Ulster Cup Report

carfax

Ulster Cup Report; Cavan Nov 12th ’05

You could feel it in the air. The buzz, the electricity, it was the Slieve ‘be jaysus there it is’ Russell Hotel in Co. Cavan. The tournament kicked off a little late but we can’t place all of the blame on the shoulders of Fintan and Donal. Actually no wait, we can.

128 players took their seats and 13 of the finest dealers in the country shuffled up and did what they do best. Personally I felt very fresh on this Saturday afternoon. I made sure I was well rested because I knew it was going to be a tough field.

There were a few early casualties. The first being from my table when a player got a little excited with Q-K against Kevin Fitzpatrick’s A-A. Kevin is one of the best tournament players around and he was gifted a double up on the very first hand. I knew one thing for sure, I had to stay away from him.

So I slowly began to build a chip stack. Everything was going grand until about five or six levels in when this hand developed;
I raised from early position with Q-Q. The only call came from the big blind who had about the same amount of chips as I did (roughly 16,000).
The flop came 7-8-9 and I thought “Oh ****”. It was very possible the big blind had called with 10-J.

I often give advice to sound players and one of the things I often say is to stick to your instinct. Well my gut feeling here was that I was in trouble. Unfortunately I needed to commit half of my chips in the pot before I got away from it. Sometimes its very easy to give advice but far more difficult to listen to it.

I released the hand after my opponent went all-in. I still had about seven or eight thousand but that was below average.

After the dinner break I was moved to another table with about 10,000 in chips. The blinds seemed monstrous to me at this stage. After getting my hand caught in the cookie jar I was again moved to a new table with about 7,500 chips.

Now I was in trouble but after stealing one or two blinds with all-in moves I found a hand and doubled up (albeit in a coin flip situation) to about 21,000. The very next hand is one that I will never forget;
I raised from first position with A-Q. With the blinds at 400-800 and a running ante of 50 I made it 2,500 to play. One player called from a middle spot and the big blind went all-in for 7,500. Now I had a bit of a think.
The all-in player was short stacked and also a beginner. I reasoned that I had him beat comprehensively. But the player who had called from middle position for 2,500 was something different. The guy was trying to look like Phil Helmuth but because of a split second tell I reasoned that he was weak and I moved all-in for 21,000.
My intention here was to isolate the all-in short stack with the other 2,500 call bumping up the pot for value. I only wanted to have to beat one player. But it didn’t work out that way.
The player who had called from middle position for 2,500 now invested another 18,500 (which was most of his stack) with an A-2.
There was over 50,000 in the pot and when the player from the big blind turned over Q-K I couldn’t believe the race I was in. Thankfully every single one of us failed to improve and I took down the pot.
With about 60 or 70 players left at this stage I suddenly had a very comfortable chip stack.

When I review my play over the course of the tournament I can be reasonably happy. There were a few patches in which I made some bad mistakes especially later on. I managed to finish fifth overall but the most important thing I can take from this is that I need to stick to my instincts in future and be able to get away from dangerous pots without losing too many chips.

The 18 players to cash were as follows;
1st Patrick Mc Fadden € 9250
2nd Ivan Donaghy € 9250
3rd Kevin Fitzpatrick € 5000
4th Aidan Carson € 3500
5th Stephen Mc Lean € 2750
6th Jim Mc Govern € 2000
7th Brendan McKenna € 1750
8th Dympna Furey € 1400
9th Mickey Murray € 1000
10th Sean Donaldson € 1000
11th Paul Quigg € 1000
12th Philip Rosenberg € 1000
13th Peter Mc Donagh € 1000
14th Glen Mc Cabe € 1000
15th Paul Mc Murrough € 500
16th David Higgins € 500
17th Barry Heirson € 500
18th Damian Mc Fall € 500

Stephen Mc Lean represents Irish Poker Events…www.pokerevents.ie... You can contact him by email at stephen@pokerevents.ie.

DeVore

Carfax, are you Stephen? (I'm presuming so!)

Nice report, I'm working on my opus from Limerick.

DeV.