Lille-ing it up

Plus ca change.....or has it?

One thing you can never really be sure about until you've had a six figure score is how it will affect you in the aftermath. Some people find it tough to get back to the ho hum routine of the grind, finding it hard to take a tournament seriously when the buyin is less than the price of a meal in Vegas and first prize less than a WSOP buyin. So I wasn't sure how my first night back on the online grind would go, and not just because I was struggling with jet lag.

I needn't have worried. I clicked right back into my normal button clicking routine like nothing of significance had happened in Vegas. Andy Black was telling me once how he reserves his A game for the big occasions and just mucks about in smaller games. I responded that the buyin has no obvious effect on my performance: I give the Fitz EOM the same focus as an EPT. He responded "Yeah, you're boring like that".

So first night and indeed first week back went well, as I went about routinely winning satellites, still my online staple. This dovetails nicely with my plan to play a lot live for the rest of the year (even before Vegas I felt I was in the best form live in years). I had already qualified for FPS Lille, UKIPT Bristol and Estrellas Barcelona all within 6 weeks of Vegas, and beyond that the plan is to hit the EPTs in Malta and Prague, and UKIPT Edinburgh.

My other immediate objectives are to put in some quality off the tables type study work (which I've done a lot of this year but had to take a backseat in Vegas), and regain the physical fitness lost in the desert in Vegas. Before heading to Lille, I did my first speed  training session in the park, and my first long run since before Vegas (I wussed out after 20 miles and it felt tougher than the 30 milers I was doing routinely every Wednesday pre Vegas so it's clearly going to take a while to regain that level of fitness). I did have a rare fleeting moment of self congratulatory contentment during the speed session when I flashed back to all the hard sessions I did in the past year that got me to Vegas in the best physical shape for several years. I'm not generally one for looking back as much as planning forward and it is tenuous at best to imagine there's any link between all that running in Hartstown Park and the run good I benefited from in Vegas, but I guess there's no harm in taking pride in the process and the hard work that went into my preparation for this year's WSOP.

Lille and Lillois.....not the same place

The trip to Lille was a little more arduous than it should have been. After procuring tickets to Bruxelles Midi station, it took a little working out that due to Belgian bilingualism this was the same place as the Brussels Suid that appeared on timetables. We had also bought tickets from there to Lille on a train that was supposed to leave at 16.14. Checking the first timetable we saw, there was indeed a train leaving at that precise time heading to Lillois, which we assumed was the other name for Lille.

Well, it turns out Lillois is not the Flemish word for Lille, but a rather sleepy looking burb of Charleroi. It took a whole train ride to there to ascertain this, and required a train ride back to Brussels and a new Eurostar ticket to Lille before we were quite literally on the right track.

We checked in and then checked out the casino, which is definitely the nicest and friendliest one I've seen in France. My French wife is quite adamant in her view that the North of France (excluding Paris) is the friendliest part, and my experiences on this trip certainly back her up.

The main and the maniac

My FPS Main event was short and unremarkable. I've recently had a change of heart about the best way to handle maniacs early in deepstacked tournaments. I used to try to steer clear of them except when I was nutted. The problem with that strategy is that by the time you catch a hand they've often hoovered up enough soft chips through pure aggression that even if you catch them you are only making a dent, and by then you've missed out on lots of good spots to get at the soft chips yourself.

So these days I'm much happier to embrace the variance and go to war earlier. When someone diverges from Game Theory Optimal in either direction (by being too tight and passive, or too loose aggressive) they open themselves up to exploitation. The maniac's Achilles heel is the opponent willing to open up all their ranges specifically against them rather than backing off.

Two hours in, I had already identified the maniac at the table. He was 5xing from every seat with close to 100% of hands, so when I picked up Ak behind him I threebet quite happy to five bet shove if he four bet. As it happened, he fourbet shoved. This didn't make me any more reluctant about getting over 100 big blinds in pre with my hand as the way he was playing I thought the shove not only removed monsters from his range (which he'd fourbet call I felt) and all pairs (he was peeling with hands as strong as tens rather than four betting). So I called quickly, hoping I would find him dominated rather than with something like jack ten suited. He did have Aqs, and the king high flop looked very good for me, until he hit a runner runner flush. An unexpectedly quick exit, but no regrets about the hand. I got it in almost as good as it gets in Holdem and if I'd have held I'd not only have double average but also have crippled the only player likely to fight back if I upped the aggression and wielded the stack.

To reenter or rest

There was a reentry option in the form of a hyper day 1c, and I did consider it given the obvious value in the tournament, but ultimately rejected it for a couple of reasons. First, I was feeling a bit tired due to a combination of ongoing Vegas jet lag, Wednesday's twenty mile run and the travel to here, so a solid 24 hours of rest before the High Roller the following day seemed in order. Second, as a matter of principle, I don't think hyper day 1's with the same reg fee as a normal speed day one should be supported. I have nothing against the idea of a hyper day one reentry option per se, but I think the reg fee has to be lower to reflect the hyper nature of the option.

High rollering

24 hours later I was back for the High Roller. My table was almost as soft as my main event one, and I advanced forward on starting stack without too much drama until the first big hand of the day when I took an unconventional line and was rewarded when I flopped top pair, turned the nut flush draw, and stacked a guy with no fold button on the river in a bizarre spot where it's difficult to justify his play on any street. That's the short version: I'll be featuring the long version in a forthcoming column for Bluff Europe.

I continued to advance steadily thanks in large part to my new found willingness to tackle the table maniac, and bagged up over five starting stacks to be 6/45 overnight. Roomie and swap for the tourney Smidge said he thought I was already a lock to cash with 17 paid, but there's many a slip twixt cup and lip.....

How to lose a big stack in four easy steps

I've had short day 2's before, but can't ever remember going from almost double average to out in just over an orbit. How is that even possible, I hear you ask? Here's how.

Hand 1: Third hand of day 2. A very aggressive looking young guy who has already raised or threebet the previous two hands limps utg. The guy just behind who has also played the first two hands flats, so I decide to squeeze to 3.25x with aqs to isolate what I'm assuming are two fairly wide ranges. I get what I want when they both call, but the j87 with no backdoor flush possibilities is about as bad as it gets for my hand and my range so I decline to cbet, and give up on the blank turn when the second guy bets.

Hand 2: Next hand I open k9s from early position, loose but justifiable at a table that looks unwilling to get involved without a big hand apart from my two neighbours to the east (one of whom has already folded, and the other of whom is big blind). Everyone folds to the button who calls, as does the big blind. This time the q54 flop looks like a better candidate to cbet as its less likely to have hit my opponents, so I fire, get reraised by the button, and give up.

Hand 3: Three hands later, I find myself with Ak in the small blind. After two limps, Mr Aggro two to my right squeezes to 6500 and is called by Mr CallsALot on the button. The low variance route here is to call and hope to see a flop but in this spot against these two opponents I think the high variance route of raising to get it in is better. When I call I will generally miss the flop and lose a small pot, but when I raise a number of good things can happen:
(1) everyone folds and I pick up 20k uncontested, a great result
(2) someone decides I'm squeezing light and decides to go with a hand I dominate (another great result) or am at least flipping against (not ideal, but not a bad result either with the dead money overlay I'm getting)
(3) someone calls creating a profitable situation for me post flop where I expect to win the pot more than half the time

After I raised, the limpers quickly folded, Mr Aggro tank folded, and Mr CallsALot tank shoved. After I called and flipped over my hand instantly, he turned over one ace (at which point I thought great, I'm dominating him rather then flipping) and then somewhat slowly another ace. So neither dominating nor flipping. There was brief hope when I flopped a king but the aces held, leaving me with 4 big blinds. I guess the chips were always going in anyway on the king high flop even if I took a more cautious line preflop.

Hand 4: I shove my remaining four big blinds with q9s on the button, and lose to the big blind's k4o.

Although I had no real regrets over any of the hands, I will admit to feeling a bit punch drunk as I walked back out of the casino I had walked into just 15 minutes earlier as one of the chipleaders. Back in the room I gave Smidge the bad news and we did what most depressed poker players do: went back to bed to sleep it off.

When we woke up, we headed out on what we grandly hoped would be a pleasant sightseeing trip through Vieux Lille, but ended up as a rather dispirited trudge through the rain on slippy cobblestones looking at closed shops and restaurants. Lille is not without its picturesqueness though, and I'd definitely go back both for the poker and the sights in better weather.

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My 2015 WSOP main event (part 2)

Day 2 of the main

After a rest day, I was ready for day 2. A Hendon mob perusal of my opponents revealed that apart from Jason DeWitt and an Asian to my immediate left with some WSOP pedigree stretching back over a decade, the rest of the table seemed to be very recreational, with most of them having only a handful of cashes in small buyin events. I quickly realised this was not the case entirely when one of the supposed "two Daily Deepstack min cashes but nothing else" guys announced in a Welsh accent that he knew who I was. After correctly identifying me as SlowDoke he confessed to being sngwonder, and I realized his first name (Owain) had been misreported.

Getting trapped down the mine?

So, not an ideal seat with an Asian with a good WSOP pedigree to my immediate left, an online beast (Owain) to his immediate left, and a bracelet winner (Jason DeWitt) to his immediate left. The first interesting spot came relatively early. At 250/500 I min raised tens under the gun playing 24500. The Asian player flatted, and then Jason squeezed to 3300. Folded back to me, I was already hating the spot as I ran through the options:
(1) calling would be the default option to a smaller sizing, but 2300 seemed a little too much to be putting in basically set mining against two highly skilled opponents, and given I wasn't closing the action there was a danger I might not even get to the mine if the other player was trapping with a monster (or even if he was holding AK and decided there was now enough out there to rip it in)
(2) raising seemed unappealing as it would probably just fold out everything worse and be in trouble if I got 5 bet. I'd probably have to fold if I did get 5 bet, so I'm basically turning tens into a bluff when that happens, which doesn't seem great (I'd rather do it with a hand like ATs which blocks some of the 5 bet range and flops better against the call 4 bet range)
(3) folding seemed very weak given how often tens will be the best hand

I eventually did fold after considering some other factors. The Asian player seemed competent and had exactly the right stack size to trap call the top of his range. Jason had no idea who I was (he had already tweeted he recognised nobody at the table), so he was playing against my live unknown image of random old guy, rather than my somewhat different online image. That means that tens is close enough to the bottom of my perceived range that I can fold it without being exploited. While he was playing aggressively opening a lot of pots this was his first threebet, and when the big chips went in post flop he'd always had it, so I figured while he obviously has a light squeeze range in this spot, it might not be as wide as it needs to be for me to go to war with tens.

This was the hand I was most unsure about this summer in Vegas so I immediately ran it by the brains trust. I asked 4 different people and got three different opinions. Daragh was quite adamant that calling was the only play.  Jason felt calling was the worst play, and four betting (to fold to a 5 bet)  was marginally better than folding (which he also felt was ok). Both David and Timmy favoured folding. I guess the fact that I asked 4 top class pros and got three different answers indicates that it's a very close spot.

Tens again

The rest of my day 2 was a struggle to get anything going. The cold 4bet was my only friend, and I hovered around starting stack until my exit. I opened tens in the hijack to 1600 at 400/800. Jason DeWitt threebet to 4600 from the small blind. This time there was no question of tens getting folded. Any reasonable four bet would commit me and it seemed a bit too much to just shove. It's also difficult to see him continuing with many worse hands or folding many better hands so this time I did feel calling was the only play.

The flop came 973 with two clubs, he cbet small, I shoved, and when he snap called I thought I might be almost dead. Actually I was in good shape against k7, at least up until the point a king hit the river, ending my involvement in this year's main event. Although I was obviously disappointed to be out, I was a lot less so than every other year. I guess the result in event 45 was a bit of a monkey off my back, but I also felt I'd done all I could given what I was given to play with in the main event.

Some bubbly fun and a cool chat with a cool cal

I was back 24 hours later to sweat the bubble. A carefully selected dozen swaps and buys and the only one still in running was country ghetto superstar Carlos Welch in his first big buyin event. Carlos nursed the short stack from a long way out and it was a fun rail, complete with a comedy guitarist ("bubble time/some people gonna be happy/some people gonna cry/some people gonna tell me to shut up") and Andrew Brokos.

Once the bubble had burst I was walking out with the intention of coming back to check on Carlos at the next break, but got pleasantly waylaid. I ran into Calvin Anderson and had a very enjoyable chat with him about poker. Cal is one of the people in poker I respect the most as a player and as a person so hearing his perspective was a definite highlight. We chatted til the break, then I went back to check on Carlos. Railing Carlos is a fairly low stress activity that mostly involves watching him fold his hand preflop, then sit immobile til he's given another two cards to fold. However, as he failed to head for the rail at the break and it was just him and one other player left at his table, I realised he must be in a hand. I got there just in time to see his pocket sevens get slowrolled by aces (apparently the second time that day the live pro lady in question had pulled that trick) and not get there. Nevertheless, amazing performance by Carlos and a well deserved cash.

Also a big well done to all the Irish who did manage to cash, especially Nick Abou Risk (in his second deep run) and Declan Connolly. The biggest compliment I can pay Declan is that literally everyone I know predicted Declan would go deep immediately upon hearing he had bagged up over 100k.

Recovery

The rest of the trip was spent chilling out. Or at least I didn't play another hand of poker. One thing I picked up from my running coach was the preparation for your next race starts the second after you cross the finishing line of your last race. The faster you can recover and get back to productive training, the better. That's an approach I've tried to bring into poker. This year, once I knew I was coming to Vegas, I prepared as best as I could, not just at the table but away from it. I went back into serious running training to ensure I got to Vegas in the best possible physical shape. I did some work with hypnotherapy and meditation to try and peak mentally. I ate healthily before and as healthily as I could in Vegas. I didn't abstain from alcohol entirely but did stick to a 2 drink maximum policy.

I also worked on my game a lot, particularly my defence. Like most games poker is a mixture of attack and defence (or offence and defence as the Americans call it). When you are playing against players who are not as good as you, you basically need the best possible offence to exploit their leaks. When you run into players as good or better then you, you need a good defence to avoid being exploited yourself. My offence has always been pretty good (my online success down the years is largely based on picking apart the game of weaker players with the help of a HUD) but in the last couple of years I've made it a priority to shore up my defence. I have no doubt that in previous years the really elite players found me pretty easy to exploit. By putting a lot of thought and effort into studying game theory as it applies to tournament poker I believe I've shored up my defence to the point that even the very best players don't have a major edge over me any more. The great thing about playing game theoretically optimally is if you can manage it then nobody can exploit you no matter how good they are. You may even get to exploit them if they don't realise in time what you are doing and stick to exploitative strategies that are themselves exploitable.  The not so great thing about it is that if you stick to it too rigidly, then you're basically playing break even poker against other players doing the same, and while you will be profitable against weaker players, you won't be as profitable as someone who understands how to attack specific weaknesses. Like all games that combine attack and defence, it's crucial in poker to understand when is the time to attack, when the time to defend, and when you should combine a bit of both. While my defence (GTO understanding) was stronger than ever in Vegas this year, there were definitely times when I concentrated on defending when I should have been attacking (most notably at the start of the Seniors). I think I managed to at least partially correct this in running in the Seniors, and by the time I got to event 45 I was more intent on the best way to exploit my opponents tendencies than simply having a protect all defence to prevent my own exploitation.

I made four divergences from GTO on the final table, and knew I was diverging at the time, but went with what I was convinced were better exploitative lines. Having sat down since to analyse all four spots in detail, the math is telling me I was correct in all four spots if (and admittedly this is a very big if) my assumptions of opponent ranges were correct. It heartens me that I got them right in game when I obviously couldn't work out the math in detail on the spot, and going forward I hope I'll be able to make those judgement calls routinely.

Getting back into shape

The next day after my exit from the main, I went for three runs. The process of physically recovering from Vegas and getting into top shape for next year was begun. I got back to work analysing the tricky spots I'd encountered, I read some theory, and I watched some videos. Event 45 might end up being the closest I ever get to winning a bracelet, but I don't want it to be for lack of trying or working.

I left Vegas feeling fresher and happier then ever before (hardly surprising given I had not only booked my first ever winning trip but washed away the losses incurred in all previous trips with punitive interest) but also more enthusiastic and determined to prepare for next year than ever before. It wasn't just the outcome: this time I enjoyed the process, the minutae and overall,experiences of the trips. I got to meet lots of great Americans like Carlos, Cal, Pesh, Nate, Mark and David Singer. I got to hang with lots of great friends like Jason, Joy, Fergal, Albert, Shiner, Ulduffer, Seamus, Jesse, Dermot, Neil, Andy, Nicoline, Ian Simpson, Kevin Williams, Mike Hill, Michael O'Dwyer, Yifei, Chi, Timmy and Smidge. I had a blast on the livestream with David Tuchman, Tatiana, Mike Leah and Ash. I was genuinely heartened by the support that flooded in through the social media from home, perhaps best summed up by this tweet.

It wasn't just all good, it was all bloody great. But I'm a greedy old bastard so I won't stop hoping next year could be even better.

Related reading/listening:

- Country ghetto superstar Carlos Welch
- Episode 130 of Thinking Poker podcast recorded while my FT was happening in real time
- TournamentPokerEdge podcast interview with Carlos
- My Thinking Poker podcast appearance

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WSOP Main event 2015 (part one)

The plan

As I've mentioned before on this blog, my WSOP plan for this year was a three phase one:
(1) a 12 day stint in the Gold Coast concentrating on selected side events starting with the Seniors and ending with the 50/50
(2) five days of rest and recovery in New York with my wife who flew in from Dublin
(3) back to Vegas with her for a 9 day stint in the Rio for the main event

New York was as restful and fun as we hoped. We stayed with our friends Russ and Nancy who have an apartment near Central Park. I went for a run in Central Park which was something of a trip down memory lane (I kickstarted my career as an ultra runner when I won the New York ultra by running 9 and a half laps there 9 years ago faster than anyone else on the day). We visited the Museum of Modern Art (watched on Periscope by a few dozen people including reported Periscope fanatic Phil Laak), went to some nice restaurants (shoutout to Tatiana Pasalic for recommending Eataly), and I lay on Russ and Nancy's sofa for most of the rest of the time (occasionally watched on Periscope by Phil Laak: he must really be addicted).

The final stretch

So, back to Vegas feeling refreshed. Before the main I had the WPT500 at the Aria, the only poker I played in Vegas this year outside the Rio. This was a multiple day one affair, and I got there just in time for the last (turbo) leg. Bizarrely Smidge arrived to my immediate left. I made a good start when a guy who seemed very impatient to get all his chips in the middle did so squeezing with k6o after I opened kings and Smidge flatted. But in a turbo things can change fast and a couple of lost flips later I was walking back to the Rio.

A meet up in an alley

The following day I went to the Thinking Poker meet up held in the suitably nitty environs of the Gold Coast bowling alley. It was a lot of fun meeting up with some of the American listeners to the podcast. In particular I had a good long natter with Mark Simmerman, who I found pretty fascinating given that he's only a little younger than me, has only been playing seriously since February, and is already somewhere on the playing ability spectrum between Serious Amateur and Pro (something he proved by cashing the main event later in the week). I guess it's not too surprising that he's gotten good a lot quicker than I or anyone else I know given he comes off a track record of successfully applying himself to various areas such as business and the military. Very interesting and cultured guy who has travelled pretty extensively (he did a tour of duty in Afghanistan as recently as 2010).

Day 1 of the main

The next day was my day 1 of the main, day 1c. Apart from my commentary box buddy Mike Leah and a few other good players I don't think I could have asked for a better table draw, as it felt like one of the softest tables I have had in the WSOP main. Unfortunately, I think I was also dealt the worst ever distribution of starting hands I've had in a main event, so the whole day was a constant struggle to get anything going. When I made moves with sub premium hands in what seemed like good spots, I seemed to run into hands more often than not.

The most interesting hand I played all day was against a player I identified as the least experienced and most nervous at the table. He was refusing to get involved in table talk, choosing instead to hide behind those Blue Shark optic glasses most nervous amateurs seem to favour. His hands were shaking violently any time he was in a pot, and he appeared to have different hand motions for moving chips into the pot depending on whether he was strong, weak, or somewhere in between.

Because of all this, I had identified him as the one guy I most wanted to play pots against, so my range was significantly wider than normal when he opened, or was big blind. This wasn't working out great for me because he was 4 seats to my right and 5 to my left so not too many hands were getting to me where he had opened, and when he was big blind I had quite a few players to get through, at least two of whom had also clearly decided he was the guy they most wanted to play pots against (so I was getting isolated or flatted in position a lot). Most of the hands we did play were ones he opened into my blinds. Most of those I flopped little or nothing and he seemed very happy with whatever he had. Since he hadn't shown himself to be the type of guy to fold anything decent post flop I just gave up when that happened. So mostly he won a bunch of small pots against me.

I managed to recoup all those losses with significant interest in this one hand late in the day. He opened when folded to him (which he seemed willing to do with something close to any two cards at this stage: he was running very well and picking up quite a lot of chips when people tried bluffing him: at this stage he was clear chipleader on the table) and I found ATo in the big blind. My hand is strong enough to threebet but I chose to stick to my strategy of keeping pots small until I was sure I had the best of it post flop, so I just flatted.

The flop came Q64cc and we both checked quickly. I wasn't sure I had the best hand (his checking range in these spots seemed polarised between monsters and hands he was giving up on) but figured I usually had since the only monsters he can really have are sets. I thought he'd bet all decent draws, and any one pair hand (for protection).

The turn was an offsuit ten and I checked again. Since I ruled out flush draws and strong straight draws. On the flop, it's pretty much a spot where I'm miles ahead or miles behind, so I want to check for pot control when I'm miles behind and want to bluff catch or encourage him to think a worse one pair hand is good when I'm ahead. He did bet, which was no surprise given his tendency to bluff far more turns than flops. What was surprising was the sizing: he bet approximately 150% of pot. The fact that this was his first overbet all day threw a wrench in my thinking and I needed to think about what it might mean.

It struck me as a pretty polarising spot where he probably has the nuts (he might play queens this way: checking the flop to trap or let me catch something, but then go big on the turn to try to make up for the missed street of betting) or a worse hand than mine that's just trying to muscle me out of a pot where I appear to have little or nothing having declined to threebet preflop, and bet twice post flop. I was watching his hands like a hawk given the apparent hand tells he was giving off (luckily Blue Shark glasses can't do anything about those) and pegged the one he used on this occasion as the "has something but doesn't feel great about it". I considered raising in case he has something like kj or j9, but decided to just call and evaluate on the river. Even with those hands he's going to miss a lot more often than not, and given how passively I had played the hand to this point, there was a good chance I could print money picking off river bluffs to more than compensate for the times he gets there.

The river was a total brick and he again overbet when checked to. I think I knew I was calling given my read on the turn and the fact that his river bet hand motion seemed to be the weak one, but I needed a few seconds to prepare myself for how stupid I was going to look if my read was wrong calling down the guy who hadn't overbet all day with second pair and crippling myself in the process. When I called he turned over his cards quickly. I couldn't actually see them at the far end of the table (again, awful Modiano cards this year), so Mike Leah helpfully chirped "9 high". So he'd turned a gutter and followed through when he missed on the river, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I raked in my biggest pot of the day.

That pot alone meant I bagged up more than starting stack (by the minimum possible margin, one ante chip), which felt like a real result after a long tough grind of a day. Afterwards there was a fair bit of discussion among the Irish, most of whom had played 1c. It has been a very bad day for us collectively compared to the smaller numbers who played 1a or 1b (at least three of whom bagged up over 100k), but the general impression I got was we had just run badly and it was still a good day to play. Certainly in my own case I felt I would have bagged up a lot more chips at almost any other seat on my table.

Related reading/listening

- TPE live podcast featuring Carlos Welch 

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What happened in Vegas.....part 3

Back in the room, I fired up the laptop with the intention of starting to respond to individual messages. There was one from Andrew Brokos whose wise words I tried to keep in mind throughout the event asking if I was available for an interview. No time like the present, so with the memory fresh in my mind, I popped on Skype to chat with Andrew and Nate.

Once that was fine, it was celebration time. My friend Yifei (who used to deal in JP's game back home before he moved stateside) had driven from California to rail. To compensate for not prolonging it long enough for him to be able to actually rail, we hung out and then headed to the Nove Italian in the Palms to meet the others. Great food, great company, and a great feeling of having achieved something of note in poker.

The fitness I brought to Vegas from the 30 mile runs every Wednesday this year stood me in good stead through the four days of minimal sleep, but by now the adrenaline was starting to wear off and I was just thinking of bed and catching up on my sleep. No rest for the wicked though: a rejuvenated Andy Black was not only making a final table of the 2500 event I had been forced to skip as a result of my deep run but sent word through various channels that he wanted me on livestream duty for his final table. Fergal Nealon was kind enough to speed me back to the Rio for that and stick around to help out with it. Knowing at first hand how vital it is to have someone feeding you the relevant information the livestream revealed (thank you again to Lappin, Jason and Carlos) I was more than happy to help out.

Friday June 26

Up early for another run, breakfast, then back to the Rio to continue my livestream duty for Andy. He ultimately ended up busting in 4th, having laddered masterfully, and seemed suitably content with his performance. As we walked through the Rio I suggested to Andy it hadn't been a bad few days for 50 year old Irish poker players while he teased Nicoline that the celebration would be in "the Gold Coast boofay" (as he insisted on calling it) before taking us to the only marginally more upmarket TGIs. Carlos came along, and Andy was very generous as ever in dispensing advice on how Carlos should approach his first ever main event. Andy's an odd blend of monkish hermit and generous extrovert (at one point he threatened to kick Carlos' ass if he followed him on Twitter) and is never anything other then fascinating and insightful when he talks about poker (or anything else for that matter).

With my next side event scheduled for the following day, I was eager to get any post big one blues or elation out of my system on my own dime, so I late regged the Rio Daily a Deepstack (a $235 turbo that attracts mainly tourists). I played it as well and as disciplined as I could, ultimately busting a bit before the money. I figured I might as well register the last turbo of the night, the 10 PM, and had just done so when another message from Tasha arrived asking if I would go back into the commentary box for the final table if the 3k 6 max, featuring Seamus Cahill.  After quickly unregging the turbo I was back in the box with David Tuchman. After some joshing about me being the latest example of commentary box run good (many previous guest commentators had similarly gone straight from the box to a big score), we were joined for a while by another very special guest.

My first WSOP campaign back in 2008 was a particularly dismal one. Looking back, I realise how hopelessly unprepared I was. I'm glad it was back in the day before professional players routinely sold for these things, as anyone buying me back then would have been better off using their cash as a fossil fuel. Not only was I a greenhorn playing less than a year, but a greenhorn used to very different pastures. Back then, the vast majority of Irish live games had no antes at any point. Similarly, antes were not a thing in my online staples at the time (limit cash and sit n gos). So while I had developed a reasonably effective tight game that worked well in the kind of structure against the type of opponents I faced back in Ireland and online, particularly when I ran as well as I did in that first year, I had no idea how to adjust to antes against players who did.

I was accompanied on that first trip by my brother Sean (who had taught me how to play). I was staking Sean, so my misery was doubled each time we bricked an event. With the campaign not going to plan and deep runs in bracelet events failing to materialise, we found ourselves with a lot of time on our hands to play smaller events like the Daily Deepstack. It was a similar story in these: we'd meet up at first break, both having added a bit to our starting stacks playing tight pre antes. Then back we'd go to antes, where we'd wither down unless we picked up premiums and end up busting a bit short of the bubble.

So every night we'd trudge (I was of the opinion that taxis were for closers, not specialists in bubbling) gloomily back up Industrial Road, the rather depressing parallel to the Strip, to our room in Circus Circus. On one such occasion, I ventured the opinion that we weren't just running bad: there was something fundamentally wrong with our strategy. Sean disagreed. He felt we were just unlucky not to be getting cards "when it really mattered". I countered with a real life example: a very garrulous Canadian who seemed to go very deep every night playing a maniacal style quite different from ours. Sean countered that the guy in question was just a luckbox who seemed to get it in every night with some sort of suited connector he'd opened in early position only to find himself priced in to call a short stack shove, and he seemed to get there against Ak more often than not.

The argument raged on with no consensus ever emerging. For the first time in my poker development I disagreed with Sean rather than just bowing to his greater experience. This led over the next few days to a Eureka moment when I realised it must be possible to solve short stack play. Over the next few months I worked laboriously to arrive at a close approximation to optimal play (so called Nash equilibrium) from first principles, which not only allowed me to crush my regular online sit n gos, but also meant when I returned to Vegas I was much better equipped to compete.

I sometimes wonder how long it would have taken me to work out optimal short stack play if I hadn't seen at first hand the garrulous Canadian routinely crushing the Daily Deepstack. Perhaps I would never have worked it out and only got there when the solution leaked out to the general populace.

I later realised (when his picture started popping up on Poker sites due to him winning big tournaments) that the garrulous Canadian was Mike Leah. So it was a somewhat surreal experience to find myself doing commentary on the 6 max final table for a while with Mike.

After Seamus got headsup and they adjourned for the night, I thought finally I'd get to catch up on my sleep, but, well, not even. Back in the room, messages arrived through various channels that Seamus wanted to talk to me. We met downstairs in TGIs and I passed on what advice I felt I could give, and agreed to handle livestream duties the following day.

Saturday June 27

After about 3 hours sleep, I headed to the Rio to meet Seamus before kickoff. He had played a brilliant final table the night before to give himself roughly a 3:2 headsup lead. Unfortunately it was not to be his day. The 30 minute livestream delay having barely elapsed, Seamus was crippled when his eights ran into aces. Next hand he got the rest in dominated and lost.

That freed me up to play my final scheduled side event, the Draftkings 50/50 (where half the field "cashed"). Numbers for this were so disappointing I doubt this particular experiment will be repeated. It was anticipated that a lot of recreational players would show up,  seeing this as their best ever shot at notching up an official WSOP cash. It seems like they did (most of my table openly admitted they'd never cashed an event before, with a few never even having plsyed one before). What wasn't anticipated was how big a turnoff the unusual payout structure would prove among regulars, very few of whom played. This meant this was by far the softest event I played this year (and maybe ever).

With the smaller than expected numbers and the fact that I ran up a stack early on more effortlessly than I ever have, I was starting to think this might be my best chance ever at aa Holdem bracelet. But then my table started hitting gunshots and runner runners every time I made a hand, and I found myself short on the bubble and required to fold through it. Quite the contrast between folding to a 1k min cash and playing headsup a few days previously for 165k, but the thing about being a pro is you have to play every situation as well as you can. One of my Facebook friends asked me before the event if the big score would change my approach to the smaller sides (making me more gambley) and I was happy to see the answer was no.

Sunday June 28

First full nights sleep in about a week, and I figured there was no point playing given I had an early flight to New York the following morning. I sold some of my surplus dollars to some Lithuanians, and paid off a couple of my investors. It felt particularly good to be handing over significant amounts of cash to people who had shown faith and bought some of the old guy. My investors this time are an eclectic mix of close friends and online beasts (with significant overlap), many of whom have kept the faith through a pretty barren set of years for me at the WSOP. One of the guys I met fresh off the plane was already one of the top online players in the world when he started buying has bought a significant chunk every year I've sold (without even asking about the events or the markup) and went on doing so even though I lost his money every year. So it felt particularly good to be repaying him with interest.

Kevin Williams and Jamie "James" Burland also arrived and I met them and the ever entertaining Neil Channing for some late night food. By now it seemed risky to even go to bed on the basis that I was so tired I might sleep through the alarm and miss my flight to New York. So I stayed up all night before heading to New York to meet Mireille. After 6 restful days there (shoutout to the amazing hospitality of our hosts Russ and Nancy) it was time to head back to Vegas for the main event (this blog and the previous two were written on the plane).

In my absence, Pete Murphy became the 7th Irish final tableist of the series. By any measure, that's pretty remarkable. Most years I've come, we have had one or at most two final tables to rail (last year there were none). Six of the seven final tableists are guys who started playing in the second half of the mid Naughties (myself included). It seems like what I always felt could be a golden generation of Irish poker players has finally come of age at the WSOP. In addition to the half dozen of us who have made a final table, most Irish poker fans could probably name another half dozen many of whom would have been seen as even more likely to succeed pre Series (such as Big Mick, Jude, Smidge, Killeen, Sean Prendiville, Reesy, Feargal, Eoghan and Chris Dowling) and who given the breaks are more than capable of delivering Ireland's first bracelet since 2008. While the number of Irish players playing the main event this year may be lower than most years, there are grounds for optimism  that there is enough collective talent there for at least one of us to go deep. Is it too greedy to hope that it be me? :)

The first few times I was in Vegas, every time I walked past the bar at the end of the corridor leading from the WSOP to the main body of the Rio hotel, it was chock full of almost every Irish player at the series. To misappropriate and twist the words of fighter Conor McGregor, it seemed like the Irish didn't go to Vegas to take part, we went there to get hammered. And hammered we got, in the bars and at the tables.

This year I must have walked past that bar a couple of dozen times already, and I have yet to see my first Irish player at it.

Related reading/listening

- Latest Thinking Poker podcast with me 

- Livestream of Seamus' final table (with guest commentary by me and Mike Leah)

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What happened in Vegas, part 2......Event 45

Monday June 22

My starting table was easily the toughest I've been at in Vegas this year, so I saw no shame in battening down the hatches as I knew the table would break before the end of the day. My second table was a lot more fun, and I built a stack and bagged up comfortably over average

Tuesday June 23

We were not too far from the bubble on day 2 (which I think reenforces my point in part one about the new structures), and I got through it comfortably without any major incident, chipping up quite a bit in the process. Most of the rest of day 2 and day 3 until the final table is something of a blur (pretty much all standard spots and lots of table changes). My memories of all my biggest wins as a runner are similarly blurry, so I tend to think it's something to do with the intense concentration that comes with the excitement of finding yourself in with a chance of winning something big. I was pretty card dead late on day 2, and even though I kept chipping up, the average caught and passed me, so I came back to day 3 a bit below average.

Wednesday June 24

Day 3 started as a fairly grim struggle for survival. I won a vital flip two tables out to relieve some of the pressure, but was still one of the shorter stacks when we were down to 10, unofficial final table. Having played with most of the players on the table at some point, I had pretty developed reads on them by this point, and I felt that there was a very strong possibility some would attack too aggressively. While I wasn't going to pass any very good spots, I decided my strategy would be to pass marginal or only slightly profitable spots. With only 30k for ninth and almost 6 times as much for third, I felt there was a lot of value in just hanging around and hoping others would bust. The first such spot presented itself when I picked up Ace queen in the hijack playing just over 20 big blinds. Jason Koon opened just in front of me playing 17 big blinds, and while my first instinct was to 3 bet and get it in with him, after some reflection I decided to let it go. Three of the players still to act behind were playing very aggressively, so I felt I would probably have to go with the hand if the four bet came in behind. While ace queen is a good enough to call off in that spot, I felt that it was basically not just a marginal spot but potentially a group of marginal spots, all but one of which could result in getting the loot in with not much more than the correct equity, which at a table where you are not the shortest and there are others itching to get all in is an ICM disaster. There was some chance everyone including Koon would fold to my 3 bet, but I didn't think this would happen all that often. More likely I'd get it in versus Koon only slightly ahead most of the time and risk being crippled. Sometimes I'd run into a hand behind and have the correct price to call off but be slightly behind most of the time and again risking my tournament life (this is what would actually have happened as the aggressive big blind was sitting there with pocket tens going nowhere). So I made a tight fold but one that felt right in the situation.

By now, my phone was buzzing constantly with notifications of messages from people watching back home, not just in their own homes, but casinos all over Ireland had the livestream up on the big screen. Ciaran Cooney, head honcho of Irish Poker Rankings, sent me a message saying it was like Italia 90 (when the Irish football team qualified for the World Cup for the first time ever and the whole country stopped to watch) for poker fans, and a photo of his local casino showing play having stopped while everyone watched the TV screen.

That level of support is very touching and truly staggering, and really only registered with me after the event. It's easy to imagine beforehand that when you find yourself in a situation like this, it could be a struggle to control your excitement, but in actual fact I felt the most calm composed and focused I have ever felt at a poker table. All my mental effort was focused on the game, and my evolving reads on my opponents and the overall situation, and formulation of my strategy. The only reason I was checking my phone is I was fortunate enough to have three top class players studying the livestream intently and relaying all the relevant information on how my opponents were playing. So a big thank you to my Chip Race cohost David Lappin back in Dublin, WSOP and EPT final tableist Jason Tompkins across the road in Palms Place, and my American friend Carlos Welch on the rail. They fed me all the relevant information that allowed me to keep refining my reads and overall strategy.

People watching back home were probably surprised to see me reshove the lot in with eight high after having earlier passed ace queen, but I felt it was a clearly profitable spot. The hijack opener was chipleader (and eventual winner) Upeshka De Silva who was pushing his lead hyperaggressively, so I felt he was opening something like 75% of hands in the spot. Given that he was probably only going to call top 15 to 20% of hands when I shoved, and 87s has decent enough equity even against that range, I didn't hesitate. Pesh immediately said something that sounds like Balzac so it was clear he wasn't at the top of his range, and took a while to call with KJo. I think it's one of the worst hands he would have called with, so that certainly makes the reshove profitable. I flopped a flush draw but it took a lowly 7 to hit the river to keep me alive.

I also passed a shove I'd normally take, QJo, from the cutoff, on ICM grounds. With one shorty much shorter than me, busting at that point was an ICM disaster, so I stuck with the strategy of passing bottom of the range shoves, even if it was the first half decent hand I;d been dealt in a while. The other option was to raise fold, but I didn't think it would get through often enough in this specific situation.

For most of the rest of the final table, it seemed I was always second shortest in chips waiting for the shortest to bust, until we got three handed and I was by far the shortest. This meant I could up the aggression and in particular target the second biggest stack, so I chipped up steadily until he got it in behind against the chipleader and bust. So having spent the entire final table allowing ICM to dictate my strategy, I now found myself freerolling for the bracelet, albeit with a massive chip deficit.

Pesh's very rowdy rail clearly didn't expect the headsup to last very long. Some of the comments from the rail upset and annoyed people watching back home (not just Irish: several Americans thought it crossed the line several times) but in all honesty I think it upset my opponent a lot more than it did me (to his credit, Pesh felt compelled to apologize to me for his friends at one point). If anything, it just hardened my resolve to make it as tough as possible for my opponent, and I dragged it out so long we were forced to quit for the night and come back the next day. Pesh won most of the small pots and I won most of the big ones, including a double up when I called it off with QT after he shoved pre with J8 and held. At that point I was within a couple of flips of the bracelet, as close as I ever got.

It fell as it so often does to the irrepressible Andy Black to inject some levity. At one point I heard his distinctive voice coming from the rail and looked over to see he had embedded himself in the epicentre of Pesh's rail, a one man verbal wrecking ball reducing them all to laughter or silence with the brilliance of his one liners, causing one guy to ruefully reflect "We are never going to win a one liner battle against the Irish".

I am particularly grateful to Andy for popping up given he was deep in the 2500 event at the time and was sacrificing his breaks. I am also very grateful to all who helped and supported, not just my many Irish poker friends, but also the very English Tim Davie (who got so wrapped up on the rail he had people wondering what someone who looks like he might be in One Direction was doing on my rail asking him if I was his Dad), the very American Carlos Welch, and the very Croatian Tatjana Pasalic who kept the bloggers fed with info on me and brightened the rail on her break from her livestream duties.

Thursday June 25

Overnight I got a message through an intermediary from Pesh and his team saying they were interested in coming to some sort of chop arrangement. Since the WSOP does not facilitate chops, I won't say anything further on that.

Unfortunately, 6 hands in, I got it in slightly ahead with the underpair against the two overs, and lost the ugly way (I got counterfeited). While it would have been nice to win the bracelet and hear the national anthem written by my Grandad's cousin Peadar O'Kearney played at a bracelet ceremony for the first time since 2007, I was not as disappointed as might be expected. I genuinely felt I gave it my best shot and got my strategy right to the point of giving myself the biggest possible payday and chance to win, and I ran well at all crucial points up to the last flip, so I have no regrets. Pesh was a most deserving winner, and a gentleman. I'm pretty sure this won't be his last big result.

The support from back home (and indeed from non Irish friends) was truly overwhelming to the point that I simply couldn't keep up with it. Every few seconds a few more notifications buzzed in, so I put off individual responses until after the headsup battle. All I can say is the support people expressed truly moved and astonished me, and if I neglected to respond to any individual message, please forgive me on the basis of oversight rather than wilful ignorance.

Before moving on, I guess I should talk a bit about what the experience of playing for on such a big final table for a bracelet felt like. I always imagined if I ever found myself in such a position I'd be a lot more nervous than I actually was, and a lot more disappointed to fall one place short. In actual fact, it was probably the least nervous and most focused I've ever felt at a poker table. So intense was my concentration at every moment on my evolving reads on my opponents, the situations and my overall strategy that I basically pushed all other thoughts from my mind, including the size of the occasion, distractions from the rail, and the actual money involved. At one point Smidge asked me how much I had locked up and I wasn't able to tell him. While I had studied the payouts carefully to work out how big a factor ICM was at any given point, it was the relative rather than the actual amounts which determine this that registered in my mind. I'm not sure why I didn't anticipate this given similar results when the chips were down during my running career (I always seemed to be able to pull out my best performances when it mattered most in races where I stood a realistic chance of success) and my other competitive exploits, but you never really know how you're going to stand up to the pressure until you find yourself in it.

As far as disappointment goes, similar comments apply. I felt less disappointed at the end than I did when I busted in 3rd in the Fitz End of Month a few months ago. Obviously it would have been amazing to win a bracelet, but my overriding feeling was that I had given it my absolute best shot and there was nothing I could have done better or more. A mistake at any point could have seen me eliminated in 9th, 8th or whatever, and my conservative approach got me to within two flips of a bracelet having already locked up almost 300 grand. Andy Black always talks about the importance of not knocking yourself out when the big opportunity looms, and I saw at first hand that many on my final table seemed only to eager to do just that.

I'm not stupid or arrogant enough to think I played perfectly, but I do think I got as close as I could on the day. Once the dust has settled and I have enough distance to look back objectively, I will review the entire livestream to see what I can learn and analyse as best I can the close decisions. But even if I come to the conclusion that the 87s shove was a tad light, or the AQo and QJo folds a tad tight even with ICM, I cannot regret those decisions made in the heat of battle as they were made for very specific reasons and in every case I made what I believed to be the best decision rather than the safest or least controversial one. I didn't freeze up and fail to pull the trigger when I saw 87s having already decided that was strong enough to push. I have no doubt that had I not got lucky on the river I'd spend the rest of my poker life explaining that I hadn't just lost my mind with 8 high but made what I felt was clearly the best play, but had that been the exit hand, it's one I would happily have lived with. I also take heart that rather than always erring on the side of caution or courage, I made the light shove, the tight folds and the loose calls all as part of the same performance, each time believing them to be the best play. While it's nice that all the people whose opinions I respect the most praised my performance (and they're all people whose opinion I value precisely because they don't pull punches when they think I messed up), and I don't doubt there are those who would find much to criticise, ultimately as a poker player I answer first snd foremost to my biggest critic, myself.

After the payout, it felt very surreal to be walking back thru the Rio to the Gold Coast with so much cash in my little green turtle bag.

To be continued.....part 3 coming soon

Related reading/listening

- Livestream final table event 45, part 1 and part 2

- Strategy piece on bounty tournaments (Bluff Europe)
- Piece on studying poker (Bluff Europe)

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What happened in Vegas.....2015

This is my seventh WSOP campaign, and the other six have more or less stuck to the same script. The one where I arrive full of optimism and leave about a month later, with my tail between my legs and my bankroll depleted after a series of bricks.

Wednesday June 17

This year I decided to try to change the script, by arriving here in the middle of the series, doing a 12 day stint of sides, followed by a week in New York to decompress and recharge the batteries, before heading back to Vegas for the main event hopefully refreshed. I timed my arrival so I got there in time to play the Seniors event, even if that meant "celebrating" my 50th birthday alone in three airports, two aeroplanes, and a room in the Gold Coast. While my transatlantic crossing was not as eventful as some previous versions it was not entirely without incident either.

I thought I had left myself ample time to check in and clear customs and border security in Dublin airport, at least until I saw the check in queue.

So a bit of a sweat but everything seemed ok until I found myself at the head of the queue waiting for the large family in front of me to finish up their business at the counter. As numerous as they were it turned out their number was missing one, and that was the cause of the delay. One of the smaller sons had wandered off in search of pastures new, and we were all awaiting his return. By the time the little ba ba black sheep reappeared we had passed the time beyond which the check in employee could say anything to me other than "You'd better run" with more than a trace of panic in her voice.

Run I most certainly did, knowing that anything but the most trivial of delays at border and custom control would cause me to miss my flight. There's always a sweat and it looked at first as if the border guard needed more than a cursory examination but in the end another brisk jog got me to the gate on time. Incredibly the very same family who had caused the delay at check in had allowed one of their brood to wander off again, but at least this time the airline person had the gumption to wave me past them.

I met Andy Black's partner Nicoline in McCarran airport and we shared a cab to my hotel. My plan to get on Vegas time was to convert most of the cash I had brought into docket form (by registering for everything I intended to play for sure) and wander around the Rio. I was surprised how excited I felt to be back in Vegas, given my excitement has waned down the years to the point I didn't even bother coming last year.  I ran into Gavin "Gavinator" O'Rourke who was already deep in the Mix Max event he ended up final tabling.

Thursday June 18

I decided to take the day off, kinda, to be fresh for the Seniors event. I went for my first run in Vegas this year, went for breakfast with my friend Aseefo and his friend also called Aseefo (who ruefully reflected that it had been ill advised of them to specifically request the Muslim meal on the flight over), watched a few training videos and livestreams, dropped over to the Rio to see how Gav was getting on, and otherwise just chilled and made sure I got a good night's sleep ahead of the Seniors, which had an ungodly 10 AM start the following day.

Friday June 19

I was up early to get a run in before a hearty breakfast and be in my seat for the Seniors before the shuffle up and deal. I attacked the event with gusto, hoping to hit the ground running and build a stack quickly. 20 minutes in, I was down half a starting stack and starting to realise that trying to run over Seniors and make them fold anything that might be or improve to best at showdown is not a good strategy. Thankfully this realization arrived in time to prevent me from dusting off the other half, and a refined strategy of waiting for strong hands and betting them hard worked much better. I recovered to over three starting stacks near the end of the day when a couple of marginal spots I pushed ran into monsters. No regrets though as I felt this was a good time to try to press on with escalating blinds and antes. After the ropey start I was pleased with my performance: hopefully I'll remember to start more sedately in my next Seniors.

Smidge moved in to share my room with me until his girlfriend arrived a few days later. I got a message from the charismatic Tatjana Pasalic asking if I could come on the livestream as a guest commentator on the Mix Max final table, which by now featured Gavinator. Unfortunately my bustout came too late in the day for that to be possible.

Saturday June 20

My next event was the $1500 Extended Play, which was basically a standard 1500 side event but with 90 minute levels rather than 60. This time I built a stack reasonably uneventfully, until an eventful final hour saw me lose it all in a series of standard spots. There's been a lot of talk of "improved" WSOP structures this year with starting stacks of 5 times the buyin rather than 3 times previously. In my opinion, these changes have been overstated. I'd almost go so far as to call them illusory.

The way I look at it is under the old structure, you started with 4500 chips in a $1500 buyin. The first level being 25/25, this represented a starting stack of 180 big blinds. If you got to level 2 (25/50) with that, you now had 90 big blinds. Under the new structure, you may get more chips, but with no 25/25 level, not only are the big blind numbers reduced to 150 (level 1) and 75 (level 2), but the antes also kick in one level earlier too.

Sunday June 21

Already feeling a bit jaded with live poker after two full but ultimately frustrating days on the bounce, I decided to take a rest from live. My third scheduled side event was meant to be event 45, a standard 1500 side starting on Monday. Playing some small live one day event didn't seem as prudent as resting up to be fresh for the 1500, so I went for a run, a fruity breakfast, watched some more videos and livestreams, and then signed up to WSOP.com and did a Sunday grind. My only cash was in a freeroll, and the schedule is very withered compared to back home, but it's a good thing not to have to go completely cold turkey as far as online poker is concerned.

Before I went to bed, I got another message from Tasha asking if I could do guest commentary on either the Seniors or Super Seniors final table. Checking the schedule I opted for the Seniors event, figuring I could do it before the start of my next scheduled side event the following day, and still be able to play that unless it ran longer than expected.

Monday June 22

Up early again for another run and breakfast (are you seeing a pattern yet?), I listened to the latest Thinking Poker podcast, a solo Andrew Brokos effort. I could definitely have done without his a capella version of the theme music, but the content was exactly what I needed to hear at the time. Talking about his own side event campaign, he emphasised the importance of focusing on performance and decision making (both in terms of at the table and game selection) rather than outcomes. So success in a tournament is related to being able to say that it was indeed a good tournament to enter, and playing as best you can, rather than the actual result.

I had a blast in the commentary booth. Part of my preparation for the WSOP involved religiously listening to all the commentary by David and his various guests, so it was somewhat surreal to find myself there, but I gave it my best shot. As a recently turned senior, I talked a bit about the fact that I think online poker is missing a trick by focussing almost all of its marketing effort at the young male demographic. When the WSOP first introduced the Seniors event a few years ago, there was a lot of pessimistic speculation about the kind of numbers it might attract. In fact it was an overwhelming success right out of the gate, attracting thousands more runners than a normal 1k side event. The event has gone from strength to strength since, to the point that the WSOP decided to introduce a Super Seniors this year (for Over 65s), which also attracted more runners than most other side events. This proves there is a large older market out there that online poker is missing out on: a point reenforced when on my starting table the subject came up and all but one of the players at the table said they didn't play online because "that's for young guys". At a time when the online poker industry is scratching its head in the face of declining numbers, I can't help but feel they could learn a lot from other entertainment industries that rely on disposible incomes. The music, film and TV industries all target young people, but they also understand there's a large older market that's worth chasing. It seems bizarre to me that an industry that ultimately depends on customers with both time and disposible income to spend playing a game not only neglects the one group of people who have both in abundance (retirees), but almost seems to go out of its way to exclude and alienate them by hammering home the message that online poker is for 19 year olds living in their parents basement.

I had mentally set a cutoff time for late registering the $1500 side event. It wasn't looking good early on as there were no eliminations, and with 5 left about 30 minutes before my cutoff I was more or less resigned to skipping the event. But the Seniors suddenly went into overdrive and dropped from 5 to 1 in almost no time, so I was able to scoot off and late register Event 45. I ended up having reasons to thank the Seniors for their haste.

To be continued.....part 2 coming soon

Related reading/listening

- Chat with Ben Jenkins before I left for Vegas on the Full Tilt blog

- My Irish Open report for Bluff Europe

- Piece on game theory (Bluff Europe)

- My first stint in the commentary box on the Seniors final table with David Tuchman

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