Sun, sea, lesbians and lung cancer

Well, I was looking forward to my first EMOPS, and now I'm looking back on it.

My plane took off over 30 minutes late and encountered turbulence (so had to fly slower) but thanks to RyanAir's sneaky strategy of padding their schedules, we bumped down officially 1 minute ahead of schedule and therefore had to endure the trumpet fanfare "Aren't we just the awesomest" tape too.

A short while later I was trying to communicate with the hotel receptionists in English (no habla espanol). After convincing two without a lick of English between them that I really really habloed no espanol, a third with at least a rudimentary grasp of pidgin English appeared and we had a conversation that would come back to haunt me:

"You book til Monday?"
"Yes, but I'm staying til Tuesday".
"Yes, is fine. You must pay for extra day when you go"
"I know, that's fine".

Joz and Joy were on hand that evening to welcome me to the island and we had a pleasant few drinks followed by a nice meal followed by a couple of Jack Daniels back at the hotel. Joy has all the makings of a great poker wife (she clearly has a good understanding of the kind of support a poker player needs from their partner) and it's always nice to have a non poker person there to stop the conversation descending into 100% hand histories.

Pushing the plain clothes detective
Main event non event probably sums it up. I got one decent hand all day, aces, which I fourbet after considering a sneaky flat (stacks were horrible for it though) and didn't get to see a flop. Pretty much says it all when the biggest pot I won all day was calling down with QT on a AT986 board. Not having played a hand in yonks, I decided to go for an utg steal and opened. The table maniac (quite a distinction in Spain where everyone wants to be one when they grow up) flatted on the button: everyone else respected the fact that this was my first hand in eons and folded. Flop came AT6 and I checked. He went to bet Hollywood style but checked instead. Turn was an 8 and I'd often bet now as there's lots of draws and gutters in his range but I decided to check for pot control (he was perfectly capable of raising me with poo here) and he fired a little more than pot. River was a truly awful nine and after a big bet well over pot for most of my remaining stack I now had a real decision. I had a strong physical read he was weak but of course he could be bluffing with a better hand than mine here. In the end I went with the read, called, and he mucked.

Only other hand of real interest saw me shoving the plain clothes detective over a raise and two calls. It was a fairly marginal squeeze as the first guy was tight and I was almost certainly in big trouble if he called. After he tank folded I breathed a sigh of relief. The other two guys tank folded too but I was less worried about them: I figured I was probably racing if either called. Neither did and I added 30% to my stack which kept me afloat for a while.

There was a shortage of such spots though and I eventually went out shoving tens with an M of 4 into aces. I was open ended by the turn but didn't get there.

Side event shmide event
Another non event really. Card dead until the pushfest where at least my tight image saw me doubling up without getting called. Exit was a bit meh: I got a free ride in the BB with T4o. Flop came QQT and the first limper overbet the pot. Second guy folded and back to me. He never has a queen here, so the question is has he trap limped a bigger pairs than tens. I decided it was more likely he had a lower pair so I shoved. Unfortunately he had AT and that was that.

Slowrolling the plain clothes detective
The last event on the schedule was the turbo. A lot of people seem to think the shallow-stacked turbo is "Doke's game", and while I do pride myself on playing these games pretty optimally, the reality of course is that like anyone else I need my rush to come fairly punctually to have any real chance. It didn't in this one: in fact it was one of those tourneys where you never win a hand. After withering down to just over 4K with the blinds at 150/300/25 and about to increase, I picked up the plain clothes detective again, on the button. After a local elderly lady who had limped a few times and folded every time to a raise limped yet again, I figured this was a good spot to add 25% to my stack and shoved in. After the two blinds duly folded I glanced up to see if the lady was for turning, and saw her pick her cards up and motion to flick them forward over the line. I looked back down and waited for the dealer to push the chips my way. When he showed no inclination of doing so, I looked back up and saw she still had her cards. She seemed to be staring at me now looking for a read. I decided to indulge her desire for a staring contest and we spent a minute or two at this, before she shrugged and went to throw her cards away again. At the last second she pulled them back and now held them up high so the people on the rail behind her could see them. Bemused by this odd behaviour, I thought she might have sevens or eights and be trying to decide whether to take a stand. She now asked for a count and after pondering the number she was given for a while more, said "Call". I immediately flicked over my KJs and waited to see what I was up against. It took a while for her to slowly shovel the correct number of chips across the line. Having done so, she peered down the table at my hand, nodded a few times, and then finally turned over her hand. Aces.

The locals all thought this was hilarious of course, even the dealer was laughing. By the turn I was dead and departing, with nothing to do other than wish the lady who seemed to be a very heavy smoker lung.....I mean luck. My original plan was to stick around and play a bit of cash but for some reason I no longer felt like it and walked back to the hotel.

Santa Catalina I hate every inch of you
The hotel included as part of the package I won looked brilliant from the outside, but to be honest was a major disappointment, particularly for the price allowed. The so called free Wifi was brutally unreliable rendering online play a very bad idea, the room was basically a windowless bedsit (there was a window, but it was basically a slit in an alcove), I made the mistake of ordering room service once and can honestly say it was the worst food I ever attempted to eat, and the staff were monumentally rude and unhelpful. It's funny (and by funny I of course mean annoying) how people who work in these grand hotels so often take on the airs of the people who lived in grand houses a century ago.

The only really good thing I can say about the place is that it had TCM, whose schedule included several of my favourite films of all time. When I played Deauville and Berlin last year, I spent much of my down time reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Tender Is The Night". On this occasion, I got a kick out of rewatching Out of Africa. There's something about the classic literature of the 1920s and 30s that just seems to gel with the experience of being on the current day international poker circuit. Maybe it's that the life of the itinerant poker player is the closest present day equivalent to that of the idle rich nomads of that era: we stay in the same grand places (Deauville is even specifically mentioned in the Great Gatsby), eat the same food, drink the same wines and liquers, and when we're not playing have precious little to occupy ourselves beyond meals, drinks, spas and gossip.

Anyway, Monday afternoon found me lazing on the bed wondering what delight TCM might offer up next when the phone rang.

"YOU MUST LEAVE HOTEL!!!"
It was a receptionist claiming I had no booking for the night and had to leave, not just the room which might have been reasonable if indeed I had no booking, but the hotel itself (which seemed a little harsh). An unsuccessful attempt to argue my case on the phone was followed by one to do so in person: I knew I was drawing dead when she took the line that not only did I not have a booking but "could not have been told I had when I arrived because we were booked out a month ago". Rueing the lack of any documentation to back up my claims, it was back to the room to pack, fire up the laptop to find an alternative hotel, and hop in a taxi to it.

Luckily the new place, the Hotel Parque, proved a lot more welcoming, with a much better room, a more reliable Wifi, and a friendlier less linguistically challenged staff. That allowed for a bit of potting (I won just about enough to cover the price of the hotel for the night) before I headed out for dinner with Joz and Joy.

The Joy Luck Lesbian Club
I had a few good meals on the island with Athy's golden couple, most notably the first night when Joz directed us to a place with white plastic chairs which we quickly decided wasn't going to cut it and we ended up in a place just round the corner that was top class, but nothing compared to the Japanese place I chose for our last night. I think they were a little apprehensive of the whole Japanese thing at first but got right into it once we discovered the food was top class. The best part of the night came though when one of the waitresses informed us that another of the waitresses was in love with Joy. It seems Joy has a track record as a lesbian magnet and sure enough the other waitress re-appeared to gush about how pretty like a princess Joy is, much to Joy's apparent embarrassment and myself and Joz' amusement. Four courses, a bottle of wine and a bit of lesbianism to polish things off: what more could a man ask for?

Don't have a canary but....
Overall I took a lot of positives from my first EMOPS. I think these tournaments definitely represent a lot of value. I met Aidan Connolly on the plane over, and ikilldurr1 from Irish Poker Boards during the event (he ended up 6th after a great run) as well as a couple of young lads from Waterford, and I do think these are the kind of events that Irish players looking to take a shot should be targeting rather than EPTs or UKIPTs. Stephen Merrick from Irish Eyes was a great host too, and the satellites on Irish Eyes provide a great inexpensive route to these events. I understand that the tour is currently evolving with new stops being tried out and venues coming and going, and that being the case, I'd have to say I think there must be better possible venues than the Canaries, which really only has nice weather going for it. The standard of dealers was the worst I've ever seen anywhere, some of them were unclear on the hand rankings even, and the locals while value are a bit hard to take with their macho posturing and general lack of etiquette. The casino itself is a bit grim. Venues are crucial to the success of these stops and the numbers on this one were also reportedly a disappointment. One friend back home told me he stopped trying to qualify after he heard it was "a bit of a kip". While I certainly intend to play another EMOPS, I wouldn't be in a rush to play on the Canaries again.

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Numbers have no memory

AS I've noted before, the down time provided by travel is the blogger's friend, and I'm tapping this entry in Dublin airport as I wait for my RyanAir flight to the Canaries for the EMOPS there. After a few good (ie profitable) weeks of online grinding to get 2011 off to a good start pokerwise, it's time to get the live campaign on the road, with a lot of stuff on in the next few weeks.

Hot on the heels of the EMOPS is EPT Deauville, but I'm still undecided on that. I haven't qualified and my normal rule is not to play anything outside the WSOP with a four figure buyin unless I satellite in, but my bankroll has now thankfully blossomed healthily to the point that it wouldn't be a major deal to just buy in. So I'll see how I feel on Tuesday when I get back from the Canaries, and if I feel up to it will head to France.

The following week sees my favourite tournament of the year, the European Deepstack, which is where it all started for me in a sense. My 100% cash record in this has to end at some point, but hopefully not this year. One of my unfulfilled ambitions as a runner was to successfully defend a title or win the same race twice, so it'd be nice to do this in poker.

Shortly after that is this year's IPR live final, which I guess also represents a chance to successfully defend. With 18 players this year it looks like the structure will be a good bit faster, but it's basically a 10k freeroll so essentially I've nothing to lose. If nothing else, it should be good craic.

The title of this entry is something I've been thinking about recently. It can be interpreted in different ways: as a description of variance for example. It points out the fallacy that just because you haven't run well for a while you're "due", or the contrary one that if you're running well you're more likely to win. The first one is definitely a fallacy in my view, but the second one has some sort of basis in reality. Players who are running well expect good things to happen, are more confident and therefore more likely to be playing well, in particular when it comes to the crucial marginal decisions. The thing is that numbers may have no memory, but we humans do.

You see another aspect to this during individual tournaments. From a theoretical point of view, your chances of success in any tournament are directly proportional to your current stack. If you have, say, 100K of the 10 million chips in play and you're an average player (no edge), then you're a 100 to 1 shot to win at that point in theory. It doesn't matter whether you just doubled up from 50K, or doubled down from 200K. Except it does. Most players have a much better chance if they've just doubled up rather than doubled down, because of human memory and emotion. When you've just lost half your stack, you're not going to be nearly as chipper as when you've doubled up. While it really shouldn't make a difference, there are very few players with the emotional control to make this so. How often do you see someone double down, then go on tilt, and do the rest? Or someone who is playing badly but gets a lucky double up suddenly knuckle down and start playing better?

When I play a tournament, I try to remember at all times that it doesn't matter how many chips I used to have, or would have had if my aces had held. All that matters is how many I have now. This is a slight simplification as your table image is affected by your fluctuations. You can't really control that, but what you can control is your emotional reaction to setbacks. So next time you find yourself steaming after a bad beat that claimed half your stack, try to do what I always do: imagine how you'd feel if instead of doubling down, you just doubled up to your current stack. And remind yourself it's essentially the same situation to find yourself in at that point in the game.

Numbers have no memory, but it's pretty inevitable I'm going to have a major online downswing at some point. Not because it's due, but simply because realistically you can't keep running as well as I've been running online for the last 12 months forever. I've been very fortunate that the biggest downswing in that time has been a very manageable 12K one, but at some point I'm almost certain to get a much bigger one, and have to be ready financially and emotionally for it. It's too easy to think easy game when things are going well, but I believe that in the long run it's how you perform in the bad spells that ultimately determines long term success. That's the good thing about human memory: in the bad times when it's too easy to think it will always be like this, you can remind yourself of the good times which followed previous bad times.

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The Doke rap

When I started blogging in secret about 3 years ago, there were a number of other blogs I read religiously and looked up to. They've all pretty much disappeared one by one. I used to wonder why people stopped blogging, but these days I appreciate that most of us simply run out of new stuff to say, or at least struggle not to fall into rewriting the same story over and over. As I sit down to write this, I have no real notion where it's going or what I have to say, but let's give it a lash and see.

The holiday season in Doke Manor was very pleasant indeed, with the old man potting away quietly in the corner. The grown up kids all returned to the nest so it was a nice family occasion, with the potting pleasantly interrupted for family meals, hot whiskeys and communal scoffing at bad TV. All well and good except my plan to shed some pounds and get back into shape took a bit of a hit. The problem with grinding through the evening and night is that by the time I get up it's dark outside and a run seems like the least appealing thing in the world at that point so I'm trying a new regime of going out for a run before I retire to bed around 10 AM after a night's grind. It's probably debatable how healthy it is to force your body out into the cold damp morning air dog tired and with some possibly unmetabolised hot whiskey still in your system, so it will come as no surprise to me if I wake up one of these evenings to the news that I dropped dead of a massive coronary.

2011 got off to a good start on the potting front with a 14K upswing. Easy game, I was thinking, long may it continue, I rule, and how. Pride comes before a fall and before I knew it I was swinging the other way to the tune of 7K. Wasn't all just variance or karma either: there was quite a bit of playing like a plonker on hot whiskey in there. Things have since swung back the other way for 7k so it's been a decent start to 2011. Time to get the live show on the road now.

Next Thursday I'm off to the Canaries for my first EMOPS. Looking forward to it and seems like there will be a few Irish among the tides of Eurodonks. I may or may not be hitting Deauville EPT just after that, I haven't decided yet. If I do it'll mean 3-4 weeks devoted solidly to live which is a bit more than I'd like at this stage of the year. Hot on the heels of that is my favourite tournament of the year, the European Deepstack, now bigger and better with two Day 1's. Then it's off to Nottingham for the next leg of the UKIPT, and then back home for this year's Irish Poker Rankings live final. I got 2010 off to a great start by winning the inaugural version in Galway. It was a very enjoyable experience sitting down to play a deep stacked one table tourney with 9 of the best players in Ireland. This year it's 18 players and there's at least as many top class players in there. I watched the online freeroll qualifier and three top class players emerged as qualifiers, Dave Masters, Aidan Connelly and Keith Maguire. Some good chatbox banter railing that: we started abusing one of the participants on the very reasonable basis that we thought he was Tom Kitt. He took it in good spirits but after a while pointed out he wasn't actually Tom. He only really took offense when I told him he played exactly like Tom. Turns out the mystery man was none other than Peter "The Multiplier" Murphy who had been up for 24 hours straight grinding online. That's the kind of sickness you really have to admire.

Anyway, I guess I'll feel a bit like last year's Miss Universe going back to see who takes my crown, although of course I'll be in there myself doing everything I can to prove I'm still the prettiest girl with a burning passion for small furry animals and an earnest desire for world peace.

My oldest son Paddy turns 26 today so a big shout out to him. He's just about the most admirable human being I know bar none, far too nice and decent a chap to ever be a good poker player, and he has made a quarter of a century of fatherhood nothing but a delight. I'm trying to persuade him to come to Vegas with me this year to help keep me sane.




I think we've all had enough of my wittering for now so I'll leave you with something a little different. I got a lot of great gifts over the holidays but my personal favourite comes courtesy of Dan "DatWillDoPig" Rankin (member of the PoLao collective) who came up with this rap in my honour:

"Dara grinds he never stops,
He grinds all day until he drops,
One o those games will be his last,
It will happen soon it will happen fast!!
He will even lose when he flops top set
And im suprised it hasn happened yet "

If I do make the final table of the Irish Open or WSOP this year, I want to make some sort of grand Hellmuthesque entrance with the Dan Rankin Doke rap blaring out over the speakers. Peace out y'all :)

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Looking back while moving forward

Keith McFadden limps utg, Chris Dowling raises to 200 (4x), just behind, Wally McCormack makes it 700, and I bump it up to 2100 on the button. Keith and Chris fold quickly, and Wally doesn't think too long either before folding, showing queens. I like Wally so I show him my hand to confirm it was a good fold (I had aces).

It's the last Fitz EOM of 2010 and we're three handed. I've just been crippled shoving fives into nines blind on blind. The button raises, Robbie Renehan gets out of the way in the small blind, and I find AK in the big blind and shove in. I'm happy to see the button has AT, until the flop falls ATx.

Between the two hands described above, my first and last of 2010, I played a couple of million other hands, mostly online, a few thousand tournaments (nearly all online) and won a few hundred tournaments and more money than in my entire career to date.

That's the summary of my 2010: now for the long version.

The year got off to a great start when I won the IPR live final in Galway, securing a 3 month sponsorship deal with Bruce (subsequently extended). Two years into my poker career I'd stopped seeing myself as a newcomer so the move to sponsored pro seemed an appropriate and timely step. I took great pride in representing Bruce at tournaments in Ireland and no matter what happens in my future career, I'll always be grateful to Bruce for being the first to put their faith in me.

A few weeks later, I was back on the final table of the European Deepstack in my first outing in the Bruce colours. It's fair to say this tournament has a very special place in my heart. In 2008 I burst on the scene winning the first running of it (in Drogheda). The following year I was chipleader for much of days one and two before ultimately going out with two tables left. This year I had to contend with the biggest field to date, and while I would have liked to be on the final table a little longer, getting there was a great start to the year.



I consistently racked up some more live domestic results in the first half of the year, including a fourth in the CPT Grand final, and by the middle of May I was runaway leader in this year's IPR rankings. Everything looked set for me to go one better than last year and claim the $10,000 Boyles had announced they were putting up for this year's rankings topper until Boyles announced they were shifting the goalposts half way through the game, and only putting up $1000 for the number one. It was time to change tack, and without the added incentive there seemed little point chasing the number one spot. For the rest of the year, I played only the major festivals and some end of month games in Dublin I would have played anyway. The results continued to come: a win in a side event at JP's mini-WSOP, a deep run in the Galway UKIPT, a couple of Fitz EOM final tables, a final table bubble in an IWF side event. All of which apparently added up to yet another second place in the end of year rankings. Always the bridesmaid perhaps, but I've always felt consistency to be a better indicator of class in this game than any one big result, no matter how eye-catching. Of the top ten players who contested last year's live final, only Chris Dowling remains in this year top 10.

This year I played 4 EPTs. I made 4 day 2's, twice with decent stacks. I was up among the chipleaders in Deauville, but didn't cash in any of the four. I had better luck in the side events, making a second last table in a 2K event in Deauville, and chopping a side event in Vilamoura (albeit in a turbo). Turbo or not though, when you have someone of the calibre of Pieter de Korver asking you to do a chop, you know you've done something right. I went to Vegas with high hopes of breaking my WSOP duck, but despite a promising start (Durr's KJo dogging my queens near the bubble of my first $1k event) and my best ever run in the main (ending with a lost race late on day 3), it wasn't to be. I won a couple of tournaments in the Rio, albeit nightly crapshoot turbos populated mainly by tourists, did well in the live stts, and came back from Vegas with roughly the same amount of cash in my back pocket for the first time.




Online this year, I made a successful transition from stts to mtts. I won on every site I played on this year, I won in turbos, slow structured deep stack games, rebuys, freezeouts, big ante games, 2-7 td. According to Sharkscope, I was one of the top 20 mtt winners this year on three different networks (Merge, Cake and Bodog). Although I didn't play there much I was in high five figures for profit on Stars, and did well on Ipoker, Full Tilt and a couple of smaller networks. My most successful year to date in poker was not built on the foundations of one huge score (my biggest online scores were all in the region of 10K) but hundreds of three and four figure scores. For the first time since I started playing, I went through a year without a losing month. There weren't even that many losing weeks. This did not happen by accident: rather than just jumping into mtts willy nilly, I put a lot of work into game selection to maximise profit and reduce variance. Most of the games I played this year won't be showing up on my Pocket Fives profile because they are either satellites (which are specifically excluded) or they have less than 100 runners (ditto). If you play 3000 runner rungoodaments, you can probably achieve a much higher ROI in the long term, but sticking to smaller fields reduces your variance immensely. It also means you make more final tables, get headsup more often, so when you do have that streak in a big runner field and get into position to win, you're better equipped to convert. Although the vast majority of my scores don't register on P5's, I broke into the Irish top 10 towards the end of the year for the first time.

The plan for 2011 is the same but more. My focus will move even more strongly towards online. I'll still be taking shots at a few EPTs, and giving the WSOP my biggest bash to date, and hope that when I'm writing my review for 2011 there aren't as many as albeits in there. But variance is variance, and as good as I think I am, I know that to win an Irish Open, an EPT or a WSOP I'll need to get very very lucky in 2011. It will be great if I do, but it won't be a disaster if I don't, so long as I can keep doing what I did in 2010 online. The game is to stay in the game long enough to get lucky.

OK, enough about me for the moment. Tis the seasons of award ceremonies, and I've decided to hand out a couple of my own. The first Doke goes to the Irish player of the year 2010. In my mind, there's only one real contender. A few of us have had good years, but this guy's year dwarfs us all. Someone asked me in the Fitz recently who the best Irish player this year was. My reply was there were quite a few contenders in their own or other's minds but anyone who's name isn't Sean Prendeville is deluding themselves. Sean became the only Irish player ever (as far as I know) to win consecutive major events on the Irish calender (the CPT Grand final, and the JP Masters). He then flew in to Vegas to zero ballyhoo and about 48 hours later was on the second last table of a multi-thousand runner WSOP event. He repeated that trick later in the series, and emerged from day 1 of the main event as one of the chipleaders. He went deep in an EMOPS, and he crushed online, winning major tournaments on both Stars and Full Tilt. I watched the last 2 tables of his win in Tilt's Sunday Brawl and there was only ever going to be one winner. There are players who can put stacks together but who will never ever win a big tournament unless they get very lucky, and then there are players like Sean who put those stacks together and convert every time unless they get very unlucky.



The second Doke goes to my pick for 2011. I first played with this kid in the Fitz a few months ago, and after I got owned in a hand I realised he wasn't just a wannabe in a baseball cap. It came as no surprise to me to learn he was at that time the highest ranked Irish mtt player on PocketFives. Since then I've gotten to know Jon "emsgawa" Amz Crute and genuinely believe this kid has everything. Talent and technique only gets you so far in this game: without discipline, work ethic, attitude, heart, emotional stability and temperament you'll end up in the "coulda been a contender" category sooner or later. Jon's only 20 and won't turn 21 in time for this year's WSOP, he hasn't played live much yet (why would he?) but his time is coming, and you read it here first. He's one of a band of younger Irish players like Gavin "Gavinator" O'Rourke, Danloulou, Lappin and Shinerr who crush online mtts and will do so live too just as soon as they get around to it.



OK, back to me. I finish the year a full stone heavier than I'd like to be. Since I stopped running competitively and training for it, it's been hard to keep in shape. But I believe fitness is vital in this game so my first New Year's resolution is to get back in shape in the first few months. I have to be realistic and accept I'll never be as superfit as I was when I was training to run 5 marathons in a day, but I'm back running most days, and weightlifting a couple of times a week.

I spent the last few minutes of 2010 and the first few of 2011 rewatching Rounders with the two people who know me best, wife Mireille and brother Sean. I love the film, it rings so true, particularly in its classifications of the different types that poker attracts. There's Knish, the guy with all the talent and technique needed to grind out a living, but lacking the heart and gamble to take a shot, destined forever to grind out a living on the fringes of safe mediocrity. There's Worm, the adrenaline junkie also possessed of talent and technique, but addicted to the buzz of the shot, always looking for the quickest cheapest way, unable or unwilling to put in the honest graft, destined for the plunge into the abyss of degen. And there's Mike McD, closer in mentality to Knish, but possessing that spark to take the shot when appropriate and mix it with the best. I like to think I'm Mike McD, there are times when I'm afraid I might be Knish, but I know I'll never be Worm.

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