I just came back from a quick but exciting trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland. Last Monday, I was speaking with Adam and Cal from PocketFives about meeting up with them on Friday since they were in Dublin for a convention. We were all excited about meeting up, since even though I have been helping out with the site for a couple of years, due to geographical restraints, we did not have an opportunity to meet face to face.

Thursday night was the P5s open. As I won the previous one I played on bwin, I felt it was important to try to defend my P5s Open title on WPT Poker. While I failed this time around, it was a good time as always. I also helped out sorting out who would be collecting the prizes and wound up staying up all night since I had to catch a taxi from Vilnius to Kaunas at 3am. 3am comes around, I am apparantly in the wrong meeting point for the Taxi to pick me up, but he came by to where I was anyway and drove me 90 minutes for about 10 euros to Kaunas. I had to fly on Ryanair, which although is a good airline if wanting to fly cheap, it also means you need to fly light and you also have announcements every 10 minutes trying to sell you something or tell you something else irrelevant and results in no sleep on the plane. I call it the flying yellow school bus that treats you like school children. I arrive to Dublin slightly early and cruise through the immigration lines, and had enough time to meet Adam and Cal at their hotel. Originally we were going to meet at the train station since our plan was to go to Belfast for the day. It was great to meet them, we then caught our train from Dublin to Belfast and of course we had to play some poker on the way with a mini poker set that Pokerstars provided to them during the conference. Obviously since I was the only active poker player, I lost my chips before the 2 of them and we had fun talking about PocketFives and life in general during the 2 1/2 hour train ride. I thought I was hustled until I remembered we were playing for play chips. ;)

We arrive to Belfast in the early afternoon, check out when the buses are leaving to come back to Dublin and set off on our adventure in Belfast. We walked around a bit in the downtown area, and there you can't tell there was any remnants of the civil war that ended over 10 years ago. We stopped off at a pub, but quickly left when it didn't seem like the food would be that great. We then walked a bit further, and wound up at a restaurant that served great pita sandwiches and wound up later on at a coffee shop after that. After we left the coffee shop, my face turned white since I realized I no longer had my passport with me. At this point, it was over a full day without any sleep, so my brain wasn't functioning at 100% capacity. My biggest worry was that I lost it on the street or train. We retraced our steps first to the coffee shop, no luck there, and then were walking to where the restaurant was. On the way to the restaurant we passed the pub where we dropped in for 5 seconds, and as luck would have it, I left it there and the bartender had it behind the bar. We stopped in for our first Guinness of the day to celebrate, and for more good vibes to come. We then ask what the best way to get a tour around Belfast was, and were told it would be via a black cab. We bump into a nice lady sitting in a black Mercedes and for some reason we thought she was maybe giving tours. She was obviously just waiting in the car for her husband, but it seems like many people are connected with many other people in Belfast as it turns out her husband was one of the guys that owned cabs and would find a good tour guide for us. He selected well, and we got along well with our driver. He showed us many a few things about Belfast, and here we got to see the strife that occurred between the Prodestants and Catholics in the country's civil war. While you might not see any problems in the center of town, the rest of Belfast was divided between these 2 groups and some small violence still occurs today. We also saw some sites like where the Titanic was built, Parliment, and some political murals. We asked the driver whether we would be able to make it to the northern tip or Northern Ireland and back in time to catch our train, since Cal read up on the Giant's Causeway. He agreed we would and we agreed upon a reasonable price and set forth further on our journey.

We had about a 2 hour ride seeing alot of the countryside of Northern Ireland. Here the driver told us a bit more about his country and we also chatted amongst ourselves. We got up near where the Giant's Causeway and walked around near the beach, saw some remnants of where an ancient castle was, and then got back into the cab to go to where the Giant's Causeway was. We get there a little late, but Northern Ireland is light out late this time of year. While Cal and Adam drop into the bathroom, I drop into a bar for a quick Guinness before we set on a small hike down to where the Giant's Causeway was. It is completely amazing to walk down, and then see the ocean coming in at the north. It is absolutely beautiful down there as well, and we were all in awe.





We spend about an hour touring the Causeway area and then get back into our cab concerned about our time restraints. We found a quick place to get some food, and the driver was cool about us eating it on the way. We head back to Belfast, and when we arrive we realize we have some time to spare, so Cal heads over to the Casino to play a little roulette while Adam and I hit a pub near the bus stations to put down 1 or 2 before our trip back to Dublin. We met some 'interesting' people there, and then had to catch our bus back. I think I slept for an hour on the bus, and after about 43 hours of no sleep, it was probably very needed. We were talking about going out to the Temple Bar area (popular night time area full of energy) before we hit the bus after we got back, but as our bus pulls in at 1:30am, I didn't have much left in me, so we headed back to the hotel and called it a night. Adam and Cal had a flight to catch the next day, and I knew I would have a few days to still see Dublin. It was not a bad way to spend a Friday and will be a trip I will always remember.

Part 2 will include my time in Dublin with a few poker players and friends.

Late last week, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by David Huber for the 7Delux7 podcast. I am about 23 minutes in. Topics David asked me about were how I got started with poker, life in Lithuania, and patrolling the site to site transfer thread as a Moderator. The play now function doesn't seem to be working right, but you can download it as a MP3 and take a listen. http://www.pocketfives.com/articles/...odcast-586121/ Thank you David for having me on.

First 10 days in 2011 have been good for my finances, but bad for my backers. I have been doing quite well in the cash games, up over $3k in this time. I have been doing very well in the 10/20 10 Game, but oddly enough not been doing as well in the 8/16 to 15/30 O8 games which I did fairly well in last year. I know right now its just variance on the O8. I had a great start with the 1/2 and 2/4 NL Rush games, but have since cooled off and running just a tiny profit there. I am being backed now for a $17K SNG stake for 2011 by a few people. I am running about $4k under EV on those and currently showing about a $3k loss in those. So although I am doing well on my own dime, I do feel bad for my backers. I do know though, that 10 days is too early to judge, especially since I am playing games as high as $335s at the moment. I have confidence I will turn things around on this stake.

I am also getting ready for my honeymoon. My wife is having some visa issues, which I hope to be sorted out ASAP or there could be some problems. We are scheduled to go to Dubai on Jan 21st for a cruise on the 24th. It will be great to get out of the cold and enjoy seeing some of the world I have yet to experience.

That's all for now, gl to everyone in 2011!

I had a great 2010 both personally and pokerwise. First off, it was my first full year living in Lithuania, and love most things about living here. I did a little bit of travel including revisiting old friends in London (lived there from 2005-2009), visiting old friends in Brussels (lived there in 2000), a few trips to Amsterdam, a few trips back home to the US, and a trip to Vegas for WSOP. Wish my WSOP was more eventful, but at least my Horses made some money out there. I also got married in Lithuania in August, the ceremony and reception were absolutely perfect. We had a second ceremony in New Jersey for friends and family that could not make it to Lithuania at the end of October. It was also the first trip to the US for my wife's sister and parents! We took my in-laws to Niagra Falls which was a dream of my wife's father. I brought my huge cat over from the US in June, and we got a puppy in May who is a complete joy and bundle of energy. The plan now is to have kids soon.

Pokerwise, I improved alot in my cash game play, especially as it came to all mixed games. I also had a few profitable stakes in SNGs, but focused mostly on cash. In January, I had a final table in one of my rare tournaments in the Sunday Warm-up on Stars, so really there was little to complain about.

For next year, my wife & I are going on my Honeymoon for a cruise in Dubai from Jan 21 - Feb 2. I will head up to Amsterdam sometime in February to visit some friends and have some fun for a few days. I plan to head up to Riga, Latvia in March to play some of the live tournaments relating to the Norweigan Poker Championships. Live poker is banned in Norway, so its actually closer for me to play these events than Norweigans. I just have to double check I am allowed to play even though I am not Norweigan, but plan to see some of my Norweigan poker friends irregardless of this. After that I am most likely heading to Scotland for a few days as well.

Pokerwise it should also be an exciting year as I raised $17k for a stake to play higher limit sngs. I will continue to play cash on my own dime as well. I have been enjoying my semi-retirement the last couple of years and hope to continue to enjoy playing poker while I am living in Lithuania.

That's all for now, will try to update a bit more throughout the year.

Happy and Healthy New Year everyone!

Jaxon