Another fantastic APAT event.
Because of work and wedding commitments we didn't arrive until late on Saturday evening. In fact we didn't even get out of our suits and felt extremely over dressed for the occasion. After checking how the people in 1A were getting on, we retired to the bar to play catch up. We had already regged for the £30 so whilst sampling the delights of NFL we played a wee bit of poker.
I bubbled the money for 13th place when a well thought out uber aggressive shove was totally not respected. I suppose I could have held out for the bottom end of the money but was really looking for the win.
We retired to the bar and decided, in the interests of the noble science of drinking, to see if changing the sequence of tequila slammers made any difference. So after the traditional Salt, Tequila, Lemon was debated the other sequences were tried. Six shots later it was decided that NFSOL was the way to go.
Not a great way to prepare for the Main Event but hey ho staggered into bed at approximately 5am.
Sunday morning breakfast consisted of a pint of Fosters and settled the nerves. The day was largely uneventful as I gradually built my stack up by playing, in my mind, better poker than I have played in a long while. I don't think I was ever behind when all in towards the end of the day, and I didn't run into any bad luck. You don't always need good luck, just not bad luck. When the whistle went for the end of day 1B I was sitting on 92,800. I was delighted when the wee man also made day 2 with a stack of around 48k.
Deciding that a late night was not a good idea we headed back to the hotel around 2am. When we were turning into the hotel car park there was a taxi parked outside the door with no one in it. We paid off our taxi and were wandering towards the door when we heard the dulcet tones of none other that Laxie.
We walked into the foyer to see Dawn remonstrating with a taxi driver whilst two burly porters looked on with bemusement.
Driver: "You owe me £3.50"
Dawn: "Bbbbbye Bbyee" whilst telling the burly porters they were lovely
Me: "What's the problem?"
Driver: "This lady owes me money, do you know her"
Me: "As she owes you money, not that well to be honest"
Dawn: "bbbye bbbye" whilst still telling the burley porters that they were lovely.
Driver: "I will find out where you live"
Me: "Good luck with that" (People with maps have failed to Knocknagree).
I walked over to the taxi driver and escorted him outside.
"Take the loss son, you are not going to win this one" with a few choice words he got into his taxi and drove off snarling.
Monday dawned and after extracting Dawn from her room we headed for a bite of lunch in Frankie & Benny's before the start of Day 2. The poker went well to be honest and I kept out of trouble and built my stack slowly up to 115k. I was on the right of the eventual winner for ages and he was playing aggressive and was hard to get past. Then I got into a worse position when Wayne & Foggy joined the table. I had three huge stacks now to my left and they were going to be hard to get by.
I was content when the money bubble burst and was still bouncing around 110k by claiming blinds now and again when my QQ was out drawn by short stack AJ push and I was down to 75k. No panic for a while but the blinds were 4000/8000/600 and when I found AK UTG I pushed them all in. Stuart in the SB called with a similar stack and with the BB out of it he tabled 88. I missed and took a walk.
Pleased with the way I played and pleased with the cash. The wee man went out shortly after when his QQ was beaten by Rodders 88 with a flopped 8. Something about 8's and the Smyth's. Pleased that Ger cashed he is great company and deserved that run.
Well done to the Welsh team, great people and well done to the Canadians for the silver (bragging rights in the Shell club FML)
Well done to all the medallists in all the disciplines.
Great to meet up with everyone once more as ever and I really look forward to these events.
Great organisation from DTD and, as ever, tremendous work from the APAT team who never flagged and kept the whole thing going.
Fantastic time, fantastic people, bring on Dublin.
Priceless
Ger
