Bruce Poker Launch Festival

Fresh off the plane from Blackpool, we headed to the Green Isle hotel to check out what was going on with the Bruce Poker Launch Festival.

The cash tables were going rightly and Rob (as per usual) made it his business to check up on every player he has ever met before that was still actively participating in the tournament. After about an hour of meeting, greeting & general chit-chat we stuck our names down for the cash. Yet again Festival Cash Games didn't disappoint and by 3am (4-5 hours later) I had successfully put myself at risk from a severe case of food poisoning (dodgy burger, thanks Rob) and managed to make about €760 in the 1/2 NLH game.

Boyles IPO

Unfortunately due to the GUKPT event we missed this one, would have been a great one to play, especially for the small buy-in, there was fantastic value. But that said, where there's a festival there's always excellent cash games!


And so that's what I concentrated on, the tables were mostly full of foreign players, primarily French, with a few Dutch and Scandies to make up the numbers. I sat at one cash table in particular for a few hours, 2 young Dutch fellas on it, they had been up for 3 days solid and were recharging the batteries with Red Bull! They certainly weren't the value at the table but they did provide the entertainment. It's fair to say that it was the most entertaining cash table I have ever sat at. As well as the ladies event I did play one of the small side events, but unfortunately due to a pretty poor structure it was a crap-shoot from the off and as I didn't get the cards it was over and out for me pretty swiftly.

GUKPT Thanet

Headed to Thanet with Rob, he was playing the main event whilst I was playing the slightly more modest side event. It was a one day NLH with a £100 + £10.50 buy-in. Yes that's right! The reg fee was £10.50!!

The structure wasn't great as is typical for the smaller buy-in English MTT, but it was something to pass the time while Rob played in the main event. I got off to a decent start, managing to stay one step ahead of the shorter stacks and was in even better shape after knocking out Nik Persaud and Jeff Kimber.

SE Betdaq Bubble

Rob & I both played the Betdaq Live Sat in the SE. Rob had won his €400 + €40 ticket in a sat the night before and we bought my ticket off Ian who had also won a ticket in the same sat but was unable to actually play the event.

There were a lot of good players in this sat, so to win 1 of 3 tickets was never going to be easy. My first table featured Donal Norton, Dennis Reyes and Kevin Farelly so it was never really quiet, even early on there were several raised pots preflop. From memory I had very little cards to see a flop with and pathetically managed to blind myself down to around 4k by the break. Great! Just in time for the break time questions . . .
"How are you getting on?"
"About 4"
"40? no way!"
"No, 4, well 4ish "
"Oh"
Like these questions weren't awkward!

IPC Tour - Fitzwilliam Leg

I actually had no intentions of playing this. I had to be home in Belfast for about 2pm as Cemetry Sunday started at 3pm in the graveyard my dad is buried in. It would have been a mortal sin to miss this and as it's only once a year I couldn't justify not going, not even to myself. Well I headed to Dublin after work on Saturday as normal anyway to see Rob if nothing else. I figured I could even make my way round to the SE and play their EOM €200 game if Rob went well or possibly play cash in the Fitz although I don't consider myself a good cash player, but it would occupy me if nothing else.

IPC Tour - Waterford Leg

Played the main event on the Saturday, which took considerable effort on my part. I was working on Saturday morning as usual and only left work at 1.20pm. It was a mad dash home to collect Rob and get on the road. It was certainly a daunting task as it was physically impossible for us to make the starting time of 4pm, but we had to arrive as near to that as possible and even more importantly had to arrive within the first 2 levels to be able to join the game. Well everything that could have gone wrong on the way did go wrong . . . traffic was horrific in parts, the road towards the end of the journey wasn't great not leaving many over-taking opportunities and we even managed a wrong turn which cost us 20 mins! But finally we made it with about 3 mins to spare!

Creating A Monster!

Ok, so everyone else seems to have a blog these days, well everyone except me that is! I created this about a year ago & never bothered posting so I figured I'd give it a crack.


Nothing really to report right now so to cover some background . . . . I've been playing live poker (seriously) for 8 months now and I have to say I can't complain. I've had several decent results, most of which were against reasonably tough fields, but more than anything I've enjoyed every hand of every tournament. Win or lose I always leave wanting more, looking forward to the next game, does this mean I'm addicted??


Not expecting to get (m)any readers here so if anything this could well be me talking to myself . . . Welcome to the Life of Me!