Rob & I nearly slept in for this one. For some reason we thought the tournament started at 6, well it didn't, it actually started at 4 & the 1.5-2 hours travelling time meant we nearly missed it. We got woke up by chance due to an unexpected phone call & shortly afterwards Rob happened to have a quick look at boards to see if there was much interest in the tourney. It's a good job he did as it was only then we discovered the 4pm kick off, doh!
As it turned out the game was delayed anyway, but at least we made it there in time :) Most tables were self-deal which to be honest I hate. I hate it for several reasons, firstly I'm ridiculously bad at dealing, slow clumsy etc, secondly it slows the game up dramatically and thirdly it tends to lead to even more time wasting & uncertainty due to everyone not knowing what most of the rulings are. My table was self-deal for several levels early on, apologies to anyone who was at my table for I know I suck as a dealer!
I got off to a good start, maintained a healthy stack & was comfortable with both my play & the table. My table was chatty enough & all the guys were very welcoming. There was a couple of guys in particular, who went out of their way to make conversation with me which I certainly appreciated & I thought was really nice of them. Most of them knew eachother from previous local games which I find can be a disadvantage for a stranger like me as they all had eachother pegged but I took on board what I could & soon sorted the rocks from the maniacs.
Even though it was a 20k stack, the blind structure was relatively fast enough & it wasn't long before the numbers starting dropping. The game slowed up a fair bit when down to 3 tables & the bubble seemed to last for months but somehow I got there & managed to make it to the final table.
By the final table I was quite short & didn't have a huge amount of time to wait on a hand which was a shame as I had been card dead for ages by this point & there weren't many spots to steal, mainly due to people being dealt monsters tbh. When folded around to me on the button I pushed my raggy king all in. Unfortunately Damo woke up with AT in the blinds which held. I exited in 7th which although happy to cash was a bit of an anti-climax, particularly considering the journey to get there & back put a damper on what wasn't far off a min cash.
That said I actually enjoyed myself quite a bit. The folk there were good craic & Neil Channing also provided a fair bit of entertainment by pickling peoples' heads as he was moving from table to table as a bounty. He also did a good radio interview whilst there for Irish Poker Radio. The other upside of the finish was it got me into the top 8 in the Irish Poker Rankings. At the beginning of the year I found it amusing how people were playing events purely to chase points, but seeing I hadn't played that many tourneys over the course of the year & was within touching distance of finishing in the top 8 of the rankings, I'll admit I was determined to do my best to qualify for the final table. No matter how flawed the points system was, I consider it an achievement to play less than 25% of ranking events & still manage to make the final :)
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