One of a Kind - A Tribute to Laramie

Like hundreds of others, I came into town in great spirits for Europe’s best tournament, the Irish Open. That didn’t last long. It was nothing to do with the tournament, which was the best since the old days in the Eccentric’s Club. But shortly after I arrived, I was told that my old friend Tom Connell, known to all as Laramie had moved on to the great game in the sky.

He’ll be a great addition to that game but that’s not much good to us. Tom’s introduction to poker, over fifty years ago would have put a lot of people off the game for life. He came from a farming background and when his father died young Tom became the man of the family. In this role, at the tender age of nineteen, he was sent into town a couple of days before Christmas to sell the family’s chickens and to use the proceeds to purchase all the stuff they needed for Christmas.

The first half went very well, he got a good price for his chickens and in time-honoured fashion went to the pub with the buyer to cement the deal with a drink. Unfortunately, there was a draw poker game going on at the time in the pub and Laramie decided to give it a go. It didn’t work out too good and he arrived home with nothing. Christmas is probably overrated anyway and he soon put that disaster behind him. From that day on, the man was in love with the game.

While Doyle, Sailor and the boys were following the white line from game to game through Texas, Laramie was doing the Irish version, playing in pubs, the kitchens of farmhouses, the front rooms of priests houses and hotel backrooms at horseracing festivals. Lar could be moody, belligerent and hilarious, all in the space of half an hour, but for every guy he drove nuts, another 10 loved him. Over a lifetime, that’s a pretty good stat and probably when it’s all said and done, the only one that really matters.

Laramie would probably kill me for telling you that underneath it all, he had a heart of gold but that’s a risk that I’m prepared to take. Everybody’s got a story about the man and I heard dozens of them over that weekend. Scott Gray, Micky McGuinness, and I were retelling one of my favourites. It happened in Galway during race week in the early nineties. We were playing in the smoke filled backroom of the Warwick Hotel in Salthill in the wee small hours.

Lar was sitting with his back to Micky, who’d been enjoying a couple of gallons of the black stuff, which is pretty normal behaviour during race week. Not too surprisingly, when Micky leaned to one side, he fell off the chair and landed in a heap on the floor, which to be honest in the circumstances was probably more financially rewarding than remaining in his seat. Without even turning around, Lar announced that it was traditional that when a man died at the table the twos, threes and fours should be taken out of the deck for an hour as a mark of respect. When questioned further on the etiquette of the situation, he said that a dead man should be dealt in and that he could call but not raise. I told you he was a fair man.

On the morning of the main event, I asked Liam Flood if he planned to have a minute’s silence in Laramie’s memory before the start of the tournament. He told me that he had thought about it but had decided against it, as most of the people in the room had never heard of the man. I guess they never will. And that’s their loss. I’ve got a crap record in that draw poker game at the Galway races and I’ve been giving it a swerve for more than a decade but if they decide to take the twos, threes and fours out for an hour or two in Laramie’s memory, I would consider it a privilege to be dealt in.