blonde poker

With the New Year barely alive and yet to open its eyes, a whopping 310 players fought off their hangovers to make their way to the Citywest Hotel in Dublin for the attractively structured annual Irish Poker Championships.

 

Although this included a sizeable contingent of Brits and Blondes including Joe Grech, Ryan Fronda and Ian Woodley, sadly none were able to make the final in the three-day event as the Irish dominated the money positions.

 

CK Le from Manchester was the last of the English to go, earning €5,000 for a credible 14th place finish. Meanwhile, blondeite Mick 'Slick Kid' McCool (left) was still plugging away at the €750 side event, eventually taking it down the following day when a successful heads up battle with Danish opponent, Soran Kongsgaard, resulted in an impressive €40,000 payday.

 

After two days of hard labouring, Sunday arrived and the final table was as follows:

Seat 1: Ciarán Burke -- 281,000
Seat 2: Dermot Jacob -- 103,500
Seat 3: Scott Byron -- 1,003,000
Seat 4: Terry McDaid -- 468,000
Seat 5: Jens Klaning -- 365,000
Seat 6: John Clancy -- 259,500
Seat 7: Stewart Samuels -- 97,500
Seat 8: Keith Cummins -- 417,000
Seat 9: Colette Murphy -- 149,500

Whilst Jacob and Samuels quickly went out in 9th and 8th place respectively both losing races with Ace-King to underpairs, remaining female player Colette 'Smurf' Murphy (right) lapped up 7th, cruelly running Kings into Terry McDaid’s American Airlines.

After this, Kerry's Keith Cummins, whose 9-9 had knocked out Samuels, saw his chip count shrink and grow with regular frequency. First his A-Q was outdrawn by Ciarán Burke’s A-3 all-in preflop, then, on a board of 9-3-2, he gave more chips to Burke calling another all-in with T-9, only to be shown 9-2 for top and bottom pair. Finally he managed to double up through lone Scandie Jens Klaning with A-J vs. 8-8, a hand which crippled the Scandinavian, thereby forcing him to move in from the small blind with 8-5, which was ultimately outdrawn (!) by the 6-3 off-suit of John Clancy.

Clancy, who'd started the day 6th in chips, would go on to knock out Cummins, calling an all-in bet on the Turn with 2nd pair against Keith’s open ended straight draw, which missed.

 

Next to fall to Clancy was Terry McDaid, whose Q-8 failed to improve against his fellow Irishman’s A-T. At this point, the remaining three players decided to restructure the final three payouts, making it slightly flatter, but still very playable:

1st = €114,000
2nd = €75,000
3rd =  €55,000

 

With Burke taking the doctored 3rd prize (A-3 vs. Byron's A-K), we were down to two, and although Byron's record and newly acquired stack suggested he was the fave, Clancy doubled through twice (the latter being K-K vs. 8-8) before finally getting Scott all-in with A-9s against A-6. An A-2-3-A-5 board meant that the 9 kicker played and John Clancy became the Winner of the Irish Poker Championships of 2007.

 

So, congratulations to John and hard luck to Scott, who found himself purely at the mercy of the cards once heads-up. It’s also great to see such a large turnout rewarding another well-structured Irish tournament (how often do we say that?).

 

 

[Ed Note: To view the full results for this event, please click here]