Oct 28th - €350+€35 No Limit Hold'Em - Citywest Hotel (Dublin)

I'd been looking forward to tonight for a good while now as I feel my 'live' play has improved tremendously over the past few months and with 8000 points to start with and a proper 45 min clock then I felt as though I had a strong chance of, at least, making day 2.

With no rush to do anything drastic I decided just to play the strong hands and hopefully things would take care of themselves. So 1 hour later I had only 3500 left!! A few hands in and I get JJ. I raise to 250 and get one caller. Flop is K-T-6. My opponent, who is first to act, checks...as do I. The turn card is a 4. My opponent bets 500. I call. River card is another blank. My opponent bets 1500. I can't put him on a King so I call. He flips A-A and I'm down 2.5k already!

I then get Kd Qd and again raise to 250. This time two callers. Flop is Q-T-3 no diamonds. There's a bet of 500. I call. Turn card is another TEN! There's a bet of 2000 and I give it up!! Doh!!!

I then look down at A-Q and decide its gamble time so all-in. I get one caller with Q-J and I escape back up to 7.5k. I get KINGS and make a reraise pre-flop to 1500. All pass. I get A-A and, again, reraise a pre-flop raiser to 1500. This time I get a caller. Flop is K-J-T. My opponent checks, I bet 2500. He calls. Turn is a 3. My opponent checks...I bet 10k and he gives it up. Things are going my way!!

At the dinner break I'm upto 16k.

It was a long night. We'd started at 7pm and by 3.30am I had 35k in chips and there were 30 players left from a start number of 160. We were playing down to 20. I felt good!

What I wasn't prepared for though was an absolute session or two of dead card holdings. Seven-7, 8-3, 9-5, J-3. Multiply all this by 10 and for the next two hours I played about 4 hands. The blinds were getting bad, for me, and I couldn't find a hand to launch with to try and double up!

With 12k left and 21 people left and blinds 1 minute away from 3000/6000 I knew I had to make a stand. I was three hands away from a forced all-in so once the field had passed to me, on the button, I took Jc-5c all-in!

Now winning this hand would mean that I could struggle on for another 20 hands or so. All passed to the BB who, with 140k, in front of him called without looking at his cards and flipped 10d-5d. I was a BIG favourite!

The flop came Kc-10c-3h. I needed help! Turn - 8s. I needed help. River - 4d. Boom...I was out on the bubble at 5.50am with nothing to show for the past 10 hours of play!

Its a tough old life!

160 entries - 21st - Loss $462 (€385) - Acc. Total - +$2264