IPC Report

What a hum dinger the IPC was, 310 runners in the main event, 160 in the €750, 116 in the €500 and more sit n’go action then you could shake a shitty stick at. The hangover hasn’t passed yet but I am starting to feel almost human again.

The weekend started of well with a Mega Sat on the Thursday that attracted 140 players, a good omen or what. 20 minutes into this I found myself sitting at the bar with Lawrence Gosney enjoying a pint. This is not a bad result as Lawrence is one of the great gentleman of the poker world, who loves a pint and a joke and absolutely hates poker stories, so much so that whenever a player, Paul “The Hangman, I know this should not surprise me but he has hangman business cards” for example, wandered by and decided to stop and tell us some riveting bad beat story, Lawrence would turn to me and ask my opinion on some feature of the building architecture. Harsh but fair I feel.

The main events started at 6 the following day and it was an absolute blast. I have never played in an event this big and deep stacked before, so I was happy to make it to day 2 ,especially considering I wasn't getting good cards. I got to meet and watch a lot of very good players in the course of the event and found most to be pleasant and full of chat. I am sure this changed when it started to get close to the money. I did encounter one incident of ugly behaviour when Stephen “The Brat” McLean threw all the toys out of the pram after a hand for no apparent reason, he did win the hand, and tore into an English guy at our table called Tikay, whom both before and after the incident seem to be nothing but a complete gent. He did have some connection with the SkyPoker team that was filming the event so I don’t fancy Chalk Dusts chances of appearing in too much of their coverage.

No sooner were we out of the Main Event then we were playing in the €750, hang the expense I’ll just pretend that it was someone else’s money. This I really enjoyed, I went really deep, just missed the money, and got really corked to not cash. It was a bit depressing but I played well and feel the cash is coming. I did have the pleasure of being at the same table as Padraig Parkinson for a few hours when we were down to 4 tables, and wow that was something to watch, I recommend it to everyone that wants to play poker. In 90% of the hands he played the cards were irrelevant, he would simple put people into impossible positions where they either give up a hand or gamble for it all with no real idea where they were in the hand. He pulled of a beautiful bluff on a German dude at the table who had he own cameraman filming his tournament. After the German folded Padraig showed the outrageous crap he had played with and the German’s head started to steam. As he sat there mumbling to himself Padraig said “Jasus you’re a hard man to read………. but your cameraman didn’t think much of your hand”, I nearly wet myself I laughed so hard, and needless to say filming stop immediately.

Later that night, in a haze of alcohol, I lost my hole playing notes poker with Pat O Callaghan, John Cullinane, Eoin Olin, Mike Lacy and Keith McInerney. It was 6 the following evening before I felt healthy enough to venture out into the fresh air. Myself and Conor “I can’t believe I came up here to play poker and somehow Fintan the bastard roped me into doing live updates on the forum for the weekend” Maguire hit the road for home. As I was leaving the Poker room in City West ,just as the €500 was getting under way, a tired and broken man, I heard the booming voice of Sligo John calling after me "Hey, Manus are you not playing this Mong Fest". I was never so happy to be leaving.What a beautiful description of an event. It doesn't matter if you are good, bad or just ugly, at this stage of the weekend your brain is a pile of Kentucky fried chicken and all the players would be much better off dragging their knuckles back to their cave and sleeping for a week. Like Racing has its Bumper, now for me the final day event of a poker festival will forever more be known as the Mong Fest.