I'd travelled over a couple of days in advance to have some quality time with my better half prior to the event and actually enjoyed playing the tourist for a change, rather than just making it a 100% Poker orientated trip. I even caught Skyfall over there, which was an interesting experience watching a Brit hero amongst Irish folks!
What preceded the Poker however tailed off, as my girlfriend became very ill (presumed food-poisoning) by the Friday evening. Naturally this put a dampener on things and I was quite burdened when playing my Saturday 6-Max event knowing that she was suffering upstairs on her own, however she insisted that I went as I could do nothing to help her.
The 6-Max was a €150 event and got a decent turnout (150 approx). Starting with 10k stacks, I was up to 40k in seemingly no time at all as I got the better of some blind v blind 3-bet/4-bet shenanigans with the guy on my immediate left and also got someone to stack off for a full stack with AK on a K ,10, 6, 9, 9 board vs my 66. Sadly this deteriorated not so long after as I risked chips calling some chunky all-ins when I had the best of it and also lost a decent amount of my stack in the following hand on a bluff. An older English chap to my right was very busy, raising lots of hands so I felt he was exploitable and I 3-bet him pre with K10, he calls. Flop is 6, 7, 4, with a club flush draw he checks and I bet, he smoothes and the turn brings an offsuit 9. He checks and I check back to him this time, the turn brings a 5 of clubs which is a good danger card to use as a lot of draws got there. I try and represent that I lead the flop with a draw and checked the turn to get there and bet 3/4 pot and our man goes into the tank and eventually calls with just a 6, for 3rd pair!
I was quite taken aback by the call but congratulated him on it, I didn't think for a second that he was donking off, but that he simply managed to decipher my deception. That said, it was still a very tough call for about 50% of his stack. This amongst many other hands I've played in live tournaments this year has made me realise that my residual table image to strangers is that of someone who is 'messing around' and I seem to get looked up often. This is something I definitely need to keep in mind of in my future play, as it will result in me getting paid handsomely when I have any hand with showdown value whatsoever, however it will make bluffing perhaps more difficult.
I never recovered with this setback, I was down to around 20K at this point and managed to grind down to 2 tables without getting any hands of significance before shoving J8 on an SB steal into AA and that was all she wrote. I then rested up until the following day's PLO €200 event, the tournament that I final tabled yet bubbled last year and something I'd regard as my strongest event. I was very excited to play this, however upon registered for the tournament 15mins before it started I was very annoyed that only FOUR people had registered, yes FOUR! Speaking with the tournament director about this issue he determined that the event would be cancelled if they got less than 16 runners and postponed the starting time until 90mins after. I was given the option to withdraw my registration with 15 people on the board at the cut-off time and begrudgingly continued.. I wish I had not. I doubled up from 10k to 20k in very quick time but then gone decimated by incredible donkey play, and was out quite early. I was thoroughly annoyed by the whole thing. How does a serious festival only get that many runners for an event this good? The answer was putting the €300 NL starting only 2 hours before the PLO, which was the secondary event for the whole series, it practically destroyed the PLO. I won't be playing this next year unless the scheduling is changed.
My final event was the €100 NL and this is comparable to smaller casino events in structure, by this time I was rather not in the mood to play. I'd just said goodbye to my girlfriend the night before but by this point had fallen quite sick, myself. I'd also had some aggro from a knuckle-dragger at the bar the previous evening who decided to take issue with me for no apparent reason which even after getting my head down still had me tilted. I crashed out of this event in fairly unceremonious style after earning every pot I'd won in 2.5 hours with no or little hands and finally when I get a good one got crushed by some donkey fooling around with junk.
The whole event for me for a disaster and I didn't enjoy myself (in the Poker sense) the entire time. I've decided that the experiment to go 100% tournament as opposed to cash games was an error, as only the main event holds enough value to warrant the effort required. In future I will try to qualify online for these events and if I'm not successful, I will probably not even go. I've come to realise that even with the impending excitement of looking forward to this event in advance, by the time it comes around I'm often unmotivated/disinterested. The same thing happened in Vegas this summer, the chore of playing for such extended periods doesn't really appeal... that is unless you're in it for the big one.
Ciao for now.
M
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