Monday, December 22, 2008

Mutt on the bounty

Boyle asked me if I was interested in being one of the players with a bounty on their head in Marty's victory tournament tomorrow so of course I said yes. Never had a bounty on me before so it should be a bit of fun. You get $1000 if you knock Marty out, and $25 for the considerably easier task of knocking me out. Anyway, kudos to Boyle for coming up with a novel idea and their continued support for Irish poker.

Otherwise, I've just been grinding away online. I think I've almost mastered the 6 man STT format, which I'm hoping will stand me in good stead for my efforts next year to qualify for the Poker Million. Long time readers of this blog may remember I came within a one outer suckout of ualifying for this year's event, despite the fact that my six-handed game was my major weakness at the time.

Playing another IO sat yesterday and got up to about 3K before card death made me go looking for moves. No real excuse for my exit hand though which was both uncharacteristic and dire. Qualified for the next Deepstack final: it'd be nice to get qualification to that nailed down soon.

No definite live plans before New York: still undecided on the Leprechaun thing.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Meh

Nothing major to report but I don't want to fall into the "only blog when you're winning" trap so here goes almost nothing.

Played Duke's farewell gig/Jackpot Xmas party. Great fun. Occasions like this are a reminder of the number of genuine characters there are on the Dublin poker scene and the genuine warmth among them. Interesting chat and banter from other boardsies in attendance including Rory Brown, Tom Kitt, and Moneymaker. Worked up to about 20K without too uch incident but then went card dead at the crucial time and eventually found myself short on the second last table and shoved TT into KK and QQ.

Played JP's triple shootout in Molloys last night and again never really got going. First bad beat was seat draw: Dave Masters to my immediate left. Ended up shortish with 15 BBs and decided to trap limp a pair in the SB with a view to shoving when he inevitably raised, but he had a bigger pair and that was the end of me.

Online has been going a bit better. I'm trying to discipline myself to play at least an hour of cash every day. On the STT front, I decided to try to master the one big hole in my game, the 6 seater STT. Got some pointers from Rob, the best 6 seater STT player in Ireland IMO, to immediate effect as I won three on the bounce last night when I got in from Molloys.

Not sure when my next live outing will be or even if there will be one before New York.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Wackypedia

Played Malahide tonight, played fine, but ultimately came down to one lost handicapped race on the FT. Folded around to me in the SB, I look down at AJ, BB is a local reg known as Sligo John who appears a bit looper aggro, so I try to figure out the best way to get him to shove light. I go with a standard raise which he gleefully smites with his allin. I snapcall as I know I'm miles ahead of his shoving range and he turns over QTo and proceeds to flop not one but two tens. Bonus points for that, plus combining the four standard dogging excuses into one sentence: "I thought you were at it, I was sure you'd fold and sure anyway, tis a good dogging hand and my cards were live".

In other news, I notice some wag has been editing my Wikipedia entry making it considerably more amusing. If whoever it was would like to own up, I might see it in my heart to reward them with a couple of per cents of my next major tournament action. I know, I know, 2% of nothing is nothing but in these recessionary times, tis the thought that counts.

Also, running so bad online it's not funny. Today's amusements included:
- Managing to crash out of my first DU today VERY FIRST HAND despite flopping the nut flush.
- AT no good against QT, AA no good against 24, AK no good against A7

Please to be switching the doom switch back.

Still dying from a cold, rendering running (the real kind, not the watching while your two cards compete with some fool's two for the favours of the board) impossible, and life somewhat unpleasant.

Recently set up a Facebook profile so if you have one and want to be Face buddies, send me a friendship request.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Back to whinging

Played JP's IPT leg in the Red Cow at the weekend. Never really got going in the Main Event. One very interesting hand early on against Oz (who had another great result to come third) currently being discussed on Boards. The line he took confused the Hell out of me. Bonus points for any Boardsies who can spot my mistake in the hand.

My second table featured the Clamper, Dave Masters, Scott Gray, Baz Hand and Martin Noonan. I played ok at this table: one blind on blind hand against the Clamper was good because it's the kind of hand I used to butcher.

My third and final table featured Chris Cooke, Christy Mongan, Mark McKeever, Pat Scanlan and Ionapaul. I was card dead and ended up with just 4K at the break, already in the shove or fold mode. I shoved my way back to 8K when Mongan limped utg (range, almost any 2), Scanlan raised to 1200 (range, 22+, A7+), a guy who seemed atrocious flatted on the button (range, very wide), I pick up AQ in the button and after a ponder decide this is a standard shove. Folded to the button who goes into the tank and then says the immortal words "I know I'm behind but I'm going to call anyway" that generally precede a dogging. Sure enough, he has K8s, flop is fine for me, but both turn and river bring an 8. Talking to Ozzy the next day he felt the guy was almost priced in at better than 6 to 4, but I disagree. While he's getting the correct odds to call against the hand I actually had, that is literally the only hand in my entire range that doesn't dominate him, so he's a 7 to 3 dog against the whole range.

The side event the next day went no better. I was card dead for the entire duration and just hovered around starting stack when the winner of the Cavan Open doubled me up in a weird little hand. I limped 33 in the HJ, button called, CO winner completed in the SB, so 4 players saw a flop of 763 with two hearts. Checked to me and I bet half pot and CO winner called. Turn's a real action card: 7 of hearts. He led for 1K, I raised to 3K, he flatted. Rivers a blank, he shoves, I call, and he says "Good call" and mucks.

That put me briefly back in the hunt but the blinds escalated, I lost 5K against Murt Ward blind on blind where I called him down with top pair good kicker to be shown a rivered two pairs. No good shoving opportunities presented themselves so I got blinded and anted back to about 6500 when I exitted with a whimper to a gross blunder. Thinking it had been folded round to me on the button, I shoved a decent suited queen only to realise too late there had been an utg raise (he had KK, lol). It probably made no real odds given how low I'd dwindled to, but I wasn't very happy going out to a gross blunder. I pride myself on keeping my wits about me at the poker table in all situations and this was only the second gross blunder in 18 months of tournament poker.

Played a few online sats yesterday and played pretty badly. Was going well in the Bruce sat for Killarney until I made a bad call against kakak: price was tempting at 2 to 1 but really I needed 3 to 1 in that spot. I'm also giving the DU STTs a go again online: it seems some of the better regs have given them up as a bad job, so there may be value there again. We'll see. Also working my way up through the normal STTs trying to get a reasonable idea of my edge at the different levels so I can settle on the optimal one from the pointd of view of bankroll, hourly rate and variance.

In life news, I have a pretty horrible cold at the moment. Live poker plan for the week is either Malahide tonight or the SE IO sat, and JP's Triple Shootout in Molloy's on Friday looks very interesting so I think I'll give that a go.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Nits at the races

Went to Cheltenham races yesterday with Rob. Very enjoyable day overall, and we both ended up. As you'd expect with Ireland's two biggest rocks (allegedly), we started it as cautiously as we would a poker tournament, basically sitting out for the first two levels (races) while we assessed the competition and formulated our strategy. It's almost 2 decades since the ponies were my major source of income so it's fair to say my form reading skills are a tad rusty. One thing that immediately became apparent was that the betting puvlic nowadays is a lot more sophisticated: nearly all the techniques I used back then based around arbitrage and trend analysis are now very much widely known. So it's no longer as simple as backing third favourites on the Tote or whatever. Neverthless, I nitted my way to a small profit while Rob enjoyed a more high variance rollercoaster ride.

Anyway, once we had our strategy in place, we started to implement it. Mine was a little more risk averse than Rob's, which meant casting the web wider, meaning I started the day with a winner but Rob was not so lucky. My good start gradually turned into a slight loss just before the final race while Rob's racing Manhattan was also down. Mine swung back into slight profit on the last race while Rob, by now pot committed, virtually well all in on the second favourite who thankfully did the business leaving him up a very healthy sum on the day. Luckbox IMO.

My day could have ended a lot better as I'd also got on an 8 to 1 shot at 16 to 1 that was going very nicely until the bloody thing fell. Glue factory material, IMO.

Got back into Dublin just after the Poker Million final had kicked off. As soon as we landed, I switched on my phone and there were a number of texts from Mireille: first a rather forlorn one that Marty was down to 15K after losing AK v Liam's KK. Then one that Neilsen was out. We couldn't understand how Neilsen could be first out given that Marty had been down to 1.5 BBs but a quick phone call to Mireille confirmed that, in her words "Liam ballsed up raising with nothing much and tripled up Marty" and Marty was now back in the hunt. She left the phone beside the TV so I was able to give Rob a running commentary as we drove from the airport.

By the time we got to my place they were down to 4. Highest quality poker I've ever seen on TV, Marty and Eoghan were particularly brilliant. If anything, Eoghan was even more impressive as he had a lot more tough marginal decisions and seemed to get them all right. He was very unlucky that his KJ didn't hold after a brilliant call. But it was good to see Marty pull it off after so many near misses.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Chop chop chop

Played the Malahide monthly tournament as planned tonight and the rush continued: ended up chopping it with Rob for 2 grand each. This one was a mirror image of our chop in the Fitz last week in that I started the FT as the short stack with just 8 BBs, while Rob was very comfortable. I waited as patiently as I could for a spot and it arrived in the form of a multiway limped pot. I had A3 in the BB, flopped two pairs, and managed to get it all in with two others to more than triple up. Game of skill really. After that I was comfortable the whole way.

Rob was finding it tougher and found himself short on the bubble, but he was showing patience and discipline too and picking his spots carefully. Then when we were 4 handed he suddenly got a surge that saw him knock out the other two players, Jay (Jayminator from Boards - first time I'd played with him extensively and very impressive he was) and a local regular called Skinny who seems to be one of the more consistent performers there. That left Rob with 3:2 chiplead headsup, and although we agreed to chop most of the remaining prize pool decided to play on for some, plus bragging rights. Good practise if nothing else.

As you'd expect, Rob's a very tricky customer headsup. Although we know each other's games pretty well, he certainly pulled a few surprises. We see sawed back and forth. I took a 3:1 chiplead when I got it all in on the flop with the nut flush draw and 2 overs against a worse flush draw and held, but Rob clawed it back to level pegging, by which time we decided we'd had enough practise and prolonged the dealer's night enough and agreed to chop completely.

As ever, was a very enjoyable tournament, this time with quite a strong field. The final table included Jayminator and Derek (The Clamper), while Joe O Donaill was unlucky to go out just before the FT.

Rob dropped myself and Jay home. Near my place, we were stopped by some plainclothes cops in an unmarked car. My first impression was they seemed more like criminals than coppers and I feared for the safety of our chopped loot, but after convincing themselves we weren't drunk, they let us continue on our way.

The only problem with 3 results in 8 days is that Mireille is now back to thinking it's pretty standard for me to win every tournament I enter like she did when I started playing in the Fitz with an amazing rush, and anything less is a disappointment that can only be explained by me not trying hard enough or doing something wrong.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Chatting and chopping with the Gentleman

First entry since this blog won Boards.Ie Blog of the Year, oh God the pressure, I should just jack it in right now.

OK, Cavan was different. I won my first ever road race in Cavan (Cavan to Arva), was a most memorable experience for me, even if Joanne Cantwell did her level best to get us both lynched by saying how great it was to see someone from Dublin coming down and beating all the locals when she was giving me the trophy. So happy memories of Cyavan.

Drive down courtesy of Rob was tilt inducing: my God how atrocious are those roads. But at least the company was good as Rob is always a most enjoyable and challenging poker chat companion.

I started the tournament badly (in terms of winning pots, my play was fine). It was well into the fourth level before I even won my first pot. By then I'd drifted back from the effective starting stack of 26K to about 12K, but patience was rewarded when a rush of cards and some non-believing calls saw me motor up to 55K. However, I was crippled late on Day 1 on the hand which probably played itself. Blinds were 600/1200, cutoff raised to 4800, I made it 13K on the button with AKs, SB shoved for 38K, original raiser folded after a dwell. Getting 5 to 2 I have no real choice but to make a crying call, even though the shover is one of the few tight solid players in the place so I know I'm behind. Just hoping for QQ but nooo, he had KK and I didn't suck out. Original raiser had AQ and would have called my raise so if SB doesn't wake up with KK I move up to 80K. I did actually briefly consider folding: that morning I'd reread the section in Chen's "Maths of Poker" where he shows that it's sometimes correct to make folds even though you're marginally getting the pot odds to call if you believe you have a significant edge over the field (and are therefore more likely to get better spots), but 5 to 2 was in no way marginal.

After being crippled, I was looking for a spot to get in or get out but one never came. Considered flinging them in anyway to save driving back the next day but couldn't bring myself to just throw my chips away.

Played some cash for a few hours, got almost no cards, played only three hands, one of them really badly (very overplayed overpair), and ended up almost 2 buyins down. I really detest live cash, and I can never play my A, B, C or even D game.

As I was cashing out, a local "character" suddenly materialised behind me muttering under his breath a string of comments that suggested that his clear and strongly held view was that I bear a close personal resemblance to male genitalia. Since I'd never seen him before, I couldn't really take it personally, which seemed to annoy him into switching to Plan B from the "Starting A Fight With Total Strangers" handbook: barging. Luckily he's quite a small little psycho and it was a bit like a fly trying to barge an elephant, so I decided to eschew the loose aggressive line of swiveling around and clocking him one in favour of the more tight passive one of pretending I didn't even notice him.

This unfortunately meant subjecting my better half to having to drive me back down the next morning (there were no rooms left at the Inn so I went back to Dublin with Rob and Cat, swapping between their cars in Virginia).

A two hours drive/skate and the poor woman had barely time to park the car and find where the poker was to make it just as I was announcing "Allin". I'd already shoved once (no call) when Jordy, a very good young Nordy that FTed JP's Blinkers festival with me in Citywest in July, raised for the third time in about 5 hands. Another shortie who barely covered me shoved. The only hand Jordy had shown down was KQ so my AK on the button figured to be ahead of his range and I was quite happy to gamble my 8 BBs with the other shortie with the likely overlay. Unfortunately Jordy had a legitimate hand this time KK, but with shortie having 99 it wasn't a bad spot for me to try to more than triple up and get back in the game. Flop was Q9x all spades, and with my K the only spade the hopes of the suckout rose, but I missed.

So one minute later Mireille and I were both on monkey tilt steaming back out to the car at the thought that we'd put ourselves through a dangerous 4 hour commute just for me to play 2 minutes of losing poker.

Fair play to Mick for pulling this together though: he's clearly done a lot to bring poker to the masses in Cavan and for the most part it was a fun tournament run in a very good spirit.

On the drive home I decided to play the SE Monthly game and got there just in time. Was a bit difficult to refocus and readjust to the very different type of poker being played here, but it helped that I took half Liam Flood's stack first hand in a bottom set v TPTK confrontation. Table broke shortly thereafter (not a bad break for me, as I found myself wedged between Danny "tylerdurden" Maxwell and Liam Flood at the first table, and Cat had position on me too), because the Chief had already claimed 3 victims in the first few minutes! Including Rob very first hand.

New table featured a very good female player who sounded American to my immediate right, Chief next to her. On the other side I had Paul Burke, another very good player, Finbarr Loughnane (ditto) and Vera and Sammy. Only the third time I played the Chief and I got most of my chips from him after finally figuring out a strategy to follow against him. Most interesting pots were against Sammy. First he raised in LP, I called with a pocket pair in SB, and checked a set to him. He made a big bet, twice pot, I raised, and he folded saying "Nice catch fish". He seemed to be on tilt next hand we played, calling me down for most of his stack when I think everyone else at the table knew I'd hit the nut flush.

Got to the FT with 37500, a bit above average. Cat had a bit less, Liam Flood had recovered too. With only 3 prizes, I was mindful of the fact that it was essentially an STT now, and played accordingly. I played very few hands early on, and got sucked out on in the two I did play, so I drifted back to under 20K. By the time it got 4 handed, myself and Cat were chronically short and gradually leaking equity as we could barely play a hand, something Liam in particular was taking advantage of. Rob suggested a bubble deal, and Liam graciously agreed, saying that although he never suggested deals, he was always happy to go along with them. I was pretty much card dead, Cat won a few good pots and it shifted to me with less than starting stack (10K), Cat and Vinnie with about 50K, and Liam with 100K. I obviously had no push power any more so decided there was no point shoving light. By judiciously picking my spots I got back up to a marginally more healthy 15K before Vinnie and Cat got it all in preflop (AK v QQ), Vinnie getting an ace from space on the river to knock Cat out. Another great performance by the Girl Wonder: she's running horrible at the moment but kept coming back from setback after setback in the tournament. And promptly marched off to tear up the cash tables.

That left Vinnie and Liam with about 100K and me with 15K. I decided to stick to my strategy of judicious shoving as Vinnie was complaining of tiredness and having to work in the morning so I reckoned it was possible the two big stacks would clash. And clash they did, getting it all in with KT v K9 on a K high flop blind on blind. Liam's KT held and suddenly after prolonged bubble clinging without doubling up even once, I was headsup.

Liam outchipped me 15 to 1 so the headsup didn't figure to last long. Normally I'd just be shoving anything half decent in that spot, but decided to keep the pots small if for no other reason than the experience of playing The Gentleman headsup. Early skirmishes went very well and I moved from 14K up to 46.5K. One hero call with K high seemed to genuinely flabbergast him, but I was actually pretty sure K high was good when I made the call, as I couldn't find a hand that beat me that Liam would play on all streets the way he did in my opinion. I suspected Liam was looking to deal, he'd already asked how much we were playing for a few times, and then asked for a cigarette break. I didn't really feel it was my place to offer a deal as he still outchipped me 4:1 and anyway I was enjoying the headsup battle, but when he came back from the break, notwithstanding his earlier comments about never offering deals, he offered me 1800 (leaving him 2300), which was about a 100 more than ICM would give me, so I was happy enough to accept. Although the headsup was going well for me, I figured that if it continued to do so Liam would just start shipping a lot pre, and then I'd have little or no edge. I also took it as something of a compliment that he offered a deal with such a big chiplead.

Liam's always a pleasure to be around, and we had good banter and interesting chitchat throughout the tournament. This tournament has been very kind to me: I've played it 5 times now, chopping twice and finishing second once. Whinge posts clearly work: since I whinged about running bad in the two recent winterfests I've chopped two tournaments in a week with the legends that are Rob Taylor and Liam Flood. Was also happy that I was able toget my A game going in the SE after the disappointment of Cavan and her roads. Overall, I think I played some of my best poker ever in the SE monthly game, not just in terms of the hands I played, but making read-based opponent specific plays and evaluating the correct strategy at different points based on table and tournament dynamics.

Plan for the rest of the week is Malahide tonight, Cheltenham races with Rob on Friday, and JP's IPT leg in the Red Cow at the weekend.

A big thank you to everyone who voted for me in the boardsies, and all who have supported me throughout the year with well timed kind comments and good wishes.

Friday, December 5, 2008

Cheesy Christmas compilation post

This the time of year when the Man tries to get us to buy David Essex's Songs of Love or Daniel O'Donnell's "Songs With Mary In The Title", so why should I be different. What follows is just a compilation of some recent stuff I've dreamt up on Boards or in private conversation.

First, some thoughts on big stack strategy arising from a conversation I had with Thomas Maguire on the subject. Basically most of the books say you should loosen up and attack relentlessly with the big stack on the basis that other people will be afraid to play back at you (same books also advise keeping out of the way of the big stack in these situations).

That's fine if that holds - that people will only play back with AA or KK - but it never does in Ireland in my experience. Irish poker players may have a lot of faults, but being afraid to stick their chips in when it's obvious someone is bullying is not one of them. ICM tells us that when you're a big stack:
(1) any additional chips you win are worth less (in tournament equity terms) than any chips you lose
(2) any chips you lose to a small stack are worth way more to them than they are to you

I think this indicates that the correct strategy is to continue picking your spots carefully with a big stack, only making moves against players who won't play back without a premium hand, and only getting involved with hands likely to be best otherwise. This has the added advantage that since you're not obviously bullying, you're less exploitable by a risk averse smaller stack. At different points at the FT in Drogheda, two other players had enormous chip leads, and both went out before the 5 way chop. Once I took the lead I tried to make it clear they'd have to be prised away from me chip by chip. Once the others realised this, they saw they were in a situation where they'd have to gamble with each other if they didn't agree to a chop. This is also how I played the giant stack I was gifted with at the start of the recent Fitz side event final table: I took no real risks until we got 4 handed. I've seen a number of others blow huge chipleads by being too laggy in these spots, so I'm convinced it's strategically wrong.

Second part of this post relates to ICM, arising from this post Macspower made on Boards.

ICM calculation is as follows: If you fold, your tournament equity is $402.If you call and lose, you bust out in 5th for $185, so you've lost $217 effectively.If you call and win, your equity rises to $558, a gain of $156.So effectively, by calling, you're risking $217 trying to win $156, so you're getting effective tournament odds of approximately 5/7 (156/217 to be exact), so you need to be a 7/5 favourite for this to be a good call.

However, you're almost certainly not going to be able to do the detailed ICM calculations at the table in real time. This is why bubble factor is a useful concept. If you do a lot of these ICM calculations offline, you quickly get an intuitive sense for the bubble factor (the ratio of how much chips won are worth to how much chips lost are worth, which is therefore the ratio you have to multiply pot odds by to get your true tournament equity odds) in different typical situations. Sometimes it's easy (bubble factor is always 1 headsup, and is equal to the number of tickets being given out in a satellite on the bubble when stacks are equal), but most times you'll have to make an educated guess based on experience gained from doing lots of these calculations. When I read Mac's post, before I did the calculations, I guessed that the bubble factor was a little under 1.5. So if I had been Mac, I'd have called if I guessed myself to be 60% against the guy's shoving range, folded otherwise. Even being aware that bubble factor exists gives you an edge in tournaments. You'd be amazed how many players think it's correct to call when you're getting 6/4 and are 40% against someone's range. It almost never is late in a tournament (because bubble factor is always more than 1) before the headsup stage.

The edge of good online STT players mostly boils down to the correct strategic application of ICM, and this also is the biggest edge an MTT player typically has deep into an MTT.To put it in concrete terms, anyone who thinks it would be correct for Mac to call if he's approximately 50% against the shover's range "because I'm getting the pot odds" is making a mistake that will cost them over $30 (in the long run). Without an understanding of the implications of ICM and bubble factor, you'll make these mistakes over and over and cost yourself a lot of money in the long run.

I believe Mellor is preparing to write a definitive piece on ICM for the board so I'll leave it to him. In the mean time, anyone wishing to read up on it, there's a very good section on it in Chen's "The Maths of Poker", an even better examination of it that develops the more practically useful concept of "bubble factor" in "Kill Everyone", plus there's a small bit on it in one of Harrington's tourney books (specifically in relation to satellite bubbles, where ICM becomes so important that even if you think someone is pushing ATC you can generally only call a push with AA or KK), and also some good stuff in Moshman's "Sit n Go Strategy".

Right, off to Cavan.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Big happy entry

Warning: this is essentially a brag post.

"If you ever started being lucky, you'd be unstoppable". The brother said that to me once when I was whining about running bad, and well, yesterday I did run good in the last event of the Fitz Winter Festival and ended up chopping it with Rob. A thrill not just to be back to winning ways, but also to actually chop with Rob.

60 runners, got off to a good start until I got Mick Duffyed in a standard Mick Duffy pot. I flopped the nut straight, he fell in love with second pair enough to enter into a suicide pact, then managed to turn his second pair into trips and river it into a house.

Recovered a bit but then the blinds got big and I had to switch to shove mode. I was down to 7K when I shoved a pocket pair into a bigger one in the blinds and got lucky when my lucky dealer Pavel duly tripped me.

Meanwhile Rob was tearing up the other table and was up to about 40K.

Then I got moved downstairs and it was a lucky move for me. First I check shoved top pair into top pair better kicker and got lucky when he folded. Then Pavel dealt the ultimate cooler in my favour: middle set against two opponents with top pair. I slowplayed it and they both duly tripped up on the turn. I was sitting there doing my best weak tight "Should I call here with the second nuts or nut? Oh what the heck, let's gambool" impression and had just flatcalled the leader's second bullet when joy of joys, the other guy shoved. I was fistpumping on the inside when I heard the other guy reshove. No need for Hollywood any more: instacall.

Paul Fish arrived shortly after. By now it's almost the bubble, I'm chipleader, he's a very healthy second. First 4 pots go, I raise, he calls behind, I check, he makes massive pot, I fold like a baba. Then I raise ATs on the button, he calls again in the SB, BB calls. Flop T84, check, check, 10K into 18K pot, and he min raises me. This is the first time I've played against Paul so have no idea how to interpret the min raise. After a ponder, I decide that given his image of me must be weak tight at this point, it's very likely a semibluff, so I ship. Now I get the full Paul Fish treatment: he's in my face asking if bottom set is good, if I have an overpair, motioning to call, fold, all the tricks. I'm trying not to give away anything so I just sit there and smile, but inwardly I'm cursing myself for an overplayed TPTK as I now think he has jacks or maybe queens. After an age, he calls so now I know I must be behind. Or maybe not: he has pocket 9's. He turns an openender but fails to suck out. I now have 35% of the chips in play with 12 left.

FT starts. This is the first giant stack I've had since Drogheda and I stick to the same strategy which goes against conventional wisdom but is based very heavily on ICM. While I'm sitting there, Rob goes from shortie to biggie with a breathtaking display of final table poker. Second one in a week where he went from short at the outset to win or chop. His STT chops really show in these situations: he also came from shortest stack to win in Macau. One hand where he extracted a double up with top set was pure genius. If you ever need someone to play an FT for your life for your entire roll, Rob would be the man to call. I sometimes wonder if people fully realise what an astonishingly good player Rob is, given that so much of what he does is beneath the surface and based on his unerring ability to home in on what the other guy is thinking. People don't tend to see Rob's best work because it usually involves either him making a great fold or inducing his opponent into making a bad one. It's not flashy, but it's always optimal, and he squeezes every last ounce of positive EV from these situations. As I've said before, I consider Rob to be the best all round NLH in Ireland in terms of his versatility.

4 left and Tommy Buckley started talking about a deal but Rob wasn't keen. At that point I was still massive chipleader, Rob was massive second placed, and the other two were relatively short. I then took out Tommy for the umpteenth time. Basically coolered him blind on blind where I raised in the SB with a bag of spanners (idea being to exploit his image of me as uber nit), he called, I flopped bottom 2 on a board that would look to him like I couldn't have hit, and made what I knew he'd interpret as a weak cbet. He shoved with an openended straight draw and missed.

Rob took Ralphie out shortly afterwards with a sneakily played KQ. There was very little between us in chips at this point so we instachopped. Headsup could have been interesting as it's fair to say that Rob knows more about my game than any other player, and I possibly know more about his than anyone else, but chop made obvious sense. Rob suggested after we should maybe have agreed to chop but played headsup anyway for practice and in retrospect that would have been interesting.

Well done to all at the Fitz as ever for another great festival.

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