Big Tournaments In Ireland

When I first played the Irish Open in the Eccentric’s Club on Hanlon’s Corner on Dublin’s North side in the mid 80’s, the buy-in was 1500. That’s about 6,000 in today’s money. Terry Rogers, who’d run the first ever No-Limit Holdem tournaments in Europe a few years earlier after accidentally visiting the WSOP in Binions, wasn’t messing about! He ran a weekly tourney on Tuesday nights and if you finished in the money, he would ask you how much you wanted to give him towards your Irish Open entry. I never answered “nothing” because you didn’t want Terry shouting at you, no matter how much you needed the money. I remember my first IO well. After we got knocked out, about six of us got our money back and more in a couple of good shoes at Terry’s blackjack table. Maybe it was karma!

Over the years before, paddypower took over, numbers went up and the buy-in went down. The explosion that took place worldwide breathed new life into the Open. Somehow, Liam Flood bluffed himself into a consultancy role. Paddy’s added increasingly large guarantees and increased the buy-in accordingly. Scot Gray and I, as well as a bunch of Irish players, had been talking up the Open in Vegas and elsewhere for years. As I started playing more regularly on the US circuit, I worked closely with the paddypower team to attract big and not so big names to Ireland. Being a friend of Mike Sexton’s certainly helped. He loved Irish poker as much as I did! It went very well, but eventually the Irish started to get priced out of their own championship, we lost sight of the fact that foreigners wanted a guarantee of the fun poker we’d become famous for rather than a bigger prizepool. I told Paddy’s and Liam that in my opinion making everything bigger wouldn’t make it better, the US support had been maxed out and increasing buy-ins and guarantees would be counterproductive and lose money for paddy’s. Liam had learned all the bluster but none of the business genius from Terry so, of course, he rubbished all the warnings from just about everybody. It was like watching the captain of the Titanic ordering full speed ahead and don’t worry about the icebergs. Although to be fair, the captain probably qualified at least.

That wasn’t the first time trying to get the Irish players to play tournaments at a level higher than they wanted to backfired. One day John Duthie, the genius behind the EPT, phoned me while I was living in Paris. He said he was in Dublin to look at the Regency Hotel as a possible EPT venue. When I stopped laughing, he told me Flood had recommended it. I laughed even more. I loved The Regency. I loved Stephen and his bar colleagues. It became the home of the IPO, one of the jewels in the crown of Irish poker. When Ciaran, Gerry, Lisa and Paul, the fantastic Boyles team ran it with unbelievable efficiency and congeniality, it was unreal. A celebration of Irish poker and Irish hospitality rolled into one. The craic was king. But the Regency was far from what the self-entitled internet pricks thought was their 5 star right.

A few months later, I showed up at the event. I was one of the few Irish players to enter as 5k was too much for the Irish market. There was consternation when a bunch of Scandies couldn’t log onto the Internet. OMG. They just wanted to go home. The relatively few Irish entrants (because of the buy-in) were having a great time. The next morning was even better, if, like me you weren’t staying in the hotel. There was for some reason no water in most of the hotel. OMG. Way later in the day, there was flooding when the water came back. Jesus.

Those were the times Irish players showed they wouldn’t be told by operators what they should pay to play a big tournament here.

With that in mind The Irish Poker Festival is holding a 3k event with a 700k guarantee at the end of October in the 5 star Intercontinental Hotel in Ballsbridge. What a venue! You could walk to the City Center. The area is full of quality restaurants and pubs. You can qualify for the event on coinpoker or in the Sporting Emporium on Sunday 20th at 8.15 p.m.

See you there!