My Irish Winter Poker Festival Part III

Day 3 started quite surprisingly I was first out of bed and made breakfast another first and proud accomplishment of mine for the weekend I stayed at least 50+ times in hotels and have never made breakfast, 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 – 3 men, 3 bags in 1 hand and 3 cushions in the other that we got seen by one of the cleaning staff. Only for her mouth was so far open in shock she might have asked us WTF we were at!

Anyways 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 do get my early double up my 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.

Anyways I make either a huge mistake or a series of little ones after this. I planned to try 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 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 that 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 choose 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 was long but I have to finish up with a few points. I played really bad from 14 players in and never deserved to win this (that’s for me). I now think Chris Dowling is in the bookies 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 Rebecca McAdam making me do interviews after bad things happen – how about one next time I win a big pot?

Lastly I just want to mention Irish Poker Boards just in case you’re not signed up. I had trolled for a long time but recently Conor and Jason convinced me to join up and it proved profitable with me winning my first last longer bet. They do usually split it but with a number of things happening I lucked into first. They do a excellent job of railing and informing of events, there is also some very smart poker players on there willing to give advice so if you’re not on join up or at least lurk a bit. http://www.irishpokerboards.com/forum/index.php

Ok that’s it.

Follow me at @NiallSmythers