not sure if anyone still drops in here anymore but I'll try post here the odd time with stuff that I feel falls outside my role with Boyles just to keep the old blog going.

Open Time

On the poker front I played twice the weekend- the monthly game in the poker lounge Waterford where I came third and the summer game in the Cue Club Killarney where I lasted about a third of the time it took me to get there. Still Killarney's always great craic to go out in this time of year so wasn't a wasted trip.

A couple of great event coming up - we have the Boylepoker Waterford Masters next week; the Masters is always a top class little tournament with a great atmosphere. Then the following week the EMOP visits Ireland for the first time. This takes place in Clontraf Castle and a good purse is guaranteed.

This weekend will be spent watching the Open Championship. I'm punting Kaymer; he's been going through a swing change and watching him play in France two weeks ago he looked nearly right to me. He's on record as saying he doesn't love links golf but in reality has a superb links record, he's also one of the best ball strikers in windy conditions which we can expect over the four days. All in all 25/1 looks a very decent price and well worth a bet. I should add however that this tip comes with a public warning, I'm very much out of form punting wise the past two months.

Celtic Poker Tour Grand Final

The Celtic Poker tour has been running since 2004 and every year has a grand final.

Initially you had to win one of the many tour games to get into this, but they opened it up to all comers since 2008. Every year more regulars of the wider Irish scene find their way to Carlow for the finals and one inevitably wins- this year was no different.

The CPT is predominantly a rural tour and the demographic of the tour regulars would be mainly over forty. The events are a social night out for them and an enjoyable atmosphere to play poker is always in place. However over the three day excellently structured Grand Final the regular's style of play just isn't up to it.

The Final table was littered with recognisable 'names'. Colette Murphy and Mick McCloskey both had good runs but fell short on the final table. Alan McIntyre followed up his 5th place finish at the JP Masters by filling the same spot here.

With four remaining, Tom Kitt took total command in a massive pot with AQ v KK, the ace on the river added to Tom's already impressive stack and sending Noel 'twang' O'Brien to the rail in cruel fashion.

After a few hours sparring and the stacks levelling up measurably the three remaining players, Kitt, Tommy Walsh and Dimitri Pembroke decided to deal with Tom taking 19k and the trophy, Tommy and Dimitri getting a healthy 15k each.

I managed to increase my side event specialist reputation (which I hate) over the weekend taking down the €220 game for 4k and was very close to getting the best deal of my career in the process.

Three-handed, with me holding a huge chip advantage, the two lads discussed chopping second and third place money and giving me first. A ticket for a future event included in the second prize eventually killed the deal but it would have been fun to get full first place money in a deal with three players remaining.