You could feel it in the air. The buzz, the electricity, it was the Slieve ‘ be jaysus there it is ' Russell Hotel in Co. Cavan. The tournament kicked off a little late but we can ' t place all of the blame on the shoulders of Fintan and Donal. Actually no - wait, we can.
128 players took their seats and 13 of the finest dealers in the country shuffled up and did what they do best. Personally I felt very fresh on this Saturday afternoon. I made sure I was well rested because I knew it was going to be a tough field.
There were a few early casualties. The first being from my table when a player got a little excited with Q-K against Kevin Fitzpatrick ' s A-A. Kevin is one of the best tournament players around and he was gifted a double up on the very first hand. I knew one thing for sure, I had to stay away from him.
So I slowly began to build a chip stack. Everything was going grand until about five or six levels in when this hand developed: I raised from early position with Q-Q. The only call came from the big blind who had about the same amount of chips as I did (roughly 16,000). The flop came 7-8-9 and I thought “Oh shit”. It was very possible the big blind had called with 10-J.
I often give advice to sound players and one of the things I often say is to stick to your instinct. Well my gut feeling here was that I was in trouble. Unfortunately I needed to commit half of my chips in the pot before I got away from it. Sometimes its very easy to give advice but far more difficult to listen to it.
I released the hand after my opponent went all-in. I still had about seven or eight thousand but that was below average.
After the dinner break I was moved to another table with about 10,000 in chips. The blinds seemed monstrous to me at this stage. After getting my hand caught in the cookie jar I was again moved to a new table with about 7,500 chips.
Now I was in trouble but after stealing one or two blinds with all-in moves I found a hand and doubled up (albeit in a coin flip situation) to about 21,000. The very next hand is one that I will never forget: I raised from first position with A-Q. With the blinds at 400-800 and a running ante of 50 I made it 2,500 to play. One player called from a middle spot and the big blind went all-in for 7,500. Now I had a bit of a think.
The all-in player was short stacked and also a beginner. I reasoned that I had him beat comprehensively. But the player who had called from middle position for 2,500 was something different. The guy was trying to look like Phil Helmuth but because of a split second tell I reasoned that he was weak and I moved all-in for 21,000. My intention here was to isolate the all-in short stack with the other 2,500 call bumping up the pot for value. I only wanted to have to beat one player. But it didn ' t work out that way.
The player who had called from middle position for 2,500 now invested another 18,500 (which was most of his stack) with an A-2. There was over 50,000 in the pot and when the player from the big blind turned over Q-K I couldn ' t believe the race I was in. Thankfully every single one of us failed to improve and I took down the pot. With about 60 or 70 players left at this stage I suddenly had a very comfortable chip stack.
When I review my play over the course of the tournament I can be reasonably happy. There were a few patches in which I made some bad mistakes especially later on. I managed to finish fifth overall but the most important thing I can take from this is that I need to stick to my instincts in future and be able to get away from dangerous pots without losing too many chips.
The 18 players to cash were as follows;
1st Patrick Mc Fadden € 9250
2nd Ivan Donaghy € 9250
3rd Kevin Fitzpatrick € 5000
4th Aidan Carson € 3500
5th Stephen Mc Lean € 2750
6th Jim Mc Govern € 2000
7th Brendan McKenna € 1750
8th Dympna Furey € 1400
9th Mickey Murray € 1000
10th Sean Donaldson € 1000
11th Paul Quigg € 1000
12th Philip Rosenberg € 1000
13th Peter Mc Donagh € 1000
14th Glen Mc Cabe € 1000
15th Paul Mc Murrough € 500
16th David Higgins € 500
17th Barry Heirson € 500