My name is Gary Cunningham and I am a recreational poker player from the Republic of Ireland. I have recently started streaming poker on Twitch and have become a member of the awesome TwitchNet Community!
I have been playing poker since my early 20s, when I was introduced to the game by my close friends. My first real dabble in online poker started in 2009 when I joined the PokerStrategy.com community. In those days they offered a free $50 bankroll to any user who completed a quiz! There was great excitement when I passed the quiz and $50 arrived in my FullTiltPoker account a few days later…..
In the next few years I played a mixture of cash, Rush and STTs. I went boom-bust more times that I would like to admit! It wasn’t until 2014 though before I settled on my one true passion in poker = Multi Table Tournaments…
Pokerstars on Mobile True Story Bro….
On the 17th March (St Patricks Day here in Ireland) I was awoken early by my then 9-month old daughter Kayla. She was awake early and needed her morning feed. After feeding her and settling her I couldn’t get back to sleep myself so I decided to register to an $11 MicroMillions Event on PokerStars that had started almost an hour earlier.
I late registered and within a few minutes I had doubled my stack. By the end of the next hour I had built up a nice stack and was one of the top 100 players.
At this stage, my wife was awake and she reminded me that we had to planned to go shopping that day as it was a rare occasion we both had the same day off work. I was still doing well in the tournament and I didn’t want to sit out or keep going all in so I managed to sweet talk her into doing the driving so I could continue playing.
Just before it was time to leave I remember having to make a huge decision with pocket 8s. I called a big shove and won vs AKo and now I was in the top 5 with 200 remaining!
As we arrived in Castlebar (40 minutes) later the field had narrowed to 100 players and I had swapped the comforts of my laptop for my mobile phone! I was walking the streets of the town grinding a $11 tournament on my phone! The next hour flew by and soon enough we were close to the Final Table.
At this time, I was getting nervous, I had never been so deep in a big field tournament (I believe there was 4.4k entries) and here I was guaranteed $600 from my $11 investment.
I entered the FT very short-staked. I was in 8th out of 9th. I spent the next few orbits folding absolute junk hands while other players were eliminated. I was then 6th out of 6th when I picked up AJo from MP and I shoved. I was called by the next seat and I was dominated by AQo. Luckily a Jack appeared on the flop and I held on for a crucial double up.
From then on, I played tight and soon we were 3-way. I was comfortably in 2nd when first place knocked out third and he had a huge 6:1 chip lead that I was not able to turn around. However, I picked up $5,242.22 for my troubles and was very happy.
All this while walking around the town, shopping with my beautiful wife and daughters looking like a crazy deranged person talking to his mobile phone. All in all, it was a profitable day and I’ve only played MTTs since!
