Letter from Doke (News and Promotions 13th April 2012)

Hi

This week was all about the Irish Open, which was a bit of a disaster for the Doke bankroll. Including myself I had an interest in a dozen players and despite selecting only what I considered the best we all bricked. A few had big stacks at different points but got unlucky.

My starting table featured a pretty sick lineup that included Faraz "The Toilet" Jaka, EPT runner up (and eventual winner) Kevin Vandersmissen, Nicky Power, Marty Smyth and Aussie beast Daniel Neilson.

I didn't get much to play with all day so i was pretty happy to escape having increased my 20k starting stack to just under 30k. I managed to lose most of my "profit" in my new table which featured Phil Hellmuth, Toby Lewis, Anton Wigg, Ger Harraghy, Sean Prendiville and Donnacha O'Dea. It was a pretty surreal experience sitting across the table from Hellmuth. I ended with just over starting stack so needed to get busy early on day 2.

Card death and another tough table draw (Xuan Liu, Jude Ainsworth, Barry Hand, Byron Kaverman and Donal O'Connor who went on to chop the sole survivor) didn't exactly help my cause. I survived a few hours thanks to a few reshoves and open shoves before I finally picked up a hand, queens. My shove was called by Jude's ak and I lost the race. Well done to Donal on his deep run and chopping the sole survivor.

Normally I'm not a betting man but Paddy Power had a few interesting markets. I backed myself in my matchup against Peter Murphy, and myself and Jason Tompkins in a five man group that also included Peter, John O'Shea and Dermot Blaine. Dermot was the justified favourite but was too short a price to back, and I felt the rest of us were pretty evenly matched, so as joint outsiders I thought myself and Jason were the value. Things looked very good for my bets after Pete busted day 1 and the other two went early on day 2 leaving just me and Jason. Someone told me that someone had to cash in the group for it not to be a push but this wasn't stated explicitly on the PP site and fair play to Paddy, they paid out on me when I outlasted Jason so that was at least some consolation.

The most interesting hand I played in the Irish Open was blind on blind against Kevin Vandersmissen, the eventual winner. He raised from the small blind and I found AJ in the big blind, way ahead of his range. Despite this, I elected to call rather than raise for a number of reasons:

(1) Because Kevin is an aggressive player, he's going to be raising a lot of junk. Reraising will just fold out a lot of this and win me a very small pot

(2) By not reraising, I'm disguising my hand. He'll find it very hard to put me on such a strong ace. If an ace flops he will almost certainly try to represent it, or if he has a weaker ace, bet for value thinking he's good

(3) Early on in tournaments, I err on the side of caution and pot control.

By not reraising, I keep the pot small til we see the flop.

The flop came AJ8 and Kevin fired for two thirds pot. I figured he was doing this on most flops and particularly ones with an ace which he will try to represent as the preflop aggressor. It's possibly but unlikely he has the ace, so I just called again to make my hand look weaker so he'll keep firing with his bluffs. With no flush draws and an unlikely T9 being the only legit straight draw, I saw no real reason to protect my hand here.

The turn was a 4, which changes nothing. He fired for two thirds pot again, and I called again, for much the same reasons as on the flop. The river was a queen which meant that T9 had now got there (or a more unlikely KT), and he fired for pot. I quickly called. Even though I was almost certain I had the best hand, there's no point in raising here, as he won't call with any worse hand. His river bet indicates he has either a very strong hand that beats me or a very weak one that won't call a raise. As it happened, it was the latter, 97o (ironically this was the hand he ultimately won the Irish Open with a few days later in another blind on blind battle).

I also saw Per Hildebrand at the IO. Per is a Swedish player who was one of the founders of Entraction, the network Irish Eyes Poker is on. Per is now heading up Terminal Poker, (a form of rush poker online), and he gave an interview to Poker Tube when in Dublin. An interesting interview about where poker online started, how he was involved, the US market, and Terminal Poker, which can be seen online by clicking the link below.

This letter is being written on the plane on the way to Nottingham for the UKIPT. There's a very large travelling group of Irish so hopefully one of us will run well and bring home the bacon.

On the promotions front, the WSOP Express promotion continues on Irish Eyes with €14,000 added and a total of four packages to WSOP Side Event 56 that is held 2nd to 4th of July in Las Vegas can be won. The package includes: $1,500 tournament entry to Side Event 56, Seven nights stay at a Palazzo Hotel Luxury Suite, $1,740 for travel and spending money. All a player needs to do is make 1 VIP that is earned in last 72 hours prior to the tournament and use this to buy-in to the first level game. There will be two tournaments per day starting at 17:30 and 19:30.

Freerolls: Don't forget to 'Like' our Team Irish Eyes Poker page on Facebook and you can get the password to the Weekly Facebook €100 Freeroll every Wednesday night. Here is the link http://www.facebook.com/pages/Team-Irish-Eyes-Poker/112290065454803

And for every Tuesday and Friday between the 10th April and 4th May on Irish Eyes there will be eight surprise freerolls with €500 in each prize pool. These will be announced in the poker client about 50 minutes before the start of each freeroll so watch out for them. The notification about the freeroll will be dispatched in the poker client. Any player with running poker client or open table will receive an invitation in a small envelope.

Good luck at the tables - unless I'm at the same table :)

Doke

Click on the links below for details on all Irish Eyes Poker Promotions, Blogs, and News.

Irish Eyes Poker Promotions - click here
Join Team Irish Eyes Poker on Facebook - click here
Join EMOP Ireland on Facebook -- click here
Keep up to date on Doke's blog - click here
Interview with Per Hildebrand - click here
Play Fast Online Poker on your Mobile or iPad on Terminal Poker. For Signup Offer - click here
Play live poker with the Celtic Poker Tour. For next events and news - click here