This month saw the Team Event bring yet more players to the already heaving Amateur Poker Association and Tour to try their four-handed might against teams from all over Europe. The format: six-handed SNGs and heads up matches, with points awarded for finishing positions. Two days of play saw a tight finish, with Poland winning a play-off against France to take the top spot. Attention then meandered over to the individual event, but that’s another story…
Black Belt Poker had its eye (and hats) on team Northern Ireland – a strong lineup including one of the first ever Green Belts Gareth Cash. Captaining the team was the redoubtable Colin O’Prey (part of Team Ireland – European Team Champions in 2008), alongside fellow members Gerard Harraghy and Raymond Crowe. Picked from the pinnacle of the Belfast League, they’d come together to represent Northern Ireland after previous combined experience at the APAT World events, live games and online. Well-rounded, yes. Punctual, no. Captain O’Prey offers to take the blame in equal measure with the local traffic in his trip report for the NIForum: “Team NI got off to rather a slow start due to some flight difficulties. Typical Irish…75% of the Northern Ireland team managed to miss their flight by 2 mins.”
By the time the majority of the team arrived at the G Casino Luton, they found not only that they’d all scored points, but that Gerard Harraghy, the only member present at the start, had actually been outlasted by all the no-shows. “We joked 
afterwards that if only Gerard had missed the flight we may have scored even more points.” Harraghy was, however, able to give me a bit of insight into the team, as well as their opinions on APAT and the live vs. online game. Like everyone ever asked about their experience on the APAT tour, he complimented it on its structure, price and management. “It’s great that they are offering good structures to people who can’t afford the GUKPT etc.,” he said, before drifting back, in the way of all poker players, to his previous APAT experience at the World event and reliving a particularly painful set of cracked kings which slowed an otherwise storming performance. It seems his aggressive ways work a little better on the live circuit: “Live players tend to be a lot more passive, whereas online if you’re raising every hand you’re going to get three-bet by anyone with half a clue.”
It wasn’t a walk in the park, though, to come back from a punishing round one to keep in contention for the top spots in the following rounds. However, they saw their points rise over the next matches, finally finishing sevent but only seven points behind third place England. A couple of crucial outdraws (O’Prey’s two pair on the turn rivered when his opponent hit a higher one, for example) and team Northern Ireland had to relinquish hopes of a medal and turn their eyes on the individual prize in the Main Event.
There was some equally frustrating actionless deck-smacking for Raymond Crowe early on too. It’s funny how many things in poker need to run right to take down tournaments – all the cards in the world don’t help, sometimes: “I got A-A, A-K, A-Q, K-K within the first hour and got no play,” he lamented afterwards, and went on to see his hands dry up as the blinds increased. A similar fate befell Colin O’Prey (pictured below) and Gareth Cash, while I arrived at the casino just in time to see Gerard Harraghy’s last stand shoving all-in on the button with what looked from where I was standing a lot like 2-4 off-suit… he was looked up by a blind with two overcards, spiked a four, but then caught his exit when his opponent hit the river.
“I’ve played three APATs this year for the first time,” said Crowe, “And I think that the structure of the tournaments are first class.” Everyone involved seemed ready to make a weekend out of it, busted out of the tournaments or not, and not even the worst bad beat could shake their enthusiasm for the event and the idea behind it. Even out of the Main Event, there was still the Omaha to look forward to (Colin O’Prey finished third in that one)… plus a little esoteric single-table action in the form of Tighty’s SNG, as O’Prey wrote:
“I eventually finished the evening by playing in the now famous Tighty’s SNG (Tighty is Richard Prew who organizes all the online APAT updates during the events). Tighty’s SNG is a fun game where he makes up the rules and changes them as he goes along; he is very entertaining and the game is a lot of fun. Sometimes he will ask a player ‘do you like that flop?’ to which they may reply ‘no’, then tightly simply discards it and deals another much to the frustration of the previous player who had just gone all-in.”
Returning to Northern Ireland medal-less, but undaunted, the team looks set to continue its domination of the online league. As regards live play, Gerard Harraghy says that he has his eye on the upcoming UK/Ireland Poker Tour, and regularly graces Blick Studios in Belfast and The Fortune Rooms in Bangor. He’s also worked previously as a dealer; does all this experience add up when it comes to learning from the Irish live scene? Well, not exactly. “At home, people will call huge shoves with random shite preflop. They never improve – if anything they get worse. They learn off each other…” Whatever their team is doing differently, however, it’s working, and I am sure all four members will be popping up at APAT events in the future, assuming they can click the ‘sign-up’ button fast enough online when seats become available.