#205: “I Thought You Must Have Died”

 “I’m so relieved to see you”, hollered Chris Dowling across the function room of the Double Tree (formerly Burlington) hotel. I shot him a confused look. “I read Dara’s blog earlier and I thought you must have died”.

The truth is I was honoured and a little embarrassed to be spoken about publically in such a nice way by my close friend. It’s not the done thing for blokes to be genuinely complimentary of one another (and it certainly provides ammunition for those out there who deride all things ‘Firmy’) so I appreciate Dara’s kind words and generosity in giving me credit as his de facto coach. The truth, however, is to what ever degree he is the beneficiary of some hand history analysis or mindset guruism, he is equally the benefactor.

It’s been a busy few weeks in poker and the next few look set to be even busier. Despite coming 30-somethingth in the London UKIPT Main and final tabling a side event, the stay there was a bit disappointing with the Russell Hotel failing to live up to the standards we have come to expect from the UKIPT. The IPO and IWF were great fun. I fired two bullets in the IPO to no avail, built a big stack in the IWF only to make a really poor error in judgement that cost me the max and min-cashed the mini-IWF. Online has been ticking over nicely with 2013 looking much like other years on the virtual felt – no outlier results but a solid grinder’s wage.

I have 15 live cashes so far this year and my goal for the year was to hit the 22 mark, something no Irishman has done to date. Next up is Copenhagen for the WPT. My old friend and online beast Rasmus Sibast is a native of the city and he has kindly offered to put myself and Clayton up for the week. After that, I travel to Amsterdam with Saron for some R’n’R, some culture and maybe a few sneaky Dutch Masters side events. We go from there to Paris by train for a three day break, one of which I hope to spend getting through to Day 2 of the FPS Main Event. I then go home for a week of Supernova grinding and a Pixies concert before the Nottingham 6-max UKIPT and the Prague uber-festival in December.

Finally, I wanna give a shout out to all the staff of the UKIPT, especially David Curtis, for putting on a great show in the Isle of Man, an absolute beauty of a tour stop. Kudos to Pokerstars embracing what was always a likely overlay to put on something a little bit different and special for the regs – a great venue, lovely food, superb hotel, friendly people and for a couple of the days, you wouldn’t have had a clue it was November as you walked along the beach in the blazing sunshine. Unfortunatly, I bust the Main on Day 1 but I did manage to final table the Isle Of Man Cup. Daragh Davey cashed the 6max to keep himself in Leaderboard contention with Max Silver, Jack Salter and one of the true gents of Irish poker Mark Spellman, who binked the PLO. Dara ended Day 1A as chipleader and almost grinded through Day 2 before busting with QQ to KQ for what would have been an average stack with 39 left. This is Dara’s fourth cash in the last six UKIPT Main Events, an incredible record that is worthy of praise.

Oh, and in case Chris is reading, this is not an obituary, unless of course something goes horribly wrong later today when we fly off the island in what Mark MacDonnell described last week as a washing machine with wings.