Celtic Chaos II: View From The Rail

APAT Cork: Sunday, 25th September 2011.

Once again, the bear had skipped over my room on his nocturnal perambulations and, thankfully, there were no early morning deliveries to the hotel to disturb my slumbers so I got a decent night’s sleep.

I was up and around pretty early but just having a Sunday morning in bed with a good book and a couple of cups of tea made a nice change from the usual headache and groaning noises that are the norm on an APAT weekend.

I headed our around noon to Rosinda’s again for another full Irish breakfast to set me up for the rigours of the day. Revelling in the cholesterol wandered down to the card room still undecided about whether to enter the side event.

My decision was rendered easy by the fact that it was more Hold’em and, as most of you know, I’m much more comfortable with at least 4 cards in my hand.

Having decided so give it a swerve I elected to just rail the final table. This was quite entertaining, there was much more speech play than you are likely to find at the much more staid tables in the UK with the possible exception of any table featuring Scouse and/or Dan Owston.

Verbal jousts were flying across the table pretty much from the start and it really enlivened the experience. For myself I was railing Frank Bailie’s son, Matt and our very own Don Roberts.

Both were very much holding their own, in particular Matt who, deliberately or not, was flashing me his hole cards.

Unfortunately, Don wasn’t destined to be with us very long getting horribly crushed by the flopped steel wheel against his QQ. Having said that, the guy who took him out was, arguably, the most likely to suck out on someone having played way too many hands and, in this reporter’s opinion, was lucky to have made it this far.

Matt continued to make some smart plays even. I’d probably have been more aggressive but he’s better than I am. There were a couple of occasions where I would have snapped the villain off a lot quicker than he did…but he usually did it anyway. Whatever, he’s better than I am so what do I know?

Eventually Matt made it down to the final three and was into full on ‘shove mode’ and continually got hands like K3 and T3, getting his money in behind and hitting.

It couldn’t last long and, finally getting a decent hand with AQ was crippled by KK only to get it all in again the very next hand and meeting KK again. Well done Matt.

The final heads up battle lasted less than 30 minutes and we were done by 7.30pm…I wonder what I did then.

Well, of course, I headed off to the Shelbourne for an evening session. I was joined by Don and company who were meeting a friend, Tom I think, there a little later.

A few drinks later the lads were looking for a little music and I remembered that there had been a little down at The Corner House when I had walked in the night before so I suggested that we move there.

This idea was greeted warmly so we headed down the road but, unfortunately, the music was just finishing up as we arrived. Disappointed we drowned our sorrows good and proper but, it being a Sunday, the 11 o’clock closing time limited our boozing capacity.

The other lads were interested in getting food but I decided to head back to the hotel in the hopes that their bar might still be open but, once again, I was to be disappointed.

Oh well, a relatively sober weekend won’t hurt me for once. I squeezed myself into the lift and headed up to my room.

Another one in the books.

Celtic Chaos II: Sometimes You Just Have To

APAT Cork: Saturday, 24th September 2011.

Iawoke to the sound of something crashing in the road/alley outside the hotel. Frankly it sounded like someone had run over a milk float. I haven’t the faintest idea of what was but, to be honest, at four, freaking, o’clock in the morning I could have done without it.

On the other hand, since I hadn’t been visited by any woodland creatures during the night I just rolled over and got a few more hours of kip.

I know the APAT trips are about having a good time and all that but it’s sometimes refreshing not to wake up feeling like the recently deceased...odd that!

I whipped out the dongle to start my morning routine but wasn’t able to get the proper...erm…connection. Apparently I don’t have the right equipment. I found out on my return that there is something in my dongle I have to tickle inside to maintain the necessary signal stiffness.

Fortunately, the hotel had a pay-per-day option so I paid the necessary price and finished off without too much delay.

Knowing better that to opt for the hotel breakfast, I wandered out on to MacCurtain Street...OK, it wasn’t so much of a wander as more hoofing it a few yards up the road to Rosinda’s, a place I spotted on my way back to the hotel last night. Full Irish breakfast for 7.50 euro…job done right.

I lingered over my second cup of tea before wandering down towards the Macau Club just a street away. I arrived shortly before midday but the place wasn’t open yet so I planted myself opposite and read for a while on my Kindle…marvellous invention…I don’t go anywhere without it these days.

It wasn’t long before the Macau opened up and somehow I’d managed to look up from my reading just as Don and crew were arriving. Walking in, we were, of course, greeted by the sight of Tighty hard at work. A god-awful flight time in on the Saturday and he’s hard at it already…sheesh we don’t say enough nice things about him and the effort he puts in…seriously.

Des arrived shortly after and, along with a couple of others we chatted for a while before the competition started.

Mini-Rant (again).

Look, I know I’d attend the opening of an APAT envelope but I was really disappointed with the turn out. Cost-wise it was no more expensive (for me) than pretty much any other APAT event. There WERE flights at a reasonable cost from several UK airports (including Scotland) and I really feel that some people who would normally turn up had just made up their minds not to bother.

I’m not pointing fingers at anyone specific…just that there seemed to be a perception that it would break the bank to get to Cork. From my research, this simply wasn’t the case and I’d plumped for, perhaps, one of the more expensive hotels when compared to other options.

Perhaps I’m wrong, but it seemed to me that some minds were made up well before the event and nothing we could say was going to change opinions.

Whatever, we got away with a mere 60 odd runners and, as I expected, the standard was pretty awful, at least on my table. Five or six limpers seemed to be the norm and putting in a decent raise in late position would often see you take it down pre-flop. If it didn’t you’d get 3 or 4 callers.

I don’t get it…if your hand is good enough to call a raise (and most weren’t) why not raise yourself?

Regardless, I never got ahead, seeing a mind-boggling succession of J4, Q5, K3 that meant I was folding the majority of hands. After picking up the blinds couple of times (betting with complete air) we were into the 3rd level and I was still sitting on the starting stack.

Things did not improve for me, I managed to lose a fair amount when my opponents refused to believe me when I had a hand and they caught EVERY FRICKING TIME on the river. I managed to donk off a fair amount with AT against AQ on an AAJ6K board despite a pre-flop raise and he still wouldn’t go away after I bet all three streets.

Eventually, I made the mistake of limping (something I rarely do) with JTs in the SB with 4 callers in front. I should have just raised….I knew it at the time and still didn’t do it.

The flop cam Jack high but all spades, I checked and it was check around to the CO who put in a pot-sized bet. It screamed to me of a ‘go-away’ bet and thinking he was drawing, I just jammed with 5k hoping for the double-up to get back in it.

Oops...he was playing 6s9s (mega-sigh) and had flopped it and barring a runner-runner boat, I was dead…and, of course, that wasn’t going to happen.

So there it was, pretty early, and I was done…I wandered off, somewhat dejected, and chatted to Des and Tighty for a while before deciding to hit up a couple of places I’d missed the night before. No point in wasting the evening after all.

So, after checking in with the few APATers who’d made the trip (most of whom were still in) I headed off for a solo night of debauchery…fair enough, just a few pints then if you want to be more accurate.

As I mentioned before, I’d made some notes beforehand and my first port of call was Sin-E (it has an accent in the Gaelic) and is pronounced ‘Shin-A’. The reviews I’d read did not, unfortunately, match up to the reality.

Described as having a large downstairs bar area (downstairs meant 2 steps) it was in fact a pokey little hole, lit almost entirely by candles and stocked with ‘arty’ types for the most part. Eclectic I suppose was the thing they were going for and perhaps it appeals to the many tourists in town but it did nothing for me. Of course, I had to have a couple of pints to give it a proper workout but I left after that under-whelmed.

Ah well, The Corner House beckoned and being just a few feet up the road from my previous venue was much more to my liking. A large bar area with plenty of seating made me suspect that half the people who’d reviewed Sin-E were, in fact, in The Corner House. A lively establishment and I made the appropriate notes should we ever return to Cork…and I hope we do.

A couple of pints later I decided that I’d done my duty and decided that making my way back towards the hotel might not be a bad idea…not that I had any intention of finishing up the night’s solitary revels just yet.

Apparently, I had been abandoned by my fellow APATers who had elected to play the Saturday night competition at the Macau. I have to wonder about their priorities sometimes…I really do.

As it turned out a couple of the pubs on my list had closed and so I made my way back to the Shelbourne which was heaving despite it being only 9 o’clock or so. Fortunately, I managed to snag a table outside and settled in for the long haul. I was well situated to catch APATers walking past and within (we eventually had calculated last night) 31 yards of my hotel’s front door.

Saturday night was in full swing in Cork and there seemed to be some sort of ‘prom’ thing going on nearby as all these suited young men and young-ish girls in their party finery kept wandering up and down the street arm in arm or in groups. They’d walk past one way and then five minutes later, walk back the other way.

I concentrated on my beer and my Social Media updates before being utterly distracted by a young lady who sat down at the next table over. Pneumatic is the word. I just had to take a picture…seriously, I just had to. If you follow me on Twitter / Facebook or Google+ then you have already seen this picture…but if you’re not…here you go.

Sue me….I’m male and breathing. I couldn’t help myself.

I knocked back a few more drinks before heading back to the hotel as I figured that being the hotel bar was safer than having to cross the street. I got myself a drink and was listening to the piano player in the corner doing that ‘muzak’ thing and wondering if I slipped him a few quid if he’d ‘rock out’ when I was unexpected joined by Jon Woodfield and Dave Pilkington who were following me on Facebook. I’m gonna have to stop checking in on there.

We had a quiet conversation for an hour or so before they elected to head back to their respective hotels and I bid them a good night. Despite only eating breakfast I was just pleasantly buzzed, much like the night before, and I had little fear of a furry visit in the night.

Regardless, I hung out the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign and chained the door, just in case.

Celtic Chaos II: The Merits of Chain Drinking

APAT Cork: Friday, 23rd September 2011

Insofar as I hadn’t been visited by the beverage ursine (that’s the Drinking Bear to the uninitiated), I awoke quite refreshed on Friday. The first order of business was to whip out my dongle and complete my usual morning procedure….checking the APAT boards.

It’s a tough business looking for for anything I can delete, move, moderate, edit, censor or otherwise fiddle with…heh. OK, I just read what was on there, although I did ban a couple of spammers so the whole morning wasn’t a complete waste.

Whatever, I took the shuttle into Gatwick fairly early for the flight. The good thing (if there is one) about Ryanair is that you’re pretty much required to check-in well in advance. So there’s no long line to check-in to navigate and you can just roll on through security and head straight to the bar.

That is if you don’t forget to take your phone out of your back pocket. Sigh…I’d got everything else sorted but in doing the “jacket-off” / “belt-off” thing I forgot to un-IT.

Not a huge issue, I got a perfunctory rub-down from the security guy. If that had been the TSA I suspect I would have had the whole ‘cavity search’ / ‘sexual assault pat down’ that I’ve heard about. Thank the stars that the UK lads are less ‘gung-ho’ than their US associates….You have been warned.

With the morning frottage over I headed straight into the Wetherspoon’s on the upper floor and order the biggest breakfast I could see on the menu and a pint. Glorious!

Free wi-fi as usual in the Wetherspoon’s and I was able to catch up the few minutes I’d missed on the interwebz since leaving the hotel. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything to moderate so I just had to settle for breakfast.

I’d wrapped myself around brekky and was contemplating the next pint when Rich “Curlage” Baker arrived, pretty much on schedule, and got one for me…Score! We, as we generally do, put the world to rights before being joined by Don Roberts and his mates, Lee and Paul.

Before long we headed off to our gate, queued (as you do) for boarding, before making the long trek across the tarmac and boarding the plane. I jammed myself into the closest seat to the back of the plane that I could and settled in. As usual, I couldn’t understand a word of any announcement made over the intercoms. It was either a combination of the Irish accent (spoken at a fast pace) or the unintelligible Eastern European accents sported by the rest of the cabin crew.

Of course, it didn’t really matter to a season traveller like me but I did see more than a few confused looks on other passengers’ faces and I could hear ‘What did she say?” more than once.

An uneventful, if a little bumpy, flight and we were into Cork Airport in about an hour or so. No hassles with the disembarkation or, perfunctory, border/customs check. Richard and I had somehow managed to lose Don and Co so, after waiting a few minutes; we jumped in a taxi to our hotel.

The taxi driver seemed to be a frustrated tour guide and gave us a little history and geography lesson on the way into Cork which made the time pass. Even so, it was probably only 10 minutes and we were dropped off in front of Hotel Isaacs. Cab fare was around 16 euro.

Richard and I checked in and arranged to meet (as I thought) in the lobby a little later once we’d settled in.

We headed up together to and encountered a somewhat small lift. Once Richard and I were inside we half expected the lift to request that 3 of us get out. In fact it was only rated for 3 people…we may have strained that limit a bit. Nevertheless, we had no issues.

My room was a decent size with a double and a single bed (I hadn’t ordered the extra bed), a desk area (which was kind of tucked away) and a small CRT telly (which I wouldn’t be watching).

The remarkable thing you noticed on entering was that one wall (onto the hallway) as made of glass bricks! Now they gave you curtains you could draw so no-one could see in…but you have to wonder a the architect’s thinking there.

Once I’d washed the travel grime off and gotten the IT kit up and running, I headed down to the lobby. No sign of Richard and I sat there for a couple of minutes reading before the fellow on the desk told me that Rich has left a message that he was in the bar.

Face-palm! Of course he was. Why didn’t we just set that as the meeting place? I‘d assumed that we’d both meant the lobby….but clearly Richard has anticipated me.

I wandered into the bar…no sign but I kept on going out into the open-air area outside and there he was, accompanied by….the ‘irritating man’, Davey Pilkington.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have checked in with Foursquare and Facebook as, apparently, no later than 3 minute later Davey had come (literally) running around the corner before I’d even made it downstairs. Richard had apparently had the pleasure of being assigned a room facing on to this ‘patio’ area…nice enough except for the waterfall outside!

Looking down the courtyard onto the main street from the hotel we could see a pub, Dan Lowrey’s. This was to be our first port of call. Rich seemed quite interested in how far away it was from the hotel and so we counted out the paces. 22 was the answer…22 yards…the length of a cricket pitch or, in old money...a ‘chain’.

This seemed to be providential. The pub wasn’t huge by any means but was welcoming and the beer was a little cheaper than the hotel…not much, but a little. I did the FSQ/FB check in and texted Don where we were and it wasn’t long before his contingent joined us from their hotel (the Windsor) just up the road.

A good time was being had by all but we couldn’t come to Ireland without sampling more than one hostelry. Rich however, not had a bee in his bonnet about the ‘chain’. I mollified him by pacing out the distance to the next pub…22 yards. True ‘Chain Drinking’…Bonus!

We piled into the Shelbourne and more drinks followed and the evening continued. The primary debate though was trying to work out how many yards our hotel was away…trying to work out the hypotenuse of the triangle without the square root function on the calculator was amusing…at least it seemed to at the time.

I’d done a fair amount of scouting (via Google Maps, Street View and Yelp) for suitable public houses to visit and had high hopes of hitting all the high spots on my list; however, I had not anticipated my compatriots’ tastes turning to the ‘spicy’ side. Now as Ger wasn’t in attendance I hadn’t done any pre-planning and was somewhat in the dark on this score.

Nevertheless, we sent Dave Pilkington out into the streets to track down a suitable establishment where my associates could sate their ‘appetites’. Dave returned in short order stating that such a house could be found only a short walk away.

Apparently it was more than 22 yards away which caused some dissention but eventually we were persuaded. We headed out into the night and made our way up MacCurtain Street to a somewhat dimly lit, shady establishment. To be honest it looked pretty sketchy to me. We peered through the windows and the place seemed deserted although there was a small light on in the back.

Looking up we could see a sign advertising something called a ‘Tasty Oriental’ and this overcame any objections which might have been raised.

We piled through the door gleefully anticipating a night of abandoning ourselves to our baser instincts only to have our hopes dashed. Bloody place was a restaurant!

Frankly I would have preferred soldiering on to the next pub on my list but I didn’t want to seem unsociable. Decent enough menu although, perhaps a little pricey (but we’re in Ireland). This didn’t slow Rich down who promptly ordered 3 starters along with his main course. I managed with just once of each while others picked their dishes. They did a decent 3 course menu for 20 euro as I recall so it’s not all bad.

Food was decent but I could see it was having a soporific effect on Rich who was on the verge of falling asleep at the table. Apparently he’d been up most of the night online….degenerate!

Not much to my surprise the food knocked out most of the party and once we’d settled up Rich, Don and the others decided to call it a night. I elected to head back to the hotel with the thought of a night-cap or two but was greeted by a sing-along going off in the bar. I decided to spare my ears (and probably my sanity) and head to bed.

Pleasantly buzzed, I hung out the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign (in case the Drinking Bear could read) and retired. I think he may have snuffled at the door but it apparently decided to spare me.

Celtic Chaos II: The Run-up

APAT Cork: Thursday, 22nd September 2011.

As is my wont, I’d elected to spend Thursday night near the airport at the local Holiday Inn as part of an end of your points hotel points run) so I’d motored down to Gatwick arriving around 7 o’clock. I had no hassles getting there, other than the usual Dartford Bridge congestion.

Mini-rant:

Once the bridge construction costs were paid off they were supposed to end the toll for crossing the bridge. Naturally, this didn’t happen but rather they rebranded the toll as a ‘Congestion Charge’. Now look, if the only thing causing the congestion is the collection of the ‘Congestion Charge’ you’re on to a sure fire winner.

When I come to power as a benevolent, but brutal, dictator, that’s getting close to the top of my ever increasing list of things to put on the chopping block…along with drivers who don’t indicate and use the wrong lane at roundabouts…but that’s another, much longer list thread that never seems to end so I can post it.

Regardless, parked the car, checked-in and, being an APATer, headed to the bar. A few Stellas under my belt (charged to the room for a few more hotel points) and all was well.

I retired relatively early for an uneventful evening followed by a nice sleep. Oh, and they upgraded my room (I think) to the next step up on the room rankings thanks to my status with the hotel chain. I could get used to this.

Move Along…Nothing To See Here.

APAT Nottingham (WCOAP 2011)

Apologies. I've been catching up on my blog posting and realised that I haven't been cross-posting between here and the APAT site. I just got out of the habit of writing it up in both formats...actually it's probably just laziness on my part.

Regardless, I’m going to try and get all the old posts over there duplicated on here (in the right order) and, and I’ve probably said this before, keep it up. Fortunately, Windows Live Writer will let you back-date posts….handy that.

Anyway, as it happens I can’t recall Nottingham at all. Obviously I didn’t win anything or even come close so it didn’t make an impression.

Fortunately, that hasn’t been the case since then. So, if I haven’t lost you completely by now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I had, brace yourself…here it comes.