#238: “Synecdoche: Dublin”

I feel like I have just woken from the dead after two consecutive 13 hour sleeps, a much needed battery-recharge after a grueling, sickly but very enjoyable trip back to Dublin for the UKIPT and EPT. I played for nine of the ten days that I was home, a relentless schedule of main events, side events and satellites. Traveling back to Malta with back-to-back UKIPT MVP Daragh Davey, we stumbled through the airport like extras from The Walking Dead. Daragh actually played all ten days, 17 tournaments in total, in his mission to retain his crown. Attempting to thwart him right down to the last event was UKIPT Season 3 MVP, online beast, Snapple addict and all round top bloke Tom Hall but Daragh, thanks largely to his 5th place finish for 44K in the UKIPT High-roller, held ‘Jabracada’ off down the home straight by the margin of a min-cash.

There were so many other great results for the Irish in this their first home EPT in over 8 years but the stand-out performances were veteran PLO pro Mark Reilly’s 3rd in the UKIPT Main for 75K, Dave Pollock’s 2nd in the UKIPT Main for 107K, and, of course, Patrick Clarke’s 4th in the EPT Main for a whopping 193K! Over the past two years, ‘Clicki’ has been compiling a live result resume of some distinction with his 2014 Irish Open victory and 2015 UKIPT Nottingham 4th place. It is great to see these lads pull off some marquis results, proof that Irish poker has serious depth these days and that, in 2016, the gauntlet has been thrown down to the established, perennial GPI top-10ers, the likes of Dermot Blain, Mark MacDonnell, Kevin Killeen, Jude Ainsworth, Dara O’Kearney, Daragh Davey, Gavin O’Rourke and Chris Dowling. It was also fantastic to see ‘OMGIJT’ Jason Tompkins take down the Dublin Cup for 27K, one of Ireland’s truly top-class players who returned from Australia last year and will no doubt be a fixture on the domestic live circuit in 2016!

The UKIPT was won by Vlad ‘P1relli’ Tamasauskas, a hard-working, no nonsense, down to Earth, Lithuanian pro with whom I had the pleasure of having lunch during the festival. With a penchant for turbos and hypers in the mould of his good friend Laurynas Levinskas, he has been a successful mid-stakes online grinder for several years. No doubt this bankroll boost will spur him onto to even greater results in the future.

The EPT was won by Polish wunderkind Dzmitry Urbanovich who has taken the poker world by storm over the past 12 months. He looked pretty ill for the duration of the final table but to be honest, based on what I saw over the festival, I reckon he was nursing a ten-day hangover. Every night, he would flick in the 1K or 500 Hyper, get a two hour massage and get trolleyed. And why not? Life must be good if you’re a twenty year old poker prodigy. He even cashed one of the hypers, joyfully running a lap of the two tables when the bubble burst, high-fiving the other players, shouting “We made it guys, we did it!”

I only got to watch bits of the final table as I was in the air for much of the coverage but I was delighted to see my friend Kully Sidhu get a podium finish. Kully is something of a maverick on the poker circuit, refusing to ever fold to a 3bet, take a conventional line or use the power of his own legs when getting from A to B. As likely to have six starting stacks at the first break as he is to have somehow lost them all by the second, he is a terror at the tables with a game that has now helped him complete a trifecta of sick results and win over a million quid in the past six months!

My own results were much more modest but I was very happy with my play as I managed to make three side event final tables (5th each time!) and win an EPT satellite. Of course it would have been nice to go a bit further but in two of the three, I short-stack ninja’d my way to as many ladder jumps as I could before finally being caught. I made it to Day 3 of the EPT, managed to initially spin up a short stack but then lost a 70/30 for an average stack 12 off the money. I was on the feature table at the time so my elimination was captured for posterity and seen by friends and family, many of whom would never have watched me play poker before. As I removed my mic and walked away from the table, I could already hear the Whatsapp and Facebook notifications coming into my phone from relatives for whom my career in poker has always been a bit of a mystery. There was the somewhat expected…

“Did you lose the whole buy-in or do you get to come back tomorrow?”

“Did you have to go all-in with the Ace-King?”

“The man on commentary said you were very close to winning 9K, would you not have waited?”

… but also the unanticipated…

“I’m really sorry. I hope you’re ok!”

“You must be devastated. Take a few days off.”

“I don’t know what to say. Just so unfair. But I guess that’s the way the cookie crumbles.”

I couldn’t resist a rye smile. They were consoling me as if my pet had died. But then again, it was a reality check, reminding me of how 9K is a lot of money and while I’m used to the ups and downs of it all, they aren’t and it all must seem like such a mad world.

The highlight of the week was the EPT party in the Horseshow Bar (thanks especially to Dave Curtis for being the host with the most) and to be fair to Pokerstars, they put on a great show with a generous free bar that lasted until it was time to go to Coppers. I played darts, gin-pong (can’t do beer coz I’m gluten intolerant) and got a chance to meet Matthew Baker, author of the excellent PokerFoodLife Blog. Matthew has been writing straight from the heart since he started the blog in January and I thoroughly recommend giving him a read.

Coppers was great craic with dancing and copious shots thanks mostly to the JagerMeistro himself Niall Farrell who lined up 60 bombs upon his arrival. I vaguely remember ending up in the late night chipper-cum-nightclub Babylon, six of us doing a congo-line to Boney M’s eponymous hit while scoffing a tray of taco-fries. It was then home to rid my cabinet of all its whiskey. At least that’s what it looked like happened when I crawled out of bed in the mid-afternoon. To be honest, I can’t remember much but six whiskey glasses, two empty bottles and my flat-mate’s Chromecast still playing an endless 80s playlist on the telly told the tale.

That night was a bit of a synecdoche for the whole trip. A lot happened, I remember some of it, the stuff I remember was great fun and from what I have been able to piece together from evidence retrospectively, the stuff I can’t remember seems to have been even more fun. Here’s hoping we see the EPT back in 2017!