Killarney and stuff

Headed down to Killarney last Friday for the €550 main event game, I struggled into Day2 with half the chip average so had about 20BB when I came back for start of Day 2. Day 1 was pretty uneventful, card dead all day long so just played very tight and played very little poker. Day 2 was more of the same really, I did pick up a few good hands but always got them in bad spots, my stack is about 15bb and I get AK in the BB after a limper in MP and the SB limps, I move allin but know I'm not getting called. At this stage of the day I would be happy to get called here as its early in the day and I would like to get some sort of stack together rather so I can have a decent stack for the bubble.

As expected I got no action here, I push allin a few more times and blinds go up and I'm back to 12bb again. I see 33 in the BB and after a MP raiser whos being pretty active makes it 2.5BB I go allin here but get called by AQ and the flop comes down a very scary JT5 with a K on turn to leave me heading for the rail.

I go play some live cash after this which I havn't played in about 1 year, I think it was this time last year when I played 2/5 in the MGM. The 2/5 game in Killarney was nowhere near as soft as the one in Vegas though. I had 2 young English pros to my right, (1 who makes videos for the biggest poker training site, Cardrunners) an old rock on my left and a few others who didn't do much wrong while they were playing. With the expensive rake this game turned out to be an unprofitable spot for me. I played until the dinner break in the tournament at which stage I was stuck for about €300. The worst thing about the game though was that I had no cash to reload. Max I could take from the ATM was €600, so going to have to sort that out in advance any more. Funny thing about live cash is though that I am kinda scared playing it in a way. I don't like losing real money, online I can lose thousands in a day/hours and not care to much about it at all, but in live games I wouldn't really like to flip for a €1k pot.

But, down there I did witness the funniest hand I've ever seen in my time playing poker. So the guys involved were a mid 20 year old from England, big build of a guy and a 25-30 year old from Dublin. So the Dublin is having a few beers and playing very aggressive. He's over bet shoving with his bluffs and slow playing huge hands. So the English guy raises to 800 and the Dublin guy calls. The flop comes down A56 with one club, the Dub check/calls a 1.2k bet or so. The turn is an 8c and the action goes check/check. A 9c on the river and the Dub checks and the English guy throws in a 5k chip. The Dub instant min raises it up to 10k (Earlier he done a similar one with 72 after he limped pre and made trips on turn, he also done it with QQ on an A and K high board and got someone to lay down a pair of As), so the English guy dwells for an age and makes it 20k, dub looks at his hand and at the board and anounces allin for about 3k more or so. The English guy is in distress now and is convinced that the dub somehow made a backdoor straight but obviously he is never folding and calls. The Dub asks him has he got and A?, english guys says no :) and throws over K7 for a straight. The Dub looks at his cards and looks at the board and is still not sure if his hand is no good. He eventually flashes JJ and leaves the table, much to the dissapoinment of everyone else at it.

One thing I have been thinking about the last few days is starting a challenge for myself. Someone else mentioned to me that they were thinking of doing a similar tone. Would basically involve turning $8k into $80k by being really strict with bankroll management and maybe giving myself a set time frame with clear goals along the way. At the moment I lack this and just take shots at bigger games when I feel like it. This approach hasn't worked well recently so maybe a change is in order. Will think more about this over the next day or so, but would like to start something ASAP.