Day 2

The night before Day Two I had a lot of trouble sleeping for some reason. My girlfriend made me something they use in Korea to help you sleep but it didn't do anything for me. I just lie in my bed and slept a fractured six hours out of the 14 I was lying there, then I groggily made my way to the tournament area. My Day Two table didn't look as easy as most of my Day One tables, with one guy from Denmark holding a slight chip lead over me. We were 2nd and 5th in chips after both Day Ones completed. Fortunately, he was a few to my left and we didn't end up warring too often.

Unfortunately, the rest of my table either had the deck running them over or they were just super aggressive against me. Guys who never touched a chip otherwise were four-betting my ass all-in every chance they could get. Others found it fitting to just shove 34k into 3k pots against me. All around it was just a nightmare, and a few hours in I'd lost about half of my stack. I won a small coin flip against a short stack though and got back up to around 60k, but sure enough I continued to just keep running into hands and re-raises. I tightened down and kept my cool but it definitely was not fun. I got moved to another table where again things were just not working. I'd lose a pot, win a pot, and lose a pot. I had one situation where the dealer failed to notify me the one seat called when I was in the nine seat and couldn't see a thing, which really irked me. I had called a really weak player's raise from early position and when he checked the flop to me I led figuring he was folding most of the time. Then, all of the sudden, this raise comes out of nowhere from the one seat and the EP raiser folds. I was kind of pissed off after I folded that I hadn't been paying better attention, but I guess you just move on.

Getting shorter I raised one hand from middle position with 9-9 and a super loose guy from New Zealand called from his big blind. The board was 10-5-4 and he checked to me. I bet with the intention to call his all-in if he did it, but after having what looked like an inner war for thirty seconds he folded. I was pulling the chips in when he stood up and pointed a finger at me and growled, "If you keep raising I will call you, that's a promise." I was really taken aback at first but then it was just hilarious to me someone's ego could be so bruised by a bet/fold flop. About an hour later WPT winner Christer Johannsen sat down three to my left. When I was younger I used to watch and rewatch the season one DVD of the World Poker Tour. The one thing that had been a constant at his final table win was that he never ever got out of line. He was very aggressive with hands, but he never would repop with a 9-6 or something.

The New Zealand guy kept going on and on about something, then randomly he started talking about me being a bully again. I looked down and saw I had A-Q from UTG+2. I had 57k at 1,500/3,000 and decided I was played back at enough I could raise/call or raise/shove all-in profitably enough to raise here. I made it 8k and the guy who kept calling me a bully let out an "Oooooooh." Given this guy was making me look like a nutcase I was really set on not folding to pretty much anyone now. Sure enough, Christer re-raised me from the cutoff to 30k. I didn't love the spot, but I thought he was doing this with 8-8 on up after the one guy's speech about how out-of-my-mind I was, so I just put the rest in. Christer grimaced and showed Kc-Qc and I was back in business.

I was moved to another table shortly thereafter and was greeted with the same Danish kid I started the day with. He had a much better seating assignment then I did with a bunch of scared short stacks to his left, and he was just able to pound them away on the bubble. I got away with some stealing, and I opened up my raising range a bit, but I ran into A-A and A-K at different times. The-Toilet got moved to my table but I didn't know who he was until Queso came up to me drunk off his ass and went "Dude, so that's The-Toilet?" I was fortunate enough to hold over him for most of the time we played together. The only two big hands I had all day were against him, and both times he was able to get away from it in spots I thought he was committed. I tried tanking for a while with K-K then 3x raising him, but he got out of the way. I tried insta-shoving against his UTG raise, hoping he'd think I had A-K or 8-8 or something, but he got away. He kept raising from stack sizes I was positive he was ready to go with, but he kept folding.

Then I went card dead and the blinds got ridiculous. I mean, average stack was under 20 big blinds, there were only 100ish left from an initial 650+ field, on the end of day two on a four day event. I just didn't understand why they went up so fast. Sure enough, my stack went down to 90k from not really playing many hands but just the blinds and antes gutting me. I got moved to another table, and to my horror saw that Imperium was to my immediate left with about 200k+. Once I sat down he introduced himself to me (which felt very weird, given he's 100x the player I am it should probably be the other way around), and he seemed like a nice guy. Of course, right after the pleasantries he went back to DESTROY ALL mode, raising every hand in the last level of the day.

With about 86k at 3/6k blinds with a 500 ante I raised with 17k on the button with 8-8. I was really hoping Sorel would shove into me, because I figured I would be ahead of his range, but he folded and an older gentleman very quickly put me all-in, looking comfortable. I hadn't been at the table very long, and while I had a bad feeling I thought raising 17k of my stack here and folding versus an unknown would just be total spew, so I stacked off, only to be shown J-J. I wouldn't think twice about the hand online, but having seen how comfortable the guy was with putting me in I felt a little sick.

I shook everyone's hand but desperately wanted to get out of the room, figuring I'd pick up my money later after I screamed, cried, destroyed something, or had nasty hate sex. Some woman came chasing after me though and told me I had to go to the cashier's cage now because they were closing up for the day. I thanked her and got my receipt, which said I finished 52nd for 6,500 Euros, although the websites would say 53rd. With about 1,000 Euros invested to get my seat after the satellite I played live and a few others I played online I came away with about 5,500 Euros profit, but given how much I spent on the trip and my current state with my backer that tournament really was a wash.

Over the next couple days I played golf, checked out the Guinness factory, took my girlfriend out to their shopping district, and overall just tried to have a good time. I wasn't too angry about how my tournament went after a while. Despite some tilty continuation bets I made on day two I felt like I played to the best of my abilities, and I couldn't really think of one hand I played abysmally. There were the usual debatable hands, but there always are.

I felt like I put my heart into two days of poker, and as my plane to Korea lifted up into the air, I looked back on the Ireland landscape without any regrets.

* This was Part 3 of a three-part article. Part 1 and Part 2 can be found by clicking on the underlined links. Alex "assassinato" Fitzgerald is a professional poker player who specializes in multi-table tournaments. You can read more about Assassinato's adventures in the poker world by visiting his blog, www.assassinatopoker.blogspot.com.