Niall Smyth -- From Ballabriggs to Baller Part IIIrish Open Poker Champion Niall Smyth Continues His Chat With Card Player About His Recent Spin Up Of €20 Into €650,000 |
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Read part I of Niall Smyth’s remarkable poker journey.
RM: How much money did you put on this lucky horse? And did you always plan on trying to qualify for the Open online regardless?
NS: I had €20 on the horse total, €10 each-way, so when he came in I decided to transfer the money from Paddy Power to their poker site and play in one of the €220 satellites. I chose the one that was on that night due mainly to my impatience to do something straight away once I’ve decided to do it. Also the massive value on offer helped me make my choice too.
From what I remember PPP had guaranteed two seats worth €7,000 in total and only got 4,400 in entries, so from a poker standpoint it would have been a sin not to play it. I would have tried to qualify regardless but mainly by playing the smaller satellites. Winning the horse bet really made it a freeroll for me, so there was absolutely no pressure on while playing, which made me play better I think.
RM: It’s like a fairytale story, did it feel like it was just meant to happen? What was going through your mind as you kept heading for gold?
NS: It’s hard to be human and not think even for a second that this was destined to happen but I like to think I’m a pretty rational person and even though it was a pretty exceptional set of circumstances that led to me playing and winning, they are still just circumstances that are going to happen in your life. So while I landed a proverbial 32,500-1 shot, I have to put it down to luck more then destiny. I do like to think I’m open-minded too so I won’t say it’s impossible just improbable.
At the start of every tournament I play I set myself certain goals like make it through the first level, first day etc., and just try to adapt to any changing situations that come. I’m not even sure I thought about winning it until it got down to heads up because that’s when I remember the first time I felt an overwhelming pressure on me — this is it, one more person and your the Irish Open champ. Like at one stage I thought this is too crazy, will I walk away from the table?! [Laughs] But as always once the cards got dealt I immediately relaxed.
RM: Talk me through your Irish Open — the good days, the bad, the hard opponents, and any strategy you put into use
NS: Well when I first sat down and the game got going I was surprised how comfortable I felt because usually I’d be a bit nervous at the start of any tournament. So realising this I thought I’d try use it to my advantage if possible. MISTAKE! I ended up running two bluffs into made hands on the river and was down to about 10k after one and a half hours, with my table image shot. So I tightened up and also went a little card dead and plugged away until I got moved table.
The table I was moved to had a very good agressive Swedish guy on it who seemed to be opening every second pot if not more, so with my ever-shortening stack he was hard to deal with. One hand happened then where I had about 15,000, I raised my button to 1,500 with K-10, and the small blind makes it 3,000. For some reason I really didn’t think he was too strong, although that could have been the tilt talking. So I said I’d call and if I flopped a pair he’d be getting my money. Flop came J-10-2, he bet, I pushed, and he called after a while with A-Q. I faded his outs and was up to around 33,000. The day ends and I’ve around 30,000.
Day 2 was pretty much a rollercoaster, I’m going between 20,000 and 40,000 most of the day usually just pushing over aggro players when short and being outplayed by them when kind of short [laughs]. The hand that makes the day is a dream, I pick up A-A, make it three times the BB, I think it was 6,000 or so. The button folds, the small blind tanks and goes all in, then the big blind looks down and pushes all in. I cooly re-check my cards and in one movement I’ve pushed all my chips in the middle and have my cards face-up. So the small blind had A-8, the big blind had K-K and my aces hold, I treble up. So now I’m at 130k and healthy.
Later that night my chips have been rising steadily and we get moved to the TV table. I’m on 300,000, I get involved in a hand with Johannes Meyer Zu Wendischhoff, an extremely talented player from what I’d seen that day and heard. He has around 300,000 too, but a bit less then me. He raises my big blind, the small blind calls, I call with J
8 and the flop is 10-9-7 with two diamonds, BOOM! The nuts! [laughs]. So with some raising and reraising on the flop and turn, we end up all in. He has a monster too, K
7, the river falls, he misses, and I win. It was around bubble time in the tourney, so between this, my big stack, and a run of good cards, I end the day with 650,000.
Day 3 was nearly the least eventful in some ways for me, the table is very aggro with the bubble burst and people now wanting to get in a position to win the tournament or go home, so I nit up a bit and try to pick my spots. The day was nearly just a tale of two hands which happened in one orbit. I had A-A the first time against Marty Smyth, he raises, I reraise, and after he thinks for a short time he pushes, I make an easy call and knock him out.
Marty would later tell me something about the hand in the bar after, and I’d like to thank him because he didn’t need to tell me. In a hand soon after I’ve A-Q and raise preflop and there is an overpush reraise from a guy down the end of the table who was looking tired. I called, he tabled K-7, and my hand held. I ended up bursting the final table bubble by getting lucky against Andy Black all in preflop, small blind versus big blind, A-5 versus A-7. I flopped a 5 and he was out. I had a great laugh with him whenever he was at my table but I was still glad to see him out [laughs].
Day 4 I went into the final table as chip leader, I can remember looking at it on the PaddyPowerPoker blog the night before and thinking is that really me there with 2 million in chips?! One hour in I get J-J and Niall McCann who was very short had shoved K-J, and I held. Although the win was good I didnt take any pleasure in knocking him out as we’d got on really well the day before, but such is poker, there really aren’t any friends on the table, just off it. The only other person I knocked out that day before heads up was Seamus Cahill, it was a pretty standard hand, he had two pair on the turn, I had a pair and a flush draw, and I ended up hitting my flush on the river.
RM: How was the heads-up with Surinder Sunar? Did you have to readjust at any point?
NS: I thought that Surinder was a very tough player heads up and was certainly getting the best of me for the first hour. I’d gone in with a 9-3 million chip lead, the most eventful hand of that first hour was when I had a queen-high flush draw, he had a five-high flush draw but with a pair, we get it all in on the flop and he holds, next thing we are bang even in chips. So he starts chipping away at me and I’m getting a little frustrated, so we get to the first break and he has an 8-4 million chip lead.
I walked off like a man possessed raging at myself for how bad I was playing but people got a hold of me and calmed me down. I went back to the table and realised it wasn’t all that bad, won the first hand back after the break, which helped, I also put back on my sunglasses and stopped engaging Surinder with any talk. After two hours or so of heads up the classic race situation occurs I’ve got 9-9, he has A-K, we get it all in preflop. A 9 comes on the flop, the turn pairs the board, and I’m back in the chip lead with the momentum. After this we just took a few small pots off each other but I think I’m up a few more chips. When the blinds went up to 100-200k it turned into push-fold poker with the effective stack sizes in play. I look down at Q-5 and put Surinder all in and he calls, I bink the 5 on the river, and the rest, as they say, is history.
RM: Did the Sole Survivor element come into play a lot for you? Did you think of it much?
NS: In many ways, no, but at one or two points it affected me. I’m not sure how much it came into play. The fact that I had so many chips over the last two days meant that I was really concentrating on winning the tournament. I mean you don’t dream about winning this prestigious tournament, get down to the last nine with a chip lead and start thinking about the 100k on offer on the side, maybe that sounds a bit blasé but it’s how I felt.
Now, that being said, when it did get down to two of us, I did tighten up a bit but it is hard not to when you look to your left and you have Aleksi [Savel] and [Seamus] Cahill sitting there, both covering you chip-wise. It was a pretty scary sight! After the last Sole Survivor got knocked out though, I suppose there was a weight lifted and I could concentrate on the task of trying to win the tournament outright.
RM: Well that you definitely did! So we should be seeing a lot more of you in the poker world now.
NS: Well over the next year, I’ll be playing 50k worth of live tournaments thanks to Paddy Power and the Sole Survivor. So I’ll definitely be around, as for how much you see and here from me well I suppose that depends on how I do and whether I can manage to book a few cashes, final tables, or even a win. If this year goes well who knows what might happen. All I know is that I plan on fully embracing the oppurtunity and after that I’ll let the cards lie where they may. ♠
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