The first trip to Dublin in the New Year (there tend to be a pleasing number of these) was to the Citywest Hotel, which was hosting the Irish Championships, a €1,500 buy-in deep stack event with a nice hour clock and over 300 runners. The first part of this report isn’t about poker – it rarely ever is – but a word of warning to anyone travelling from Dublin airport: travelcards are a false economy. Three hours spent alternately on foot and on the slowest buses in the world brought us to the luxury hotel and country club, by which time Snoopy and I were already tired and ready for a nap. Instead, we were sent to the pleasantly warm and spacious Convention Centre to begin our live coverage.
At the start we were a little overwhelmed by the multitudes of Irish faces we didn’t recognise, and the high number of qualifiers boosted the number of players but also the number of times we needed to ask them to identify themselves. Luckily for us, there were around 30 others we recognised from the UK and beyond, including tikay, Praz Bansi, Ian Woodley, Ryan Fronda and Red-Dog, and we followed them for a while, hoping no one would notice, until we got our bearings. It worked; by the time Liam Flood was eliminated a ways into the first level (his Aces against Jacks which hit the set on the turn) we had a player list. This was 80% helpful – at first we were confused when latecomers came over to our central Media Platform asking, “Where’s Waterford?” thinking this was some kind of geography test, but the tables turned out to be named rather than numbered, leaving us with no real idea where each set of players were located.
This turned out not to matter too much, however, as from the middle of the room we could see where action was occurring (and later, when the Guinness started flowing freely) hear it. Matt Tyler got a good start, when someone decided pushing all-in in the second level on an Ace-high flop with AK was a good idea – Matt held the Aces and was in good shape for the first half of the day. Other decent early stacks were held by Daniel O’Reilly, Joseph Costello, Neil McCambridge (right) and Nick Slade. We were aided in our stack searches by announcer and organiser Fintan Gavin, who would randomly shout over the mic things like, “And here we have Paul ‘The Hangman’ Roper who has 34,800!” He also aided Snoopy by bringing him drinks.
The most forum-debated hand of the day has to have been Red-Dog’s button Queens – he raised, a player he described as “loose, aggressive, and with a big stack,” re-raised from the blinds, he made a re-raise and found the other guy moving in. He passed, and was shown Aces. Make of it what you will, Mr. McCready never quite recovered and was soon out (albeit after Michael O’Sullivan, Kieran Walsh and Joe McDermitt). Kevin Parkes (from London) was meanwhile counting his 60k after eliminating Tim Gillig with a full house against Gillig’s flopped broadway straight, and others ending the first session with a full bag of chips were Paul Roper, John Keown and Colette Murphy, with Day One’s chip leader being Lam Trinh.
Dan Smith (left) started to make and break his stack several times during the course of Day Two, the first time with pocket Tens, with which he called an all-in overbet on a flop of Qc 8h 6c. His opponent had the dangerous Ac Kc, but he dodged all bullets and had 65k within the first hour. Richie Lawlor was soon ahead of that, however, having knocked out John Keown over two consecutive hands. It’s that quick sometimes. Tikay’s exit was with KK against the A3 of lone Scandinavian Mats Iremark. It’s funny how the detail adds everything – Mats didn’t do anything strange, in this instance – he was short stacked and moved in in late position. Tikay (even shorter-stacked) had Kings in the blinds and that was that, a spiked Ace and he was off to stage surreptitious press sit’n’gos in one of the hotel’s many bars.
Grinder of the Day has to go to Chris Smith (father of Dan) who looked at many times like an average stack was going to elude him, but outlasted his more high-variance progeny, all the way to the money. Champion boxer Bernard Dunne held his own in this other sort of game, taking a chunk off Stephen MacLean after taunting his call with the line, “Now you could say you’ve knocked me out…” He never made it to the dizzy heights of 100k plus, though, like Keith Cummins, John Clancy, Stewart Samuels and Tommy Watson.
Notable hands included a three-way AK all-in between John Clancy, Kevin Buckley and Chris Smith, with only a moment of drama as Chris’ hand (suited in hearts) picked up a flush draw on the turn freerolling his tense opponents. Nothing happened; this is only notable because of the amount of interest the multiway all-in created in the room. Something definitely did happen to Pat O’Callaghan around this time, however, as his Aces were cracked by the Queens of Keith Cummins. This victory was enough to propel him all the way to the final table, having already secured a payout. Probably a good idea to list the prizes up to the final Nine, then:
10th = €9,000
11th = €8,000
12th = €7,000
13th = €6,000
14th = €5,000
15-18th = €4,000
19-22nd = €3,000
23-27th = €2,000
28-29th = €2,000 (these last were taken from the top two places)
With Chris Smith and Paul Morrow out of the running, we’d assumed that that was your lot as far as English players, but we discovered CK Le at the eleventh hour to be from Manchester. Almost as soon as we’d congratulated him on still being in, he wasn’t, finishing 14th. Having done most of his stack to Scott Byron’s Q-Q with his K-Q, he was knocked out by the silent assassin Jens Klaning (right), and it turned out that both his destroyers made Day Three (the final table). A large discrepancy was becoming apparent in the chip distribution: Scott Byron had over 600k as they reached the end of the second day, while a few like the experienced Colette Murphy were hovering under 200k but showing no signs of disappearing. When Mike Healy, Sean Clery and James Lee took 12th-10th respectively, the 12 hour day was over and we trundled off to bed, in the strange position of having no definitive idea of when the restart was scheduled for. We were told 5pm, 12:30pm and 2pm by different official-looking people, but in the end went with Dealer Paul who looked the most confident in his assessment. He was right.
The final table all managed to be up and present at 2pm, and their chip standings were as follows:
(1) Ciaron Burke -- 281,000
(2) Dermot Jacob -- 103,500
(3) Scott Byron -- 1,003,000
(4) Terry McDaid -- 468,000
(5) Jens Klaning -- 365,000
(6) John Clancy -- 259,500
(7) Stewart Samuels -- 97,500
(8) Keith Cummins -- 417,000
(9) Colette Murphy -- 149,500
And the top prizes (at this point):
1st = €138,000
2nd = €68,000
3rd = €38,000
4th = €28,000
5th = €21,000
6th = €17,000
7th = €14,000
8th = €12,000
9th = €10,000
It was a fast start to the final, with short stack Dermot Jacob the first to go, racing his A-K against Scott Byron’s 7-7. Scott had a suspiciously non-Irish accent, and we overheard that he was in fact an American, with plenty of pro-type experience in his background. Now working for Pokerstars, he clearly hadn’t forgotten how to play tournament poker, and I tipped him for the top spot. It’s also easier to do that when someone has over a million chips out of a total of three and a bit.
It was Keith Cummins (left) who eliminated 8th place, Stewart Samuels, and this time his A-K took down 9-9, proving beyond mathematical doubt that pair vs. overcards only wins one time in two. A third such all-in saw the ever-popular Colette Murphy get a needed double through as her K-J suited beat Kieran Burke’s pair of Sevens making a crowd-pleasing straight on the river. But her luck was not to hold – the next time she got her chips in the middle she was holding two black Kings, but Terry McDaid had the Aces and knocked her out in 7th. He displeased the crowd by making a rather cruel slowroll out of his hand, telling Colette, “good call,” when she put her stack in, which went down like a lead balloon amongst the crowd. We were later told that there were mitigating circumstances – apparently he’d not played anywhere except a small game where etiquette rules had no bearing, and it didn’t occur to him that a big money cold deck wasn’t something with which to wind up the opposition.
Keith Cummins and Ciaran Burke clashed repeatedly on the final, with Ciaran’s Ace-little-kicker outdrawing Keith’s Ace-big-kicker to keep him alive, and then taking another double through from a blind vs. blind flop of 9-3-2. He held 9-2, and after a succession of raises got it all in against Keith Cummins’ T-9. There followed one of those Final Table Lulls during which we distract viewers with pictures to avoid the fact that we have no hands of consequence to report. Luckily, in the €750 side event, Michael McCool had just emerged victorious, taking €40,000 for his efforts, which was definitely news. Back to the final, and Jens Klaning, who’d quietly and impassively played all the way to 6th, went out to John Clancy after he’d gambled most of his stack on Eights against Keith Cummins’ A-J. It was a move to put him in contention for the top spots or knock him out, and unfortunately for the laconic Scandinavian, it was the latter.
The chips slowly evened up for a while, before another blinds battle saw Keith Cummins making a stand with an up and down straight draw on a 7-A-5-J board, which John Clancy (right) called with the marginal J-3. It was good, and they were down to four. Clancy and Burke were now the chip leaders, and Clancy soon moved ahead when he knocked out Terry McDaid in 4th, calling his short-stacked move in with Q-8 with the victorious A-T. Down to three, and the players formed a Deal Huddle. We hoped they weren’t going to just chop it there and then, and found to our delight that they’d just restructured the top prizes as follows:
1st €114,000
2nd €75,000
3rd €55,000
A monster pot then left Ciaran Burke with little hope of recovery, after the board came 9-6-7-3-5. Ciaran was apparently betting the whole way with A-9, but the river saw a 200k bet from Scott who held 8-8 for the straight, and after that it was pretty much all over for Mr. Burke who finished in third place. With a two to one chip lead, it looked like the Scott-to-win prediction might have been correct, but it wasn’t to be. The crucial hand saw John outdraw Scott’s Q-9 with 7-9, all in on a Nine-high flop. The Seven popped out on the turn, and with a better stack, his following double through with KK vs. 88 was enough for him to turn the tide. The end for Scott came when both players found two Aces to go with the one in their hand, but Scott was outkicked and the top prize and title of Irish Champion went to Irish player John Clancy.
At this point in a tournament there is usually some bustle around the final, with trophies awarded and photos taken, but the directors seemed to have packed up shop, and John Clancy was left looking a little bemused but pleased enough to have won over a 100k. We were about ready to drop, and having experienced the sheer luck of sit’n’go donkeys Mike and Lloyd (you know what happened, best it stays over there) we decided to beat a hasty retreat, avoiding more embarrassing defeat at cards. On the way back to the airport we took a taxi.