How I Won The Irish Poker Festival

Read part I and II of Niall Smtyh’s blog on how he won the Irish Poker Festival here:

SUNDAY
Turns out I didn’t lie to myself as I managed to get the last 10 mins of an impressive second half performance from the Irish team. I have a quick shower and drag myself down the road. I bump into John Kalmar in the car park. Whereas last night you couldn’t shut us up, today we barely speak to each other, feeling each others pain, both sipping from litre bottles of water. The absolute picture of professionalism. Although I’m sure he felt five-times better than me with his one million stack to my 200k one.

The play at our table is pretty slow for the first two levels – I think we only lost one player of the nine. I manage to climb to about 350k at one point, I had pushed over a preflop raise with A-Q and also won a pot on the flop with K-K with three players involved after both players tank-folded. We get down to 18 players, with a pay jump and move of table.

For the first hour at this table I’m on around 10 big blinds but I don’t get to push once because I’m only getting crap cards in early position and always a raise when I have mediocre ones in late position. Obviously I don’t hit any premiums.

Just before the break I manage to get three pushes through, the third one was A-A and I was fully sure that I was getting a call because it was all in the one round. Then I make my first mistake of the day with A-T on the cutoff, I make my normal raise and end up getting check-raised on the flop where I have completely whiffed and drop over half my stack. I think I was down to four or five big blinds.

Dinner break, time for my one and only meal of the day. The water had been serving me well up until that point.

It really is strange how tournaments can go, I come back from dinner break and manage to get three or four pushes through and pretty much double my stack. A few hands later I’m in the small blind with A-8 and John raises the button and its a snap shove for me, after a bit of deliberation John decides to call with 9-7 getting 2-1 pot odds. I manage to hold and I get to 600k for the first time in the tournament.

At this stage it was time to celebrate so I have my first pint of the day, which quickly turned into 2 as there was a bit of confusion and I got dropped down 2 pints by accident. I know, I’m running good! I don’t do much after this except a few three-bets and blind steals and manage to sneak to the final table 8th/9 with 920k. At this stage Keith decided that 6/1 was a good price on me to win. I think the drink must have been getting to him.

I’m on the right side of two coolers early on at the final table, first I wake up with A-Ks in the big blind to a shove from the SB A-Js and a round or 2 later my K-K holds against A-K. Suddenly I’m up to second in chips.

I play a strange hand a while later with Eamon Horan and it’s the first time I’ve played with him all weekend. I open the hijack with A-4, the flop comes Q-4-2, he checks I bet and he calls. The turn pairs the 2, he checks and I check behind mainly for pot control as I don’t want to be moved off my hand if he had been planning to make a move. The river was a 7 and he now led at the pot, the reason I’m worried is there was no possible draws on the flop and I don’t think he is defending with 3-5. In the end, due to the pot odds, the fact I wanted some information and it all not making sense in my head I made the call and was right. Never got to see his cards as he mucked.

We quickly get down to 3 players and we all sat pretty even on chips, even though the blinds were frozen we all sat on 30bbs and decided to make a deal – €45k each with €10k left and the trophy for the winner. This is great news as a drawn out final 3 would really have cut into our drinking time. The very next hand myself and John get into a raising war and he ends up shoving on the button. I deliberate but eventually call and my 7-7 holds against his A-10 and honestly can’t say it enough; this guy is a true gent and great fun to have on your table.

Heads up lasted 3 hands where I ended up pushing J-10 on a J-high board and getting called by second pair and again I hold. I give it the little fist pump and think “Fuck! What a few months”. We do the photos and interviews after. I hate all this crap but I suppose its a small price to pay if you are winning tournaments. I had to draw the line at one stage where the photographer wanted me to lie across the table covered in chips. I mean come on, these shots are meant to be for magazines like Card Player not Maxim!

At this stage it’s around half 11 and I decided its time to head to bed! Only not really, we hit the town where one of the funniest memories I have of the weekend is four lads giving it socks on the dance floor to Lady Gaga’s pokerface. If anyone has a video of this would you kindly burn it cause it can’t have looked good. We end up in the hotel bar until 6 in the morning just to bring the weekend to a nice relaxing end. The last night of these tournaments are usually the best because at this stage everyone who had anything to do with the tournament can unwind.

The next day Barry, Keith, Con and myself meet for Lunch, four of the sickest men I have ever seen, we are just laughing about the weekend and trying to psyche ourselves for the bus journey home. We were the four left down with no car and we were in fear of this journey home, I mean who doesn’t hate public transport at the best of times. That’s when someone thought of the idea of the weekend. Let just get a car. I thought fuck it, why not?

So they we were driving back home in a brand new 2011 with the trophy in the back. It’s just a shame it was a Seat Ibiza. And a rental.

Thanks to everyone involved for a great weekend…

You can follow me on twitter @niallsmythers