Emop Canaries (most of my time spent in the sun)

As unfortunate as it was the Emop Canaries was not kind poker wise to me at all nor was it to most of my fellow Irsh who travelled, Doke himself had pretty much the same frustrating trip as neither of us could cash in the main or side event. I will have to add it was not to our own plays so much as the Spanish armada of fish who drowned our hopes with their um unique style of play or in my own words retarded donk plays which ended our chances of running deep. It is like taking the biggest fish from every club in Ireland and landing them all in one tournament and you have to play v them all with the added deterrent of a handful of some very good players also, to name one would be Johnny Lodden which I had to sweat he was going to sit to my left after first level where the dead stack was but to my luck he quickly realized it was the table across from mine that he was suppose to be sitting at. It is a shame now as if you would have told me I was gonna bust early I'd have jumped at the chance to play first few levels with a player of his caliber but at the time I was all smiles to see him walking away! That's what it is like to play in a 1k event in Spain just so everyone knows, happy days.

My exit hand from the main event was the horrible kk v aa, it was the 150-300 level (same exit level as my last Emop Barcelona where I held aa v 77 all in preflop) and I had been playing great, I had managed to double my stack without ever having it at risk,some great reads and some great raises on the river for value saw my stack reach it's great heights, I picked up kk after two ppl had limped,one of the limper's was crazy guy who was just bonkers check raising ppl on any board and limp reraising ppl n showing the old 62off,so I thought this was a prime spot to win some more chips, I 4x to 1,200 and sure enough came back to the crazy guy and he makes it 5k to go, I just flat so he will continue his madness and that was my plan for the hole hand, flop comes 622 rainbow and now he bets 10k, I flat and off to the turn and it comes the qh which brings flush draw and now the strange bet comes in he makes it just 5k now, again I just flat so if he did hit a q he will continue to over value it, any under pair or continue his weird bluffs, river comes off suit 7 and now he decides to bet 15k which is so weird just the hole makes no sense right now, i take like 5-7 minutes rerunning the hand over and over to see what possible hands could he play this way like if he had the aa why would he only bet 5k into 30k pot when a flush draw comes out it's just not standard for amature players the norm is prob even a big shove with aa but anyway I came to the conclusion against this type player who shows up with the most random hands it's a call nearly every time, I called and he showed me aa which is still a little shocking as I right this lol.

Great tourny the main event and I stress anyone who are even thinking of it to 100% go and play these Emops totally worth it plus over 50k for the winner this time round and the numbers were down for this slightly, easily has the most amount of fish left in the world playing these games plus on top of this does be great craic with all the other Irsh who travel as Steven Merrick Ceo of Irish Eyes likes to have all the Irish at one hotel so the trip can be as enjoyable as possible not to mention the drinks on the house, hats off to Steve!

Side event would be more structured along the lines of a turbo game and again I had no luck with it but had played good so I was not too disappointed when I got knocked out shoving an ace from bb when cut off opened who was doing this alot and the sb flatted, raiser ended up reshoving with 88 and hit a boat on the turn and that was the end of tournies in Canaries for me.

Off to the airport now to catch our flight home, we did have a great dinner last night when Doke took myself and Joy out to dinner in a v stylish Japanese restaurant, the food was absolutely brilliant as I've never had Japanese before I just went for a bit of everything lol crazy I know, also at the end of the night we were treated to a bit of a laugh when the Japanese lady waiter could not hold back from telling Joy how beautiful she looked (which of course she did) and just could not stop starring at her,ha poor Joy a Japanese lesbian coming onto you I don't no what to make of that myself but it was entertaining for us as we all had a good laugh about it, topped off a great week of relaxing in the sun and spa, it was heaven for Joy I am sure of that. Great trip! Ok back to Ireland to walk my dogs good job I have a field just down the road from me,it holds two rottweilers and a siberian husky alot better than my back garden does lol, good luck Gran Canaries.

New Years Resolution

Well I suppose one of my resolutions should be to update my blog more after all pretty poor performance in that area last year never mind the poker. This I hope will be a big year in poker for me or as my good mate Aidan Coonan says 'Fu 2010, 2011 is gonna be our year', I agree on the 2010 part so far anyway. I am pretty much going for broke (remember that board game? man that was a class game) I am planning to play alot of events this year around the globe, Emop's, Ept's, Wsop and of course the Irish circuit. I will of course update this to let people know my exact events, too hard to give a list now obviously. I will also be selling % of myself for Ept's and some Wsop's just so people know, I will probably do some of it through Irish Poker Boards.

My first event is actually Emop Gran Canaries so let the optimism begin, I am definitely going to enjoy it regardless come on after all it is the Canaries not many people get there in the summer let alone January. I'm playing day 2 so I will have a break for two days once myself and my girlfriend Joy arrive there. I do remember correctly that the structure in the last Emop I played moved pretty fast in the early levels with one or two levels left out, this is all the information I have on the structure as I busted level 3 all in preflop with AA obviously v 77 and well you guys no the rest. I pretty much can not wait to go now and get stuck into what I hope to be a 3day grind in the main event, I will also update my twitter while I am over there which is as I'm sure you guessed another new year resolution.

The deep stack game is coming up very soon also, now there's a tourny I'd love to win, I final tabled it two years in a row 2nd and 8th I suppose a decent accomplishment but still maybe I'll get third time lucky who knows. It's actually gonna be a hectic month or two with loads of tournys coming up in Ireland itself, Clonmell coursing festival is on like 3 days after I get back from Canaries and all the best to Liam, Fionn and Neil who are running it and also two other good friends who I hope to see at it Keith Murphy and Richie Frisby, I grew up playing poker when they owned the big slicks in Carlow, I was trying to make it in the game then. Great guys use to give me loads of support and needling of course :).

On another note, I will be playing my colleague Paul Lucey heads up on Irish Eyes very soon so keep your eyes open for that one should be mental stuff, I will of course post on twitter when we get the go ahead to start. For now all I know is we will be playing 2 heads up tables, 1 no limit hold'em and the other pot limit omaha, the stakes or anything else like that has yet to be decided, if I had my wish tho I'd be playing 12 hu tables at 25-50 smashing the pot button until the cows came home, think I got the first needle in there?! I must confess I did loose our last heads up match in the Atlantis casino so who knows whats going to happen in this game but I know one things for certain it will not be short of action! Gl to you Mr.Lucey.

I will soon enough sit down and write up a blog on my views on how to play mtt's from start to finish and maybe throw something in like hand history I've played so you can see my thought process throughout them etc, this will only be a once off tho for obvious reasons, expect my views to be alot different to other people, I seemed to always cause controversy on Irish Poker Boards when I use to post in the hand history section, always good fun tho I must say.

Finally, for people who play on Irish Eyes and also people who are thinking of joining us, I have some good news to share not only further improved rakeback deals but also the site itself will be updated soon with all new software being installed, with the likes of time bank, late reg, new layouts, seating preference and many more so pretty much a make over of updates to come, should be great I'm looking forward to it. For anyone who wants to sign up to Irish Eyes plz use my sign up code propoker100 and avail of the great offers it carry's. Once you sign up plz send a short email to 'team@irisheyespoker.ie' giving your name, screen name, shirt size and address. You will receive an email back welcoming you to the team and also everything you are entitled to rb etc etc. Gl at the tables for the new year people!