Racing in Galway

I only played cash for a couple of hours over the weekend of the Waterford Masters, and despite losing in the game, I could still see that it was good value. I was too drunk to take advantage of it, but I’d like to think that if I’d put in a few sober sessions over the weekend then I could have done pretty well. With this in mind I decided to drive down to Galway over the racing week to play cash games for a couple of nights.

Despite my best intentions, it didn’t quite work out like that. Fintan [Gavin] decided to organise a €1,000 buy-in, winner-takes-all, single-table tournament in the Eglinton club and asked me if I fancied playing. It was a pretty tough field, but I still thought it would be a bit of value for me as there was €1,000 added by the club, and I thought I’d know that format as well as any of them. There was also the small matter that I was driving down that night and knew that I’d be one of the few sober players.

Things were going completely according to plan until with four players left, Roy Brindley raised all in first to speak, and I found 10-10 on the button. My tens were well ahead of his two under cards, but unfortunately Martin Silke who was big blind looked down to find J-J and they held up.

This left him heads up with Padraig [Parkinson] who went on to win the trophy after they’d done a bit of business. Despite being sober when I arrived in Galway at 9 p.m., I’d managed to drink myself into a pretty bad state by the time the tournament had finished, and either decided I was too drunk to play the cash game or else forgot to play the cash game. I’m not really sure which, and I actually had to double-check with Padraig the next day whether or not I had played.

I spent a lot of the next day in bed, then went for a couple of pints in the evening to prepare myself for the cash game. I’d heard that there had been a €38,000 pot the previous night (in a €5-€10 game), so I was a bit apprehensive about sitting down in this type of game. I was still determined to give it a go though, especially since I’d heard that Tom Hanlon, who I’d have been most worried about, had gone back home. I put in a good eight hour session and made around €3,500 after being stuck a few grand at the start, so it was a pretty decent night.

The game was playing much smaller than the previous night, but it was still pretty crazy. I made a couple of big calls (both for bets of around €600-700 on the river) in two pots when I could only beat a bluff — once holding a 9 on a J-J-9-X-X board, and another with K-10-10-3 on an A-K-9-8-7 board.

I was correct both times in that I was facing total bluffs, but unfortunately in the first case my opponent was bluffing with a better hand than me. I thought he’d missed a wrap after calling my bet on the J-9-X flop and he had, but unfortunately he was holding Q-10-10-8 and was ‘bluffing’ with a pair of tens. This is always a risk when you make a call holding less than top pair in Omaha, and in the second pot I knew that my opponent could easily have an ace or even a king with a better kicker and be thinking that he had to bluff to win the pot. Fortunately for me he had Q-Q-X-X and I ended up feeling pretty good instead of looking like a complete idiot.

It’s the first time I’ve been to Galway over the week of the races, and I couldn’t believe the buzz around the place. I’ll definitely try to get down for more than a couple of days next year.