Irish Poker Cup

Hell of a weekend, an absolute humdinger, holy shit was I drunk on Saturday night, the Galway captain and I went on a little bit of a bender, as did most of the 310 player that had taken part in the weekends main event. The crack at the sit n’ go tables on Saturday night was fantastic, you certainly wouldn’t want to have been the sensitive type, as the offence was being piled on by the barrow load. I should apologise to the ginger from Wexford that I meet in the €200 multi table, I’m not going to, but I definitely should. I actually split 2 of the €200 multi tables, to salvage a weekend that was well and truly in the crapper, yeehaw.

The Highlights of the weekend for me were:

I got to meet the impresario for the first time since I pointed out a small weakness in his game on this blog a few weeks ago. As expected, he thanked me for the help and said he had been working on that part of his game ever since. We then decided that the best way to test Mr. L(en)’s new game was to have a last longer bet in the €400 freezeout on the Saturday. I unfortunately was unable to resist the urge to get the chips into the middle after playing so tight in the teams event, with the result that I was out after about 20 minutes.

This week’s event saw the unveiling of Ireland’s newest pro poker player, not so much a new player but a new name, yes ladies and gentlemen the player formally know as Tony “The Shafter” AKA Tony “The Cartoon” Rafter has , and this is very important, renamed HIMSELF, Tony “The Pirate, no I’m not taking the piss I’m deadly serious” Rafter. Where to start on this uummmmm. I have had a lot of nicknames over the past 30 or so years and they have rarely been complementary. Some examples would be, Shortfinge, Dom, Chops, Shithead and currently Duck, and these are the nice ones. All of these names have 1 thing in common, they were given to me by other people and this, as far as I can see, is the unbreakable rule when it comes to nicknames, you cannot give one to yourself. I mean I would much prefer to be called “El Bandito” then Duck, but what ya going to do. I don’t lay all of the blame with Tony “The Pirate, please try not to laugh in my face” Rafter, as we must remember that he is close personal friends with one of Irelands most famous players, Paul “The Hangman, this is actually a registered trade mark” Roper, who is currently trying to put together an Irish version of the Hendon Mob, I can only assume they will be called something like “The Irish X-Men” or “The Justice League”. I’m just waiting for the day he pays some guy to play theme music as he enters the poker room. But this is our big chance to help out. I think we should have a competition to name this Irish Hendon mob for “The Hangman, yes I actually paid a film crew to follow me around Monte Carlo” Roper. I will start a thread on the Irishpokerforum.ie. and Boards. Please post any suggestions there.

Mr N(icky), I can only assume, was the most disappointed man in the Citywest, not only was his the first team to be completely eliminated from the event, but it appears that due to a lack of communication about a planned protest of the event by the Limerick team over an extra €10 on the registration fee, 2 of there team, the Brothers C(osgrove) chained themselves to the railing outside the casino in Galway and missed the event completely (one can only assume there is a Darwin award somewhere in their future). But despite this massive stroke of good fortune which allowed them to replace the Brothers C(osgrove) with 2 random people off the street, the team simply underperformed. I can only assume that Mr. N(icky) will soon announce his resignation a Limerick Captain and not make himself available for selection for next years team after what has been described by some as, "a complete failure as a player and a leader".

By the way Leitrim won the team event.

Oh ya, nearly forgot, the 20 minutes I lasted in the €400 was 15 minutes longer then the impresario. Thanks Mr L(en).