2001/2002 is when I started to play texas holdem, like most poker players I started off playing small games in pubs and soon after started to play cash games in the Macau sporting club in Cork city. I have always had a gamble in me, from horse racing to sports betting.
I met my wife Amanda in 2000, she was from Killarney where we would end up moving to in 2005. It was from there I got to meet up with other poker players from the Cueclub and we used to travel as a gang of 10-15 to most of the Irish events. As a gang of players we used to discuss a lot of poker, coming back from our trips we would discuss some of the hands we played where we learnt a lot from each other.
I can recall a hand I played in the Macau vs a player who I used to look up to and whom I would be good friends with today, Nicky Power. Can't remember sizing and stacks but its not really important for this, but its just to show that I used to just bluff way to much. I open utg AK, bb defends who is Nicky, flop JJx, Nicky ck calls, turn x, he ck calls, river x, he cks, I jam and Nicky snaps and of course he has JJ for quads
My first real cash came from the IPC (Irish Poker Championship) in January of 2007, this was a €1500 buy in. I won a satellite for this the week before. I drove up to the citywest hotel along with Matt Dobbins and Connie O Sullivan. We had agreed to swap 10% of each other (great for them :)). Long story short, I finished in 5th place for €21k but I was very disappointed at the time as I was big chip leader with 5 left but just basically blew up as I didn't know how to fold back then, plus the fact there was €117k for the winner with the eventual winner being John Clancy who was the one to knock me out when I was on a big bluff. Collete Murphy (smurph) also final tabled this event, she was a popular Irish woman on the Irish poker scene at the time.
Over the next several years or so I continued to play recreational poker as I had a construction company, but it was always a dream of mine to become a full time poker pro. I had never travelled outside of Ireland in this time playing poker but any opportunity I got I travelled to most of the Irish events, I used to look at this as an opportunity to meet up with other Irish players. Most of the time it used to turn into a big piss up, (us Irish are good at that unfortunately). In this time I had also found online poker and used to mostly play cash with some success, playing mostly on the Entraction network using the Irisheyes skin.
When Ireland was hit by the recession the construction dried up so I turned to online poker but after about one year at this I decided to head to Australia with a friend of mine and see if I could get a stable income and move my family out there. After six months I came home to process a sponsorship deal I was offered by a construction company in Sydney. I was home about one week and got offered a Job in Oslo Norway which meant travelling to Oslo for about 4-6 weeks and home for a long weekend, it was a lot closer than Australia and it meant I would not have to move my family, so I stuck at this for about two years. I based myself back in Ireland sometime in 2013 and worked away at the construction but found it difficult to get jobs in as there was a lot of undercutting going on.
2015 is where I turned to poker full time, this is the year that kicked off my poker career and this is where I got my first trophy by winning the Fultilt IPO for 10k, okay, it might not have been a huge amount, but for me I was absolutely over the moon to get my first trophy. I had applied to many staking companies but got turned down by them all as I had not enough volume played online but a big thanks to my good friend David Caffrey (caff) got me in with the company he was with and where he was a coach. He always felt I had the game to make it as a player and in return he helped me with my game by doing sweat sessions with me and discussing situations with me when ever I wanted.
So I joined BRS in Feb 2015. As the summer months were approaching I started to play more live and didn't really play much online for BRS. I had some good success from live poker, felt like I was on some kind of a heater and after the MPN tour in September and a deep run I decided I was going to buy into the WCOOP Super Tue for 1k but to try and sell 50% of my buy in, I went onto Irishpokerboards to start a thread to sell, I posted the thread sometime on the Monday and on Tuesday morning there was no interest, so I said fuck them to myself and pulled the thread from IPB. Later that day a poker buddy Andrew Dwyer messaged me asking if he could have 5%, which would have cost him $55 so I obliged.
The event was a two day game and I made it into day two with about 20bb, I ran very well on day two only to find myself as chipleader on the FT with some of the worlds best, this was a surreal feeling and very emotional. I can recall having a huge decision vs Grindation with four left with trip 10's but everything got there on the river, I eventually do call and he was on a big bluff. So we get HU vs Hellzito who is a high stakes cash game player from Brazil, I can recall having about a 6/1 chip lead but he ran absolute pure vs me, if I had top pair he would turn or river two pair. We battled for about two and a half hours. He had a 2/1 chip lead, then I got the chip lead back so we did a deal where I got $240k where he got $220k but we had to play out for $40k which I would lose, but this was still a surreal moment for me. We finished this game about 8am and my buddy called to me about 9am and where did we go? of course, straight to the pub like a typical Irish man, ohh, we must not forget about the $12k that Andrew got for his $55. https://uk.pokernews.com/news/2015/09/ireland-s-keith-cummings-secures-a-240k-score-in-the-wcoop-19048.htm
2016 was also a big year for me, I came 16th in the Irish Open for €16k in March, and then decided to go on a live heater, October I got 2nd place in the WPT 55O in Nottingham for £90k, November I got my second trophy in Bucharest by winning the HighRoller for €28k. Went to play my first EPT in Prague in December and went deep in the Eureka €1k and also finishing in 15th place for €15k in the Eureka €2k HighRoller after a bad decision.
Found myself on the same table as Sam 'squidpoker' Grafton a few tables out from the final table of the Bucharest high roller. First time ever playing with Sam, and by fuck he can talk, If I'm to be totally honest, I wish I had my earphones, I don't think Sam was to happy with me, he was after making a suggestion on the table that who ever wins a hand without going to showdown must show one card, I kind of ignored this as I was in the zone, so, I win a pot and Sam says are you going to show, I just mucked and got a bit of an evil eye from him, he was not happy. Sam ended up busting in 4th place. I have met Sam several times since and I find him to be a great character and just a very nice person in general and great craic at the table. But I'm sure I would not have been the only person to think this when we first played against him.
2017 I got to go to the WSOP in Vegas and the WSOPE for the first time thanks to BRS. I have BRS to thank a lot for the opportunities I have had since been with them, I got to play a $5k PowerFest game on PartyPoker for them in September and managed a 4th place for $105k. The week before I went to Vegas for the WSOP I managed to get second place in the Sunday 150k HighRoller for $21k.
BRS who is run by Paul 'action' Jackson in my opinion is the best staking company out there, every year they give players the opportunity to go to play the WSOP in vegas and also rent out villa's there for the players. They have recently set up an academy where any person/player can join and develop to becoming a great player and you don't need to have any experience for this. They also have some specialist coaches, the likes of Dara 'doke' O'Kearney and Bryan Paris and also have several coaches whom have developed within BRS, including myself. I have discussed a lot with Dara over the years and especially in recent times about the game in general and I have definitely learnt a lot for him.
I am just home from the WSOPE and will be heading off to Punta Cana in the Carribean next week for the PartyPoker millions as I won two $10k packages for this, $5million GTD with $1million GTD for 1st place. I will report back on these two events in my next blog.
I met my wife Amanda in 2000, she was from Killarney where we would end up moving to in 2005. It was from there I got to meet up with other poker players from the Cueclub and we used to travel as a gang of 10-15 to most of the Irish events. As a gang of players we used to discuss a lot of poker, coming back from our trips we would discuss some of the hands we played where we learnt a lot from each other.
I can recall a hand I played in the Macau vs a player who I used to look up to and whom I would be good friends with today, Nicky Power. Can't remember sizing and stacks but its not really important for this, but its just to show that I used to just bluff way to much. I open utg AK, bb defends who is Nicky, flop JJx, Nicky ck calls, turn x, he ck calls, river x, he cks, I jam and Nicky snaps and of course he has JJ for quads
My first real cash came from the IPC (Irish Poker Championship) in January of 2007, this was a €1500 buy in. I won a satellite for this the week before. I drove up to the citywest hotel along with Matt Dobbins and Connie O Sullivan. We had agreed to swap 10% of each other (great for them :)). Long story short, I finished in 5th place for €21k but I was very disappointed at the time as I was big chip leader with 5 left but just basically blew up as I didn't know how to fold back then, plus the fact there was €117k for the winner with the eventual winner being John Clancy who was the one to knock me out when I was on a big bluff. Collete Murphy (smurph) also final tabled this event, she was a popular Irish woman on the Irish poker scene at the time.
Over the next several years or so I continued to play recreational poker as I had a construction company, but it was always a dream of mine to become a full time poker pro. I had never travelled outside of Ireland in this time playing poker but any opportunity I got I travelled to most of the Irish events, I used to look at this as an opportunity to meet up with other Irish players. Most of the time it used to turn into a big piss up, (us Irish are good at that unfortunately). In this time I had also found online poker and used to mostly play cash with some success, playing mostly on the Entraction network using the Irisheyes skin.
When Ireland was hit by the recession the construction dried up so I turned to online poker but after about one year at this I decided to head to Australia with a friend of mine and see if I could get a stable income and move my family out there. After six months I came home to process a sponsorship deal I was offered by a construction company in Sydney. I was home about one week and got offered a Job in Oslo Norway which meant travelling to Oslo for about 4-6 weeks and home for a long weekend, it was a lot closer than Australia and it meant I would not have to move my family, so I stuck at this for about two years. I based myself back in Ireland sometime in 2013 and worked away at the construction but found it difficult to get jobs in as there was a lot of undercutting going on.
2015 is where I turned to poker full time, this is the year that kicked off my poker career and this is where I got my first trophy by winning the Fultilt IPO for 10k, okay, it might not have been a huge amount, but for me I was absolutely over the moon to get my first trophy. I had applied to many staking companies but got turned down by them all as I had not enough volume played online but a big thanks to my good friend David Caffrey (caff) got me in with the company he was with and where he was a coach. He always felt I had the game to make it as a player and in return he helped me with my game by doing sweat sessions with me and discussing situations with me when ever I wanted.
So I joined BRS in Feb 2015. As the summer months were approaching I started to play more live and didn't really play much online for BRS. I had some good success from live poker, felt like I was on some kind of a heater and after the MPN tour in September and a deep run I decided I was going to buy into the WCOOP Super Tue for 1k but to try and sell 50% of my buy in, I went onto Irishpokerboards to start a thread to sell, I posted the thread sometime on the Monday and on Tuesday morning there was no interest, so I said fuck them to myself and pulled the thread from IPB. Later that day a poker buddy Andrew Dwyer messaged me asking if he could have 5%, which would have cost him $55 so I obliged.
The event was a two day game and I made it into day two with about 20bb, I ran very well on day two only to find myself as chipleader on the FT with some of the worlds best, this was a surreal feeling and very emotional. I can recall having a huge decision vs Grindation with four left with trip 10's but everything got there on the river, I eventually do call and he was on a big bluff. So we get HU vs Hellzito who is a high stakes cash game player from Brazil, I can recall having about a 6/1 chip lead but he ran absolute pure vs me, if I had top pair he would turn or river two pair. We battled for about two and a half hours. He had a 2/1 chip lead, then I got the chip lead back so we did a deal where I got $240k where he got $220k but we had to play out for $40k which I would lose, but this was still a surreal moment for me. We finished this game about 8am and my buddy called to me about 9am and where did we go? of course, straight to the pub like a typical Irish man, ohh, we must not forget about the $12k that Andrew got for his $55. https://uk.pokernews.com/news/2015/09/ireland-s-keith-cummings-secures-a-240k-score-in-the-wcoop-19048.htm
2016 was also a big year for me, I came 16th in the Irish Open for €16k in March, and then decided to go on a live heater, October I got 2nd place in the WPT 55O in Nottingham for £90k, November I got my second trophy in Bucharest by winning the HighRoller for €28k. Went to play my first EPT in Prague in December and went deep in the Eureka €1k and also finishing in 15th place for €15k in the Eureka €2k HighRoller after a bad decision.
Found myself on the same table as Sam 'squidpoker' Grafton a few tables out from the final table of the Bucharest high roller. First time ever playing with Sam, and by fuck he can talk, If I'm to be totally honest, I wish I had my earphones, I don't think Sam was to happy with me, he was after making a suggestion on the table that who ever wins a hand without going to showdown must show one card, I kind of ignored this as I was in the zone, so, I win a pot and Sam says are you going to show, I just mucked and got a bit of an evil eye from him, he was not happy. Sam ended up busting in 4th place. I have met Sam several times since and I find him to be a great character and just a very nice person in general and great craic at the table. But I'm sure I would not have been the only person to think this when we first played against him.
2017 I got to go to the WSOP in Vegas and the WSOPE for the first time thanks to BRS. I have BRS to thank a lot for the opportunities I have had since been with them, I got to play a $5k PowerFest game on PartyPoker for them in September and managed a 4th place for $105k. The week before I went to Vegas for the WSOP I managed to get second place in the Sunday 150k HighRoller for $21k.
BRS who is run by Paul 'action' Jackson in my opinion is the best staking company out there, every year they give players the opportunity to go to play the WSOP in vegas and also rent out villa's there for the players. They have recently set up an academy where any person/player can join and develop to becoming a great player and you don't need to have any experience for this. They also have some specialist coaches, the likes of Dara 'doke' O'Kearney and Bryan Paris and also have several coaches whom have developed within BRS, including myself. I have discussed a lot with Dara over the years and especially in recent times about the game in general and I have definitely learnt a lot for him.
I am just home from the WSOPE and will be heading off to Punta Cana in the Carribean next week for the PartyPoker millions as I won two $10k packages for this, $5million GTD with $1million GTD for 1st place. I will report back on these two events in my next blog.
what a fantastic read , wow congrats on that huge ship in the WCOOP ....I had a similar experience in the special edition Thrill wcoop but not quite a great finish as you on day 2 but can relate to some of the heavyweights I found myself up against . Anyway Brilliant read and congrats on your successes. Will look forward to reading the next blog entry ...
ReplyDeleteThanks, glad you liked it, gl on the felt
ReplyDeleteI never thought you could have written a blog like that ,well done ✅ I'll see you in Punta Cana next week. I hope you remember my A 6
ReplyDelete