Galway Team Event

There were high expectations for this event but at the same time it was always gonna be tough. We had a good team, a very good team but we weren't the only ones. Our team had Rob, KP, Dara, Rory Brown, Paul Coyle and little old me. On paper, our main rivals were the Bundys: O'Shea, Brennan, Fallon, O'Dea, Walsh and Hayes. There was some side action between us and the Galway Team, in fact I'm pretty sure there was some side action between the Galways team and most teams!
The casino was fairly packed, good atmosphere, everyone in good spirits. There were clashes from the off, losing a few casualties very early on. We got off to an ok start, nothing major for the first level or 2 but our main rivals were all gathering chips together nicely and most of us were fairly short stacked. It wasn't long before we lost a couple of our members, Rory Brown ran his AK into AA on a K high board and Paul shipped suited connectors in late position to find a limper with QT decided to make a huge (aka terrible) call for way too many chips! At this time our difficult but manageable feat was looking more and more out of reach.

As a team we tightened up and tried to salvage something. Dara was totally card dead but managed to hang on to grab 28th or thereabouts which was huge as it turned out. At this point the Bundys team was looking much healthier than ours and the Eglinton Team was absolutely flying. However things were to take a turn for the better for us. 3 Bundys made a very sharp exit very soon after Dara meaning we were now in a decent spot after all.

In the end it got very close between us and the Eglinton Team with the Bundys totally out of contention. Out of those who made the final table, we had 3 (Rob, Kp & I), the Eglinton had 2 (Dave & Jay) and the Bundys had one sole survivor (O'Shea). O'Shea had a chip lead but was playing for sole prizes only, as was Johnny Weafer. There was a lot of banter and it was certainly the funnest final table I've ever been on.

Unfortunately KP was first out meaning both Rob & I had to go very deep to have any chance of winning, but it was looking like we had 2nd place locked up. Given our position half way through day 1 we would have definitely taken 2nd place for team prize money of €5k. Jay sucked out on Rob with 6 left cracking his AK with 89, swinging the chip stacks in the opposite direction to what we would have liked.

Dave Curtis ended up 6th, Rob was 5th and Jay was 4th . . . meaning the 3 left were O'Shea, Johnny Weafer and I. On paper if I won the thing our team could still grab 1st place, but that was never going to be easy as I was the short stack and both O'Shea and Weafer were playing very well.

I ended up finishing 3rd, think my exit hand played itself. Weafer made a standard raise and I shipped AQ, unfortunately he had a monster and his KK held up. I won €1k for 3rd as well as the team winning €5k for second. We also made a team side bet profit of €1,500 for outlasting the Galway Team to contribute to the winnings . . . not bad for a couple of days in Galway!