Few of the 5,619 runners who sat down for the World Series of Poker Main Event in Las Vegas earlier this month can have travelled a more interesting route to this, the pinnacle of Tournament Poker.A part time player on the Irish circuit for 10 years or more, Andy's first success in Poker's Blue Riband came as long ago, when he finished a highly credible 14th place in the 1997 renewal, collecting a very handy $29,680 in the process. As this was far and away Andy's biggest ever win, one would be entitled to assume that young Andy would be a happy and proud man. Not so, not at all - he felt he should have won the event, and his departure in 14th place devastated him. So much so, in fact, that he felt he needed to get away from the poker scene for a while, and, in the modern parlance, "find himself". Well he did find himself - in the foothills of Tibet, of all places, where he decided to devote himself to Buddhism, and for several years he led the life of a Monk. Not too many poker players can lay claim to that calling! Eventually, enriched in mind by what he had experienced, he returned home, where he continued to live in something like solitude for a good while.
Eventually, and still continuing with his Buddhist calling, he returned to poker, determined this time to face it's challenges & beat them.
So it was to the Merrion and Fitzwilliam Clubs in Dublin that Andy began his poker rehabilitation. After confirmation that he still possessed the skills necessary, a trip to Barcelona in September of last year yielded some clues, for he managed to make the Final of the 200 Euro PLH. A small step on the road back to the World Series, but a step in the right direction.
Confidence rose at The Irish Open this Spring, when he secured a long overdue victory, and so plans were laid for him to attend the World Series in Las Vegas. These are seriously expensive affairs if success does not come quickly, so he managed to find a few backers to buy a percentage of him, and off he flew to Nevada, heart full of hope, and pockets full of the money he'd scraped together both from winning small competitions, and from the "investors" he had found at The Fitrzwiliam.
Success - of a sort - came quickly, when he finished 10th in the short-Handed NLH, for a payday of $25,210, and he followed this up two weeks later with a minor finish in the $5,000 Short-Handed NLH. Clearly he had "game", as short handed poker requires a particular form of controlled aggression.
And so to the Main Event, for which a $10,000 buy-in deters all but the better players. Could the rejuvenated Andy prove himself against the biggest field ever assembled in Poker?
From the very beginning, the answer seemed to be a resounding "yes", as he dominated, bullied and bossed table after table. Starting with 10,000 chips, at one stage he had accumulated a mind-boggling 20 million chips, over a third of all the chips in play. He absolutely coasted to the Final, and the stage was set for him to show now just how outstanding a player he had become.
The Final began with the knowledge that even the first man out would collect over a million dollars, with a breathtaking $7,500,000 to the winner. Was Andy phased by the occasion, or by the thought of the sums of money involved? Seemingly not, for after sitting quietly for the first few hours of the Final, he then started to assert his authority over the table. And assert his authority he most certainly did, as he bluffed and talked his opponents off hand after hand. Most good poker judges saw Andy as clearly the best player at the table, but a series of outdraws eventually destroyed his confidence and decimated his chipstack. Playing catch-up poker, he eventually and almost inevitably took one beat too many, and he exited in a quite remarkable 5th place, earning for himself and his backers a cool $1,750,000.
Would this "so near yet so far" performance send him back to Tibet? Not this time it seems, as Andy was back at the tables less than 2 weeks later, mixing it again with the world's best in the Paris WPT Event.
Andy, early thirties, tall and fit, still sports what looks like a Monk's haircut, and still practices Buddhism, particularly the meditation which it involves. This seems to have given him the strength of character to take poker's ups and downs in his stride. He is a man whose time has arrived, and he is ready to grasp it. He will win a major tournament very soon, that's now seems a certainty. He's come a very long way from Tibet, but for Andy that was the route to success. One can but watch and admire.