I played in the €250 + €20 end of month NLH freezeout tournament in the Fitzwilliam Card Club in central Dublin last night, along with 75 other players. The structure is good but not great, the standard is average and the fun is fairly good usually! I took part in a €30 one-handed blind Omaha satellite for a ticket beforehand, this is just a bit of fun and chance to gamble it up - I’ve never won one of these!
The usual Dublin poker crowd was in attendance, at least those who are not lucky enough to be over in Las Vegas for the WSOP. My fellow PPP’er Noel ‘BCB’ Hayes was there (even though his flight to Vegas to look after our WSOP qualifiers was leaving at 10am!), as was such notables as Ollie Boyce, Willie Clynes, Colette Murphy, General Zito and more. We started with a 7,500 stack and 30 minute blinds - at 8.30pm the flag was raised and away we went!
I had a quiet few hours up until the break, with only one or two interesting hands. During the 75 / 150 level, action was folded to me in MP with AKc and I raised to 400. The button, a strong player I didn’t particularly want to tangle with, raised to 1000 and I decided to call. The flop was 2c2s3c , I checked to see if he would continuation bet (c-bet), he bet 2000, I put him on a strong pair but with my nut flush draw and two overcards to the pair I put him on, I was 50-50 to win the hand at this point, so I pushed for about 6k in total and let the decision to race rest with him. I actually didn’t like his 2000 c-bet, as it almost committed him given what I had behind if I pushed, 1500 would have made him fold easier. In any case, he folded and I raked in enough chips to put me above average.
During the 100 / 200 level afterwards I made a mistake: I found 5c5h in MP and raised to 500, only the BB called, another good thinking player. The flop wasQs9c4h , he bet 600, it smelled weak and I raised to 1400, which I hoped would look strong and get him to fold a weak Q or 9 or a bluff of course! He called and checked the Jc on the turn. What could he have? Again a weak Q maybe, a strong 9, the small possibility of a flopped two-pair or set of fours, or a straight draw. Don’t think he’s floating anymore. I bet 1400, which he called without betraying any emotion. The river was a 6d , and again he checked. I briefly thought of betting, but didn’t want to lose any more chips in case he was slow-playing a monster or would check-call with a medium strength hand, so I checked. He turned over JdTh expecting to lose and was somewhat surprised that I mucked.
I played his hand badly, particularly in my giving-up on the hand on the river. If I had slowed down and given myself 60 seconds to think about it, I would have realised he wouldn’t have checked a strong hand to me on the river (not this player, he would have value bet it), that he played it like the straight draw it was, and that if I had fired the third barrel I would have taken down a tasty pot. Always take the time to think your decisions through, especially in a spot like this with a lot of information on offer over the course of the hand and with so much of your stack on the line.
Anyhow, fast forward a few hours (don’t want to bore you with lots of the standard play!) to when there were only 11 players left, blinds were about to go up to 800 / 1500 and I had dwindled to 14.5k, it was folded to me in the cutoff with Td8h , the button (General Zito) and the SB were playing very tight and only had 25k each and so very likely to fold to my all-in, so I pushed to take the blinds. The General insta-called, the SB and BB folded and he turned over AQc , uh-oh! Not only was I in trouble, the door card (the first one exposed on the flop) was a Q! The flop was QhTs9c, not the worst really, the turn was the beautiful Th and the river a brick, so I doubled up! Poor General, he wasn’t happy.
The bubble soon burst and I was on the final table with a decent 42k stack, only €500 for 9th but €7000 for 1st, a long way to go! Fellow PPP’er Noel was there too with over 60k, in good shape - could we do a paddypowerpoker.com one-two? It wasn’t to be! I picked up QsQh in the first hand, raised to 11.5k (blinds were 1.5k / 3k), the player on my immediate left with over 100k raised to 40k, everyone folded to me. Obviously, with 30k behind and an effective pot of 55k, this is almost always an insta-call, but I have put a lot of hours in against this opponent and knew he almost certainly had KK or AA, I would say more than 80% of the time here. The best I could hope for was to be against QQ or AKs. Despite my read, I made a foolish call and knocked myself out getting it all in against his KK. Bleh. All that work for €230 profit! Make that €200 considering my one-handed blind Omaha madness 
