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.
