Poker News

Jonathan Raab

While most of the events I attend are in the UK, I do travel to some events outside of my home country. Next month I will be visiting Slovenia before heading stateside for the WSOP, but just last week I paid a visit to Ireland for the Green Joker Poker festival. Held at a newly opened poker club in the small town of Drogheda,it was a small but cosy affair with just 126 entries for the ?1,000 main event. Poker tournaments never start on time in Ireland - it’s not that they are inefficient at running them, far from it in fact, it is quite simply a tradition. So when the advertised start time was set at 4pm, play started as expected shortly after 5pm.

Several British players had made the journey over the Irish Sea including fellow poker journalists Barry Carter and Jen Mason. I am delighted to report that at the end of the three day main event; Jen emerged victorious winning just over ?30,000, reiterating just how good she is at the game that she usually reports on. I am less than delighted to report that my attempt to win the ?500 side event was cut short, in the main by the other attending journalist Barry Carter, who had the timely audacity to find aces when I indeed found kings. The town of Drogheda, with only 29,000 inhabitants, seems well placed to cater for the demands of poker players, race/sports bettors and gamblers in general. There are no less than 15 off-track betting shops in the town and as we discovered, most of the local pub managers will also lay bets on request. The recently opened Drogheda Poker club, where the festival was staged is one of three poker clubs operating in the town. What struck me most about the trip was not the quality of the poker that was played, assome of it was indeed very questionable, nor the good natured way in which Tournament Director Mike Lacey orchestrated proceedings, but the general laid back good atmosphere at the festival in every bar/bookie or restaurant that I frequented in this sleepy little town.

At one point a colleague and I found ourselves enthralled in a gambling game in one of the public houses with some of the locals. It was a game of pocket threes versus ace-king. On each betting coup we ran the flop nine times and the hand that stood up the most scooped the pot. I’d like to thank my Irish opponents and my colleague Jamie for sticking with A-K while I opted for pocket threes. It’s nice to bet on a game where I have the house edge.

Ireland also hosts several other festivals each year. The recent Irish Open, with 708 runners was the largest nolimit tournament ever staged in Europe. The EPT makes an annual pit stop in Dublin during the fall, and the Macau casino in Cork holds regular festivals throughout the year. While poker has been popular in Ireland for many years, its popularity now seems to have reached new heights. There are over 30 private members poker clubs in Ireland and new ones are being opened every month. If you like a drink and a good natured game of poker, you can’t go wrong in Ireland.

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