In August every year, My home city of Edinburgh and The Lothians, doubles in size from about 500,000 to just over 1 million people for the entirety of the month, largely due to the popularity of its many International Festivals.
This year with the unfortunate ‘threat’ of terrorist activity on continental Europe and North Africa, you definitely get the feeling that more and more UK & Irish residents are staying at home than in years gone by, forsaking the allure of the sun for the ‘safety’ of home shores.
Edinburgh actually feels as if it’s tripled in size this year, and I’ve never seen such a show of strength from a booming Chinese economy, that I also witnessed in Dublin too, albeit to a slightly lesser extent.
Anyway, we usually manage to fit in a weekly trip to Ireland at least once a year, around about September or October. We always make sure to spend the last 3 or 4 days with family up in Donegal and try to visit different places for 2 or 3 days beforehand. Previous excursions (and the pokers) have taken me to Wexford, Waterford, Limerick, Galway and Sligo to name but a few.
This year it was 2 days in Dublin, a City who’s airport I’ve passed through on several occasions before, but never really had enough down time to see it properly.
2 Years ago we had about 10 hours downtime in between flights, where we nipped into town for the day and had some good food and drink before coming back up the road for our connecting flight. Its airport is especially good for anyone flying to The States as you get all the immigration clearance and customs done on this side of the pond and basically then just hop off at JFK, far easier than connecting via London or Amsterdam then going through US customs over there.
This year we decided to go in the middle of August, thus killing 2 birds with the 1 stone. Out of a jam packed Edinburgh for a week and onto a nice little break in Ireland. Dublin was probably just as busy as Edinburgh ha ha, yet again another sign of people staying closer to home no doubt.
Our Hotel was up near Glasnevin Cemetery, so it was pretty interesting (on a scorching hot 1st day), to go inside and visit some very famous Irish graves, Michael Collins, Éamon de Valera , Kevin Barry, Daniel O'Connell et al.
A guide was commentating to a group of about a dozen people to our left (anti clockwise a bit, behind Kevin Barry’s memorial), we shuffled over to hear what he was saying….
I’m pretty sure I heard him say something about a tin of Guinness being left on Brendan Behan’s grave on the first Saturday of every month or something not too dissimilar...
He then quipped – ‘Does anyone know what this guy is famous for?’ as he pointed to a rather non-descript looking gravestone (in comparison to some of the more grandiose monuments within) to his left.
None of us had a clue, but someone in the group of a dozen then answered – ‘He wrote The National Anthem!’.
This brought a smile to my face, as I remembered Dara O'Kearney mentioning this (within the last year) somewhere in his blog http://dokearney.blogspot.co.uk/, that one of his close relatives helped contribute to The National Anthem!
Here I was in the middle of a humungous cemetery in Dublin (whilst DOKE was out of the Country on poker duty), and this guide was providing some sort of ‘tenuous’ connection between us, (or so it felt).
How many famous ‘residents’ within Glasnevin Cemetery can DOKE have strong family ties with, (probably several…) and what are the odds of the very first question I hear getting answered being such a person?
It came pretty close to turning Atheist me back into a Roman Catholic. :-)
(Maybe it’s DOKE that’s leaving Brendan Behan his monthly tin of Guinness? Ha, ha).
Anyway, the pokers:
Visit 1
€55 Hold'em NL Double Chance Freezeout – 14K stack + 2K early bird
Got down to the Fitzwilliam Club at about 07:40pm.for the 8pm start on Tues 16/08/2016
Girl on desk couldn’t locate my online application form that I’d submitted 2 weeks earlier, so was not a great start, (they have a bit of an early bird bonus, which was of more concern to me than the form).
I told her that I’d received an email only last week with the ‘missing’ application form in PDF attachment format just waiting to be signed and awaiting my passport photographic ID.
(Because I intended to go out for a few drinks after playing poker, I had left my tablet back at the hotel as I didn’t want to be carrying it about with me, and I never do email on my phone).
After about 10 minutes with still no sign of it, she eventually asked me to fill out a paper one.
About 2 years ago to my utter shock and dismay, and completely out of the blue, my optician casually informed me that he’d also be prescribing me reading glasses to go along with my normal prescription!
I’d been blissfully swapping between contact lenses and specs for about 20 years with absolutely no hassle.
I used to smirk at those characters trying to read newspapers that were stretched at a full arm’s length away from themselves, I don’t anymore ha ha.
I always wear contact lenses when playing live poker, so looking down at that form was a bit of a blur until my eyes adjusted, I eventually managed to fill it out and got myself signed in and made my way upstairs.
Nothing much exciting happened for the first few orbits, then I min opened KK UTG at BB 100, a very solemn looking guy then 3bet me to 800, (normally we’d be expecting closer to 500), we 4bet to 1.9K and solemn looking guy insta 5bet jammed for close to 7K!
I announced ‘Call’.
(I still had a blue 7K chip that wasn’t in play yet if he busted me, this more often than not will be AA when they jam so quickly, but will be QQ, possibly even JJ sometimes too. We block and crush AK).
Solemn looking guy tables Big Slick.
Ace right in the door on the flop, ouch.
We put the blue chip into play and get back upon the horse.
Again nothing really exciting happens over the next few levels, it’s all pretty standard.
So I’m nursing a circa 12x-15x stack @ BB 300 or 400 level, with the BTN coming to me next hand when the table breaks and I’m moved into the BB at the new table, (Fáilte!).
A girl who appears to be way more interested in super-fast texting on her phone is saying to someone beside here that she 'just really wants to go home', jams 8x from early pos and it’s back on me.
I’d not normally take this spot with KJo, but given what she had just been saying, I asked how much and called. She tabled 99 and we binked a Jack on the turn.
So we’re down to about 20 left from 88 runners, 9 get paid and if my memory serves me correctly there was about €1.5K up top.
It’s a little bit later now and I’ve been moved to a new table. There's an incredibly fishy drunken, heavily tattooed Irish woman (40-45 ish). to my immediate left who never stops talking or asking the dealer ‘How much for me?’.
She’s got a very big chip stack, that looks more like chips in the middle of a pot, due to the fact that she’s not really stacked them, they look more like a bag of spilled coins. Her pack of 20 Mayfair fags and lighter sit proudly on top of them!
She habitually flats any opens and over bets most flops that are X’d to her. She keeps raking in the chips without showdown.
I’ve now got a 20x stack, and min open 88 from the HJ at BB 1.4K and the drunken Irish woman flats from the CO.
We are HU. I X a flop of 779r. She immediately ‘pushes’ a pile of chips into the middle of a 6.5K pot.
I ask the dealer ‘How much?’ and he replies ‘9K’
This obviously doesn’t make a lot of sense, and I pretty quickly announce that ‘I’m all in’.
If she’s really over betting the pot with 7x or any monsters, then good luck to her, GG, but it’s highly unlikely, it weighs itself more towards a possible GS draw (which we’re blocking and crippling), or possibly 1 or/with 2 over cards, or just taking my X for weakness. Having said that, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised to see her doing this with 9x all the same, especially A9, so I rather sheepishly awaited her reply with my ears pricked as I looked straight ahead…
To my utter horror, she immediately announced ‘I Call! How much is it for me?’
I flip over my 88 and she tables A8o!
She then binks her 3 outer right in the door on the turn.
A guy to my immediate right blurts out – ‘OMG, That’s just fkn brutal…..’
Drunken tattooed woman, chirps in with – ‘Oh, I’m really, really sorry love!…..’
Sadly, it wasn’t my snout at the trough hoovering up the 40x+ pot as I glanced over at my new favourite drunken tattooed Irish Lady!
I said my Goodbyes to the table, and exited into the warm Dublin night.
‘Welcome to The Dublin pokers ya cunt!’ Ha ha.
Visit 2
€25 Hold'em NL Multi-rebuy - 5K stack + 2K early bird
Ultra-rainy day and night, so didn’t get there until about 08:15pm.
Was given a 7K stack. A little old Irish woman to my immediate right started looking at my stack ‘suspiciously’.
Eventually she chirped up ‘Did ya get the extra 2 blue chips downstairs?’
I’d read online, about 2K early bird, but wasn’t entirely sure when it ‘expired’ so countered her inquisitiveness with:
‘I’m not from around here sweetheart, I’m pretty much soaked to the bone, all I want to do is play some poker, I don’t even know the value of the chips! Are we good to go?’ I replied.
‘No, no, sure you’re grand, you’re grand’ she answered me.
A super fish (with a very big stack) in mid to early position was opening to 4x/5x at BB 100.
I’d then seen him X/F 2 low flops with 2 callers.
When the BB had risen to 150 he had upped his opening to 6x UTG.
This particular hand got to showdown on the river and he tabled AJo v AQo, losing a good chunk of his stack through stupidly barrelling full pot on all streets on A53r 7 Q.
Next hand I min opened 66 from mid pos at BB 150 and the super fish flatted in the BB.
The flop came 456 (2F).
I barrelled half pot and he flatted.
King on turn (no completed flush), that cards usually more likely to have helped our range than the super fish, so I tentatively fired out another half pot barrel fully expecting our well to have ran dry.
To my delight he X jammed me.
I insta called and he showed me K4o, and we held.
A guy to my immediate left continually kept muttering/whispering ‘I’ve got a premium (Ace)’ regularly over the next 4 or 5 hands. He’d then ‘proudly’ flash the Ace over at the little old Irish woman to my right, who held her cards up high, as if she were reading a newspaper.
To be fair to him, he only did this when both my own and the little old lady’s hands had been folded, but it was still pretty much very bizarre behaviour. He also took great delight in showing that he was capable of folding Ax pre and post flop too sometimes for some reason ha ha.
A few hands later I flatted an early pos min opener from mid pos with TJs and the ‘The Mutterer’ did likewise.
The flop came Q87 (My 2F draw).
Early pos X’d, I bet half pot and ‘The Mutterer’ raised to more than 2x pot!, early pos folded.
It was back on me.
My head was sayng – ‘Just fold, he’s obviously got AQ type of hand at the very least…..’
My heart was saying – ‘He’s an irritant, we’re going to have close to 50% equity here at least (most of the time), call and we’ll probably be chip leader (or very close to), and we do have some (albeit incredibly slim), fold equity occasionaly.
‘I’m all in’ - I announced.
‘The Mutterer’ immediately replied – ‘Call!’
I looked at him and said – ‘I’ve a Flush Draw and GS…’
He proudly replied ‘Nut Flush Draw and one pair!’ and slammed down his A8s, ha ha.
So from approximately 50%, our equity was down to just over half of that.
No off suit 9, Ten or Jack arrived and the pot winged it’s way over to ‘The Mutterer’, sigh...
I rebought (you only get 5K in chips) but couldn’t really get anything going with the 15 min blind levels.
I got moved to another table where I done a stop n go from the BB with my 11x stack and KTs over a UTG min opener.
The flop came J42 (My 2F draw).
I X jammed into a QQ caller and bricked my 50%er
Blinds we’re now at BB 600, so it was pretty much futile rebuying again for only about 8x.
It was goodnight to The Dublin pokers for me.
In summation, the Fitzwilliam Club is a fine place to play poker, being Ireland you’ll have a great laugh with the many many wide and varied characters you’ll bump into. Of all my Irish poker jaunts, this, by a country mile had the largest population of fish that I’ve probably ever come across anywhere, Galway and Limerick poker rooms were way more stronger.
Obviously Ireland and particularly Dublin, has it’s fair share of poker bosses too. My comments about the fish are in no way intended to be disparaging to Dublin poker, it’s just how I seen it.
One thing’s for sure, as long as the doors of The Fitzwilliam Casino and Card Club Dublin are open, Dara O'Kearney will never go hungry!
