Mystery Envelopes

Killiney Castle 1982 played a major part in the history of European poker. A planeload of the best players in the world flew into Dublin as guests of Irish bookmaker and founder of the Irish Open Terry Rogers to play poker for a week in this picturesque hotel. Over coffee, there last week Irish legend Don O’Dea was telling stories from back then that you’d need to be Irish to believe. I’m sure they are true.

The hotel had a safe in which guests could deposit their valuables, passports, etc. for safekeeping. The system was simple. They gave you a large envelope with your name on it and you could place your belongings inside it before handing it back to the girl on the reception desk who placed it in the safe with everybody else’s envelope. For the Irish, this is quite a sophisticated system, especially when you consider that this is the eighties we are talking about. It was working just fine until one of the Americans realised you could go to reception, give a name and be handed that person’s envelope. The problem with Americans is that they just have to interfere. Especially in matters overseas which are really none of their xxxxing business. This one was a particularly nasty specimen and he proceeded to throw a bit of a wobbly, even going so far as to insinuate that this system was open to abuse. The cheek of him. It had worked just fine for years apart the odd passport or opera tickets going astray, but that was a small price to pay for the warm feeling that had been felt by thousands of guests over the years knowing their valuables were fairly safe.

The guy even went so far as to tell Terry that this was a disaster just waiting to happen. This was a bit rich considering all was well till he started screaming blue murder. Unfortunately, the hotel owner got involved and asked exactly what was in his safe. Nobody knew for sure but they told him it probably wasn’t much more than half a million, so this was just a storm in a teacup. His insurers thought differently, which is no surprise really as insurance companies in general seem to be seriously lacking in the humour department. Except when they are quoting premiums of course. They talk a lot about Irish hospitality but where’s the hospitality when Terry was told to get those envelopes out of the safe immediately. That’s a bit strong considering he’d filled the hotel for them and if the worst came to the worst and there was a small armed robbery the resultant publicity would have been great for the joint. Especially with the US market in mind.

Poor Terry had to take all the envelopes up to his room and employ an armed guard around the clock to keep an eye on them. This was rather inconvenient as Terry had to sleep every now and then and was a bit concerned about doing so as nobody really likes to wake up to the sight of a guy with a gun in his room. Even Terry.

When Paul and JP are working on the logistics for this year’s Irish Open at Easter, I bet they wish that instead of the complicated security arrangements they are putting in place they could just get six or seven hundred envelopes and a few cardboard boxes .But that dreams not going to work. I blame the Americans!

(Due to a concert at the venue that clashes with the tournament hotel rooms will sell out. Overseas visitors can contact me at [email protected] for help with bookings, but only sooner rather than later.)