Lost in Translation

PokerStars very kindly added a charity event to their UK & Ireland Poker Tour Dublin weekend from which the Irish poker player’s charity Poker for the Homeless benefited to the extent of €8,065. I missed the main event but ended up sorry because by the time I turned up in the Burlington, it was more like a wedding than a poker tournament, judging by the party in the bar.

Once again, the Irish poker players did themselves proud and turned up in great numbers to play alongside sports stars Reggie Corrigan and Jim Rock. Despite the recession, most of us were playing with gay abandon and after about an hour, I was sent out to the bar to round up the stragglers. It was a bit like sending a mouse out to set a mouse trap.

The usual suspects were there ⎯ Marty Smyth, Nicky Power, and Paul Carr. I swapped my usual 5 percent with Marty who then told me he had a train to catch at 6 p.m., which wasn’t a big problem because I was playing like I had one at 5.30 p.m.. It was about 3 p.m. at this stage and the three boys were betting about which of them would have the most chips by 5 p.m..

When I went back to the bar on the break, the three of them were still there but had apparently played the tournament and had all got knocked out before 5 o’clock. They asked me to adjudicate as to whether the guy who’d lasted the longest should win the bet. I passed.

The highlight of the event occurred when some Polish guy who didn’t speak a word of English had his hand killed because he wasn’t sitting at the table at the correct time. He was pretty upset but the tournament director, John Scanlon, came up with the perfect solution, he called his lovely Polish fiancée, Kasha, over to explain the situation to the guy, which she did. In perfect English. This didn’t help a huge amount, so she was asked to have another go. She was a bit flustered at this stage and explained it to him in English again. Eventually it all got sorted. Just another day out in Irish poker.

The final came down to a battle between Fintan Gavin, who’s been a great supporter of the event, and my American friend “Miami” John Cernuto. Fintan was a little surprised when I started rooting for John but I had to explain to him that, as the charity was going to have 50 percent of the ticket for the European Poker Tour London, we’d have preferred to have John playing for us. He saw the funny side of it, especially as he won.

*Beware The Internet Qualifier *

I’ve been betting on golf in association with Jesse May for years now. We once even turned up a day early for the two week 888 UK Open, just to bet on the final day of the Ryder Cup. This was a big mistake as twelve singles matches and three NFL games later, we finished up working for the fortnight just to get out of trouble. On another occasion, we were betting on three-balls in a big American tournament, just to keep ourselves entertained.

One of the matches involved Tiger Woods, another big name player, and some guy called Molinari.

We couldn’t decide which of the big names to bet, and somewhere along the line, I asked Jesse who this Molinari guy was. He’d obviously been doing way too much commentary because he said, “Well, he’s just kind of like an Internet qualifier.” He later told me there were two Molinaris, but that it didn’t really matter which one this guy was. Recently, I watched most of the Ryder Cup in London with Jesse and the past came back to haunt us. Both the Molinari brothers were in the European team who beat us out of our money one more time. I suppose we’ll never learn.