Pulling off the impossible

Fintan Gavin’s ambition to bring higher stakes live tournaments back to Ireland was never more evident than when he announced the inaugural Irish Poker Festival last year, with a €700,000 ($768,261) guarantee on the €3,000 ($3,293) buyin Main Event, and a total of €1m ($1.09m) in total guarantees across the festival. This seemed brave to say the least, and by the time the International Poker Open rolled around the week before, almost everybody I spoke to in Irish poker gave Fintan no chance of hitting the guarantee.

“Fintan will do his boll*cks.”

“Just before late registration closes will be a good time to be hanging around the Intercontinental bar.”

The first two flights were ahead of expectation but a big Saturday was still needed. Fintan admitted to me afterwards that when he came in early that day to find only 17 players registered he felt some waves of panic. As the day went on though more players jumped in, and by the end of the day it was clear that the guarantee was safe. In the end, they comfortably exceeded it, and Fintan’s uncanny ability to pull off the seemingly impossible was reaffirmed.

This year’s edition

You’d think after last year’s sweat Fintan might have reined it in a bit this year, but you’d be wrong. The Irish Poker Festival returns from Tuesday, October 29 to Sunday, November 3 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Dublin, with guarantees of more than €1m. The €700,000 guaranteed Main Event which has a €3,000 buy-in and runs from Wednesday to Sunday with three days.

The early highlight will be the €70k Mystery Bounty. Several giant bounties will be pulled out by lucky players, and defending champion Thomas Murphy who also pulled most of the bigger mystery prizes has vowed to try to pull them all this year.

The €1,100 ($1,207) Irish Poker Championship will run from Friday 1nd to Sunday 3rd. Previous winners include some of the greats of Irish poker such as Padraig Parkinson, Steve Dwyer, and Jude Ainsworth.

Coin Poker is running satellites with multiple packages guaranteed every Sunday

Festival partner Coin Poker has a €2,500 ($2,743) NLH tournament which runs over the closing weekend. Coin Poker is running satellites with multiple packages guaranteed every Sunday, with plenty of feeder satellites available to suit every bankroll.

EDGE Expo

Ever the innovator, Fintan announced EDGE, Europe’s Gaming Expo, a unique conference set to merge live & online gaming to run alongside the Irish Poker Festival in the same venue.

The event will feature 20 workshops, and the speakers include whistle-blower Jonathan Raab, leading ladies ambassador Tanya Masters, Alec Torelli, Will Shilibier, Alex Scott, and Padraig Parkinson. Oh, and someone called Dara O’Kearney.

See you there!