Sole Survivor

My Irish Winter Festival — Part III

Day three started quite surprisingly I was first out of bed and made it down for breakfast — another first and proud accomplishment of mine for the weekend. I’ve stayed at least 50+ times in hotels and have never made breakfast in time, paid for or not. We hadn’t booked in for that night so we packed our stuff and returned the couch to its original spot minus the cushions and managed not to get seen.

It was only when we left the room — three men, three bags in one hand and three cushions in the other that we were seen by one of the cleaning staff. Only for her mouth being so far open in shock she might have asked us WTF we were doing!

Anyway back to poker. I had an easy game plan for the day — double up or go home. We were playing sixhanded with a redraw and I only had one guy that was on my table from the night before. I did get my early double up, 6-6 v his A-T, and I’m probably 5/6th in chips with 12 left. I’m just on average after I push A-Q over an early position raise. The guy folded 7-7 and said, “I won’t win a race against you anyways.” I have to say it was a good read of my hand.

Anyway I make either a huge mistake or a series of little ones after this. I planned to try to really spin up my stack by taking a lot of uncontested pots preflop while we are sixhanded but out of the next five pots I opened I’m reshipped on all except one which went to flop on a J-7-2 board and he shipped on my continuation bet and showed J-7. After the first hand shoved on me I should never have been open-raise folding.

Then after one players busts out I get 7-7 on the big blind and as soon as I looked at it, in my head it was going in. I get re-raised from Noel O’Brien and I ship. I have to say looking back he had shipped on me earlier when I’d a bigger stack but now chose to re-raise. I missed any chance I had to fold by not paying attention but against such an aggressive player it was more than likely always going in with the stacks we had.

Anyways I didn’t bink my 7 and my unfortunate prediction from the night before came true.
I know this story was long but I have to finish up with a few points. I played really badly from 14 players in and never deserved to win this. I now think Chris Dowling is in the bookie’s paw cause they must have paid him off not to win (joke!). I think John and Noel really fought it out in the final two and having played with both of them over the weekend it was really hard to shout for a winner.

Also thanks to all the Paddy Power team, my apologies to Emmet for blank refusing to come into the commentary box but I’m never going to come in after Neil Channing and Dara O’Kearney have been in, it’d have been like watching Fair City just after Lord of the Rings. I’m also still not happy with Card Player’s Rebecca McAdam making me do interviews after bad things happen — how about one next time I win a big pot? ♠

Niall Smyth finished 11th in the paddypowerpoker.com Irish Winter Festival for €5,800. The event was won by John Keown for €100,000. Noel O’Brien was second for €57,950 while Chris Dowling was third for €35,750.