Christmas etc...

I'm a firm believer in any job Christmas week is a time for relaxation, poker is no exception to this rule. This is why I played very very little this week.

With it now being the day after Stephen's day 95% of Ireland's 18-35 population is nursing a hangover that feels like they got hit by a bus, lucky for me I'm feeling ridiculously fresh. After the sheer amount of gargle I've had over the past few days my liver has got one hell of a workout. Xmas eve gets special mention as one of the shittiest states I've been in before 10pm ever, the Xmas day hangover was not worth it at all. Last night was pretty messy too which makes the lack of hangover all the sweeter, nice to run good for once.

I think I'll play tonight but I'm not sure my hearts in it at the moment, there's too much fun shit happening to be worrying about grinding plus I travel to London on the 30th for New Years Eve so I'm pretty much checked out. I have a really nice feeling about 2011, it could really be a breakout year for me poker wise if I get my head down and get in the volume. There's a few things I'm looking forward to in 2011:

• Vegas trip in the summer
• Hopefully satellite into Irish Open
• Shipping the Paddy Power Student Masters, I won it in 2008.
• Successfully defend my Dublin Poker League title.
• One five-figure score would be nice, two would be epic.   

For the moment thats pretty much it, oh if any readers out there are on twitter follow me @Moro88.

Best of luck for 2011 folks.

Finally some results!

The blog curse has been broken!!

Played four tournaments this week and some that are not in the usual schedule. Monday played the d1 freeze, eliminated in a pretty standard button v bb spot. I shipped 10 bb's AJ called by JJ and missed. Whatever I wasn't too bothered, if you let these sort of situations bother you in tournament poker you will not survive.

Tuesday I played a €30 freeze in voodoo. Decent structure and 52 runners so it was pretty juicy. On the break they had a 1 table PLO SnG which I managed to scoop which easily covered both nights tourneys plus interest so that was sweet. After the break I accumulated a mountain of chips, 18 players left I was 4x average and super cruising. Started FT as chip leader but just had cooler after cooler to finish a very disappointing 5th but two cashes in one night live is a rare feat, nice to get back in the + column.

Thursday was a new tourney for me. €45 Triple Chance Round of each in the Voodoo (4k+4k+4k). I cant even stress how good this tournament is, between the 12k deepstack along with the added fun of NLHE and PLO this tournament is a must for anyone who enjoys PLO and tournament poker around Dublin. The tournament is only in its infancy and had 15 runners but I hope it will only grow and grow because its that good. In the tournament itself I played as good as I have in a tournament as long as I can remember. All my bluffs worked, value bets paid off and reads spot on. I ended up chopping with a guy, we were both deep and even though I was confident I could beat him heads-up the chop seemed like less of a grind so I accepted along with a nice little pay day.

Fair play to the lads at Voodoo for putting such an innovative tournament into their schedule, keep up the good work lads.

I didn't play the MiniFTOPS, mostly due to tiredness and its a super all night grind, I would not have been playing my A-Game and if your going to win a tournament of that size you gotta be playing A++, this wouldn't have been the case so I like my decision overall.

Christmas this week so I'll be playing a bit, finishing on Thursday then on to festivities. I know Christmas dinner this year will be SWEET, plus maybe some sneaky drinks and poker with the uncles, easy monies baby!

Run good everyone (Back by popular demand, there ya go Al and Snips)

Too much drinking not enough poker.

As far as tournaments go I played an amazing two tournaments last week, really bad volume wise and considering I just started a blog on this shit, I'm not gonna lie it doesn't look great, oh well.

Last Monday was the €25 Freeze in D1, never got a thing going past level 1 and eventually shipped my 11bb stack into two limpers fully expecting two folds, I had the monstrous 6s3s got called by both. One with 8h8d and the other with 9x9x. I turned a flush draw but alas 6 high was no good for the pot.

Thursday Jackpot was one of them horrible nights where every hand was a horrible spot, bottom two v flush, straight v straight flush, kk v aa I could go on. I eventually bust aj v 22 for an above average stack, quite an achievement considering the bullshit I had to put up with.

This was a week of just doing small amounts of nothing that got in the way of tournaments but the highlight of the week had to be the 12 pubs of Xmas on Saturday night, or in our case 7 pubs, burger king, then head back to one of the lads houses. Fun times altogether and I'm pretty sure we're gonna do it again, hopefully properly this time. Its easy to forget the banter to be had in Dublin pubs as opposed to the usual get sloshed then go to a nightclub. Could be a turning point.

As far as poker is concerned I'll be on the usual grind this week looking to play a lot but with it being Christmas shit just seems to pop up everywhere. I will be playing online on Sunday in the MiniFTOPS Main Event over on FTP. $75 Buy-in with a $1,000,000 gtd prize pool, beyond sickness.

I think thats all for the moment, no big buy ins on the agenda until maybe Clonmel in February but thats about it as far as i know, I'm usually late to the game on these things so never know.

I think it was Phil Galfond who talks about blogging being bad luck so I'm 0/2 so far, this could be a curse. On a completely separate issue I just heard FTP Pros wont be on the next season on High Stakes Poker because its now sponsored by Pokerstars, so we will no longer be able to see Ivey do this to people.

Laters

First post... All you need to know, for now.

Hey I'm Carl Morrissey and I'm a low-mid stakes live tournament grinder around Dublin with the (very) rare online stint thrown in for fun. The main reason I've started this blog (aside from boredom) is because I'm not awfully aware of a low-ish live tournament blog around, I could be wrong but I don't really care.

I play on average 3-5 live tournaments a week ranging from €25 at the low end up to €250 at the high end. In general I am pretty sure I'd be in the top 5% low tourney buy in players around Dublin based on results which to be honest doesn't say much given the softer than belief standards but what the hey, its somethin' like! I'll also be using this blog to keep tabs on results, a few interesting hands that pop up and maybe the odd story or video that may amuse me.

Tonight is the €25 5k freezeout in D1 Club. This is an amazing little tournament for a modest buy in and friendly atmosphere could not recommended it any more highly, its actually what really gave me the kick up the arse I needed to do this. They have a progressive jackpot for winning the tournament two consecutive weeks which i scooped for just under €2,500. I believe the jackpot currently stands at €750, so that coupled with 1st place prize money adds up to a €1,000+ score, none to shabby for a €25 investment.

Tournaments I regularly play (bread and butter tourneys)  

• €25 Monday D1 Freezout, 5k starting stack.
• €45 Wednesday Jackpot, 10k starting stack.
• €20+€20(rebuy/topup) Thursday Jackpot, 4k+4k.
• €45 Friday D1 Friday Freezout, 10k.

I'll list off a few of my less regular tournaments in my next post, and I've a shout out to Ray Roche who scooped €1,300 playing roulette today to which I replied "Amazing, but don't give any money back. Keep it for Christmas and tournament buy in's." 0% chance that happens.

Run good everyone.