blog before bedtime...

Back in sunny Drogheda, the world series of poker adventure is over for 2005 but I have a strong feeling that is only the beginning of an interesting year for irish poker. Firstly I would like to give a personal congrats to Andy Black for his WSOP performance, he was easily the player of the tournament and that is a view shared by all the people I met at Binions on the final two days, including a certain Mr Hellmuth.

My own personal two weeks was one of mixed feelings and results. Poker-wise it was terrible, I played two tournaments and 5 cash game sessions, I bombed out of both tournaments, one to a real bad beat and the other I was a big pre-flop favourite. I only won in 1 of the cash games after being up in all the games at one point or another. In fact in nearly all the cash games I got off to a great start before losing monster pots. The worst was just after Andy was knocked out of the WSOP and I was playing 2-5 NL. I had started well moving my stack from $500 up to $700 with some solid play and then it got messy. I decided to call a $20 raise with 6 3 off suit. Well there were 4 other callers already! I got a dream flop of 6 3 9. I was first to act and bet out $30 to see what happened, I had a feeling I was going to get re-raised by an overpair. The original raiser called and the button raised it another $100. I was pretty sure that either he was the over pair or else he had A9s. I am more worried about the original raiser who flatcalled, he had about $200 in chips in front of him (or so I thought) and this led me to believe he did not have a set as he did not have enough to money to scare off an overpair. I believed he would have moved in with a set or at least raised so I went with my feelings and moved in. Original raiser dude moved his chips aside to show a wad of notes equalling about $5k and thought for about 3 minutes before calling with the immortal words 'I think you have a set but I can't let it go...'. The button folded his A9 face up and my opponent flipped pocket Kings. I like my position now as he needs a 9 (one of which is gone), a King or the board to pair the turn and river to win. Of course the board pairs the turn and river and I am potless again! Another big pot earlier in the week saw me put in a big raise only to be called by A3s, I flopped a set and she flopped a flush, I almost folded even though I had the odds to call her all in as I knew I was behind but I couldn't and as usual I never hit my outs (unlike my opponents when the situation is reversed!)

The other bummer of trip was having my laptop stolen from the press room on the second day. That left us with just Tom's steam driven Dell and that was the reason we did not have as much multimedia content posted as we would have liked. Just to rub it in, I brought some stuff to Binions on the second last day in the bag for the stolen laptop and some fecker stole the empty bag!

Overall though the trip was excellent. being involved so closely with the biggest event in history was amazing. We met some really great people, there are far too many to list but the picks of the bunch were Pauly, Dan, Otis, the gutshot crew, Phil Gordon, Andy Bloch, Robert from The Hendon Mob (he does far more work than Barny, Joe , Ram or Ross) and as per usual the Blondepoker team of Tikay and Jen were gems.

Also I solidified my friendships with a lot of the Irish players. I had only known most of them as players and only ever met them at the tables but after Vegas I feel I can now count them as friends (until I meet them at a poker table again). I also briefly met Scott Gallant, better known as Doubleas to blog readers, he was very unlucky not to become the first blogger WSOP bracelet winner in the $1500 event, check his blog for a blow by blow account.

That was my trip to Sin City, losing at poker and working 16 hour days following the Irish poker heroes. There is a lot more juicy stuff I could write about some of the things that I witnessed but you know what they say - 'What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas'. Plus I may recoup my poker losses via blackmail!

Antesup will begin to update again as soon as Tom gets back and tells me the new FTP password (we had to change it when my laptop was nicked and I forgot to ask what it was changed to!)

I am off to bed at 2.30PM, damn jetlag.