[johnnybeef]

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I am sitting in a Trinity College computer lab waiting for my friend to get out of his lecture so I thought I'd write up a bit of a trip report about my time here so far and my first experience in an EPT event.

I have been in Dublin for a week and a half now mostly visiting a friend of mine who know goes to school here but I decided to come around the time that the EPT dublin event was on since I had been looking for a good opportunity to jump into major live tournaments (and I'm only 20).

Dublin is all about the nightlife. There are so many pubs and clubs here that you couldnt possible go to them all in a month. The details from most of my week leading up to the tournament are shady (for obvious reasons) so I'll skip ahead to the EPT weekend since that's probably most interesting to this group anyways.

I met AbelM and his entourage of dutch friends friday night for a few "pre-game" drinks before the tournament on saturday afternoon. We went to a few different places at the direction of our "tour guide" but they kept closing and kicking us out. Eventually we found a nice place and decided it would only be sensible to celebrate our EPT victories early with some Moet. Two of Abels friends were online qualifiers and were playing the tournament as well so we all toasted to our hopes for the final table. Then we made it an early night and called it quits around 2 or 2:30 to get some sleep.

Saturday I was almost late for the tournament due to getting lost somewhere in Dublin on a cab finding adventure after watching my friends band practice. Fortunatly the tournament was late starting so everything was ok. I introduced myself to Exitonly who wasnt hard to spot with his bright green hair and got my seat.

I was on the very top floor of the card club, the tournament was being run on 5 different floors to fit in all 250 runners. I didn't recognize anyone at my table which was a good thing but seat one had yet to show. It ended up being occupied by Isabelle mercier (I may get a lot of names wrong and spellings since I don't really know a lot of these people). She was apparently some kind of celebrity and had about a million pictures of her taken. The only big pot I played in the first three hours was also with her where I made a bluff raise on the turn and she put me in, bringing me down to about 5k in chips after a few hours of play (10k starting stacks).

Some big hands:

I was down to about 4.5k at 200/400/50 when the most aggresive player at the table opened for 1600 and I moved in with AQs in the CO. He called with A-10 my hand held up.

There was a severe food shortage and everyone was getting hungry. They werent serving dinner and the kitchen couldnt meet the demand so I had a BK burger delivered much to the envy of the rest of the table. Right as I took my first bite out table got broken.

I was moved down to the basement and had just started complaining about how i was moved in front of the blinds when I saw my first hand was KK utg +1, I raised and got reraised from the button. I counted down my call, then my stack and moved in. He called with AQs and doubled me up. The next hand I got AK and took the blinds and then the next hand The SB raised to 1600 and I moved in (He only had about 8k or so left), and he folded. So suddenly I had a healthy stack. This table was much tougher though, I had the "Martins poker" guys sitting to my left and there were a few other people I recognized but didn't know the names of. After the player with the AQ vs my KK busted Noah Boeken took his seat and unraked his mountain of chips. Now I had an aggresive big stack across the table from me and a loose very good big stack on my left.. it made for some good fun anyways.


Hmmm, I have more hands and stuff to talk about but I'm taking too long typing this up and I have to go so I'll skip to my boring bust out hand I guess.

After I was moved back to the basement I had several steal attempts picked off and was down to about 22k with 30minutes left in day 1. I pushed 10s utg+1 at 1k/2k/200 and was called by sunar surindi (sp?) who had AAs. Andy Black took a long time sweating his cards in the BB hoping for KKs so he could have a "tough call" and was joking around with sunar as to whether or not he should gamble (it was pretty obvious sunar had a huge hand). I couldnt suck out and was left with about 2k. I won my blind all in to quadruple up but my 10-7s from the CO couldnt beat the buttons AK and i was out in 45th.

Most of the fun trip report sort of stuff went on sunday night but the stories of alcoholism, Costa Rican businessman, Dutch profanities, failed bouncer payoffs, and crazy cash games will have to wait.

One last great quote from Abel on live PLO:

"You only get like 15 hands an hour so you have to play them all, and you know when you play junk hands.... you just gotta raise"

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this sounds ridiculously fun, im jealous, and coming with next time.