A long way from Old Leighlin, a long way from playing cards for fun with his pals in Careys' and Matty's, a very long way from his scheduled appearance in the Carlow number 15 jersey in the Christy Ring Cup hurling final at Croke Park the following Sunday week.

For that, at the bottom of it all, was where Brendan Lawler came from. Long before he found himself immersed in a world of blinds and flops and folds, he lived in a world of ash. The hurling came first, unsurprisingly for a man who was Feile na nGael skills champion in his youth, whose uncle Mick Lawler won an All Ireland medal with Kilkenny in 1969, who idolised Johnny Nevin, the Carlow dual player and a fellow clubman, when young and who made his intercounty senior debut against Dublin in 2000 at the age of 18.

But then two Christmases ago somebody arrived home from a summer in the US and introduced the lads in Careys' to the rudiments of Texas Hold 'Em, a variant of poker hitherto unknown in this corner of Carlow. Lawler's interest piqued, he began watching poker on TV. That's really how he came up to speed with the game, he says, not by playing but by observing. There was no eureka moment; it took Lawler a full year before he decided he had a handle on Texas Hold 'Em and was improving.

"You need to be playing poker a few years and playing in pressure situations. It's okay playing in your local for a tenner. You can laugh and joke. But playing in Vegas, when you've paid $10,000 into the tournament, two cards in front of you and you're shaking . . . that's where the pros will rip you asunder."

Winning a Paddy Powersponsored tournament here brought him to Las Vegas in August for the World Series of Poker, all expenses paid. Now Lawler was swimming with sharks. Playing against people he'd never played against before, discovering that each player was different. "Who's aggressive? Who's very tight?

The first few hands, you're looking around for reads.

That's where the pros are so sharp. They pick up on these things in a flash. What you're trying to do is to get into a position where you're favoured. That's when you put your chips in. It doesn't mean you'll win, though."

All too aware of the imminence of the Ring Cup final, Lawler gradually discovered he was playing more aggressively than he usually would at home. It wasn't a conscious decision on his part to have a cut, it simply happened that way. "I loosened up as I went along and got into the swing of things."

By Tuesday the field was down to 1,600 players and Lawler was up to 95,000 chips, twice the average stack. Then disaster struck.

He went into a "big, big pot" with pocket jacks and lost more than half his chips to a jack 10 who got a straight. In hurling terms, he'd been leading by two points in injury time only to concede a freak goal. It wasn't that he'd done anything wrong. It was merely, and literally, the bad luck of the draw.

The blow knocked the stuffing out of him. His confidence was shot, his energy drained away. Suddenly every card he was dealt was a bad card. Any other week of the year Lawler would have stayed and tried to tough it out for another day or two, but this wasn't any other week of the year. Hurling was calling him home.

After much complicated juggling of flights, he made it back via Boston for training at Dr Cullen Park on the Friday night and to Croke Park on the Sunday. For him and for his county, the Ring Cup final was over almost as quickly as it began, Antrim shelling Carlow for three early goals that ended the game as a going concern before half-time.

Having feasted on five points from play in the semifinal victory against Down, our man was reduced to iron rations. One shot he hit tailed wide, another was blocked out for a 65'. There weren't too many balls that came his way after that.

"Getting the chance to play in Croke Park was brilliant.

But we're not there to play in Croke Park, we're there to win competitions wherever they're played. That's two finals Carlow have lost in successive years, after losing the Division 2 play-off to Offaly in 2005. We need to make the breakthrough shortly. Otherwise we'll never get to play the top teams."

The importance of aggression is a lesson Lawler, a mildmannered accountant by day, has learned in more than one facet of his life this past year.

Thanks to Vegas, he knows now to think bigger at the table.

"You have to be in there, bluffing, trying to rob the blinds. You won't win anything by sitting back and waiting to play just the big cards."

Not that he's going to become a millionaire out of poker, he's well aware. "It's a hobby, an alternative to the pub. Once you don't get into it for serious money or spend hours playing it online, you'll be fine." The last couple of months he's been busy socially, making up for lost time.

But Carlow are back training now, and hurling season means poker season, and every new season brings new ambitions.

Return to the World Series of Poker and get into the money this time. Be part of a Carlow team that wins the Ring Cup and hurls in Division 1 of the National League.

All in the cards.