The Start of Serious Progress!

Since the St Patrick's Day Cup it's all been about improving. I've actually started to not hate the range, I guess the on course results improvements have helped me focus. I've also been reading up on golf tips online & watching loads of online video clips. It's astounding how much free help there is online, & effective free help at that. It's been back to basics for me for a couple of months now, but this time I'm doing it right & I already see a huge improvement. I've also been heading up to the course when I can for practice. South County has great practice facilities & before this enthusiasm novelty wears off, I plan to improve whatever way I can.

St. Patrick's Day Cup

So the weather was rubbish & the frost course appeared to be a permanent feature, however I was truly bitten once more by the golf bug. Whilst my main objective to work on my handicap was on hold due to non-qualifying, I was keen to play as regularly as possible to help get my handicap down in any way possible.

The first competition in the club diary (excluding the regular weekly tournaments) was The St. Patrick's Day Cup. It was nice to see such an active time-sheet, something my previous club could definitely not compete with, although with this brought a desire to not screw it up. This was the full 18 holes although qualifying still hadn't started for the season.

Time To Meet The Members

Just under 2 weeks ago, I got a text message from the lovely Lady Captain Pauline up at South County to see if I fancied a game with her & couple other of the lady members up at the club.

Whilst I was delighted to be asked, & relished the opportunity to compare myself to other lady golfers, I admit I was petrified that this could be a huge embarrassment. I'd only ever played golf with Rob's mum before & she had a very laid back attitude towards golf, & she also knew I was only a beginner, plus I knew her! But, now, playing with people I'd never met before, & also after looking up their handicaps on www.HowDidIDo.co.uk - these girls could bloody play!

New Golf Club picked out . . . Now for that handicap . . .

Given the financial climate, it was obvious enough that anyone paying silly money to join a golf club needed their heads looked. Over the last few weeks (as well as most of our snow ridden winter) I've spent a fair amount of time looking at courses within a 45 min traveling distance that fell within a reasonable budget. Again, in golf, typically you get what you pay for. But when you're faced with top quality tracks with annual subs of less than €2k, & in some cases €1k, it would be madness to shell out anything more. I also had to bear in mind that whatever we were faced with cost wise, would be doubled as there are two of us.

Change of Direction

For some reason I got very distracted from blogging and also eventually got reasonably distracted from poker.

I made a decent profit from poker in 2010, enough to get me into 5 figures and even managed to scrape into the Irish Poker Rankings final at the end of the year. For those that aren't familiar with it, the IPR final is effectively a free-roll for the top performing tournament players in the country.

Goodbye 2009 . . . You Were Bloody Smashing!

So, end of another year & hasn't it been bloody great!

The year started pretty quietly, missed out on a few tourneys I would have liked to have played for one reason or another. Didn't play the IPC in January, although cleaned up in the cash games down there. Missed the Deepstack in February although went deep in a side event.

March marked the big move to Dublin & was also fairly successful in being the last standing of my team in the fantastic Eglinton Team event & also winning €3k in the Westbury EOM (end of month).

And The Winner Is . . .

Tonight marked the final Irish Poker Ranking event as well as the night of the Irish Poker Ranking Awards.

Going into this event I was 7th in the rankings meaning there was a decent chance I would be one of the automatic qualifiers for the STT in January. The one potential problem was the fact that the last ranking event was worth double points meaning there were a few people within over-taking distance if they went deep.

Irish Poker Championship / UKIPT Galway

*** Warning - This blog post may irritate due to severe whining at the beginning! ***

I was working the night before the first day of this event, got home about 7.45am & I felt like utter $hit! I'd developed a chest infection earlier in the week, managed to get an antibiotic, but it was finished & it appeared my chest infection had not. For this asthmatic, that meant more discomfort than for the average person, especially at night when breathing proved a lot more difficult than it should have. Rob was obviously playing the event himself so we packed up the car & headed for Galway.

Monaghan Harps GFC Charity Game

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!

Fitz Poker Festival 2009

During this festival I happened to have only one night off work meaning the only game I could play was the €75+R on Monday night. I hadn't been sleeping great for a few days & there was a large part of me resigned to spending my night off catching up on some sleep. Rob however was determined to head in for this game & somehow managed to drag me into town with him.