After rocking out to a new band in Whelans last Saturday night, I wandered into the wonderful Sporting Emporium in central Dublin with a fistful of cash and the dream of crushing the live cash tables. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person with this dream, as there were a number of cash tables going and more punters arriving every few minutes. After a brief period of enforced blackjack (waiting for a seat to free up in the poker room), I was called by John to sit down at one of the €1 / €2 Pot Limit tables.
The regular crowd had shuffled in - students in hoodies, professional types wearing suits, a sprinkling of women dressed to impress and the usual poker fiends! Many seemed to have a bit of drink taken too, as you might expect, top-drawer poker was not being played by anyone. I had to stop myself from limping with 85 suited and the like UTG a few times, that’s the kind of game that is played in the wee hours on any given Saturday night!
In any case, after about an hour of play, the following hand occurred at my table: I was on the Small Blind with Kh 4h, three players limped, I completed and the Big Blind checked. The flop was 5d 6d 7d, which gave me an up-and-down straight draw but otherwise was not very good for me and something I could get away from easily (with a hand like K4 suited, you either want to flop a monster or nothing at all, otherwise these kinds of hands can cost you a lot in the long run!). I checked, the Big Blind (Up From Kildare Man) bet €10, two of the limpers (let’s call them Angry Young Lad and Drunken Lawyer Guy to better keep track of the play) flat called, myself and the other limper folded. The turn was a Qd and now the action got exciting!
Up From Kildare Man bet €40, Angry Young Lad raised to €120 and Drunken Lawyer Guy pushed the rest of his stack in for about €350! Without much ado the other two players’ stacks were thrown in, building a huge pot of over a grand. The Jc was dealt on the river, it wouldn’t help anyone I thought, obviously one of them had the ace-high diamond flush, but which one?
Confidently, Angry Young Lad turns over the Ad 8d for the flush. Drunken Lawyer Guy mucks his hand, muttering something about two pair. Now the surprise: Up From Kildare man shows 3d 4d for the straight flush! Angry Young Lad looks as though he’s been told the McDonald’s Euro Saver Menu has been cancelled - shell-shocked and sick to his core! Up From Kildare Man pulls in the chips with a florish and takes his time sorting his stack out, while the rest of the table looks on enviously. Maybe I’ll win the next big pot, we all think.
If you still haven’t secured your ticket for the biggest poker tournament to be ran in Ireland, the Sporting Emporium is running an Irish Open Satellite next Tuesday March 11th at 9pm.
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