Our Trip to the Macau

It’s taken the best part of 2 days but I am at last starting to feel human again after my little trip to Cork for the Betfair Live event, and a cracking little game of cards it was too. 204 turned up to the Macau to fight for a piece of the €120,000 prizepool and Galway was represented by 6 of its best and me.

So the magnificent 7 headed for Cork lead by their beloved talisman Fintan Gavin, and I swear if he would just throw in the towel and lose the comb over he would be the spit of Yul Brynner. He travelled down on the Friday night with young Frank Dunleavy and the rest of us would follow on Saturday morning travelling in pairs so as not to spook the locals. I was paired with John “I am telling you I am going to start running good sometime real soon and then you bastards better watch out” Costello. John was only available to make the trip because he had recently been dropped from his Junior B football team just before their appearance in this weekends county final, apparently is was all politics or so he claimed. Anyway it was a delightful story that made the 2 ½ hour drive feel like a stroll,

in the desert,

without water,

for a fucking year.

We were followed by a couple of real live ass kicking poker players, Derek "The Dangerous" Murray and Ronan "Take this filthy beer away and bring me the champagne" Gilligan, with Kieran Loverboy Furey taking up the rear with his better half keeping him company on the journey. What a sneaky sly dog that boy is, bringing his little lady away for a romantic 12 hours watching him play poker, it’s always the quiet ones eh.

Little did we know but our doom had been sealed long before we even hit the road, a sinister plot had been hatched by the overlords at Betfair which was clearly put in place to benefit the Scandi contingent that seemed to make up the majority of the qualifiers. Upon our arrival key members of our posse were presented with qualifiers lanyards in the guise of a gift, these were the golden tickets to the Betfair lounge and the endless ocean of free beer and wine. Like sailors being lured on to the rocks by the haunting songs of the sirens we never stood a chance. These are the kind of bastards that would offer Samson a complimentary haircut just before he entered a strong man tournament. I can’t be sure but I think some of us may have been trying to get the €500 entry fee back in beer because a few of us came damn close.

By midnight I was sitting in the bar of the hotel with my fellow Galwegians, with the exception of The Furious One who I assume was off dancing and romancing, and a fine collection of other top Irish players, Tom Hanlon, Nicky Power, Chris Dowling and many more. The Crested Ten and Prosecco was in full flow at this stage as were the stories of how everyone got eliminated, which for the most part were bloody hilarious. I think my favourite was Nicky’s, after working hard for 10 hours he had managed to get a nice stack together when he flopped top 2 pair and a guy open shoved 80k into him, Nicky called, his opponent showed his 5 hit flush draw, bye bye Nicky. I think he might have found a way to get his buy in back though, I have a vague memory that sometime near sunrise I made a €500 bet to play him in a game of golf in which we can only use an 8 iron and a putter for the entire round, Christ I need to stop drinking.

It was John “Remember that thing I said about running good, I think it might not start until next week” Costello that ploughed the lone furrow into day 2 and by God did he do us proud, 6 minutes in he jammed with A,K and was called by A, 10.

 At least we got back to Galway early.