We (Me, The Duke, Richeo, and 3 other friends (Jason, Dan and Danny) just got back from Dublin where we played the 1000 player International Poker Open.. The ended up having 1072 players and a first prize of 31,000 Euros...
Friday night, played at The Fitzwilliam club, scalps night, made a few scalps, 95 runner field, 26th... Nothing spectacular, except, Dewi..!!! Top man...!!! When we were over at Fitzwillaim for the APAT in the summer, Friday night before the game, Dewi chops for the prize.. And again on Friday, he chops again for a nice 4k split.. Nice one Dewi.. Player count was aparently well up because of a lot of extras... Wonder why..!! LOL...
Stayed up way too late (4:00am) considering I had a marathon game ahead of me the following day..
We arrived at the RDS maybe 11:00am for a noon start... A lot of people were arriving same time as us.. We went to check in and let them know wh we were.. Ner, it was not happening... All that they did was put a list up on a giant projector screen telling each person their table number and seat number.. Find it and sit down, dont register, I thought that was a little wierd...
noon start actually happened 30 mins late, which is not too bad considering the logisitcs for this...
1 single room, 108 tables, some great tables, some rather shabby looking ones.. You could tell by the positioning of some of the tables which ones would be shut down first because of the seating quality.. Some was better than others but fine really.. It was really BIG...That is all I can say about it.. 108 tables in 1 room and there was planty of space to walk around, and in all honesty, they had enough room for maybe another 30 to 50 tables..
Once we got started it was all wierd... 108 dealers for 108 tables..
Nope.. Not sure how many dealers they had but the PA was asking for volunteers who would play and deal. I guess these would dwindle down as time went by.. dealers got 10 Euros per hour for volunteering... after 40 mins (Almost exactly same blind structure as APAT) we had lost a player, into 2nd level, new player joins our table... Local guy, said he was happy that he got moved. He had been sat at a table with no dealer, they never played a single hand in first level.. He was happy to be moved to a table where poker was being played..
Saw plenty of Blondeites, maybe 15 to 20 in total I happened to talk to... Wierd that I never saw kingPoker.. I had seen Gareth the night before at the Fitzwilliam... Later that night i mentioned to Rookie that I had not seen him on the Saturday and I was told that he went out one of the early ones with a pocket aces bad beat..!! Sorry to hear that Gareth.. Not good after the travelling...
I was lucky enough to be at the same table for maybe 9 to 10 hours before I got moved..7 of the 10 players at my table were there for all of that time... There were 3 seats where the people either got picked to be moved away or were taken out by one of the 7 long-stayers... There were just so so many people there it was amazing... I managed to play the marathon game, not involved in too many hands, but the hands I was involved in, I played pretty much OK and maybe lost 1 in 10 bets which i was involved in...10 hours in I was at approx 30k chips from a 10k start...Avg at that point was maybe 40k... We were down approx 200 players (I say approx because I dont think that there was any exact count except someone counting tables and multiplying by 9).. I had AQ diamonds... 3k blinds... someone raised mid table to 9k... I decided that this guy was doing this too much, and I push all-in with 27k total... He went into the tank for a few mins, then he decided that I had an Ace with a strong kicker... So he called... He turned over KQ... That had me much happier..... cards came out, crap, crap crap, crap, King..!!! BOOM.. End of my adventure of the biggest single tournament under 1 roof... 110 was the paying bubble so got relatively close but not close enough...
2 out of the 6 of us made money with Dan I think at 107ish and Danny making it to the final 87 that came back for day 2...
Day 2 was at a different location, a local casino... A little different to what I have seen before, casion in 1 side street and it was in 2 halves, one being on one side of the street, and other half over the raod.. The 9 tables were being split, 5 on one side of the road, and 4 on the other.. I thought that the table balancing would be fun, and yes, they were sending people over the road to change tables..!!! 10k blinds at the start with avg chips at 140k, from the very first hand it really was a push-fest... people were going out every few minutes.. Our friend Danny who made it to day 2 managed to stay in until 57th I think... people were pushing all-in with some rubbish.. one guy bet I think 60k with 68 pre flop and saw a back door full house.. it was crazy and happening so much.. Once Danny was out, off we went and I have not seen details of the remaining..
The whole weekend was really great, and yes I would like to do it again next year if they hold one..!! The guys organising the event did great, no messing when a few drunks were questioning decisions.. Hell of a good job making sure tables got balanced and making sure that empty tables were removed from the room... There were also plenty of cash tables and sit and goes running all the time to keep the early exits happy...
Would be nice to hear other people's thought of the weekend too...
Cheers
Carl..
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