Card Player Poker Tour: Thirty Three Years of Irish Poker - Part ITerry Rodgers Brought Hold'em To Ireland, Europe and Beyond |
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The Paddy Power Poker Irish Open is now part of the Card Player Poker Tour. With a colorful history spanning more than three decades, the Irish Open is sure to add additional buzz and excitement to the CPPT.
The longest running tournament in Europe and the second longest running tournament in the world, behind only the World Series of Poker, the Irish Open will crown its newest champion April 18-21 in Dublin, Ireland.
Over the coming weeks Card Player will take a look at the last three decades of Irish poker, beginning with the first Irish Open in 1981.
The Beginning
In May 1979 Terry Rogers, a colorful Irish bookmaker, found himself with three days to kill in Las Vegas while on a business trip. He wandered into Binion’s Horseshoe Casino and found himself in the middle of the biggest poker game on the planet. He met and befriended Benny Binion and that friendship would result in the spread of hold’em to Ireland, Europe and beyond.
Often credited with bringing hold’em to the rest of the world, Rogers and tournament director and poker player Liam Flood were already holding poker tournaments in Ireland in the mid 1970s. Those games would draw anywhere from 100 to 300 players playing five-card draw for £100 to £200 per game.
“That was a lot of people for that kind of money at the time,” Flood later said.
Rogers would return to Ireland and begin his greatest legacy, the Irish Open. It’s a story peppered with colorful characters, triumph and action that is still playing out more than 30 years after its beginning. Rogers passed away in 1999 but the Irish Open lives on.
Early On
Always one to spot an opportunity, Rogers cemented his relationship with Binion and his friends by making bets on the outcome of the games and offering the sort of odds Americans had never seen before.
“Guys like Benny Binion, Doyle Brunson and Chip Reese really held Terry in high esteem,” said WSOP bracelet winner and Irish Olympic swimmer Donnacha O’Dea. “He’d give them great odds, better than any American bookie would give but he still made sure he had a 20 percent edge.”
Rogers stuck around Las Vegas for the 1979 WSOP and then returned to Ireland, enthusiastic about what he had seen and ready to bring the intriguing game of no-limit hold’em to home. Stud and draw games were the games of choice in Ireland at the time but Rogers felt hold’em beat them out for excitement and skill.
In 1981 Rogers morphed the tournaments he and Flood at already been running into the Irish Open, a tournament which would become the longest running in all of Europe.
The Irish Open was organized under the guise that it was a charity fundraising event and it attracted mainly local players, but Terry had his eye on expanding the tournament right from the start.
“There would always be a few English who came over for the games – Derek Webb Nick Cook and Derek Baxter,” Flood said.
O’Dea, whose bio also includes two WSOP main event final table appearances, recalled Rogers’ stunts to generate interest.
“He’d publicize betting on the tournament in the Racing Post along with an event such as the Super Bowl so that he could get around the law on advertising such events. He’d install an outsider as the favorite and poker players would see the odds and think to themselves, ‘well, I’m much better than this guy who is the favorite’ and immediately want to take part in the tournament.”
For more information on the CPPT Paddy Power Poker Irish Open, click here.
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