Live and Dead at the Irish Open: Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

The original Irish Open was the first-ever major hold'em tournament played in Europe, and this year the sponsors made a major step forward by having the final table televised live. The Irish aren't usually great innovators. If you're somewhere between half-drunk and totally drunk most of the time, change doesn't necessarily mean progress. I had a very small part in the TV end of things. It involved wearing a suit and saying, "This is great stuff. I think Paddy is playing well enough to win from here." It was generally agreed that I was doing quite well, until some smartass pointed out that there was no longer anybody called Paddy left in the tournament. I was immediately replaced by Simon Trumper - a left-sided midfielder for a left-sided midfielder. While this may have greatly disappointed my fan, it did give me the opportunity to watch the proceedings from behind the scenes, and this turned out to be more fun than the poker.

The first major bit of craic was when the TV sound man fell asleep sitting in a chair with his mouth open. It would have been hard to blame him. The tournament itself had been absolutely marvelous. It had been played in a sporting and wonderfully good-humoured spirit, and confirmed Dublin's reputation as the best place in the world to play poker. If the final table was half as enjoyable as the rest of the tournament, it would have been a well-deserved triumph for the Paddy Power poker team and all the staff who worked with a smile. Obviously, in the opinion of the sound man, it wasn't. The short-stacked local character was eliminated, leaving us with three stiffs from the Net, a guy from a pub in Donegal, and a lesser known English pro. The fates conspired against us and failed to provide many interesting clashes, and not much happened for hours that seemed like days. The English guy had us all worried at one stage when he went into a complete trance. Most people thought that inasmuch as his hand was absolute garbage at the time, he might be dead, although there was a minority opinion that he had gone blind and was too polite to mention it. It was neither. He was just wasting everybody's time. By the third time it happened, some were of the opinion that if he was dead this time, whereas it might have been bad news for himself and his loved ones, it certainly would have improved the tournament! Others ventured the opinion that when a sponsor is adding money and running a good tournament, the professional players have a duty to keep the thing flowing. I had some sympathy for both points of view, especially the first one. The commentators did their best. Jesse drank three gallons of coffee and managed to sound excited every time somebody posted the small blind without being asked. Roy wisely switched from beer to Jack Daniels and became an expert. The sound man woke up in time for that wonderful, euphoric moment when the final two players managed to get all of their chips in the middle in a toss-up, bringing the proceedings to a welcome end.

Thankfully, not everybody sees the world through the same eyes. Whilst veteran TV men and poker pros who'd seen one flop too many might have thought the affair a boring experience, that was not the case for everyone. I had the pleasure of watching the action unfold (or not unfold, as the case may be) in the company of a lovely lady from Donegal who was doing the makeup for TV. She had an absolute ball, and was excited from start to finish. She plays a little poker herself, though not Texas hold'em, and was absolutely enthralled by what she was watching. She saw a fascinating contest between four Irishmen and two invaders from England (one of whom looked Chinese to me, but then again, my babysitter, when I was a kid, didn't look like Mary Poppins). The first Irish guy got dogged trying to get back into the action. Then, that nice young lad from Leitrim got knocked out while courageously trying to make something happen. The first of the English went down in a dramatic hand in which his opponent, the eventual winner, was dead to a 9 and hit one on the river. What drama! What excitement! The next man out was the fairy tale of the event. The lad whose poker is played in a pub in Bundoran was living out everybody's fantasy. Heads-up play was a thrilling contest that ended, as it should in Ireland, in an Irish victory. The buzz she was getting from every hand was infectious. By the time the end was approaching, I had forgotten I had seen everything before and lived every hand through the eyes of my new pal. It was great!

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.