DUBLIN BELLYBUSTERS

They tried to make me go to Rehab but I said No, No..., no wait, that's the wrong one! (At least I hope it is!)

For the past eight days, I have been chasing my losses in an effort to avoid my first negative month in over two years. Well, thanks to a 5th place finish in the $5K Guarantee PLHE tourney tonight, I can proudly declare that I am 'Back to Black' for August. In the words of George W. Bush from his famous speech aboard the USS Lincoln on May 1st 2003:

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

Exactly 7 days ago, I set myself a goal:

Make August a positive month and thus avoid having my first negative month since May '07.

I was almost $4500 in the hole and enduring one of my biggest ever slumps but now, with 4 days remaining, I have put myself in with a real chance of completing my mission. Propelled by yesterday's $2K+ feast, I am now on the brink of positivity. I only need to make another $200 to be back to black.

Several hours ago, midway through my poker session, I took the nastiest of bad beats. Were my aces cracked by 23? Was my nut-straight runner-runner flushed? Was I river one-outed? None of the above...

There was a knock at my door. Since I live in an apartment and there was no buzz of the doorbell, I assumed it was someone from within the building. (Ye know, one of those cup of sugar scenarios) Being the miserable bastard that I am, I ignored it. (I don't have any sugar in the cupboard in any case) I was busy with my games and assumed that it wasn't important. Five minutes later, there was another knock. I begrudgingly got out of bed and made my way to the door. "Hello", I said. "Hey", said a man's voice, "Post-man here, I have a package for you". "Hmmm...", I thought, "maybe Full Tilt have finally sent me my fancy clothes for the Barcelona Event" and I opened the door.

"TV Licence Inspector here", said the man.

Fuckety-Fuck! After a few questions, he gave me four weeks to cough up the dough. I closed the door and cursed my poxy luck. Having successfully dodged this bloke for 9 years, he finally got me!

I just came 6th in the $18K Guarantee for just over $1K. I held a massive chip-lead with 11 players remaining but lost a huge flip versus the guy in 2nd place. If my AQ beats his 55, I would have been out of sight with over 40% of the chips in play. As it turned out, I got to the final table 4th in chips and was 3rd of 6 remaining when the weirdest hand changed the balance of the table.

Three of my opponents got it all-in and a fourth commit about a third of his stack pre-flop before folding. If the big-stack's AK wins, then two players would be eliminated. However, the short-stack's KQ somehow emerges victorious as he almost quintuples up with the third player taking the side-pot from the big-stack. In the blink of an eye, I went from 3rd of 6 (and looking like 3rd of 4) to 6th of 6. Two hands later, I picked up 88 in the SB. The button made it 8K and I shoved my remaining 55K. He insta-called with Kings and rightly held.

I am hugely disappointed at the outcome as, with 11 left, I believed that a top3 finish was inevitable. However, I am simultaneously buoyed by the result, happy to have made a final table and optimistic for the days ahead. Victory would have instantly erased the misery of the past 4 days but the 6th place finish gives me my first positive day this week. I'm not back in the black yet but at least I'm finally going in the right direction.

July was a super-duper month on the tables. Without hitting any particularly big scores, I grinded out my best month to date, crossing the 5-figure mark for only the fourth time. The reason? I feasted the $69 45-player games to the tune of $8K in just 160 games. Michelle also enjoyed a fantastic month, a $1600 first place finish in a 900 player $10KO propelling her to her second-best month to date.

August has so far been a smidge less than super-duper. My worst day ever on August 17th has been compounded by two further losing days. I am currently down $3500 for the month and am staring down the barrel of my first negative month since May 2007. Bizarrely, I'm handling it fine. Don't get me wrong, my wall has been punched more than a few times and I have indulged in several sweary streams of consciousness but beyond my immediate outbursts, I can honestly say that I have not let the bad run dampen my spirits. The sessions end and I don't dwell on them. The bad runs are meant to happen and I know I was due one after three outstanding back-to-back months. Longterm, you get what you deserve in poker. Your expectation is dictated by your quality of play. The amount of money you will make is, in a sense, pre-destined. I have definitely run above expectation recently so this is just the poker gods doing some course-correcting.

My mission for the next 10 days is simple. Get back into the Black! The three things that will help to make this happen are as follows:
1. Play well
2. Be extra-vigilant with regard to bankroll management
3. Do not let Dr Fill influence my decisions

The most important of these is obviously 3. So far in the last two weeks, I have turned to Fill in a couple of key moments, moments of extreme difficulty, moments where the difference between the right and wrong decision were several hundreds of dollars. In each of these moments, he has told me what he would do. In each of these moments, I have asked him for a reason. In each of these moments, he has given compelling reasons, reasons like:

"I'm not good enough to fold there"
"I go all-in there because there's a chance I'm winning"
"I call there because I'm a donk"

In each of these moments, I did what he suggested and in each of these moments, I lost. On reflection, they weren't exactly airtight arguments.

Patrick came to watch the end of my cricket match and enjoy a few pints with myself and a few of the lads in the bar. Somehow the subject got on to my pathetic fielding effort in the last half hour of the game (two balls somehow found their way through my long barrier and 'Sydney Harbour Bridge' dive at extra-cover). Patrick accused me of looking dreadfully unfit and I explained to him that I was carrying a strained rotator cuff and pulled achilles. He laughed and said "Yeah, whatever, you're just unfit!". I said "Fuck you, I guarantee you I'm fitter than I look!" He said "I bet you couldn't do 50 sit-ups." I said "Fuck you, I could do 100". He said " No chance!" and everyone at the table agreed with him. I jumped out of my seat (forgetting momentarily about my dodgy achilles) and said "Fuck all you guys, I'll do them right now!" Fill laughed and tossed out 10-1 odds. I took my €10 to his €100 and the challlenge was set...

Day 12: Friday, July 31st, 2009
In the afternoon, we had a scrumptious late-lunch in 'The Bistro'. In the evening, Nick decided to put in another online session while Patrick and I headed out to Dakota (Late Bar) and then later, The Sporting Emporium with Dave 'Thefloof' Block and his better half, Tanya 'Themooshy' Holbrook. Continuing his hot streak from the Colossus Casino a week earlier, Blockey more than doubled up for the session but unfortunately, Tanya's first casino poker experience was not a profitable baptism of fire and she lost her buy-in. Patrick was on fire, doubling up early and then raping me for a €500 pot after we got it all-in pre-flop QQ to AK (we took insurance for €100 so it wasn't too brutal for the loser). Despite being down €400 in the first half hour, I came back to make a small profit (€150) by the end of the night.

Day 13: Saturday, August 1st, 2009
The lads played the €250 buy-in game in The Sporting Emporium while I played cricket. It was a super-deep-stacked structure so I expected them to be home in the wee hours. Imagine my surprise when the doorbell rang at 8.30pm. "I was chip-leader after 30 minutes and and the second person eliminated", said Patrick and he ran through some of his key hands. "How was Nick doing when you left?", I asked. "Decent, I guess. He was short at the first break but then doubled a couple of times. Then, just as I was leaving, he knocked someone out. I think he had like 30-35 big blinds." Imagine our surprise when the doorbell rang at 8.45pm.

Day 10: Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
Staring at the movements of a shark as he swam menacingly around the two-storey fish-tank that surrounded us, Patrick and I made pithy poker references while Nick contemplated the consequences of taking a sledgehammer to the glass. Needless to say, he was horribly hungover when we woke at 2pm but unsympathetically, we still dragged him with us to see San Sebastian's famous Aquarium.

Late-lunch at a tapas bar put Patrick and I in the mood for a swim and Nick in the mood for a siesta. A relaxing evening followed and it was 10pm before we headed out. Dinner was washed down with a couple of drinks and a couple of sleeping tablets (Nick blatantly ignoring the recommended dosage coz they were 'pussy European pills') in preparation of the next day's early start. Patrick and I bet €25 on whether Nick would still be conscious by the time we got home and we took off for a fully-clothed stroll down the beach, wishing a fond farewell to the city that provided us with good times and hilarious memories. As we neared the hotel, Nick was holing up surprisingly well and Patrick conceded defeat. I offered him 'double or quits' on a coin-toss. He chose heads, it came up heads and I cursed my wretched luck.

Day 11: Thursday, July 30th, 2009
We got up early and took a taxi to Biarritz airport where we caught a flight to Dublin. Having not played poker in almost 4 days (Nick definitely sneaked in a game or two on the dodgy hotel connection), we all decided it was a good night to order in some thai food and hit the online tables. By the end of the night, Patrick and I were up 1K and Nick was up 2K. I made my money grinding some SNGs but it could have been a big night for both Nick and Patrick who both went deep in MTTs only to both take bad beats early on the final tables.

Day 9: Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
All attempts at an early start were futile. We dragged ourselves out of bed at 1pm, showered and headed out into the beautiful sunny day. A Tapas Lunch overlooking the bay was just the kick-start we all needed. Patrick was particularly dopey as his 'allergies' kept him awake much of the night, tossing and turning (probably more of the former) in the fold-out bed which he bizarrely insta-claimed on our arrival, a schoolboy error which he almost insta-regretted!

After lunch, we took the Funicular up the hill to the kids carnival. A couple of rounds of beers and pacharans later, we were ready for some prop-bet tomfoolery. Patrick beat me by 2 seconds on the aqua-bumper car time trials (although I did whack into the greater number of six-year old children), we drew level in the mallet-swinging strength contest (admittedly his effort appeared more manly as he didn't scream out in pain and claim possible broken fingers) and sadly, we couldn't think of a way to bet on the trampolining!

Fearing our pasty white skin was being incrementally fried by the afternoon sun, Patrick and I made the case to Nick that we should descend the mountain. We headed back to the hotel for towels, grabbed sun-screen from the farmacia and made our way down to the beach for a swim.

Adorning my newly purchased James Bond (Daniel Craig) swim-trunks, I strode into the ocean and (leaving Nick in my wake) swam half a kilometer out to a platform in the sea from which you could relax, dive and slide from a water slide back into the ocean. The scene was truly majestic - San Sebastian's horse-shoe beach, a blazing hot Sun, the mountains, the ocean, the wonderful architecture of the city and of course, the sight of Dr Fill and his luminous orange swim-shorts, stranded back on land.

Five minutes earlier, Patrick had suffered some sort of pussy asthma attack/panic attack. 'I give up', he uttered (not for the first time on this trip), after we got deep enough for the water to reach his knees. 'You guys go on without me!' And that we did, leaving the boy in the bubble to return to terra firma where he hooked himself up to a ventilator and then no doubt got shot down by copious volumes of Basque beauties!

After our swim, we wandered back to the hotel. It was 10pm before we headed back into town for dinner. We had a superb meal in a top-class restaurant where we polished off three bottles of the finest local Cava (One by Patrick and I and the other two by Nick on his own!) To start, Nick had soup, Patrick had a selection of local meats and I had a pan-seared piece of foie gras. For mains, we had three massive T-Bone steaks. Nick's steak came medium, Patrick's came rare and mine was blue, much to the upset of Nick who felt the need to photograph and facebook it. Believing Patrick's meat was to rare for him, Nick threw down a challenge to him - €50 if you eat every piece of meat on your plate. Patrick accepted the challenge. Half an hour later, Patrick's empty plate was cleared and he was ordering cake. Pass the Sugah and the dessert menu!

After dinner, we popped into one of the many bars and had another few drinks. Nick ordered a screwdriver and was handed a cork-screw. Meanwhile, Patrick, having been shotdown by every Irish woman in Dublin, was busy being shotdown by the only three Irish women in San Sebastian. In his defense, they all had boyfriends but, then again, that's what they would say if Patrick was chatting them up. In any case, it was nice to have a conversation with some English-speakers, which was more than we could have had with Nick who was already mumbling his own variety of drunken jibberish (mostly slurred comments about what a beast rounder63 is and how he wants to rape Jeff Schulman on Scott Cook's behalf!)

The bar closed at 2am and we made our way back to the hotel - a twenty minute beach-walk that turned into an hour of drunken madness. The protagonist... an inebriated Rounder63. The antagonist... an expert prankster by the name of LAPPIN. The cameraman... a half-complicit/half-petrified Dr Fill Good. Lights, camera, action as on three separate occasions, Rounder63 stripped down to his underpants and ran hysterically into the sea. What was he doing? The first time he was teaching Jeff Schulman a lesson. The second time, he was goaded (by LAPPIN) to touch the boat. The third time, he was goaded (by LAPPIN) to touch the boat (Having been talked back out of the water by Dr Fill the previous time).

The film documenting Rounder63's nocturnal beach-escapades has yet to be edited but suffice to say that when it is, it will be uploaded onto the net (and this site). If the clips I've already seen are anything to go by, it is destined to be a classic piece of youtubia!

What's the fucking story with Dublin's coffee-shops at the moment? For the last week, I have noticed a distinct difference in the quality of lattes, cappuccinos and espressos in several of my usual caffeine dispensers around the city. Are they buying budget beans to cut corners or have they fired all the qualified baristas in favour of some minimum wage monkey? Whatever it is, it's pissing me off.